"I am alive. I am here. I am talking to you. This is obvious proof that harm reduction works"

EHRN are happy to present a video created by their very active members in Belarus, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Tadzhikistan. Special thanks given to Igor Kuzmenko as well as members of Georgian and Tadzhik harm reduction networks for filming. Thanks also given to Studio Workshop (Germany) for editing and development. This video was first introduced during the Regional Dialogue in Tbilisi.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

Video: Why fund harm reduction? 

The drug laws of the Republic of Georgia are very harsh, even by comparison with other countries in the region. The government launched its war on drugs in 2006; and since than, tens of thousands of people have been stopped every year by policemen, and forced to provide urine samples for drug-testing. People can be stopped for testing, even without any reasonable suspicion of using drugs. If the test proves positive, the offender has to pay a fine, and if they re-offend, they face a prison sentence. Young people spend years in prison for possessing very small amounts of illegal drugs. This system is not only brutal, costly, and ineffective, but a constant source of corruption, and blocks access to effective treatment and harm reduction programs.

Civil society, including the communities of drug users, have been fighting against repressive drug laws for a long time. The current government has decided to take cautious steps towards reforming its drug laws. Last year, they abolished a law which obliged medical staff to report overdose victims to the police. This week, at an international conference organised in Tbilisi by the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network, the Minister of Health announced the intention to amend the law, limiting the scope of mandatory drug testing on the streets. The new regulation (Interior Ministry Ordinance №725) came into force on Thursday, and only permits policemen to force people to undergo drug-testing if the following conditions are fulfilled: a) a law enforcement official has witnessed an illegal action (eg. drug use); b) there is enough reason to suggest a person is under the influence of drugs; c) police have obtained information, either through investigation or information received, that the person has illegally used drugs.

The new ministerial ordinance regulates the procedure for drug testing. If the law enforcement representative claims to have witnessed a breach of the law, the suspect can undergo testing voluntarily. If the person should refuse, a sample may be obtained by force. The suspect can contest this action in court, where s/he also has the option of disputing the test results.

Republic of Georgia cuts back its street drug testing programme

The Global Fund is currently conducting an audit of its Country Coordinating Mechanisms. The overall objective of the audit is to evaluate the role and effectiveness of the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) for the Global Fund grants. This will include, but not limited to, assessing:

the adequacy of the CCM model in coordinating and overseeing in-country grants; and

the operational effectiveness of the CCMs, including policies and processes in place at the Global Fund Secretariat and at the country level.

As part of the process, the Global Fund is conducting a survey for civil society organizations and key populations to get their valuable input to make the Global Fund CCMs more effective. Please find below the link to the CCM audit questionnaire. Please respond to the questionnaire by 

CCM Questionnaire for CSOs and Key Population

Questionnaire destiné aux organisations de la société civile et aux populations clés

Survey - Audit of the Global Fund country coordinating mechanism

O congresso 'Drogas, Política e Cultura: Perspectivas Brasil México' (5-6 de Outubro de 2015) concluiu com uma forte declaração em contra das "consequências indesejadas" do regime internacional de controle de droga. Assinado por um grupo importante de académicos, jornalistas, ativistas e políticos, a «Declaração de Guadalajara" salienta a necessidade de re-orientar o debate sobre a política de drogas fora do âmbito da criminalização e da proibição, para desenvolver perspetivas ‘que respeitem os direitos humanos, promovam a saúde pública e a proteção social e cultivem o desenvolvimento na América Latina’.

Registe-se para recever as Alertas mensais do IDPC e obter informação sobre questões relacionadas com as políticas de drogas.

O Momento é Agora: Declaração de Guadalajara

Dealing with the double stigma of racially-fuelled exclusion from local services and problematic drug use, Britain’s Gypsy and Traveler communities are among the most marginalized groups when it comes to addressing substance misuse.

Until quite recently drug use was very rare among Gypsy and Traveler communities. In the last 15 years, however, local health workers, community members, and voluntary sector agencies have been anecdotally reporting increasing problematic substance use among primarily the young and unemployed of these groups.

The pattern of this substance misuse is particularly concerning: polydrug use, lack of knowledge about safe injecting and speedy progression to “hard” drugs including crack cocaine and heroin are likely exacerbated by historical disengagement with fulltime education.

