This series includes episodes with harm reduction and drug policy reform activists from our network and allies, including Daniel Wolfe, formerly at the Open Society Foundations, on Funding Global Harm Reduction; Alejandro Madrazo and Catalina Perez, from the Mexican Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), on Drug Prohibition in Mexico; Gideon Lasco on the World’s Most Vicious Drug War —discussing the Philippine war on drugs; Anya Sarang, from the Andrey Rylkov Foundation, on Russia and Drugs; and Amanda Feilding (Beckley Foundation), on Psychedelics Research.

Drugs, drugs, drugs. Almost everyone uses them. Almost everyone has an opinion about them. Drug policy pioneer Ethan Nadelmann gets to the bottom of our strange relationship to drugs by talking with those who love them, hate them, and study them.

PSYCHOACTIVE - A podcast series with Ethan Nadelmann

Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS, was on her way to the 24th International AIDS Conference in Montreal this week when attendants at the airport in Geneva almost refused to allow her to board the plane.

In a tweet Tuesday, Byanyima, who is from Uganda, wrote that she was standing at the gate with her boarding pass in hand while airport personnel repeatedly scrutinized her documents and made phone calls.

“I board last,” she wrote, calling her treatment “Unjust, racist!”

Byanyima was not the only person planning to attend the Canadian event — the first in-person International AIDS Conference since the COVID-19 pandemic began — who found their travel disrupted or blocked by visa denials, boarding problems, or other incidents that often affected people from the global south.

“I was aware that so many people, hundreds actually, have been turned away, some of them after working so hard to make their applications, to pay the fees that they have to pay in advance, to travel long distances, to line up for visas — and they were denied,” Byanyima told Devex.

These reports have cast a shadow over a major international conference aimed at reconnecting a global, inclusive movement at a pivotal moment when the fight against HIV appears to be faltering.

Devex spoke to Byanyima about how to get that fight back on track. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

AIDS conference exclusion is 'unjust' and 'wrong,' says UNAIDS chief

The Home Office has set out its plans to reduce the current levels of recreational drug use across the UK in its new White Paper Swift, Certain, Tough: new consequences for drug possession. The paper follows on from the Government’s most recent drug strategy; it was promised at the time to address the objective of ‘demand reduction’- reducing use - which the drug strategy mostly overlooked in its focus on service provision.

The White Paper’s demand reduction strategy for ‘so-called recreational users’ proposes a model for public consultation (to be piloted in three locations) for how drug possession offences would be dealt with, summarised in this graphic:

Some elements of the proposals appear relatively promising. At first glance, there seems to be a desire to try and avoid the tens of thousands of people caught committing minor possession offences from being drawn into the criminal justice system. Implicit is an acknowledgement that criminalisation of minor possession is both expensive and counterproductive; there is no evidence that blanket punitive sanctions are an effective deterrent and there is substantive evidence that they fuel stigma, create obstacles to proven public health interventions, and undermine the life chances, particularly of people from socially and economically marginalised communities.

This is why ending criminalisation of people who use drugs is recommended best practice from the Government’s own expert advisers (the ACMD), all 31 lead agencies of the UN including The World Health Organisation and UN Office on Drugs and Crime, as well as the Royal College of Physicians, the UK Faculty of Public health, the Royal Society for Public Health - and many other authoritative voices.

United Kingdom: Reviewing the government’s new ‘tough’ consequences for drug possession

GENEVA (29 July 2022) – UN experts* today condemned the execution of Nazeri Bin Lajim, a 64-year-old Malay Singaporean national convicted of drug offenses and urged the Government of Singapore to halt plans to execute individuals on death row for drugrelated charges.

There has been a sharp rise in execution notices issued in Singapore this year.

Nazeri Bin Lajim was arrested in April 2012 and convicted for trafficking 33.39 grams of diamorphine under the 1973 Misuse of Drugs Act in September 2019. The mandatory death penalty wassubsequently imposed in his case and enforced on 22 July 2022.

“Under international law, States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose it for the ‘most serious crimes’, involving intentional killing,” the experts said. “Drug offences clearly do not meet this threshold.”

The experts reiterated that, as per the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention’s report on arbitrary detention relating to drug policies andits subsequent jurisprudence, imposing the death penalty for drug-related offences is incompatible with international standards on the useof the death penalty.

