Malaysia is combating an epidemic of HIV infections transmitted through sharing contaminated needles and syringes. In 2006, the government initiated limited programs of "harm reduction" interventions. The program included the Needle and Syringe Program (NSP), a program where people who inject drugs are offered clean needles and syringes, and Methadone Maintenance Therapy (MMT), a program offering heroin addicts enrollment in rehabilitation therapy where heroin is replaced with synthetic methadone. These harm reduction programs have succeeded, and Malaysia has now expanded them nationwide.

These harm reduction interventions also have been shown to be cost-effective, according to new research led by the Centre of Excellence for Research in AIDS (CERiA) at the University of Malaya, in collaboration with the Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales and funded by the World Bank. Such interventions can be expected to avert 23,241 new HIV infections as well as result in savings of RM210 million in direct health care costs – producing a return of RM1.07 for every ringgit spent over the next ten years.

The study estimated that 12,653 HIV infections were successfully averted since 2006 with the implementation of these NSP and MMT harm reduction programmes, targeting people who inject drugs. These averted infections have resulted in savings of RM47.1 million in direct health care costs, which the government would have had to spend on treatment and monitoring, demonstrating that harm reduction programmes in Malaysia are highly cost-effective.

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Malaysia’s public health policies on people who inject drugs found to avert new HIV infections, says new World Bank study

We are not here to talk about past regrets. We are here to shape the future of eastern Europe and central Asia—a future with zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. This region is famous for passionate, people-led revolutions. We need a revolution in HIV prevention now. Combination prevention, including HIV treatment, must be at the centre of our response.

Across the globe, progress against AIDS has been amazing and inspiring. We have broken the trajectory of new HIV infections. Today, we have more than 11 million people on life-saving HIV treatment. Around the world, AIDS mortality is declining. We are making unprecedented progress to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015 and keep their mothers alive.

The data show that the alarming increase in new HIV infections in this region is driven primarily by injecting drug use. Never in the history of the global AIDS epidemic has there been such a large and growing HIV epidemic concentrated within a community facing barriers to essential prevention and treatment services. If governments want to prevent their citizens from getting sick and dying, they must ensure that people who inject drugs are not treated like criminals. They should be treated as people with an illness that needs prevention, treatment, care and support.

On the subject of harm reduction, I am very concerned about the situation in Crimea. As of March 2014, 806 patients were enrolled in a safe and effective substitution therapy programme there. Stopping this treatment violates the patients’ right to health. It will cause health setbacks and put their lives in danger—it will increase their risk of returning to illegal drug use, stopping their treatment for HIV and tuberculosis, and becoming infected with HIV and infecting their partners.

I call on the authorities of Crimea and relevant Russian institutions to ensure that these essential, life-saving services are not interrupted or suspended. This is not a political issue—it is a serious health matter. Their lives are hanging in the balance.

We cannot end the AIDS epidemic without the Russian Federation taking a decisive leadership role here in the Russian Federation, across this region and around the world.

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Speech by Michel Sidibé, at 4th conference on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Colorado's pot sales are booming. The state's Department of Revenue reports that marijuana retailers sold nearly $19 million in recreational weed in March, up from $14 million in February. The first three months of legal weed have netted about $7.3 million in taxes, not including medical marijuana sales taxes and licenses, which bring the number to $12.6 million.

Over the same time period, crime in Denver has slightly declined, making opponents who said it would result in more trafficking seem kind of silly. It's created a modest number of jobs ranging from 'budtending' and marijuana journalism to farm labor and ownership. And the state has even created a banking system that complies with the U.S. treasury system's guidelines, clearing up the last regulatory questions.

The Colorado legislature has already formed a plan to spend $33 million of the marijuana taxes on school nurses and public education on marijuana.

Three months since legalising marijuana, here's what Colorado looks like

A spate of extreme violence in Mexico's north-eastern Tamaulipas state has ended the relative calm in the region where the country's drug war began.

Officials say about 80 people have been killed in almost daily street battles.

Tamaulipas has been a focal point in the drug wars as one of the busiest places on the border for northbound drugs and migrants and southbound weapons and cash. But the latest outbreak of bloodletting has prompted fears that the region is set for a return to the worst days of 2010, when entire populations fled towns in the region to escape the violence.

Violence erupts again in Tamaulipas state, Mexico, where the drug war began

"The government is committed to tighten control over border crossings and increase border control to decrease drug smuggling into the country," the Iranian interior minister told reporters in Tehran on Thursday.

He said that decreasing counter-security incidents along borders, specially through blocking boundaries in Southeastern and Northwestern Iran are among the interior ministry's plans to block supply of narcotics in the current year.

Iran aims to completely seal off its Eastern borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan by 2015 to prevent drug smuggling and infiltration of armed groups.

Iran planning to intensify war on drug traffickers says interior minister

The growing market for new psychoactive substances (so called legal highs) is a headache for politicians all over the world. Large quantities of formerly unkown drugs are shipped from Chinese and Indian factories to urban centres, where smart online distributors market them among young people as cheap and legal substitutes for currently illegal drugs. New Zealand, a country far from drug trafficking routes, had to face this challenge much earlier than other developed nations. Its government at first responded to this challenge in the good old prohibitionist way: banning as many new substances as possible, as fast as possible. There was only one problem with this approach - namely, that it didn't work. As soon as a substance was banned, a new substitute replaced it in the market, with a slightly different molecular structure and similar psychoactive properties. In 2013, policy makers introduced a new law which aimed to create a legal, regulated market for certain new drugs – so long as the distributor could provide clinical evidence that they pose a low risk to public health.

