One hundred years ago this March, the Harrison Narcotics Act came into force, heralding the onset of American drug prohibition. It promptly spread across the globe. 2015, however, may well be remembered as the year that the cure for criminalization broke the drug war fever.

If nothing else, there have been an awful lot of encouraging signs since January.

For starters, 2015 was marked by a hastening of the end of the national war on pot. Two new states—Oregon and Alaska—joined Colorado and Washington in implementing recreational marijuana legalization, as did Washington, DC, (albeit in a bizarre fashion that doesn't actually provide a reliable source of legal pot other than growing your own.)

Gallup polling in favor of complete national legalization also matched an all-time high of 58 percent, with support having roughly doubled since the 1990s, and more than a dozen states could vote on pot legalization either through ballot initiatives or legislatures in 2016.

The top two contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have both expressed some openness to allowing states to legalize, with Sanders going further and suggesting that marijuana be removed from federal drug prohibition laws, as well. And even Republican candidates Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and Ted Cruz are in favor of letting the states decide—an unprecedented level of mainstream political support for what as recently as the 1990s seen as a fringe position.

Even the cops began taking steps towards drug decriminalization in 2015. A formal initiative, started in 2011 in Seattle and known as Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD), showed stunning results in an outcomes evaluation published this year. The idea of LEAD is to bring the concept of "harm reduction" into policing: Rather than trying to force drug users to quit by arresting and incarcerating them, the program aims to cut harm by attracting users into recovery, or at least less-harmful use instead.

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A hundred years after the war on drugs began, is it finally winding down?

The Open Society Global Drug Policy Program and a panel of international experts hosted an event on Wednesday, December 9 from 6-9pm including a discussion and cocktail reception on the topic of: 

The Impact of Drug Policy on the Environment. 

The podcast for this event is now available online.

In the lead up to the UNGASS in April 2016, OSF is hosting a series of public events and producing reports designed to inform the New York-based missions and the wider public on some of the important issues addressed at this meeting.

While the Climate Change Conference was being held in Paris, an international panel of experts, moderated by Brian Winters, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, discussed the role of drug crop cultivation in environmental devastation. The event also launched a brief report outlining key recommendations on the topic for UN member states to consider leading up to the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs.

The panel discussed how drug crop cultivation has played a disproportionately large role in deforesting and degrading some of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems, including those in national parks and indigenous territories. Additionally, the speakers examined why environmental devastation is proliferating in drug trafficking regions despite sustained investments in drug interdiction and other anti-trafficking measures.

The impact of drug policy on the environment podcast

The Drug Enforcement Administration has a vested interest in the War on Drugs, the federal government's decades-long mission to eradicate drug use in the U.S. Not only does it support the federal agency's core goal — to "enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations of the United States" — but it also serves the criminal justice system on a financial level, allowing the agency to profit off enforcement through budget requests and a civil asset forfeiture program.

Tough drug laws demand greater financial resources, a larger slice of the federal budget from the U.S. government. That's one theory as to why the DEA continues to enforce federal marijuana laws in legal states, despite public condemnation: It pays to criminalize pot.

The DEA has an entire department, the Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program, dedicated to the enforcement of marijuana laws under the Controlled Substances Act, which strictly prohibits the use, cultivation, and sale of cannabis in the U.S. Federal law regards marijuana as a Schedule I drug — as addictive and dangerous as heroin. Schedule 1 drugs are considered the most dangerous drugs and to have no “accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” according to the DEA.

So it makes sense that the DEA would resist changes in public opinion and state marijuana laws. Without weed, the agency would have to rely on demand for the enforcement of other drugs to justify their tall budget requests. And as it notes on its website, marijuana is the "only major drug of abuse grown within the U.S. borders." It's also the most commonly abused illegal drug in the country, according to National Institutes of Health.

But the War on Drugs doesn't just help the agency bolster its budget. Another controversial program allows the agency to seize the money and "assets" of people and businesses it suspects of violating federal drug laws.

In 2014, the Department of Justice took in about $3.9 billion worth of civil asset forfeitures, more than doubling what the agency seized in 2005, The Wall Street Journal reported. The DEA contributes to those funds by seizing assets in suspected drug-related cases. A statistical report from the DEA's 2014 fiscal year shows that it seized more than $27 million is assets through the cannabis enforcement program alone.

