Torture can happen to anyone. Just ask Juan Méndez. In 1975, while representing political prisoners as a human rights lawyer in Argentina, Méndez was arrested, tortured, and eventually expelled from the country. Today, he is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, investigating human rights violations.

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Torture: It can happen anywhere

In this episode of On Point, School of Public Policy Professor, Julia Buxton, discusses how the international drug control system is facing fractured consensus.

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CEU on point with Julia Buxton: Consensus fractured in the international drug control system 

The proposition of a law project to legalize and regulate the recreational, medicinal and industrial use of Cannabis was presented at the Brazilian Senate this last Monday (17/02/2014) and will be coordinated by Senator Cristovam Buarque.

Senator Buarque affirmed in his speech at the Senate that this is a very important discussion and should be made with full participation of the society. He wants to analyse the risks involved, potential medicinal advantages and the impact of legalization in reducing the violence.

The Senator, who is seen in Brazil as a moderate, has a long career in politics and was exiled to France during the military dictatorship in Brazil, when he obtained a doctorate in economics by the University of Sorbonne. He was the Minister of Education for President Lula and candidate to the presidency of Brazil in 2006.

Brazilian Senate will discuss the legalisation of cannabis

In this forum, experts, practitioners and policy-makers from around the world discuss how to address the ongoing and emerging challenges for meeting the MDGs in 2015 and for sustaining development gains in the future. The results of this-e-discussion will provide ECOSOC with constructive inputs and policy recommendations for strengthening efforts towards achieving the internationally agreed development goals, particularly the MDGs by 2015, and for sustaining and continuing development gains in the context of the post-2015 development agenda.

Participants might comment, in English, French and Spanish, on any of the discussion threads posted. The facilitators will summarize key points from the e-discussion and keep a log of policy ideas put forth by the participants. Click here for Moderators’ bios

 When adding a comment, please introduce yourself, including affiliation and location.Thank you! See Tips for Participation.

For questions or comments, please email support.amr@unteamworks.org. For technical issues with this platform, contact support@unteamworks.org

E-discussion: Addressing challenges for meeting the MDGs and sustaining development gains

Serbia is a country at the crossroads of a number of heroin trafficking routes. It has a significant injecting drug user population, many of them belonging to a marginalised ethnic minority, the Roma. Thanks to grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tubercolosis and Malaria, several harm reduction services were introduced into Serbia during the first decade of this century. There are approximately two thousand people enrolled in opiate substitution programs, and four NSPs (needle and syringe programs) provide sterile equipment to injecting drug users.

The prevalence of HIV among drug users has so far remained low, but access to harm reduction services is far from adequate – the best indicator of risk being the high prevalence of Hepatitis C infections. Hopes, on the part of service providers, that programs can be scaled up, seem to be going up in smoke: the country is not eligible for any more money from the Global Fund, and the last grant will end in June. This means that NSPs face an uncertain future: the government has made no commitment to continue their funding, and there are no other donors available to step in. In September, the Drugreporter filming team was invited by ReGeneracija (like them on Facebook!), a local NGO working with young people, to produce a movie about the situation. We hope this video will give you an overview of the situation, and show why it is so important to provide adequate funding for harm reduction programs.

At a crossroads: Will Serbia fund harm reduction programs to save lives?

Norway is poised to start trials of a nasal spray that reverses the effect of a heroin overdose, in a move that could encourage other countries to follow suit.

Despite its oil wealth, well-funded drug rehabilitation programmes and generous welfare safety net, Norway has western Europe's worst overdose rate. Campaigners have long been urging the government to approve the rollout of the nasal spray, which administers Naloxone to people who have taken an overdose, in effect acting as a kind of liquid defibrillator.

Now, regulatory approval permitting, the Norwegian trials will offer the kit in Norway's two most populous cities, Oslo and Bergen, later this year. Philipp Lobmaier, the doctor leading the trials, said that while Naloxone was no silver bullet, he was confident it would cut down the number of ambulance cases. "I hope we will soon be able to show fewer incidents of paramedics being called out for overdoses," he said.

Norway will trial Naloxone spray to tackle its alamring rate of heroin overdose.

Norway to trial nasal spray antidote to heroin overdose

This documentary shows the cannabis law reform around the world, as well as the history of the prohibition and potential benefits of the plant.

Documentary on cannabis law reform

People smoking a joint in France face a maximum penalty of a year behind bars and a €3,750 fine for the first offence, yet 13.4 million French people admit to sparking up at least once in their life. Even France’s top cop, Interior Minister Manuel Vallls, said in a recent interview, he’d tried it “maybe once.”

The numbers go up as you look at the younger portion of the population. France had the unhappy distinction of being the European “champion” of teen pot smokers in 2011 when 24 percent of its 16-year-old kids admitted to smoking at least once a month, daily Le Monde reported.

Not surprisingly legalizing cannabis has come up regularly in France, but the discussion never has never gotten far. In fact, it was only this month that authorities announced medical cannabis spray Sativex had been authorized for sale in France, though only by prescription and solely to multiple sclerosis patients.