When the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) visited New Zealand to make a film about this pioneering policy, some retail outlets had already been licensed by the government to sell some approved substances, even before the risk assessment regulation comes into effect. A few days after HCLU finished editing their movie, Minister Peter Dunne announced that the government will remove currently-approved legal highs from sale until they can be proven to be low-risk. The media presented it as the government performing a U-turn on its drug policy. Actually, the policy framework has not yet been abandoned, the risk assessment regime is still in place, and distributors still have the opportunity to prove their products are low-risk. What is behind the unexpected decision of the government is not scientific evidence – but the tabloid media, with its potential to frighten voters at the upcoming elections. Now it's up to the next government to determine the fate of the Psychoactive Substances Act.

A foot in the door: A new approach to drugs in New Zealand

Canada has followed in the footsteps of its US neighbour by installing its first vending machine for medical marijuana in the city of Vancouver.

The machine has been installed in a local dispensary known as the BC Pain Society who boast that it features “Purple Kush, Bubba Kush, sativa and indica strains of medical marijuana”.

A video uploaded on YouTube by the dispensary shows that unlike a similar machine installed in Coloarado last month, there’s no built-in system to identify the buyer, with users simply feeding in the necessary money and selecting their product of choice.

Chuck Varabioff of the BC Pain Society told Canada’s Global News that verification of the buyers’ identity would instead be carried out by staff and that feedback from the dispensary’s clientele had so far been “incredible”.

Canada welcomes first cannabis vending machine in Vancouver

UNODC, together with UNAIDS, UNICEF and UNDP, has established a project to reduce the risk and impact of HIV/AIDS in the north east region of India, an ethnically diverse area bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh. Building on years of experience on similar efforts, this project aims to help local communities prevent the spread of HIV through unsafe injecting drug use, especially among vulnerable populations -of which women represent a large part.

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Preventing HIV/AIDS among women who use drugs in north eastern India

The Minnesota Senate passed a bill Tuesday legalizing medical marijuana that is more ambitious than Gov. Mark Dayton and law enforcement officials have said they would support.

The legislation, approved by senators on a bipartisan 48-18 vote, would allow patients to use marijuana in the form of pills, oil and vapor to ease their symptoms but would prohibit them from smoking the drug. Minnesota would be the only state with legalized medical marijuana to ban patients from smoking it to ease their symptoms.

Minnesota Senate passes medical marijuana bill & could become only state that bans smoking

The Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) of the Organization of American States (OAS) concluded on May 1, 2014 its 55th Regular Session with a review of current drug policies in the Hemisphere, in compliance with the mandate that the hemispheric institution received from the leaders of the region at the Summit of the Americas in 2012.

The OAS Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, participated in the final session of the three day meeting of CICAD and thanked the commissioners of the 34 member countries for their active participation in the meetings. Secretary General Insulza highlighted the contributions that the hemispheric institution has made to the global drug problem, and called both the Report on the Drug Problem in the Americas (Analytical Report and Scenarios Report), and the Declaration of Antigua Guatemala adopted by all Member States of the OAS at the 2013 General Assembly in in Guatemala, that calls for a Special General Assembly focused on the discussion of the issue, "substantial contributions to the discussions on this topic that are being developed around the world."

Secretary General Insulza said that the conclusions of the Special General Assembly that the OAS will hold on the world drug problem in September in Guatemala "will surely represent a major contribution to the debate on drug policy that the United Nations will undertake in 2016."

The Executive Secretary of CICAD, Paul Simons, introduced the Work Plan for 2014, and listed the five program areas in which the work of the Commission will be based: Institutional Strengthening; Demand Reduction; Supply Reduction; Control Measures; and International Cooperation. He reiterated that "all activities and programs will support the Hemispheric Drug Strategy and its Plan of Action."

CICAD reviews current drug policies in the Hemisphere at 55th Regular Session

Four in every ten women who die a drug-related death have previously been reported as victims of domestic abuse, new figures have revealed.

A leading expert described the link as disturbing.

David Liddell, the director of the Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF) said addicts often endured abuse at home, but could miss out on proper support due to the stigma surrounding their drug use. He was speaking after official figures revealed that four out of every ten women who suffered a drug related death in 2012 also had a history of domestic abuse.

Mr Liddell said: "This figure should be disturbing to all of us. One of the challenges for a woman with a drug problem and on the receiving end of domestic abuse is where to go for help when they are doubly stigmatised."

'Disturbing' link between domestic violence and drug deaths in Scotland

The Uruguayan government has unveiled long-awaited regulations for its recreational marijuana market — a move that steers the tiny nation of 3.3 million people away from the prohibitionist war on drugs, with its disastrous consequences in Latin America, and toward a drug policy based on improving public health and security. Although Uruguay’s Congress approved the measure in December — becoming the first country in the world to legalize recreational pot use — it was just this week that the government of President José Mujica announced all the details.

The regulations allow three forms of access to marijuana. Uruguayans can purchase up to 40 grams per month – with a limit of 10 grams per week – from registered pharmacies. They can also choose to cultivate up to 6 homegrown plants, with a cap on annual production at 480 grams. Finally, as members of cannabis clubs, Uruguayans will be able to cultivate up to 99 plants per group, with a production cap of 480 grams per member. But smokers must choose one form of acquiring pot, and will be denied access to the drug by the other two means. The law officially takes effect on May 6, the government announced Friday.