A six month research project in Tower Hamlets, London, found that the most common drugs of use were herbal cannabis, crack cocaine and heroin. Worryingly they also discovered that the average age of first drug use was 13 years and that users rarely came into contact with drug services until their use was at a very advanced stage, and then often through Youth Offending Teams or Probation Services.

Roma and traveler communities excluded from drug treatment services

Internationally, the drug policies created over the past 50 years have been a bust. The emphasis on prohibition and security has done little to control the production, transit, or consumption of drugs. These policies have failed because the factors driving thousands of people to join illicit drug markets are deep and structural. Try as you might, you can’t just police them out of existence.

Poverty, gender inequality, rural development and land rights, corruption and weak rule of law—these are the factors that fuel the illicit drug market. They’re also development issues—the very issues tackled by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goalds (SDGs), which were adopted last week. This is why the SDGs must incorporate reformed drug policies. Neglecting a developmental approach to drug policies has led to myriad consequences, from environmental degradation and crime to destabilization and displacement.

In production countries, prohibitionist policies are based on the assumption that by reducing the supply of drugs, you can drive up prices and, in turn, drive down demand. But this approach doesn’t take developmental factors into account.

For instance, in Latin America around 70 percent of women in prison face charges of nonviolent “micro-trafficking” activities. Women are prone to engage in these activities because of the persistent gender inequality in underdeveloped countries. Single mothers with no education often find in these activities a way to support their families, working as low-level dealers or “mules” to transport drugs into prisons or other countries.

Likewise, for poor farmers with no access to land, the cultivation of coca leaf, opium poppy, and cannabis presents numerous benefits. Drugs are nonperishable products that are easy to grow in marginal terrain and poor soil, and with limited or no irrigation. Therefore, a black market for these highly cost-effective commodities is inevitable in lieu of appropriate development solutions.

At the same time, the environmental impact of the illicit cultivation of drugs is severe. In the Andean and Amazonian regions, each hectare of coca leaf or opium poppy cultivation causes the deforestation of two or three hectares of forest, destroying ecosystems and affecting biodiversity. Making things worse, the eradicating chemicals used in aerial fumigation destroy vegetation and animal habitats, not to mention negatively affect human and reproductive health.

Why the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals must Include drug policy

Small and landlocked Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America. For centuries, its majority indigenous population has grown and chewed the coca leaf - much like other people around the world drink coffee or tea - to increase productivity and stave off hunger while working in the fields.

An estimated one-third of Bolivians today consume the leaf in its natural form.

Coca, of course, is also the main ingredient in cocaine. Because of growing demand, coca production expanded exponentially in the 1980s, much of it flowing into the international cocaine market. This set the stage for three decades of US-financed eradication programmes in Los Yungas and especially the Chapare, Bolivia's two main growing regions.

Peasants became the main target of military and US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) missions, yet the violence, killings, and political instability continued - and overall cocaine production fluctuated, but did not decrease.

Lean and tall, Carlos Perez - a cocalero or coca farmer with more than 20 years of experience planting, harvesting, drying and selling coca - remembers the military repression that took place as a part of Plan Dignidad in the late 1990s, in which the US paired up its counter-narcotics aid with debt relief.

But he would rather recall the time in 1994, when former coca grower Evo Morales joined a march of thousands of other cocaleros, demanding an end to the forced eradication of their crop. Perez marched too, walking the 130km from the cloud forest of Chulumani to the capital, La Paz.

"Around that time, we would regularly throw the military and DEA out of town," he said. "People organised through the local community radio and kicked them out of our coca-producing villages, one by one."

Bolivia stands up to US with coca-control policy 

On 28th September 2015, the Human Rights Council organised an expert panel discussion on the impacts of drug policy on the enjoyment of human rights. Ann Fordham, IDPC Executive Director, was one of the panellists and focused her intervention on the impacts of drug control on civil and political rights. She specifically addressed issues related to violations to the right to life, the criminalisation of poeple who use drugs, and disproportinality of sentencing for drug offences. Her statement is available below.

IDPC addresses the Human Rights Council on the impacts of drug policy on human rights

For 37 years Colombia has been spraying chemicals to combat illicit crops, particularly coca. These massive eradication programmes became part of the US-backed 'War on Drugs'. The fumigations are controversial for their proven inefficacy to reduce supply and demand and for the use of herbicides such as glyphosate.

