By Takayuki Harada, Global Drug Policy Program, Open Society Foundations

Asia boasts some of the harshest laws in the world, including the death penalty for drugs and caning of drug users. These laws steer people away from lifesaving health services and fill prisons with people in need of treatment.

However, there are regional pioneers that are charting new courses on drug policy. With the support of the Open Society Foundations, researchers from Mejiro University went on a fact-finding mission to learn about alternative approaches in the region and beyond.

In Taiwan, we encountered a burgeoning harm reduction movement that is successfully stemming a startling increase in HIV. For example, there were typically a few hundred new HIV infections per year, but in 2004, the number increased to 1,520. The following year, 3,380 new infections were detected, most from injecting drug users.

In response, the Centers for Disease Control in Taiwan introduced harm reduction services that prioritized prevention of HIV, including needle exchanges and methadone maintenance therapy. Currently, about 20,000 syringe and needle kits are distributed every month in Taiwan. Since used syringes and needles are exchanged with new ones, 90 percent of the distributed syringes and needles have been collected.

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

Moving the needle on drug policy in Asia

With marijuana legalisation measures passing in Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., and with groundbreaking criminal justice reforms passing in California and New Jersey, there's no longer any denying that drug policy reform is a mainstream -- and quite urgent -- political demand.

These wins will boost efforts already underway in states such as California, Massachusetts, Maine, Nevada and Arizona to end marijuana prohibition in 2016, as well as efforts in Congress and around the country to scale back the disastrous policies of mass incarceration.

And speaking of 2016, yesterday's results now mean that Presidential candidates and other prominent candidates for public office will have no choice but to take positions on these issues, which could prove to be another tipping point in national politics. While some major politicians have yet to evolve on marijuana legalization and drug policy reform, that’s likely to change in the coming months and years, as drug war proponents start to pay a heftier price at the polls for their cluelessness.

Election 2014: North Americans ready to end the war on drugs

Around the word, criminal justice–led approaches to drugs have resulted in mass incarceration, increases in crime, insecurity, and public health crises. Now, a coalition of human rights groups are calling on the United Nations to fully account for the true costs of the “war on drugs.”

The United Nations is bracing for an international debate on global drug policy, scheduled for 2016. The UN is organizing the 2016 Drug Summit in response to demands by Latin American leaders who have called for a reassessment of current drug policies.

Several partners from the Count the Costs coalition will speak at Open Society Foundations about the drug war’s impact on human rights, health, and security.

Count the costs of the war on drugs

This open letter to the Global Fund Board was drafted in advance of its Thirty-Second Meeting, and signed by 24 civil society organisations from around the world. The letter details grave concerns regarding the impact of the funding allocation methodology applied to middle-income countries (MICs) or those transitioning to middle-income status, and the ultimate consequences this will have on key affected populations.

Open letter of civil society organisations to the Global Fund board in advance to its thirty-second meeting

The human rights impact of drug laws and policies is a new and emerging issue among human rights scholars and advocates. Using the issue of the compulsory detention of people who use drugs as a case study, this lecture will explore how methods for applying international human rights law can serve as a tool to scrutinise drug control issues.

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

Examining drug control through a human rights lens: The case of compulsory drug detention

Over the past few years, research has revealed that marijuana can both destroy certain cancer cells and reduce the growth of others. Now, a new study in mice has found that when combined with radiation treatment, cannabis can effectively shrink one of the most aggressive types of brain tumors.

In a paper published Friday in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapies, a team of researchers from St. George's University of London outlined the "dramatic reductions" they observed in high-grade glioma masses, a deadly form of brain cancer, when treated with a combination of radiation and two different marijuana compounds, also known as cannabinoids. In many cases, those tumors shrunk to as low as one-tenth the sizes of those in the control group.

"We've shown that cannabinoids could play a role in treating one of the most aggressive cancers in adults," Dr. Wai Liu, one of the study's lead authors, wrote in an op-ed earlier this week. "The results are promising...it could provide a way of breaking through glioma and saving more lives."

