This month negotiators met at the UN in New York to discuss the Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs); government targets that will heavily influence policies through to 2030 and that will affect the lives of billions in the coming years. The SDGs are intended to address global challenges relating to our ability to survive and thrive on this planet, from climate change, poverty reduction, sustainable cities and disease prevention to functioning institutions of government. Done well, this could be transformative. But somehow (nobody seems to know how) a goal to rid the world of drug use has been included in the draft SDG document. This is harmful both for the aims of the SDGs and, given the lack of any transparency around its inclusion, for the credibility of the entire process.

The current draft includes a target to 'eliminate narcotic drug and substance abuse'. This is the essence of drug war rhetoric. But issue by issue, discipline by discipline, every canard, every straw man, every lie of the war on drugs has by now been exposed, including any pretense that a 'drug free world' is either possible or, given what it requires, a desirable goal to pursue. In fact, just as the UN negotiators were considering this target five Nobel Prize winning economists joined the growing chorus of community activists, experts and senior political figures calling for systemic change.

Aside from being a failure on its own terms (pick your indicator) the war on drugs has been a systematic human rights onslaught. It has eroded and crowded out constitutional values democratic societies should defend. It has fuelled urban violence and hindered peaceful resolution of conflicts. It has been a consistent barrier to development in producer nations. It has been a vector of disease and an economic catastrophe; billions poured down the sinkhole of tail-chasing drug enforcement at the expense of proven, life-saving harm reduction and treatment interventions.

the idea of a drug free world has produced and is producing effects that are anathema to everything the Sustainable Development Goals are supposed to stand for.

Now, there are some aspects of the draft SDGs that can be criticised as, for example, unachievable or immeasurable. But none are so directly harmful to the whole enterprise as this. So how did something so counterproductive make it in?

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Drug use is not a sustainable development issue - the war on drugs certainly is

Lisbon city council has selected a space to house what would be the country's first assisted consumption room for drug users, popularly known as 'shooting gallery', as part of plans that are well advanced.

The premises in question is in Rua da Palma, in the Mouraria neighbourhood, near a health centre and a future police station that is due to open this summer, said the coordinator of the council's priority intervention unit for Mouraria, João Meneses.

The main reason for the choice was the fact that it is not in a "zone of major population density, because that in itself provokes resistance from people who don't want consumption rooms in their back yard, in their building, in their street." In addition, it is "a place open to the city and with easy access" by public transport, he noted.

The project is still in a study phase, but is not expected to bring large concentrations of users, Meneses said. Some 50 people are expected to use it, including locals and outsiders.

Legislation allowing for such shooting galleries was passed years ago but it was left up to local councils to implement it on the ground and until now none has chosen to do so.

According to João Goulão, the head of the department of the Ministry of Health who oversees drug policy in Portugal, "this could be an experimental project that could be extended to other areas" of Lisbon.

The aim of such facilities is to try to reduce the harms associated with drug use, such as when needles are shared and become vehicles for the transmission of blood-borne diseases, as well as to enure that users are in more regular contact with health professionals.

Lisbon room could be Portugal's first assisted consumption room for drug users

Sub-Saharan Africa has emerged as a new front in the global struggle for control of illicit drugs. Significant trafficking routes of drugs from Asia and Latin America criss-cross the continent, benefiting in some cases from weakly supervised borders and ports.

Africa also has some of the most repressive national drug laws in the world, many of them dating from the 1960s, and hundreds of thousands of people are in pre-trial detention or other state custody for minor drug offenses. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the government of the United States -- two heavyweight players on the global drug control scene -- both see opportunities for replicating in Africa the human rights-unfriendly drug-control approaches used in Latin America. Both also invoke links between drugs and terrorism as a justification for a militarised response to drugs. This talk will consider the lessons, including human rights-related factors, that should inform drug control strategies in Africa.

Another front in a losing war: Human rights and drug policy in Africa

The Syrian civil war has led to a surge in cannabis production in Lebanon as the country’s army is forced to focus on security rather than drug eradication.

In the Bekaa Valley, Ali Nasri Shamas carries a revolver by his side and an automatic rifle in the back of his car, weapons he says he’s ready to use if the army moves in to try to destroy his lucrative cannabis crop.

But he may not need them this year. With Syria’s civil war 30 miles away, Lebanese security forces have other priorities than their annual showdown with the Bekaa hashish growers.

“If they want a confrontation that’s no problem for us, it will be harvest season soon,” Mr Shamas says, standing in a field of the green, spiky-leafed plants from which hashish resin is extracted.

Syria conflict: Lebanon sees surge in cannabis crop as army is forced to focus on border security

Treatment and rehabilitation services to reduce the impact of drugs on Iraqi society are being launched by the United Nations.

Two UN agencies have joined efforts on the project—the Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Both are supporting the development of drug dependence treatment services in Iraq, which has reportedly for many years been a transit and destination country for illicit drugs.

