What would you want police to do if they found your child, relative or best friend in possession of cannabis or other illicit drugs?

Most people we talk to say they would like their loved ones to have an opportunity to get help if they need it, and to be left alone if they don’t. Funnily enough, no one ever mentions that they’d want them to receive a conviction for drug use. Why would we want it to be different for anyone else’s relative or friend?

Last week the Ministry of Justice released their drug conviction figures for 2021. We now have two full years of data since the government amended our drugs laws to reduce the number of people prosecuted for possession and use of drugs. The jury is in: the new law is better than what was there before. Convictions have fallen by 28% for low-level possession offences in the two years since the amendment, compared to the two years before.

Aotearoa / New Zealand: Who gets a conviction for drug possession, and who gets help?

MANILA, Philippines – The still elusive justice continues to pave the way for more killings under President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent anti-drug campaign, Amnesty International said in its latest report released on Tuesday, March 29.

In its 2021/2022 State of the World’s Human Rights annual report, Amnesty pointed out that “lack of accountability continued to facilitate unlawful killings and other human rights violations under the government’s war on drugs campaign.”

Data from the government shows that 6,229 people were killed in police anti-drug operations from July 1, 2016, to January 31, 2022. This toll does not include victims of vigilante-style killings, which human rights groups estimate to be between 27,000 and 30,000.

Data obtained by Rappler in September 2020, however, showed that 7,884 drug suspects had been killed by the police since Duterte assumed office until August 31, 2020.

Only one case has led to a conviction so far – the killing of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos in 2017. Families of thousands of other victims continue to face challenges in seeking justice for their slain loved ones, including harassment and inability to get key reports from police.

Philippines: Lack of accountability paves way for more killings in Duterte drug war – Amnesty International

By Alison Spedding Pallet / Transnational Institute

It was not by accident that it should have been the Mexican government which rescued Evo Morales after his intemperate renunciation of the presidency of the Plurinational State of Bolivia in November 2019, since the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, Institutional Revolutionary Party) of Mexico was during 60 years what the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement towards Socialism) aspired – and still aspires – to be: the one party in the state, of which all social organizations form part. A model closer to home is the MNR (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) in its first governments after 1952, although both indianists and leftists are accustomed to despise that period.

In its first period in office (2006-2009) and during most of its second (2010-2014), it was not necessary to juggle in order to procure that the leadership of social organizations lined up behind the MAS, and people willingly came out for mass meetings, openings of new public works and other events where Evo was present (at least until we got bored with seeing him so many times and all over the place). It was in the course of his third administration, from 2015 onwards, when his reelection was proposed on the basis of the dubious technicality that, although the new Constitution reformed by the MAS in 2009 only allows two consecutive presidential periods, that is only one consecutive reelection, his first period was under the Republic of Bolivia, supposedly a different country whose rules were irrelevant.1 At that time, and even in the referendum of the 21st of February 2016, when the proposal to allow indefinite re-election of the President and Vicepresident lost by a narrow margin, the yungueños continued to support the MAS. The schism began with the conflicts around the Law 906, the Coca Law, which was eventually promulgated on the 8th of March 2017.

In fact, since 2002 successive governments debated the division of the Law 1008, Law on Coca and Controlled Substances (1988), into two parts, separating the Coca Regime to give it the status of an independent law, Evo Morales, at the time leader of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba (the Chapare) and member of parliament, held meetings with Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (MNR) before the latter was forced to resign in 2003. In 2004 Carlos Mesa, in a typical expression of the erratic and improvised policies of his interim presidency, approved the long time demand of the Chapare coca growers for the legalization of a cato (40 by 40 metres) of coca per member of the peasants’ unions, up to a maximum of 3000 Ha. This limit was to have been revised after a year from the emission of the decree, but was not reconsidered until, early in 2017, the law finally entered into debate in the Plurinational Assembly (the new name for the parliament), after years during which it was more useful as a political football with which to distract the coca growers’ organizations into passing time preparing diverse drafts of a law on coca, in which the yungueños also took part presenting their own proposal in their region.