'First ever' bill proposes legal cannabis in France

On 13th February, Mexico City submitted bills to both the Local House and the Federal Congress of Mexico that, if passed, will decriminalise the possession of small quantities of cannabis for personal use.

The move is being backed by four former Latin American presidents (PDF), all of whom are members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil; Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico; César Gaviria, former president of Colombia; and Ricardo Lagos, former president of Chile.

The bills are the result of lengthy discussions that began last summer, when the ALDF (Local House) organised a series of public hearings to explore alternative policies aimed at addressing the city's drug problem. Staff from the Latin American Drug Policy Programme run by México Unido Contra la Delincuencia (MUCD) and Transform Drug Policy Foundation (TDPF) co-organised and spoke at the hearings. After six months of work, the technical group in charge of the drafting process – which consisted of lawyers, health practitioners, security advisers and drug policy experts – finalised the two bills that were presented this morning.

Mexico City: New bill on cannabis decriminalisation submitted to local congress

Britain's "hopelessly out-of-date" drug laws could now be debated in Parliament after 100,000 people signed a petition. The success of Caroline Lucas' campaign has prompted Russell Brand to promise to "snog" the 100,000th signatory live on Channel 4 News.

Brand's endorsement, plus the intervention on Sunday of Nick Clegg, has helped drive support for the petition, which must now be considered for debate by Parliament's Backbench Business Committee.

CAROLINE LUCAS BLOG: Time for a sane, evidence-based drugs policy

It urges the Government to order a cost-benefit analysis and impact assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 within the next 12 months. Lucas argues that, as the Government is spending £3 billion a year on its drug policy, it is worth "checking whether Britain's current approach is value for money or money wasted".

UK Drugs petition passes 100,000, Russell Brand offers to snog signatory live on air

On February 12th, the Italian Constitutional Court ruled that the 2006 Italian drug legislation (the so called Fini Giovanardi law) is unconstitutional. Consequently, the 1990 legislation, as amended by the 1993 popular referendum (which decriminalized possession for personal use), has been restored.

The legitimacy of the 2006 drug legislation was first challenged by Società della Ragione, an Italian NGO working in the field of justice and human rights, soon followed by many other NGOs. At the beginning of 2013, the Società della Ragione published a memorandum, drafted by the jurist and activist Luigi Saraceni, showing that the Fini Giovanardi drug legislation did not meet Italy’s strict constitutional requirements for laws by decrees, as previously affirmed by the Supreme Court. In fact, Italy’s 2006 antidrug law was surreptitiously introduced as a single article in a law by decree on an entirely different matter - the funding of 2006 Turin Olympics. One more question of legitimacy was raised with regards to the harsher penalties for cannabis introduced in the 2006 legislation, by upgrading cannabis to Schedule I, along heroin and cocaine, in spite of the different levels of risk: the memorandum claimed that this was in opposition to the constitutional principle of proportionality in penalties.

Following the publication of the memorandum, several judges took the initiative to suspend trials for drug crimes and called for a decision from the Constitutional Court about the legitimacy of the anti-drug legislation. A few days before the Court’s decision, an appeal by sixty jurists and academics advocated the abolition of the 2006 legislation. To the same purpose, a rally with thousands of citizens, mainly drug users, took place in Rome. In the final audience before the Supreme Court, on February 11th, Giovanni Maria Flick, the prominent jurist and former Minister for Justice in the nineties, represented the plaintiffs arguing for the unconstitutionality of the law.

The Supreme Court decision has wiped out a legislation which has been widely recognized as one of the main reasons for the overcrowding of Italian prisons. As for the anti-drug norms, as amended by the Court’s ruling, the main change concerns the reintroduced distinction between cannabis and “hard drugs”, with milder penalties for cannabis; the abolition of the “threshold” aimed at distinguishing between personal use and dealing; the decriminalization of drug possession (for personal use), to be punished with milder administrative sanctions (than in the abolished text); easier access to alternative therapeutic measures to incarceration.

The Italian Supreme Court abolishes the 2006 antidrug legislation

The World Health Organization is developing guidelines on the management of overdoses due to drugs such as heroin and prescription opioids. The preferences of people who might be affected by the guidelines, such a people who use opioids, their friends and families, emergency care services and the health care staff who treat opioid opioid overdose are one factor being considered in the development of these guidelines. If you belong to one of these people we would greatly appreciate your input.

The issues covered by the guidelines include the management of opioid overdose with opioid antagonists such as naloxone - a specific antidote to opioid effects, including whether or not naloxone should be made available to people who are likely to witness an opioid overdose, even if they are not medically trained. Such people could include family members of people who use opioids, close friends, people who use opioids themselves and non medical emergency service workers. The guidelines also cover other aspects of managing an opioid overdose, including resuscitation techniques, and what to do after the person who overdosed has resumed consciousness, including whether or not transfer to hospital is necessary.

The survey will take about 5 minutes to complete.