Bin Lajim is the fifth person executed in Singapore in 2022.

“We are concerned that a disproportionate number of those being sentenced to death for drug-related offences are minority persons andtend to be from economically disadvantaged backgrounds like Mr Nazeri Bin Lajim,” the experts said. “The practice amounts to discriminatory treatment of minorities such as Malays and vulnerablepersons,” they said.

The enforcement of Nazeri Bin Lajim’s execution proceeded despite claims that he had been suffering from long-term drug addiction andthat most of the diamorphine would have been for personal use. The rest of the narcotics in his possession for trafficking would not have met the 15 gram threshold for the imposition of the mandatory death penalty in Singapore.

“We are also extremely concerned by reports about increasing pressure and acts of intimidation by the authorities against activists,journalists, legal professionals and human rights defenders who peacefully advocate against the death penalty and/or represent persons on death row, and the chilling effect such acts have on civicspace,” the experts said. “The act of expressing one’s opinion and protesting against the death penalty should be tolerated in a democratic country.”

The experts urged the Singaporean authorities to suspend the further execution of individuals on death row for drug offenses and commutetheir death sentences to imprisonment consistent with international human rights law and standards.

“We urge the Government of Singapore to immediately establish an official moratorium on all executions with a view to fully abolishing the death penalty,” the UN experts said.

They said the Government of Singapore should review, without delay, the scope of the death penalty, particularly with regard to drug-related offences, in order to ensure that its imposition and implementation arestrictly limited to cases involving intentional killing.

“We reiterate that the mandatory use of the death penalty constitutesan arbitrary deprivation of life, since it is imposed without taking into account the defendant’s personal circumstances or the circumstancesof the particular offence,” the experts said.

“Mandatory death sentences are arbitrary in nature and not compatible with the limitation of capital punishment to the “most serious crimes.”

, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; 

Ms. Miriam Estrada-Castillo (Chair-Rapporteur), Mr. Mumba Malila (Vice-Chair), Ms. Elina Steinerte, Ms.Priya Gopalan, and Mr. Matthew Gillett - 

, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; 

, Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by olderpersons; 

Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; 

Special Rapporteur onMinority Issues; and 

Special Rapporteur on thepromotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion andexpression.

The Experts are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematicissues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for theirwork. They are independent of any government or organisation and servein their individual capacity.

Singapore: UN experts call for immediate moratorium on executions for drug offences

The Legislative Committee of Liberia reports back to Senate on the Controlled Drug and Substance Act 2014 (amended).

Following months of a careful review of the amended Controlled Drug and Substance Act 2014, the Legislative Committee of the Liberian Senate, on July 25, 2022, presented its findings and recommendations to the plenary.

In cooperation with the Office of Honorable Thomas Goshua and the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the West Africa Drug Policy Network (WADPN) facilitated the amendment in March 2021. It was motivated by calls for a stricter drug law to address the drug trade and its effects in Liberia.

The committee highlighted that the amended law is progressive and in line with international standards for a comprehensive approach to drug control, even though all drug-related acts remain unlawful. The law allows people with substance use disorders and dependence to participate in drug treatment and rehabilitation programs instead of being locked up under the law. It also dramatically reduces the minimum and maximum sentences for drug use and possession from 5 to 20 years to 3 months and 18 months, respectively, and separates possession of prohibited substances for trafficking from personal use.

The law designates illegal drug cultivation, manufacture, transportation, and trafficking as a first-degree felony offence that is not subject to bail and carries a mandatory 10 to 20-year prison term. The committee emphasised that the classification violates Article 21 d (I) of Liberia’s 1986 constitution, even though the law establishes an evidence-based drug control intervention framework. Therefore, they suggested that illegal drug cultivation, manufacturing, transportation, and trafficking should be a criminal offence punishable by bail, but only if a 200 per cent instant-payable bond covering the value of the exhibit is paid.

According to a different senator, the recommendation defies the very goal of the amendment, which is to stop the flow of drugs into Liberia by ensuring that high-end traffickers are subject to the full force of the law and are not given any opportunity to get out of it. She referenced several incidents in Liberia where top-end dealers used bail to evade the criminal justice system. She maintained that because too-end dealers usually have fortunes in billions, they should not be subject to bail since they can easily afford whatever bond sum set by the court and use their connections to dodge prosecution.