Bolivia: If the MAS government is a coca growers’ government, why are the Yungas coca growers against it?

Swiss health authorities on Tuesday approved the launch of a pilot project for the recreational consumption of cannabis in Basel this summer.

About 400 people in the city will be allowed to buy cannabis from select pharmacies in Basel in late summer, the city's government said.

They will be questioned regularly about their usage pattern and physical and mental health.

The Swiss Federal Office of Public Health said the idea was to increase understanding of "alternative regulatory forms" or regulate the sale of cannabis at pharmacies because so many people consumed the drug.

The aim is to test whether consumption of the drug changes when it can be bought legally.

Switzerland to launch 1st cannabis sale pilot in summer

While it is clear that Black and Indigenous people have long been disproportionately arrested for drug possession across North America, a VICE World News investigation has compiled one of the first datasets of its kind that shows the extent to which it is happening in Canada.

Through Freedom of Information requests to police services, VICE World News has compiled national non-cannabis drug possession arrest data broken down by race, something that does not yet exist publicly in Canada. This dataset follows VICE’s 2018 investigation into arrests specifically for cannabis possession, which also revealed stark racial disparities. While the number of drug possession charges and arrests in Canada has declined even further since then, after cannabis was fully legalized in 2018, Black and Indigenous people are still much more likely to be arrested for drug possession—with Indigenous people eight times more likely to be arrested than white people in one major city.

The data was shared for review and analysis with University of Toronto criminologists Akwasi Owusu-Bempah and Alex Luscombe. The race-based police data was compared against the population totals for each demographic of the particular city using Statistics Canada’s census metropolitan data.

“The findings here provide further evidence of the harms of the war on drugs,” Owusu-Bempah said in an interview. “Racial profiling and the targeting of specific racial groups for law enforcement generally, and drug law enforcement in particular, have resulted in these disparities.”

Exclusive data shows Canadian cops target more Black and Indigenous folks for drug arrests

By Imani Mason-Jordan & André Gomes / TalkingDrugs / Release

In March 2022, the revelation that a 15-year-old Black pupil had been strip-searched by police in a London school after being wrongly accused of having drugs in her possession sent shockwaves across the United Kingdom – and for good reason.

Everything about the 2020 incident is absolutely harrowing. An independent child safeguarding report found that her own teachers called the police on the young girl after suspecting she may be carrying cannabis. Once they arrived at the school, Metropolitan police officers took the girl into a medical room and strip-searched her without appropriate supervision, despite being aware that she was menstruating. After the invasive and traumatising search, she was asked to “go back into the exam” she had been sitting, with no teacher asking about her welfare.

The safeguarding report concluded that the treatment of the child was unjustified and racism was “likely” a reason why she was strip-searched in the first place.

While the trauma inflicted on Child Q understandably shocked the nation, the actions of the police in this case can hardly be considered an anomaly. It is well known that communities of colour are disproportionally policed in the UK, and British police commonly respond to alleged drug offences – especially when the suspect is a person of colour – with violence.

The abuse of Child Q should make Britain rethink its drugs laws

JAKARTA (THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - On March 30, Singapore executed Abdul Kahar bin Othman, a local man sentenced to death for drug offences and the first person to be executed in Singapore in since 2019.

Othman had been unable to appeal his execution because he did not have a lawyer. Eight of the 35 countries that still retain the death penalty for drug offences are in South-east Asia and were responsible for a staggering 91.5 per cent of all confirmed death sentences given for drug offences worldwide, according to the Global Review 2021 from Harm Reduction International (HRI).

The imposition of these death sentences is shrouded in secrecy and characterised by widespread human rights violations (HRI 2019), such as lack of access to legal representation (HRI 2020), as in Othman's case. Too often, there are reports of torture, ill treatment and coerced confession.

The situation is particularly dire for foreign nationals who find themselves sentenced to death outside of their home countries, often without interpreters and lawyers made available to them during the legal process, says a March 2019 HRI briefing paper.

