Ricardo Soberon, the reformist head of DEVIDA, the Peruvian drug agency, has been fired and replaced. Soberon made waves last August when he implemented a temporary ban on forced eradication of coca plants, taking the US Embassy by surprise, but that was soon reversed on the orders of his boss, Interior Minister Oscar Valdes.
In keeping with the regressive turn that the Dutch drug policy has taken under its conservative coalition government, the government said it will ban khat, a plant used by people from the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula for its mild stimulant properties.
For the past few months, the Civil Society Forum on Drugs has been drafting a list of recommendations to guide the European Commission in drafting the new EU Drug Strategy.
Denmark has one of the highest overdose death rates in the European Union. Contrary to common beliefs overdose is a preventable cause of the death and its prevention does not cost a lot of money: you need to provide skills and tools for preventing lives and a safe environment to use drugs.
Following a thorough review of its old structure and operations, AHRN has developed a new set of objectives that will guide its work over the coming years.
The Mexican government updated its drug war death toll on Wednesday, reporting that 47,515 people had been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a military assault on criminal cartels in late 2006.
Australia’s first overdose management programme that provides naloxone on prescription to potential overdose victims has been developed and will be implemented in the Australian Capital Territory.
With 7 months to go until the upcoming AIDS 2012 Conference, young people are organizing and gathering forces now before mobilizing and advocating in the United States.
The Copenhagen City Council is pushing ahead with a proposal to decriminalise cannabis, and has set up a committee to investigate the best way to regulate the supply and distribution. The favoured option is for 30 or 40 cannabis shops controlled by the city in which adults may legally buy cannabis. By a margin of 39 votes to nine, the City Council decided to draw up a detailed outline of how the plan would work. Subsequently, the resulting proposal still has to be ratified by the Danish parliament, which has blocked similar movements in the past. But after the national elections in September 2011 the current parliament could support decriminalisation this time around.