The Controlled Drug and Substance Act of 2014 was amended with the express intention of making drug trafficking a non-bailable offence while simultaneously lowering the criminal penalties for drug use and possession and improving the health and wellbeing of people who use drugs.

But it appears that the non-bailable drug trafficking provision in the amendment has become the main point of contention among senators, and if this issue is not resolved at their next session, the concurrence of the amendment is likely to stall.

As a major player in the process and an organisation that supports progressive drug policies that are human rights and public health-focused, WADPN urges the Senators to find a compromise that adheres to the constitution while advancing the human rights and welfare of people who use drugs.

However, the committee Chairman advised members to read the revised statute and pick up their discussions again in October following their constituency recess. WADPN will continue to closely monitor the process to ensure that the outcome is in the best interests of minor, nonviolent drug offenders and associated underserved populations.

Liberia: Legislative Committee reports to Senate on Controlled Drug & Substance Act 2014 (amended)

By Matt Lamers, International Editor / MJ Biz Daily

Key European government ministers have concluded more work must be done to craft a sustainable framework for regulating recreational cannabis across the region – arguing the current situation is untenable after an unusual meeting of top officials earlier this month.

Government ministers from Germany, Malta, the Netherlands and meeting host Luxembourg met July 15 to discuss adult-use cannabis regulation and the legal issues involved in market oversight.

The gathering – believed to be the first of its kind and held at Senningen Castle – involved countries with varying degrees of interest in regulating recreational cannabis.

At the meeting’s conclusion, Germany, Luxembourg and Malta adopted a joint statement – with the Netherlands electing not to take part.

‘Status quo not a tenable option’: EU ministers discuss cannabis policy hurdles

Across the world, the state of environmental stress is unprecedented. As scholarship and activism on ‘environmental justice’ point out, poorer and marginalised communities face particular exposure to environmental harms.

This holds especially true for populations in the Global South, including Myanmar. The role of opium cultivation in relation to these environmental stresses is an underexplored terrain. Yet, as this new TNI report argues, drugs, as well as the policy responses to them, are an environmental crisis in Myanmar as well as other countries where opium poppy, coca bush and cannabis plants are cultivated.

Across the world, the state of environmental stress is unprecedented. This includes major threats to the lands, soils, waters, forests, and oceans that make up our ecosystems and biodiverse nature. Cutting across all of this are the unfolding effects of climate change and global heating. All of these developments will continue to have dramatic impacts on both people and planet. These impacts are however not evenly distributed. As scholarship and activism on ‘environmental justice’ points out, poorer and marginalised communities, often differentiated along class, gender and racial lines, face particular exposure to environmental harms. This holds particularly true for populations in the Global South.

The role of illicit drugs in relation to these environmental stresses is an underexplored terrain. Yet, as this report will argue, drugs, as well as the policy responses to them, are an environmental issue. This disconnect between drug and environmental policy is the result largely of the institutional compartmentalisation of the issue of drugs into the domain of crime and law enforcement with little outreach to other spheres related to the environment or sustainable development. References to the environment within drug policy have as such remained sparse and limited in scope.

This is slowly changing. A resolution on alternative development adopted by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) - the central drug policy-making body within the UN system - in March this year gave special attention to environmental protection, encouraging “Member States to examine and address, within the efforts of alternative development, the harmful impact of the illicit cultivation of crops used for the production of narcotic drugs on the environment, which may lead to deforestation and the pollution of soil and water, and to seize the opportunities offered by alternative development with regard to the conservation and sustainable use of the environment and the protection of biodiversity”. And for the first time this year, the 2022 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Drug Report will include a special booklet on the connection between illicit drugs and the environment. This follows on from an increasing number of official side-events that have been organised in recent years at the CND in Vienna on the issue of drugs and the environment.

