Fortun, one of only two forensic pathologists in the country, has now spent more than 18 months examining the exhumed remains of dozens of victims of the 

, revealing serious irregularities in how their postmortems were performed – including multiple death certificates that wrongly attributed fatalities to natural causes.

Most recently, her findings have raised questions about examinations carried out on the body of 

, a 17-year-old boy whose death at the height of the shootings provoked global outrage.

“We have very weak institutions, unqualified people. We have a law that’s so ancient. And here comes a madman, ascending to the top as president, and I think he just took advantage,” she says.

Kian delos Santos was found dead, bent in a foetal position, in a dark alley in Caloocan, Metropolitan Manila, in 2017, with a gun in his left hand. Police argued they killed him in self-defence. Yet his family pointed out that he was right-handed. CCTV footage showed police dragging a male matching Delos Santos’s description towards the spot where he was killed. His is the only known case where police have been 

r. Despite intense scrutiny at the time of his death, examinations by both the Philippine National Police and the Public Attorney’s Office failed to spot a bullet that was still lodged in his neck, according to Fortun’s findings. “It’s evidence that has been missed,” she says.

According to government figures, officers killed 6,252 people during anti-drug operations from 1 July 2016 to 31 May 2022. Fortun wonders if it will ever be possible to accurately calculate how many were killed. “Who is keeping count?” she asks. “What about the [victims] who were never recovered? Bodies thrown into rivers, buried in some clandestine grave?” Even less is known about killings outside Metro Manila.

‘They were shot in the head’: Morgue gives up truth of Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war

Rosma Karlina and Bambang Yulistyo Dwi live with their two young children in the rainy hillside town of Bogor, south of Jakarta. If their family life is traditional, their work life is anything but. Ms Karlina is the founder and Director of Suar Perempuan Lingkar Napza Nusantara (also called Womxn's Voice), an advocacy and care organisation serving women and transwomen who use drugs. Bambang, popularly known as Tedjo, founded the Indonesian Justice Action Foundation (AKSI). Since 2018 his team has provided legal aid and support to people who use drugs, and advocated for their rights.

The organisations successfully advocated for a man to be released from a compulsory rehabilitation centre so that he could access HIV treatment. Otherwise, he would have gone three months without his medicines. The organisations have witnessed many examples of women living with HIV being faced with extreme scorn. A police officer once threw a pack of sanitary napkins into a woman’s cell instead of passing it to her, saying it was because he was afraid to be near her.

“Healthcare providers and law enforcement agencies treat them with violence and abuse,” he said. “So they don’t want to come out the closet and say ‘I have shared needles and syringes and I need an HIV test’. Because drug users are not welcome in our health facilities that leads to them going into the shadows and staying there.”

Twenty-one countries in the region operate either state-run compulsory detention and rehabilitation facilities for people who use drugs or similar facilities. These are a form of confinement where those accused of, or known to be using drugs, are involuntarily admitted for detoxification and “treatment”, often without due process. Conditions have been reported to involve forced labour, lack of adequate nutrition, and limited access to healthcare.

Ms Karlina called for increased investments in mental health care, poverty alleviation and education. “We need proper assessments to better look at each situation and come up with an effective solution. Prison is not the answer. If you see us as humans, you will take care of us as humans,” she insisted.

How harsh drug laws undermine health and human rights in Asia Pacific

90% of the morphine for pain relief is consumed by 10% of the world’s richest countries. Asia’s morphine per capita consumption is 36 times less than the global average. The roots of the 

 can be historically traced through the commodification of substances that were traditionally used as medicine.

Current policies – largely determined and imposed by the Global North, and influenced by the US narrative – are centred around licencing, prescription and control, disproportionately impacting the very countries that grow and manufacture the raw material. Western corporate capture continues to dictate and shape access, manifested in essential medicines lists and reimbursable insurance packages. 

The UN Drug Conventions place on all member states the dual obligation of two core imperatives – to prevent the non-medical use of controlled substances, and equally, to ensure adequate availability of controlled substances for medical and scientific purposes. Historical misalignment between these two core imperatives has produced two opioid crises – one of access and “the global pandemic of untreated pain,” and the other a more regionally defined epidemic of opioid use disorder and fatal overdose.

Excessive prescription opioids in some countries shouldn’t blind policy makers to the pain crisis in other countries. The singular focus on inappropriate use is not adequately evened out by the available evidence of successful achievement of balance, which should be models.

Let us focus on not only improved access, but 

 access to opioids. On well-calibrated, compassionate and 

 regulatory systems, and fit-for-purpose supply chains for controlled medicines, while simultaneously providing the guardrails of training and evidence-based information about the safe use of opioids for pain relief.

