2014 marks the 25th anniversary of the identification of the hepatitis C virus (HCV). HCV infection continues to be a major global health problem. Unlike many chronic diseases, hepatitis C can be cured, but it is difficult to treat, not all patients are responsive, side-effects can be severe, and progression to end-stage liver disease and liver cancer is common.

Over the past few years, new medicines for HCV infection have begun to transform the treatment landscape, and, just in the past few months alone, the development of new regimens has been so successful that disease experts are heralding an era where all patients can be cured, even debating whether eradication is possible.

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Only just the beginning of the end of hepatitis C

The proposal is an appeal to the Italian Parliament that they “move from a prohibitionist structure to one where soft drugs, particularly cannabis, are legally produced and distributed”. This means that while the vote doesn't make it legal to consume, buy or sell cannabis for individual use yet, it paves the way for a more tolerant view of the drug in the eyes of the law.

There are two parts to the proposal; the first called for the right to use cannabis for 'therapeutic' purposes, something already permitted in Tuscany, Liguria and Veneto, where as well as authorizing pharmacies to sell cannabis-based products, experimental distribution of free medications containing cannabis has been approved in hospitals, as well as direct production of marijuana.

Turin votes in favour of legalising cannabis

Labour MP Marith Rebel said the government should listen to local councils who have asked to be allowed to regulate cannabis cultivation.

She called for justice minister Ivo Opstelten to drop his opposition to legalised cannabis production. Opstelten has threatened in the past to go to court to stop municipalities such as Utrecht from authorising cannabis growers.

The Liberal (VVD) minister has blocked all attempts to extend the current drugs laws in the Netherlands. Drugs are illegal but small quantities of soft drugs can be bought from licensed premises (‘coffeeshops’) under tightly regulated conditions.

Only people resident in the Netherlands are legally allowed to visit coffeeshops, but it is left to local mayors to decide whether the rule is enforced. In Amsterdam, which is home to around one-third of the cannabis cafes, tourists are still welcome, while Maastricht strictly enforces the ban on foreigners.

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

Coalition MP calls on Dutch justice minister to review ban on cannabis cultivation

The European Commission proposed to strengthen the European Union’s ability to respond to ‘legal highs’.

This proposal for a legal highs regulation intends to withdraw faster dangerous new psychoactive substances from the legal market.

 A progressive response based on a risk assessment

 This regulation will increase the race between laws and drug traffickers and, consequently the risks for users' health.

The NEW Net members were invited to contribute to the European Economic and Social Committee's Opinion on this proposal.

New Net influences EU regulation on legal highs

In the first debate of its kind the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting hosted a discussion with leaders on both sides of the rising debate over drug policy. Although there was vigorous disagreement on many points, the leaders marked out a pathway towards at least some decriminalization. While Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, USA, and Juan Manuel Santos, President of the Republic of Colombia, defended current law enforcement in both of their jurisdictions, they agreed with the general need for policy reform.

World Economic Forum: First drugs debate highlights need for policy reform 

Denmark has joined a handful of other countries worldwide in providing “fix rooms,” or drug consumption centers (DCR’s) where users are supervised when using. The Danish Parliament passed legislation in June 2012 that would allow municipalities to open these centers and Copenhagen launched the first one in October of that year. Two other Danish cities have since followed suit.

A second DCR was opened in Copenhagen last August and both centers now host 1,800 users who smoke and inject heroin and cocaine. Nurses witness up to 800 injections each day at the centers. However, that isn’t to say that drug use at DCR’s is necessarily safer. Although no deaths have taken place in the two Copenhagen fix rooms, 135 people overdosed on site in the first year.

But despite claims from some that DCR’s encourage and promote illegal drug use, studies are now showing that the rooms reduce the issue of public drug use without increasing crime and actually save lives in the process. "It's very similar to the early days of needle exchange in the U.S., where there was a lot of opposition," explained Laura Thomas with the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance. "Pretty much all of that opposition has now faded away and a lot of people acknowledge they were wrong to oppose it: that it didn't increase drug use, that it didn't do a lot of things that people feared. But at the same time, there's a very human cost to a slow learning curve."

The Danish DCR’s also assist addicts when they leave the rooms. Rasmus Christansen, manager at one of the Copenhagen DCR’s, said they have helped over 1,000 users get access to housing and medical care through the country’s welfare system.

Denmark's drug consumption rooms: A proven success in first year

Hundreds of Scotland’s most vulnerable young people are to be given greater rights to continuing their care placement into early adulthood from next year, the Scottish Government has announced.

From April 2015, teenagers in residential, foster or kinship care who turn 16 will be entitled to remain looked after until the age of 21 under new provisions proposed for the Children and Young People Bill.

This increased support, to be funded by £5 million a year up to 2020, is in addition to the Scottish Government’s recent commitment to provide support up to the age of 26-years-old for care leavers to help them move into independent living.

Minister for Young People Aileen Campbell said:

“It is vitally important that the support available to young people leaving care will help make the transition to independent living as comfortable and successful as possible. Care leavers in Scotland currently receive care and financial support up to the age of 21 and we have already committed to extending this to 26. We are now able to announce that, from April next year, those 16-year-olds in foster, kinship or residential care will have a right to stay up until the age of 21 before receiving aftercare.