Under the "asset forfeiture program," the DEA can take your money even if you haven't been charged or convicted of a drug-related crime. Sure, you can try to fight the forfeiture in court if you feel you've been wronged, but that can be a costly legal battle.

How the DEA profits off the war on drugs

By Professor Irwanto, Department of Psychology, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia

Indonesia’s “war on drugs” is jeopardising years of hard work by civil society and public health sector to provide harm-reduction interventions. These have successfully reduced rates of HIV prevalence and other blood-borne illnesses among injecting drug users.

If Indonesia does not shift from its criminalisation and punitive approach to a public health approach in tackling the problem of drug abuse, it may face a larger health crisis in coming years.

Last year, Indonesian President Joko Widodo declared a drug emergency and carried out executions of convicted drug dealers, including reformed Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

The National Narcotics Agency (BNN) has since continued the “war against drugs”, targeting not only drug producers, dealers and couriers but also users.

Newly appointed BNN chief Budi Waseso recently announced that drug users have until January to turn themselves into government-run rehabilitation centres. They face prosecution if caught next year, although the centres are not ready to provide necessary services.

BNN’s strategy is expensive and does not work. The annual budget of over IDR1.3 trillion is mostly allocated to supply reduction, which involves police arrests and seizure of narcotics.

BNN’s own estimates suggest it will only be able to seize 10% of the estimated supply of illegal drugs in the market.

The demand-reduction strategy has been marginalised and underfunded. In any case, forced rehabilitation is not effective in reducing demand for illegal drugs. It reinforces stigma and discrimination against drug users, destroying their chance to live a productive future life.

Indonesia’s ‘war on drugs’ may bring health crisis

By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Peter Baker

President Obama ended a tumultuous year in the nation’s capital by commuting the sentences of 95 federal prisoners and granting two pardons on Friday, building on his push to reorient the nation’s criminal justice system with a holiday season stroke of his pen.

The set of commutations was the largest of Mr. Obama’s presidency, and it more than doubled the number he has granted since taking office. Most of those who will be freed are nonviolent drug offenders given long sentences during an earlier crackdown on crime. Forty of them will be spared life terms.

The move came as the president is pressing for an overhaul of criminal justice laws to reverse decades of steep penalties that have packed the nation’s prisons and jails, disproportionately affecting African-American and Hispanic men. The vast majority of Friday’s commutations were given to criminals who have been imprisoned for more than a decade, behaved well in prison and would have been sentenced to fewer years under current rules.

In ‘fairness,’ Obama commutes sentences for 95, mostly drug offenders

As New Year’s Eve rolls around, music festivals are the hottest tickets in town to help partygoers usher in 2016.

From the Falls Festivals’ three locations down the east coast, to Field Day and Lost Paradise in NSW, Beyond The Valley in Victoria and Southbound in WA, tens of thousands of revellers will celebrate the new year with friends, music, late nights and alcohol - and, for many, illicit drugs.

In 2015, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s National Drug Strategy Household Survey reported 27 percent of Australians aged 20-29 had used illicit drugs in the preceding 12 months, with eight percent having used ecstasy in that period. The 2014 United Nations World Drug Report found Australians had the highest rate of ecstasy consumption on Earth.

Sadly in recent times, the combination of music festivals, alcohol and drugs has had devastating and tragic consequences. The deaths of Georgina Bartter, Sylvia Choi and Stefan Woodward in the last year have become the tragic shorthand for the consequences of illicit drug use, among several other music festival deaths believed to be related to drugs.

Music festivals, drugs and pill testing

He started growing marijuana as a teenager and for four decades earned a modest living from his tiny plot tucked at the base of these rugged mountains of western Mexico.

He proudly shows off his illegal plants, waist-high and fragrant, strategically hidden from view by rows of corn and nearly ready to be harvested.

"I've always liked this business, producing marijuana," the 50-year-old farmer said wistfully. He had decided that this season's crop would be his last.

The loosening of marijuana laws across much of the United States has increased competition from growers north of the border, apparently enough to drive down prices paid to Mexican farmers. Small-scale growers here in the state of Sinaloa, one of the country's biggest production areas, said that over the last four years the amount they receive per kilogram has fallen from $100 to $30.

The price decline appears to have led to reduced marijuana production in Mexico and a drop in trafficking to the U.S., according to officials on both sides of the border and available data.