TNI’s latest report ‘Prohibited Plants. Environmental Justice in Drug Policy’ explores, among other things, the environmental dynamics associated with opium poppy cultivation in the two regions with which it is most associated: Myanmar (as part of the so-called ‘Golden Triangle’ along with Thailand and Laos) and Afghanistan. The two cases make for an interesting contrast. While in the case of Myanmar, more traditional forms of cultivation practised by upland populations and ethnic minority groups as part of mobile agricultural systems are examined, in Afghanistan the environmental implications of the introduction of new ‘green’ technologies in the form of solar-powered deepwater wells for long-term sustainability are discussed. In both cases, opium cultivation has continued, if not dramatically increased, against the backdrop of a series of bans and, with few exceptions, failed crop-substitution and alternative development (AD) programmes.

Opium cultivation and environmental justice in Myanmar

By Claudia Stoicescu, Associate Professor, Public Health, Monash University, Indonesia

On a balmy day in 2009, Adinda Amalia (not her real name) and her boyfriend were arrested after they were caught injecting heroin in an informal shooting gallery – a derelict property in a South Jakarta slum. The arrests followed a police raid on the area.

The couple were brought to the local police station. While her boyfriend was allegedly beaten and tortured in a separate cell, Adinda was allegedly blindfolded, drugged, and gang-raped by police officers over four days.

The police allegedly demanded IDR95 million (US$6500) to end her ordeal and drop all charges – an unfathomable amount for someone living below the poverty line in Indonesia.

My latest research shows that experiences similar to Adinda’s at the hands of police officers are widespread in Indonesia.

Worse still, drug law enforcement in Indonesia including crackdowns, arrests for drug use, incarceration, and extrajudicial abuses were linked with negative health outcomes for women, and increased their risk of suffering a drug overdose.

New research shows how Indonesia’s drug control policy victimises women, and puts their health at risk

The first time Patricia Tévez went to the district prosecutor’s office in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to demand that the system do something to protect her husband, who was being tortured and beaten inside a prison, she felt lost and alone. With her two young children beside her, she was left standing in the office with no support and no idea as to what to do next. What she did know is that if she didn’t do something, her husband could be killed. The authorities told her everything was fine.

It was then that Patricia met Andrea Casamento, the mother of a young man who had been in a very similar situation. She had received calls from her son, who was being held in the Penitentiary Center of Ezeiza, a department 20 kilometers south of the country’s capital, saying that all he had to wear was underwear, and that he had gone many hours without eating. He told her that if he didn’t find a way out of prison soon, he would take his own life.

Patricia remembers the feeling well: “Our family members tell us ‘go to the Ombudsman’s office, say this or that’ but they explain things to us using words that we don’t understand. Family members aren’t lawyers. It’s because of this that family members don’t go, don’t ask, and don’t claim their rights.”

Andrea and Patricia have faced the reality of thousands of women whose relatives are in prison: coming face to face with an intricate maze of institutions, mechanisms, and vulnerabilities that systematically violate the rights of their loved ones, as well as their own.

“The narrative of human rights surrounding prison systems across Latin America has largely been centered on those on the inside of the bars,” explains WOLA Senior Fellow, Coletta Youngers. “But we also need to take into account, from a gender perspective, who is left behind when people are detained and how their lives change virtually overnight.”

Women make up the majority of people who care for those in prisons across Latin America. They are often responsible for securing food, medicines and other essential needs States fail to provide. They suffer from abusive searches and other forms of violence when visiting their loved ones behind bars.

The invisible resistance to Latin America’s prison systems

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The place where Chris gets his fentanyl is bright and airy, all blond wood and exposed brick. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable about the potency of the pills he can crush, cook and inject.

Soft pop music played, and an attendant spritzed a bit of Covid-cautious spray on his seat before he settled into a booth on a recent afternoon with a couple of red-and-yellow pills, a tourniquet, a tiny candle and a lighter.

“The best thing about this is the guarantee: I can come in here four times a day and get it,” Chris said. He no longer spends all of his waking hours in a frantic scrabble of panhandling and “other stuff” to scrape up the cash to pay a dealer. He won’t get arrested — and he won’t overdose and die using a drug that is not what it is sold as.

Canada: Fentanyl from the government? A Vancouver experiment aims to stop overdoses

Civil society organisations sent an open letter to the EU Commission to criticise the new call for drug policy grant proposals that almost only focuses on law enforcement and excludes harm reduction.

Since the Drug Unit of the EU Commission was relocated to the Internal Security Department, civil society has been concerned about the continuous shifting of its approach towards a more repressive, law-and-order direction from a balanced, integrated model of drug policies.