In an email to The Huffington Post, Liu pointed out that while research surrounding marijuana's cancer-fighting properties is nothing new, his team is the first to document its effect on the disease when used alongside radiation. "The results showed that the final effect was superior to the sum of the parts," he said. "Hopefully, these results will support calls for formal trials in humans to test these combinations."

Liu and his colleagues examined mice that had been infected with glioma and subsequently treated with radiation alone or in combination with varying levels of two cannabis compounds: THC, the psychoactive compound associated with the "high" sensation, and CBD, which doesn't produce psychoactive side effects.

Marijuana drastically shrinks aggressive form of brain cancer, new study finds

More than 400,000 children in the United States suffer from epileptic seizures.

Recently, families with children suffering from epilepsy have been moving to Colorado. The big draw is the state's liberal marijuana laws and a special oil called 'Charlotte's web' which uses low THC and high CBD, which is the medicinal extract from the drug.

This week, contributor Crystal Dilworth finds out how exactly it has being used to help children with epilepsy and talks to families being labelled 'marijuana refugees' because they have uprooted their lives in order to get treatment for their children.

Also on this episode, we meet Jason Koger, who lives in small-town Kentucky and Katie Walker who spends her time in rigorous training for the 2016 Paralympic Games in Brazil.

The two lead very different lives, but have a powerful factor in common. Both Jason and Katie wear high-tech prosthetic hands to help them live actively and independently.

Contributor Phil Torres takes a close look at how these amazing bionic arms work, as he goes hunting on a quad bike with Jason; and then meets up with Katie for a run and a bit of baseball.

Click here to read the full article and watch the video.

In the US state of Colorado, marijuana is being used to help children suffering from epileptic seizures

Doctors in Vancouver, Canada, have become the first medics in North America to administer prescription heroin to drug dependents. The treatment will only be given to a group of patients who failed to respond to traditional therapies.

“For this group the addiction is so severe that no other treatment has been effective,”

 David Byres, vice president of acute clinical programs at Providence Health Care, told Canadian media. 

 The Globe and Mail Newspaper cited Byres as saying. The program will be performed in Providence Crosstown Clinic in Canadian city.

Byres added that the treatment is only prescribed for those patients for whom traditional therapies such as methadone have failed to work at least 11 times. Canadian doctors are trying the treatment on a group of 202 patients, of which 120 have received diacetylmorphine (heroin) prescriptions.

However, only 26 drug dependents will get their first heroin treatment next week, as so far there are only enough drugs for that number of people.

Canada starts prescribing heroin to people dependent on drugs

The plethora of comment and reflection on the First World War has overlooked the importance of that war for drug and alcohol control. Yet this war was crucial in the establishment of a system of international control for drugs that still endures today. It instituted models of control for alcohol that also had a lengthy life. In 2014, the First World War is still a potent presence so far as drugs and alcohol are concerned.

International drug control had been discussed before the war, but a global system was unlikely. The major initiative had come from the Americans in the early 1900s, driven by twin motives of moral regulation and strategic advantage in the Far East. The Americans believed that “civilising” and converting the Chinese would come through the ending of their opium consumption. Missionaries and the US State Department had trained their sights on the Indo-Chinese opium trade, a trade which civil servants in the British Foreign Office were already bringing to a close. The Shanghai Convention of 1909 retained a Far Eastern focus, but afterwards the compass of potential control widened. There was genuine concern in the British Foreign Office about morphine and cocaine smuggling in southeast Asia and this topic was taken up by the Americans as an important part of the international control agenda.