Timeline - Fumigation in Colombia

On 11 and 12 September 2015 opium farmers and representatives of opium farming communities from Kayah State, Shan State, Kachin State and Chin State, came together in Upper Myanmar to discuss the drug policies affecting their lives. Following from the discussions the farmers issued a statement with recommendations to policy makers nationally and internationally.

We, opium farmers and representatives of opium farming communities from Kayah State, Shan State, Kachin State and Chin State, came together in Upper Myanmar to discuss the drug policies affecting our lives and to make the following recommendations:

We grow opium in order to ensure food security for our family and to provide our basic needs, and to have access to health and education. We grow opium because of poverty and because we live in isolated and mountainous and high elevated areas, where it is difficult to grow other crops, infrastructure is weak and we face difficulties to transport crops, and where we have difficulty to access markets. We also have little access to land to grow other crops. The large majority of opium farmers are not rich and grow it for their survival. Therefore, they should not be treated as criminals.

Opium has many positive values for us. As there are few health facilities in our areas, we use opium as a traditional medicine for diarrhea, coughing, and as a painkiller and to keep us save from poisonous insects. For some of us, we believe it protects us from evil and if offered to spirits it will bring good luck. We also use it to treat sick animals.

Statement of 3rd Myanmar opium farmer forum

On Thursday, the French Senate discussed the new health law, which was passed by the National Assembly in April. The new law introduces several controversial reforms, such as banning the smoking of tobacco in the presence of minors below the age of 12, accepting gay men as blood donors, and the removal of the compulsory reflection period before an abortion. The most heated point of discussion involved Article 9 - a paragraph which allows for the opening of drug consumption rooms. Under the draft law, drug users cannot be prosecuted for drug use within the facilities, so long as the amount of the drug is limited to "purely personal use". The rooms will provide a hygienic environment where drug users can inject using sterile equipment. Clients will also be able to access a range of other services in these rooms, operated by a multidisciplinary team of professionals.

Conservative Senators called such rooms "the antechambers of death" and accused the socialist government of promoting drug use. They submitted an amendment to delete Article 9. The majority of Senators, however, rejected this amendment. Supporters of the reform pointed out that drug consumption rooms are in fact essential to prevent death and disease among drug users. "What is important is that addicts will meet addiction doctors in these rooms," said Senator Alain Milon (Union for Popular Movement). Senator Yves Daudigny (Socialist Party) added that these rooms will also reduce nuisance on the streets, thus making neighborhoods safer. By rejecting the Conservative proposal, the Senate gave the green light to a six-year experimental project which will allow the opening of the first drug consumption rooms. Similar facilities now operate in a number of European countries, including Spain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark and Germany.

There are 80,000 injecting drug users in France, and 100 overdose deaths per year. Experience in other cities has showed that the rooms are effective in preventing both infections and overdose deaths. French research published last year (Aerli) showed that drug consumption rooms reduce practices leading to hepatitis C transmissions by 43 percent, and reduce other injection-related health complications by 41 percent.

French senate gives green light to drug consumption rooms

HRI is inviting nominatons for the 2015 International Rolleston Award.

This award was first presented at the ‘3rd International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm’ in Melbourne in 1992. Each year, it is given to an individual or organisation whose contribution to reducing the harms from psychoactive substances has international significance.

For the purposes of the Rolleston Award, ‘international significance’ should reflect:

2) Demonstrating courage or leadership in performance of the work

3) The resilience of the individual or organisation

For the 2015 award HRI is specifically inviting nominations of persons or organisations working at grassroots level.

Please submit nomination by 1 October to rick.lines@ihra.net.

The nomination should include a short explanation of why the person or organisation is being nominated. In addition, each nomination should include two referees in addition to the nominator.

The award is named after Sir Humphrey Rolleston, President of the Royal College of Physicians who chaired the UK Departmental Committee on Morphine and Heroin Addiction. In 1926 this committee concluded that the prescription of heroin or morphine could be regarded as legitimate medical treatment for those in whom withdrawal produces serious symptoms that cannot be treated satisfactorily under normal practice and, for those for who are able to lead a useful and fairly normal life so long as they take a certain non-progressive quantity, usually small, of the drug of addiction, but cease to be able to do so when the regular allowance is withdrawn. This decision epitomises a benign, pragmatic and humane approach to drug problems, and was a landmark event in the history of harm reduction.

Thumbnail: Flickr CC World Bank Photo Collective

News