Will 2022 signal sea change in the death penalty for drugs?

IDPC Regional Co-ordinator – INSPIRE Project

Part-time position (preferably based in a project country: Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines)

Salary: EUR800 per month (part-time basis)

12 months, part-time contract (with possibility of extension)

The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) is a global network of NGOs and professional networks that aims to promote objective and open debate on the effectiveness, direction and content of drug policies at national and international level, and supports evidence-based policies that are effective in reducing drug-related harm. We have over 190 member organisations worldwide, and extensive communication and contacts with a range of experts in the field. The IDPC Secretariat is based in London with a smaller presence in Bangkok.

IDPC is looking to appoint a Regional Co-ordinator to support the delivery of the INSPIRE Project workplan together with partners in the project countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.

The successful candidate will report to IDPC’s Regional Director: Asia, and facilitate communication and learning exchanges between project partners, ensure implementation of regional project activities (including advocacy, capacity-building, communications campaigns, self-care and an end-of-project evaluation) and prepare regular project reports.

The successful candidate will be highly motivated, flexible, excel in oral and written communication skills, and possess sound problem-solving abilities. The successful candidate will carry out this role on a remote working basis, in one of the INSPIRE Project countries.

Excellent interpersonal, representational and communications skills, especially in developing and sustaining productive relationships with a wide range of stakeholders across different cultural and country contexts in Asia

Demonstrable experience and/or interest of issues relating to human rights, women rights, gender equality, harm reduction and decriminalisation as it relates to drug policy in Asia

Excellent speaking and writing capabilities in English

Previous experience working in advocacy for gender equality, human rights and/or drug policy reforms towards decriminalisation and harm reduction in Southeast Asia.

Physically based in one of the INSPIRE Project countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.

Strong capabilities in developing and carrying out advocacy strategies, and/or policy research and analysis.

Fluency in speaking and writing one of the official languages of the project countries (other than English).

If you wish to apply for this post, please complete this application form and send it to Ms. Unchisa Eaimtong (ueaimtong@idpc.net) by 6:00 pm (Bangkok time) on Monday 25 April 2022.

It is expected that interviews will be held from Monday 2 May 2022, with a commencement date as soon as possible afterward.

IDPC recruits Regional Co-ordinator (INSPIRE Project)

Greetings from Uganda Harm Reduction Network (UHRN).

We are excited to bring to you our quarterly newsletter which is dedicated to informing you about the strides UHRN has made in their effort to provide services to people who use drugs (PWUDs) in Uganda. In this newsletter we highlight some of the key events that happened in 2021 as well as in the first quarter of 2022. We hope you will find this useful and informative.

UHRN has continued to make tremendous efforts towards addressing the issues affecting PWUDs in Uganda through various Harm reduction interventions amidst the challenges created by Covid 19.

It’s my pleasure to introduce to you some of the significant achievements UHRN has made. Amongst them include the scaling up of the harm reduction interventions in the Teso, Lango and Karamoja regions of Uganda, the integration of social economic empowerment into harm reduction programming that has supported skilling up of PWUDs as a way of preparing them for integration into the community. And lastly the adoption of the diversion strategy by the law enforcement officers as an alternative for incarceration among PWUDs rather than incarceration.

In UHRNs efforts to increase accessibility to Medically Assisted Therapy (MAT) services for PWUDs in Kampala and surrounding areas, UHRN in collaboration with the Makerere School of Public Health and Medical School of Wisconsin is in the processes of rolling out the community dispensing of buprenorphine at the Drop-in Center (DiC). In addition, UHRN in collaboration with M.O.H and Butabika Hospital is rolling out a Mobile Van Dispensing Model of service delivery for clients on MAT. We believe with this we will have increased access to the MAT programme for MAT clients as well as support client’s recovery.

All these efforts have been made possible with contribution from our different partners, harm reduction advocates, like minded civil society organizations, donors and the community of people who used drugs among others. We are grateful for your continuous support.