Bringing severe pain to an end

52nd session of the Human Rights Council (27 February – 4 April 2023)

Statement delivered by the International Drug Policy Consortium

For over 50 years, the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has brought about a global, pervasive and systematic human rights catastrophe that requires the continued attention of the Council. Its most salient manifestations include the death penalty for drug offences, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention in certain ‘drug rehabilitation centres’, mass incarceration, criminalisation, and the militarised eradication of crops. Worldwide, only 1 in 8 people with drug dependence have access to evidence-based health interventions. Life-saving harm reduction services remain chronically underfunded and unavailable, fuelling the HIV epidemic and a catastrophic rise in overdose deaths.

The Council has a critical role in ending this devastation. Therefore, we strongly welcome the initiative to table a new resolution on the human rights impacts of drug policy at this session of the Council. This resolution, which should include a standing mandate for OHCHR to periodically report back to the Council on the human rights impacts of drug policy, will guarantee that the UN human rights system has a strong voice in the review of the global drug control regime that will take place at UN level throughout 2023 and 2024 – and beyond.

The resolution is also closely aligned with new initiatives emerging across the human rights system, such as the 2021 study on drug policy by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and the recent announcement that the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights will initiate a General Comment on drug policy. Civil society looks to the Council for leadership in encouraging and welcoming these initiatives and ensuring that they are presented to the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs. The UN can no longer a blind eye on the human rights impacts of drug policy.

International Drug Policy Consortium (International)

Centre on Drug Policy Evaluation (Canada)

Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales – CELS (Argentina)

Drug Policy Alliance (United States of America)

Harm Reduction International (International)

Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Poland)

Intercambios Asociación Civil (Argentina)

Penal Reform International (International)

Students for Sensible Drug Policy (International)

Washington Office on Latin America (United States of America)

On the human rights impacts of drug policy - IDPC Statement to the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council

Recent decades have seen the adoption of three conventions on drug policy and numerous commitments to make drug policy comply with human rights.

Despite this progress, many States continue to pursue drug policies that fail to live up to the core tenants of international human rights law.

While at least 30 countries and 50 territories have decriminalised drug usage, 20 percent of the world’s incarcerated have been convicted of drug-related offences, demonstrating that criminalization is still the worldwide norm.

Indeed, the current approach in most of the world continues to be of mass incarceration of people who use drugs, often with long sentences and lack of due process.

At the extreme, 35 countries maintain the death penalty for drug-related offences, in violation of international human rights law. I call on States that maintain the death penalty to abolish it, including for drug-related offences.

Harsh and punitive drug control measures, based on the unrealistic notion of a “drug free world”, hinder access to health treatment and harm reduction services, and they contribute to 1.2 million unnecessary drug-related deaths per year. It also creates stigma and exacerbates discrimination.

Women continue to be incarcerated at a higher rate than men for drug offences, often as a result of the patterns of discrimination and inequality in society, including the lack of job opportunities for many women.
People of African descent are often targeted in drug operations and are disproportionately denied access to treatment for dependency.

Traditional medical and cultural practices of indigenous peoples are often criminalized where they involve controlled substances. This is contrary to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

States must come together to end such practices and adapt their drug policies to address the specific needs of women, children and youth, and people in vulnerable situations, such as minorities, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and LGBTQI+ people.

In parallel, I encourage States to take concrete steps towards ensuring access to controlled medicines for everyone. In spite of the fact that international drug conventions recognise that the medical use of narcotic drugs is indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering, millions of people, primarily in the global south, do not have such access. This is often due to drug policies that are excessively restrictive for fear of diversion for illicit use.

This year’s commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides an opportunity to reflect on how to reform drug policies in line with the spirit of human rights.

I encourage the Human Rights Council and Human Rights Mechanisms to continue and strengthen their engagement in drug policy debates, particularly as we prepare for the 2024 mid-term review of the 2019 Ministerial Declaration on joint commitments to address and counter the world drug problem. In this regard, I welcome the initiative of some Member States to submit a new resolution on drug policy and human rights at this session of the Council.

Instead of the war on drugs, States should adopt drug policies anchored in evidence, human rights approaches and public health prerogatives, which can tackle the needs of the 21st century.

My office stands ready to support States, civil society and other stakeholders in this endeavour, towards ensuring that human dignity, fully compatible with the rule of law, remains at the center.

OHCHR statement at high level side event on a human rights approach to drug policy

Hong Kong on Wednesday made possession, consumption, and distribution of cannabidiol, or CBD, illegal.

While some governments across the world have legalized or moved toward decriminalizing cannabis, including 

, cannabis itself remains illegal in most countries, with related offenses often punishable by long prison sentences.

Still, products containing the cannabis-derived compound CBD have become increasingly popular in recent years, touted to have therapeutic benefits. And it’s long existed in a legal gray area for regulators. As of last February, the global market for CBD was 

In Hong Kong, a growing market had emerged for products containing CBD, ranging from skincare to food and beverage items. Months before the ban, one could, for example, walk into a specialty cafe and buy CBD-infused chocolate chip cookies or get a few drops of the compound in their smoothie or coffee.