Greater rights for young people in care

by Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch, US Program

Nearly every country in the world plays a part—as producer, consumer, or transit point—in the multibillion-dollar illicit drug trade that supplies more than 150 million people every year and keeps on growing.

To combat this trade, many countries over recent decades have launched so-called “wars on drugs” that entail crackdowns on participants large and small in the drug business, including harsh penalties for users.

Human Rights Watch has long documented the widespread human rights abuses resulting from this approach: in the United States, the devastation that disproportionate prison sentences for drug offenses have wrought on individuals and their families and disturbing racial disparities in drug law enforcement; in Mexico, the killings committed in the name of combatting drugs; in Canada, the US, and Russia, how fear of criminal law enforcement deters people who use drugs from accessing necessary health services, exposing them to violence, discrimination, and illness; in Afghanistan and Colombia, how narcotics production has fueled armed groups opposed or allied to the government; in India, Ukraine, and Senegal, how cancer patients suffer severe pain due to drug control regulations that render morphine inaccessible; and in China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, the “drug rehabilitation centers” where people are subjected to torture, forced labor, and sexual abuse.

But there was a growing sense within Human Rights Watch that this approach did not go far enough—that the problem did not lie merely with ill-considered policies or their abusive execution. Rather, the criminalization of drugs itself seemed to be inherently problematic. Especially when it came to personal possession and use, imposing the full force of the criminal justice system to arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate appeared contrary to the human rights to privacy and personal autonomy that underlie many rights.

The human rights case for drug reform

Il 12 feb­braio arriva davanti alla Corte costi­tu­zio­nale la legge Fini-Giovanardi per molte ecce­zioni di costi­tu­zio­na­lità che sono state sol­le­vate nei mesi e nelle set­ti­mane scorse dai giu­dici di merito e finan­che dalla Corte di Cas­sa­zione. Mar­tedì 21 gen­naio, a Roma (Sala Colonne, via Poli, ore 9,30), nel con­ve­gno pro­mosso da La Società della Ragione sulla «Fini-Giovanardi a giu­di­zio» saranno appro­fon­dite le moti­va­zioni che hanno por­tato la attuale legge anti­droga davanti alla Corte.

Tienitiaggiornato congli sviluppi politicidi drogamediante la sottoscrizione diAlertIDPCmensile.

La costituzionalità della legge Fini-Giovanardi esaminata davanti alla Corte costituzionale

On February 12th, the Italian Constitutional Court will rule about the legitimacy of the 2006 drug legislation. On January 21st, in a seminar of jurists promoted by Forum Droghe, Società della Ragione and other NGOs working in the field of justice and human rights, an appeal was launched by 60 academics from the most important Italian universities to the Supreme Court, drawing attention to the many legal flaws in this piece of legislation.

First and foremost, the 2006 drug legislation was surreptitiously introduced in a single article in a law by decree on a totally different matter (the funding of the 2006 Turin Olympics), so as to prevent the Parliament to discuss and emend the government’s text. Secondly, by upgrading cannabis to Schedule I, with heroine and cocaine, the same penalties were introduced for all drugs, in spite of their different levels of risk. “This is in opposition to the principle of proportionality in penalties – the jurists write- as established in the EU Chart of Fundamental Rights (art.49, c.3) and confirmed in the EU Council Framework Decision 2004/75”.

Finally, the jurists underline the link between the present drug legislation and the crisis of prisons. “Reintroducing a less punitive drug legislation- they claim- would substantially contribute to solve the problem of prison overcrowding, which led the European Court to condemn Italy for the degrading and inhumane living conditions in Italian prisons”.

"The Italian drug legislation is blatantly illegitimate": An appeal to the Supreme Court from 60 prominent Italian jurists

The Executive Board of the World Health Organization has adopted a resolution on palliative care that will be useful for palliative care advocates in their home countries to advocate for palliative care.

For the first time, a stand-alone resolution on palliative care was on the agenda of the World Health Organization’s Executive Board. The Board considered a report by the WHO secretariat on palliative care, before adopting the resolution: ‘Strengthening of palliative care as a component of integrated treatment within the continuum of care’ to be referred to the World Health Assembly in May.

The resolution urges countries to integrate palliative care into healthcare systems, to improve training for healthcare workers, and to ensure that relevant medicines, including strong pain medicines, are available to patients. It also urges WHO to increase its technical assistance to member countries on the development of palliative care services.

World Health Organization Executive Board adopts resolution on palliative care

A Georgia-based NGO has launched an online petition it hopes will attract regional support for a greater push by governments to fill the anticipated vacuum that will be left once the Global Fund no longer commits significant financial support to a majority of EECA countries.

The regional initiative spearheaded by the Georgia Union of People Livin with HIV “Real People, Real Vision” group will also include advocacy targeting governments in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, The Russian Federation and Ukraine. The campaign, ‘

Health can be purchased, put the price in the budget’ 

seeks to ensure that government provides stable, quality and free treatment for all people living with HIV.

EECA remains the only region where generalized HIV prevalence is rising, according to a 2012 report from UNAIDS. However, because of a shift in the Global Fund’s approach towards high impact, low income countries, many of the states in the region that are classified by the World Bank as middle-income may see a precipitous drop in the amount of financial support they get from the Fund, from 2015. And while governments have committed to provide funding for treatment and care programming, it is prevention and harm reduction activities, specifically targeting key populations, that are especially vulnerable.

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