The new call for proposals launched by the Commission is another step in this direction. Unlike the previous EC JUST drug policy grant calls, this funding mechanism almost only focuses on supply reduction. From its four objectives, three focuses on improving supply reduction, it has only one objective on drug prevention – while harm reduction is completely missing.

Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network (C-EHRN), an umbrella of European harm reduction organisations (Rights Reporter Foundation, the organisation operating this website, is a Steering Committee member) sent an open letter to Ilva Johanson, Commissioner of Home Affairs, and Fiona Sipala, the head of the Drug Unit of the EC, to address this issue.

“We write to you on behalf of Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network (CEHRN), representing 158 civil society organisations (CSO) working in the area of harm reduction drug policy in Europe. C-EHRN is part of Foundation De Regenboog Groep and, as such, is also represented in the EU Civil Society Forum on Drugs.

Together with the undersigned networks, we would like to express our concern and disappointment with the current call of the Internal Security Grant concerning better law enforcement in the area of illicit drug trafficking. We believe this call does not reflect the principles of an evidence-based, integrated, balanced and multidisciplinary approach to the drugs phenomenon and is not in line with the Drug Strategy of the European Union. The call has a narrow focus on law enforcement interventions, with no objectives to improve complex public health and social services, including harm reduction.

For several years, the members and organisations we work with have benefited from the EC JUST Drug Policy grants launched by the European Commission. These grants demonstrated the balanced, evidence-based and multidisciplinary approach to drug policies in accordance with the core principles of the European Union. They provided an excellent opportunity for civil society organisations working in the field of drugs to cooperate internationally and exchange knowledge and good practices.
When the Drugs Unit was moved from the Justice Department to the Internal Security Department, civil society organisations were promised that this would not affect the balanced and multidisciplinary approach to drug policies of the EU Commission.
However, the apparent shift towards law enforcement and crime prevention proves different – with social and public health aspects slipping off the agenda.

The Internal Security call lays only limited emphasis on drug demand reduction and none at all on harm reduction. At the same time, no other EU Programme took over this responsibility, leaving drug demand and harm reduction behind, without any opportunity for EU funding and support.

This is an extremely concerning development. EU funding has become increasingly important in recent years because of the emerging funding crisis for harm reduction, especially in the Eastern part of the European Union. Since the 2008 economic crisis, funding for harm reduction has constantly been declining in most Member States.

Several essential services operated by CSOs have been closed down or curtailed due to budget cuts and the retreat of international donors.

On top of the funding crisis, CSOs experience a shrinking space for civil society in several Member States, where governments are increasingly hostile to those organisations that receive international funding or work with marginalised groups of society. With decreasing national and local funds, direct funding from the European Commission was often the only funding opportunity to improve advocacy and innovation in the harm reduction field for many organisations. This opportunity is now lost.

DG Home is the department within the EC responsible for developing and implementing a balanced, integrated and evidence-based EU Drug Policy. Such a balanced approach requires that funding mechanisms are available for all drug policy areas and not only for law enforcement and crime prevention programmes.

We, therefore, call upon the European Commission and DG Home to reinstall the funding mechanism for drug demand and harm reduction to ensure a balanced and evidence-based drug policy also in the future.

We look forward to your response and hope for your continued support for civil society in the area of drug policy and harm reduction.”

Drug Policy Network South East Europe [DPNSEE]

EU HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis and Tuberculosis Civil Society Forum

Eurasian Harm Reduction Association [EHRA]

European Network of People Who Use Drugs [EuroNPUD]

Federation des Acteurs en Education en Promotion de la Sante de Guyane [AGRRR] International Drug Policy Consortium [IDPC]

International Network of People Who Use Drugs [INPUD]

Youth Organizations for Drug Actions [YODA]

Civil society demands balanced EU funding for drug policies

A week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Brittney Griner was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, where cannabis oil vape cartridges were found in her luggage.

Griner, an American basketball star and Olympic medallist who played part-time in a Russian team, admitted the cartridges were hers and that she had packed in a hurry, not intending to break Russian law.

She was charged with drug trafficking, an offence that could see her imprisoned for up to 10 years. She is attending a fifth hearing of her trial on Tuesday.

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