But local authorities have argued that the science behind CBD’s supposed therapeutic qualities is not absolute and that its use may actually have harmful side effects. As of Feb. 1, CBD has been categorized as a “

,” along with the likes of heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine.

CBD tends to perplex regulators. Hong Kong’s new ban reinforces Asia’s strict drug approach

The return to regular trading in Melbourne’s CBD has coincided with a spike in heroin-related overdoses, with drug experts warning that stalling the city’s second safe-injecting room is putting lives at risk.

Former police commissioner Ken Lay is still finalising a report, which was meant to be handed down in 2020, that will recommend the best site for the second safe-injecting room – believed to be the former Yooralla building on Flinders Street.

The delay is putting pressure on community health professionals, who have noted an increase in overdoses and people needing immediate support for drug-and-alcohol-related health issues.

Data from Cohealth, a community health organisation and provider of choice for the second safe-injecting room, shows their City Street 

 team has recorded a steady increase in the number of clients accessing the service in the past 12 months. The team has reported four overdoses in the past four months, compared with three in the previous nine months.

Greg Denham, the community partnerships facilitator at Cohealth, said that in 2022 the program engaged with more than 1,428 people in the CBD, 75% of whom were homeless.

Australia: Melbourne’s injecting room delay puts lives at risk as heroin overdoses spike in central business district

The Japanese government is set to allow the medical use of cannabis to treat patients with incurable conditions, while cracking down on recreational consumers.

The Japanese government plans to submit several bills, including one which would see the revision of the Cannabis Control Act, during the current session of the Diet, Japan’s national legislature, according to 

Possession, sale and cultivation of cannabis for recreational and medical purposes is currently 

, along with the manufacturing of medicines derived from the plant. The proposed revision would enable patients with conditions such as refractory epilepsy to use drugs made from cannabis plants.

The first moves towards legalising medical cannabis in Japan have only concerned the authorisation of 

 a pharmaceutical CBD oil prescribed for certain types of rare refractory epilepsy, which has been approved for use by the US FDA and European health authorities.

However, the proposed revision would further criminalise recreational cannabis consumers.

Japan to legalise medical cannabis

Iranian authorities have executed 55 people in 2023, Norway-based Iran Human Rights said Friday, adding that the surging use of the death penalty aims to create fear as protests shake the country.

Meanwhile, rights group Amnesty International said three young people sentenced to death over protests — the youngest aged just 18 -- had been subjected to ‘gruesome torture’ in detention.

IHR said it has confirmed at least 55 executions in the first 26 days of this year.

Four people have been executed on charges related to the protests, while the majority of those hanged -- 37 convicts—were executed for drug-related offences, IHR said.

Iran hangs 50 people this year

Australia has become the first country to recognise psychedelics as medicines, after the Therapeutic Goods Administration took researchers by surprise and approved the psychedelic substances in magic mushrooms and MDMA for use by people with certain mental health conditions.

MDMA and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, will be considered schedule 8 drugs - meaning they’re approved for controlled use when prescribed by a psychiatrist - from July this year after the TGA acknowledged there were few other options for patients with specific treatment-resistant mental illnesses.

The changes will allow MDMA to be used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. They will still be considered prohibited substances - or schedule 9 drugs - for all other usages.

Australia becomes first country to recognise psychedelics as medicines

The Cabinet has approved a new Citizens' Assembly on drug use at its meeting in Dublin.

In a statement, the Government said the assembly will be asked to consider the legislative, policy and operational changes the State could make to significantly reduce the harmful impacts of ilegal drugs on individuals, families, communities and wider society.

Chief Whip and Minister of State with responsibility for Public Health, Well Being and the National Drugs Strategy, Hildegarde Naughton, said: "Drug use affects all members of society, whether directly or through families and communities, and it imposes significant health and financial costs. Involving citizens in decision-making on drugs policy is therefore appropriate.

"I want to ensure that the voice of young people is heard at the Citizens' Assembly, as they can be particularly impacted by drug use. To this end, I have initiated a consultation with young people through Comhairle na nÓg and youth drug projects in disadvantaged areas, which will be presented to the Citizens' Assembly for its consideration".

Minister Naughton said she would bring forward a motion to the Dáil and Seanad next week to formally establish the assembly.

It is expected to begin its work in April and conclude the process by the end of this year.

Ireland: Cabinet approves new Citizens' Assembly on drug use

VIENTIANE, Jan 31 (Loatian Times): The Ministry of Health has issued an agreement stating their approval to produce and distribute hemp or cannabis sativa L and the restrictions businesses must follow for medical purposes in Laos.

The agreement states that the seeds produced from cannabis sativa L must be registered, authorize their sources of origin, and control amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) of 1% per weight, under the approval from the ministry.

The ministry permits certified businesses to use cannabidiol (CBD) for main medical purposes, while tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) must not exceed 1 percent by weight, or 0.2 percent for both raw and processed products.

News