Yury Fedotov, the Executive Director of UNODC, said on Wednesday that until recently, a gap existed between the needs of drug users and what could reasonably be delivered by Iraqi health services.

To close this divide, Mr Fedotov said UNODC and WHO have helped build modern, effective services, which are also fully in line with international drug conventions.

Launch of drug dependence, treatment and care programme in Iraq

On May 22, 2014, four years after introducing its first vral hepatitis resolution, the World Health Assembly (WHA) - the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO) - passed the Hepatitis Resolution, which commits the WHO and United Nations (UN) member states to urgent action to address the global hepatitis pandemic, including that of hepatitis C virus (HCV).

Globally, an estimated 185 millions people have been infected with HCV. Since 2010, more than a million of them have died from HCV - related liver disease, although hepatitis C is treatable and curable.

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New hepatitis resolution is passed at world health assembly; challenges World Health Organization and member states to act

As Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova trumpeted Russia’s progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS, critics insist that the government policy prohibiting methadone substitution continues to hamper efforts to slow the spread of the disease.

“In Russia today, 463 out of every 100,000 people are infected with HIV. In other countries that boast of their preventative efforts, the prevalence is higher. In the U.S., 600 out of 100,000 people are infected. In Brazil, the infection rate is about 500,” Skortsova said in a speech Monday during a conference on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The Moscow Times could not independently verify these statistics. Neither the World Health Organization nor UNAID included Russian data in their most recent comparative reports on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Please click here to read the full article.

Methadone looms as obstacle in Russia’s fight against HIV/AIDS

Lobbyists urged Jamaica's government Sunday to move within 120 days to decriminalize pot and establish a local medical marijuana industry.

The Cannabis Commercial and Medicinal Research Taskforce organized a three-day meeting on marijuana decriminalization with Jamaica's largest university. The conference, which drew speakers from the U.S. and Israel, ended Saturday.

On Sunday, the lobbyists issued a 12-point roadmap they want the government to follow. Among other things, they assert that Jamaica should immediately expunge criminal records for all Jamaicans convicted for possessing small amounts of marijuana and amend laws so private, personal use by adults is decriminalized.

The group also believes Jamaica will significantly benefit from a regulated medical marijuana industry.

Lobbyists call for Jamaica to decriminalize cannabis

Tunisia’s prime minister has backed a reform of the country’s harsh penalties for cannabis possession, calling it “out of sync” with current times.

In a press conference late Wednesday, Mehdi Jomaa promised to “amend the law to adapt it to the new reality” in society. The current law gives prison sentences of up to five years for possession of cannabis.

Tunisian Prime Minister says cannabis law too harsh

On April 28-30, UNODC Kenya in collaboration with Ministry of Health and KANCO convened training at Serena hotel coast region in Mombasa. A total of 45 CSOs representatives attended: NOSET, SAPTA, MEWA, RCT, OMARI project, BOMU clinic, Teens watch and MDM. The training was facilitated by facilitators from NASCOP, UNODC, GOK Mathare mental clinic and KANCO.

The aim of this forum was to provide basic orientation on medically assisted therapy (MAT) and develop common understanding on key messages plus expected role and responsibilities for CSO service providers in partnership building and support for opiate users along the pathway to recovery. The training focused on the following objectives: to provide clear guidance on use of medications for, opioid agonist maintenance treatment (OAMT), prevention and management of opioid overdose, management of withdrawal and relapse prevention among persons dependent on opioids and to defines basic concepts of drug dependence and opioids, recommended procedures and minimum standards for good practices in MAT service delivery for different settings.

Training on medically-assisted therapy conducted in Kenya

The recent network development work in February 2014 in Nairobi, Kenya, is an extension of the developing community mobilisation model undertaken by the 2 East Africa country networks alongside INPUD while in Mombasa and along the coastal region of Kenya, during November 2013.

This network development model involves the application of a grassroots hierarchy approach placing the maskani (using sites) members who have no IT access, mobile phones, enduring chronic health issues, and the most stigmatized, as the leading and most significant members of the mobilisation. This had to be complimented and strengthened by a complete decentralization of capacity building activities from INPUD for the purposes of this project.

INPUD-led people who use drugs community capacity building in Kenya is reaching to thousands

Did you know that the majority of police officers don’t get into the force to bust people for ten bags? While it might occasionally seem like that – especially if you had little else to do growing up bar smoking weed in lay-bys and cultivating your collection of stop-and-search forms – plenty of cops are tired of fighting the War on Drugs, a battle they know full well they’re never going to win.

In 2002, a group of American police who were fed up of making menial street arrests for petty drug offences set up LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), an organisation that aims to bring together law enforcement and criminal justice workers who support a system of regulation and control of drugs that currently remain illegal.

Though it remains relatively small, LEAP’s UK branch has been operating since 2008, headed up by volunteer Jason Reed since 2010. Reed is a 34-year-old medicinal cannabis user from Kent who’s suffered from ME (also known as chronic fatigue syndrome) for 25 years.

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