Mexican marijuana farmers see profits tumble as U.S. loosens laws

The tremendous costs of the current drug control regime are by now obvious. The past few decades have seen hundreds of thousands of atrocities committed in the name of the prohibitionist policies - people being kidnapped and disappeared, marginalized, forcefully relocated and killed. Millions more are infected with blood-borne diseases such as HIV and HCV because they don't have access to clean needles or substitution treatment, or suffer unnecessarily because bureaucracies withhold cheap, effective opioid pain medications. Clearly, existing drug control policies are failing.

There is reason to hope, however. Over the past several years, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, Catalonia, Bolivia and the Czech Republic have responded to local needs with local innovative drug policy solutions and provided much needed global leadership. In 2015, the global drug policy reform movement has made great strides and expanded the number of reformist voices, including countries of the Global South.

I am hopeful that momentum will continue as we head into the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the world drug problem in 2016 and well beyond--until there is a consensus for a more sensible global approach.

What we did right in drug policy during 2015

On Dec. 18, Congress passed a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill filled with numerous additions and addendums, including, somewhat surprisingly, a rider that might be really important to drug addicts. It restores the possibility of federal funding for needle exchange programs. For both drug users and those who advocate for them, this is a huge step—but there’s still more to be done.

The first ban on federal funding for needle exchanges was implemented back in the late 1980s. We’ve been relying on stigma to dictate our public health policies for almost three decades. In 2009, legislators briefly relented and lifted the ban, only to reinstate it with a spending bill in December 2011.

It’s well-documented that needle exchanges reduce HIV and hepatitis transmission rates among IV drug users. This 1998 study found that one needle exchange in Connecticut reduced the HIV infection rate among participants by 33%. Also, it’s worth noting that a 2000 study–conducted by the same two scientists—found that needle exchanges did not correlate with any increase in crime. In other words, they’re not making your neighborhood unsafe. And from a public health perspective, they’re actually making it safer.

The best way to truly help people experiencing problem drug use is to help them use drugs safely

Colombia's president has signed a decree fully legalising medical marijuana in a shift away from preventing drug crop production.

Juan Manuel Santos said the move put Colombia "in the group of countries that are at the forefront...in the use of natural resources to fight disease".

But, he said, the country would still fight illegal drug production.

Up until now, marijuana production in Colombia had fallen into a legal grey area.

While a 1986 law allowed for the manufacture, export, sale and medical and scientific use of marijuana, the practice was, until Tuesday, never formally regulated.

Anyone wishing to grow marijuana must now apply to the National Narcotics Council for a licence. Medical marijuana is used for medical ailments such as Crohn's disease, seizures, HIV and nausea.

Last year, Mr Santos, who has admitted smoking cannabis while a student in Kansas in the 1970s, said legalisation would take drug production out of the hands of drug traffickers.

Thumbnail Flickr CC Ministerio TIC Colombia

Colombia fully legalises medical marijuana

What do drug experts in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States have in common? They all recognize that the war on drugs has failed, and that it’s time for a change.

It’s been 17 years since world leaders assembled at the 1998 special session of the United Nations to discuss the global drug problem. The slogan of that meeting was, “A Drug-Free World: We Can Do It.” But they couldn’t do it. The effort to eliminate all drug production and impose a zero-tolerance approach to drug use didn’t work. In fact, these efforts have done more harm than good the world over.

In April 2016, the world will gather at the UN once again to revisit the problem. This time, the secretary-general and the nations of the world must listen to voices of experience: those from the streets of Rio to the parliaments of Europe, from West Africa to New York, who are looking at the impacts of drug policy and calling for a rethink.

Seventeen years after setting the wrong goal, the UN aims to get drug policy right

Opponents of marijuana legalization often cite the "skyrocketing" number of people seeking treatment for marijuana addiction in their arguments. Project SAM, the nation's leading anti-legalization group, notes with some alarm that "data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that in 1993, marijuana comprised approximately 8 percent of ALL treatment admissions, but by 2009 that number had increased to 18 percent."

But new data out this month from the Department of Health and Human Services provides some important context behind those numbers. In 2013, more than half of marijuana users in treatment were sent there by the courts or the criminal justice system. That's more than the share of court-ordered referrals for any other drug, including far more deadly ones like alcohol and heroin.

Overall, fewer than 1 in 5 marijuana treatment seekers checked themselves in voluntarily. That too is a lower share than for any other drug.

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