Uganda Harm Reduction Network quarterly newsletter

WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill to end the federal ban on marijuana, which has created legal headaches for users and businesses in the states that have legalized it, though the measure was seen as unlikely to pass the Senate.

It passed by 220-204, with few Republicans supporting the measure.

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, sponsored by Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, which is in the process of legalizing the drug, removes marijuana from the list of controlled substances and eliminates criminal penalties for individuals who grow, distribute or possess it.

But the MORE act will need to gain 60 votes in the evenly divided Senate before moving to President Joe Biden's desk for his signature, an outcome widely seen as unlikely given the lack of Republican support for the measure.

The bill would "end decades of failed and unjust marijuana policy," Democratic Representative Ed Perlmutter said on the House floor on Thursday ahead of the vote. "It is clear prohibition is over. Today we have an opportunity to chart a new path forward on federal cannabis policy that actually makes sense."

He added that the bill does not force any state to legalize marijuana.

Bill to legalise cannabis passes U.S. House, but faces dim prospects in Senate

How will the current war affect harm reduction in Russia? We asked two experts, Michail Golichenko and Alexei Lahov, to share with us their prognosis.

Michail Golichenko, Senior Policy Analyst, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network:

Russian aggression against Ukraine will have a very deep and long lasting impact on harm reduction and civil society organizations (CSOs) in Russia due to the following reasons:

Harm reduction and HIV services for key affected populations in Russia were funded to a very large extent by international donors. In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the USA, UK, Canada, and the EU countries imposed significant restrictions on major Russian banks. In response, Russian authorities imposed restrictions on transactions made using USD and Euros. This will make transactions with Russian counterparts, including CSOs, much more difficult and costly, thus making international funding far less available.

The Russian ruble has lost more than 40% of its value since the invasion. Foreign manufacturers fled the Russian market en masse. As a result, prices for harm reduction and HIV prevention commodities, such as syringes and condoms, have soared, forcing harm reduction projects to deliver fewer such commodities to key populations. Logistics disruptions will negatively affect the manufacture of medicine, including such essential products as ART.

Continuous attacks on CSOs who receive foreign funding

Before the invasion, Russian authorities designated fifteen HIV-service CSOs as foreign agents. A week after the aggression Russian lawmakers tabled amendments to enable the Ministry of Justice to create and maintain a single database of all persons designated as foreign agents, as well as all staff members of NGOs that had been designated as such. Such a database will enable banks and financial control agencies to harass activists and prevent them from receiving any donations from abroad.

By 22 March 2022 Putin’s army had not defeated Ukraine. This is very good news for the free world. Perhaps by April Russia and Ukraine will enter a somewhat temporary peace deal. However, this won’t stop Putin completely. He’ll have to mobilize his supporters against the enemy inside and outside Russia. Progressive civil society, including human rights defenders and harm reduction proponents, will most definitely fall within the circle of enemies. The Russian economy will quickly become the economy of a militaristic state, where every failure will be attributed to the enemy and everyone will have to sacrifice everything for the purpose of “defending” a motherland.

Russia has already left the Council of Europe, meaning that from September 16, 2022, the European Court won’t be available to people living in Russia. Human rights as a concept will fall victim to militaristic mobilization.

Even before the invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities significantly restricted access to information about harm reduction and human rights. During the first three weeks of the invasion, Russian authorities shut down all independent media, Instagram, and Facebook. Authorities will restrict access to information about anything that can demonstrate their failures. This will include information about HIV, drug use, HCV, and TB, especially the details concerning key affected populations. Some official statistics will be available but without any chance to check its accuracy.