The Hague Convention of 1912 was the product of this expanded geographical concern. The decision at the Hague that opium, morphine, and cocaine and their use should be confined to “legitimate medical purposes” was central to future international drug control. Earlier enquiries, such as the Indian Royal Commission on Opium of 1895, had defended medical and non-medical use, and indeed had taken the view that it was difficult to distinguish one type of use from the other. But there were further complications about extending control. The German Government refused to adhere to the Convention because it might be only partially applied and therefore damage the German cocaine industry; it insisted that all 34 participating powers had to ratify the Hague Convention before it could come into force. The convention thus had an “all or nothing” aspect that had not been initially intended. As the British Delegates wrote in their Report, “It [the convention] has, for the first time, laid down as a principle of international morality that the various countries concerned cannot stand alone in these measures.”

The German proviso was a delaying tactic and so only those countries committed to further controls went ahead before the outbreak of war. The USA was one, keen to take a prohibitionist stance. The US Harrison Act of 1914, a revenue measure, aimed to restrict access to drugs and to “stamp out” addiction. Other countries were less keen and by the outbreak of the First World War, there had been only eight ratifications. In the UK, rather desultory discussions before the war envisaged simply an extension of existing pharmacy controls and possibly some further restrictions on the dispensing of doctors' prescriptions.

The war changed the situation. In the UK, it brought the Home Office—in 2014 still the lead department for drug policy—into a central role and also more stringent restriction onto the agenda. Two issues caused concern. Smuggling of drugs showed that controls were indeed interdependent at the international level. The UK was the world's major manufacturer of morphine and the exported drug was being diverted into China via Japan. The Home Office introduced a system of import/export certification designed to ensure that all shipments out of the country had a legitimate destination. Morphine was the main smuggled drug but the use of cocaine also seemed to be expanding in some of the combatant countries. It was feared that army efficiency was at risk.

Drugs, alcohol, and the First World War

This panel discussion on "The road to the United Nations General Assembly’s special session on the World Drug Problem 2016 (UNGASS 2016)" was organised by the United Nations University (UNU).

The road to the United Nations General Assembly’s special session on the World Drug Problem 2016 (UNGASS 2016)

A national consultation was held in New Delhi today to discuss the emerging challenges faced by India’s drug-using communities. Harsh laws, policies and practices that punish drug users only perpetuate the harms of drug use, and there is increasing evidence that India’s drug laws stifle the country's HIV response.

Organised by India HIV/AIDS Alliance (Alliance India) in collaboration with United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the consultation saw more than 100 stakeholders from government, affected drug-using communities, media, international agencies, and civil society come together to discuss the emerging challenges faced by India’s drug-using communities and synergies to address this crisis of health and rights.

Worldwide 16 million people are estimated to inject drugs, and three million of them are living with HIV. In India, HIV prevalence in this group is 24-times that of the general population. Though progress has been made, the HIV epidemic continues to be fueled by the stigma and discrimination often experienced by drug users. In India, the lack of access to services can effectively be a death sentence for people who inject drugs. While some parts of the country, especially the Northeast, have developed a range of services for this vulnerable population, most other states have few if any such services. Even in places where basic services exist, it remains difficult for beneficiaries to access them.

The simple reality is that drug users are dying due to lack of attention to a variety of their health problems, including Hepatitis C, HIV, overdose, and detoxification. Some of these services remain controversial and currently not part of India’s basic harm reduction service package, while others are often not available where needed.

Harsh drug laws undermine India's HIV response

Every deputy in the Health Committee of Congress in Chile agreed to move forward in the discussion for allowing cannabis use and self-cultivation. The initiative comes from the legislature, according to the urgent need to avoid criminalising people who require cannabis or its derivates for treatment of diseases that cause pain and reduce trafficking in more deprived areas, since the government still does not respond to these situations.

All political sectors are open to allowing the medical use of cannabis, although differences persist on the recreational use of the plant - this will be further discussed in Congress.

Currently the law 20.000, which regulates the use of narcotics and psychotropic substances, allows personal consumption, and accepts their therapeutic application, but criminalises all access to these compounds, criminalising consumers with the same sentences as for drug dealers. Although the government has allowed the import of drugs which compounds are derived from cannabis, the protocol is a cumbersome and very costly preparation, so it continues to be difficult to access to them.