Harm reduction and HIV prevention among key populations in Russia will fall victim to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Alexei Lahov, St. Petersburg, Harm Reduction NGOs Coalition “Outreach”:

There will be a clear division into “ours” and “not ours.” Those who receive foreign grants and donations, especially from “unfriendly” countries (and there is a whole list of them now, these are the countries that supported sanctions against Russia), will be tortured even more with checks, will be forced to coordinate their programs with the authorities, and to cut out all “Western” approaches such as harm reduction, gender-responsive and gender-sensitive services, work with LGBTQ communties, etc. It will be good if authorities don’t close this opportunity of receiving funds from abroad altogether. Foreign donors themselves, by the way, have not yet refused to work with Russian NGOs, but even within their ranks there are suggestions to only fulfill the pre-war obligations, and then put cooperation on pause. And priority in grant support from abroad will be given primarily to human rights activists, and not to service organizations such as harm reduction and HIV prevention programs.

Those NGOs that receive state subsidies and have contracts with state institutions, at first informally, and then more and more clearly, will be asked to make a concrete decision: “You want to continue working, you don’t want to leave your beneficiaries, do you?” And, of course, there will also be manipulations with the official statistics, and there will simply be no one to talk about the real state of affairs such as how many people live with HIV, how many PWUD there are, etc. due to the complete destruction of independent media (and the upcoming increase in pressure on opposition deputies). And all this will happen within the next year or two (although judging by how quickly events are unfolding among lawmakers, this could happen even earlier).

Therefore, it is now all the more important to look for like-minded people and allies from among private donors and businesses, who will indirectly express their disagreement with the regime through such support. And, of course, volunteer help is becoming more in demand than ever.

Well, the first signs have appeared: Olga Zanko, deputy chairman of the State Duma committee for the development of civil society, proposed introducing criteria for excluding non-profit organizations from the register of socially oriented organizations for anti-Russian propaganda.

The State Duma at its plenary session on March 10 approved an amendment according to which Russia will create a unified register of information about individuals who perform the functions of a foreign agent or are associated with foreign agents. The Ministry of Justice will maintain a unified register, according to the amendment. It will include individuals who are foreign agents, are included in the register of media foreign agents, as well as citizens who were employees or members of foreign agent NGOs, and public associations foreign agents. In addition, individuals who are politically active and who received money or property assistance from foreign agents may also be placed on the register.

The impact of the war on the prospects for harm reduction and civil society in Russia

Early last year, TalkingDrugs reported on the partnerships between UN agencies and the Brazilian government in an attempt to breathe fresh life into the failed campaign for a drug-free society. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are sponsoring President Jair Bolsonaro’s bloody drug wars with funds and human resources, working together with the Brazilian government to establish the Centre of Excellence for Illicit Drug Supply Reduction (COE). The COE’s first report, detailing how drug traffickers adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic, was published last December. Reading through it, at first, I did not feel like commenting. Watching side events at the 65th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, however, where the fetishisation of drug supply reduction was frequently displayed, alongside the annual commitment to design and implement further strategies to dismantle the illegal drug markets, I felt the urge to discuss some of the findings brought in the report. What was the impact of the combat of illegal drug supply during the first year of the pandemic in Brazil? A short answer: the incarceration of over 80,000 people, most of them Black and Brown men with low levels of formal education and, therefore, small chances of entering the legal labour market during what is one of the hardest economic crises that Brazil has ever experienced.

One of the lessons that both the UNODC and the Brazilian government learned since they established their so-called centre of excellence is that illicit entrepreneurs are resilient. They too design and implement strategies to adapt to adverse situations, as evidenced in the report:

“Brazil remains a strategic region for the transit of cocaine without major changes in the routes traditionally established pre-COVID-19 pandemic. There is a strong resilience on the part of drug trafficking organisations with a great capacity to adapt and diversify routes.”

Traffickers searched for new routes through land and rivers. They changed their routes to other regions of Brazil and its bordering countries. They moved smaller batches between points. Police forces kept on seizing banned drugs, though, which the Brazilian government claimed was a successful approach, even when there is no evidence to back up the notion that seizures and arrests contribute to the reduction of crime, violence, and other forms of harm.

The report suggests that the main reason that people engage in drug trafficking is due to the lack of alternative economic opportunities. This is not a new finding, and neither is it only a Brazilian peculiarity. Evidence shows it is a reality faced around the globe. Increasing incarceration, however, cannot help to sort this situation out.