Recent years have seen a growing public and clinical interest in the potential therapeutic use of a number of psychedelic substances, including some novel and little-known substances. A number of jurisdictions outside the EU have begun regulating the use of psychedelics for medical and therapeutic purposes, while significant commercial interest has arisen in this area, evidenced through the appearance of so-called ‘psychedelic retreats’ in a number of countries. An increasing number of clinical studies are exploring the potential of a range of psychedelic substances for different mental health conditions. Some research appears promising; however, generalising in this area is difficult, partly because of the large number of substances under review and partly because of the wide range of conditions that are being studied. Taken together, these developments have given rise to questions at the policy level relating to the risks associated with the increase in experimental use of these substances, their potential to cause harm, and appropriate policy responses.

In Europe, there are now indications of changes in patterns of use of psychedelics, including an increase in unregulated and/or illegal practices in which these substances are used as part of a wellness, therapeutic or spiritually oriented intervention (EMCDDA, 2023). Some of these psychedelic-related practices and interventions appear to market their services by referencing the latest developments in medical research, either directly in relation to the substances or indirectly by providing links to research and scientific papers.

Due to the limited information that currently exists in this area, the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA, former EMCDDA) has launched a project to increase our understanding of key developments and respond to concerns raised by policymakers. These FAQs aim to respond to some of the key questions raised and provide a better understanding of ongoing developments in this field. While the focus of these FAQs is on the therapeutic use of psychedelic substances, additional questions have been added to provide important contextual information on related developments in this area, such as the prevalence and patterns of use of psychedelic substances in Europe, the presence of unlicensed and illegal psychedelic practices, and developments in clinical research.

EUDA publishes answers to the most frequently asked questions about the therapeutic use of psychedelic substances

Amsterdam has been grappling with the unwanted results of permissiveness for much longer. The world’s most liberal city has become one of the most visited: nearly 10mn tourists stayed there last year, above the pre-Covid peak. It is the city where everything goes and everyone goes. Many foreigners are drawn by cannabis and sex shows; some locals despair at the tawdriness.
The city’s mayor, Femke Halsema, is trying to clean up the excesses. In her office overlooking the Amstel river, she calls for more visitors “who love the canals”, rather than “urinate in them”.

But she says the deeper problem is less visible: the illegal market for cocaine is booming across Europe. In 2023, Dutch police intercepted record quantities but on the street cocaine prices remain low. “The only thing you can conclude [is] that there is more and more coming in and more and more money is made,” says Halsema, who begins her second, six-year term as mayor this week.

Amsterdam’s real problem is prohibition, she argues, and the answer is not less liberalisation, but more. She wants to end the Netherlands’ halfway policy on cannabis: coffee shops can sell it, but cannot buy it legally, meaning they have to buy from criminals. Other European countries have recently liberalised further.

Mayor of Amsterdam: 'In time, drug legalisation is inevitable’

 aims to identify and support local partners (up to 7) with funding of between USD 4,000 – 5,000 for strategic, creative and collaborative projects to be carried out from October 2024 to February 2025.

The activities proposed must seek to advance drug policy reform, bolster harm reduction and build bridges with/within/between communities disproportionately impacted by the ‘war on drugs’ (e.g. people who use drugs, farmers of crops deemed illicit, youth, racialised communities, LGBTQ+ people, sex workers, among many others).

Kindly note that the Support. Don’t Punish Initiatives Programme differs in size and scope from the regular small grants that the campaign deploys yearly to support the realisation of activities during the Global Day of Action (26 June).

Since 2013, Support. Don’t Punish local partners have organised 

 in more than 120 countries — accelerating moves toward reform in response to local needs. These events range from sports and arts events, to press engagement workshops, to formal advocacy with policymakers, and many more.

Successful applicants to the Initiatives Programme will have demonstrated how their proposed work-plan of activities strategically, creatively and collaboratively tackles specific challenges experienced in their communities in relation to drug policy and harm reduction, as part of wider ongoing efforts for change.

In seeking inspiration, please do check out the activities organised as part of prior rounds of the Initiatives Programme: 

We expect this to be a highly competitive process. We tend to receive close to 90 applications and can only award a handful of applicants. If you have questions on eligibility, please drop us a line. While we are not be able to offer detailed advice on your proposal, we are happy to provide orientation.

While colleagues from all regions are invited to apply, priority will be given to proposals from the Asian and African continents. Groups that have previously received an Initiatives Programme grant are unlikely to be awarded on this round.

To apply, please fill in the application form 

We can receive applications in English, French and Spanish. Other languages can be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Support. Don’t Punish Initiatives programme 2024 - Call for expressions of interest

An experiment enabling cannabis smokers in the Netherlands to light up legally has been expanded to eight new cities, as authorities extend a trial that aims to curb criminality and social problems.

A widespread misconception abroad is that cannabis is already legal in the Netherlands - home to the world-famous coffee shops (which sell cannabis) and seen as a huge draw for cannabis smokers.

But in fact, the drug exists in a legal grey area, which authorities seek to stamp out with the experiment that started last year in the cities of Breda and Tilburg and expanded today to eight other towns.The consumption of small quantities of cannabis is technically illegal but police choose not to enforce the law as part of a so-called "tolerance" policy in place since the 1970s.However, the production of cannabis and supply to coffee shops is both illegal and not tolerated, meaning producers and coffee shop owners have to operate in the shadows.

Netherlands: Dutch extends trial of legal cannabis to eight new cities

Six years after the Constitutional Court judgment, small-scale dagga growers are sliding deeper into poverty while businesses profit in South Africa’s “cowboy” cannabis industry.

The police could never shut down the trade of dagga from Mpondoland. But the gradual decriminalisation of cannabis, ironically, has posed a bigger existential threat to these small farmers than law enforcement did. While anti-cannabis laws were enforced, there was a ready market for dagga grown in remote Eastern Cape villages. But with the flourishing of the often illicit, but largely unpoliced, cannabis trade in cities in recent years, it has become extremely difficult for these farmers to compete with much more sophisticated operations on quality or price.

It is a dry winter morning in Dikidikini, a remote village in the Mpondoland region of the Eastern Cape. The sun is still behind the steep rocky mountains towering over the village as 60-year-old Landiwe Msolongile gazes over her recently planted dagga field along the Mzintlava River.

“There was a time when we were making good money,” Msolongile told GroundUp as she surveyed her field full of small spindly dagga plants. “My grandfather sent us to school with money from growing dagga. Our parents even bought us cattle and clothes from growing … Everything has changed now.”

Farmers have grown cannabis in the valleys of Eastern Mpondoland in villages like Dikidikini for over 100 years. Mountains tower over the village, obscuring the cannabis fields from the prying eyes of authorities.

But this once valuable illicit cash-crop now yields barely enough for farmers to buy basic groceries to get their family through the month.

Growers in the area described to GroundUp how changes since the 

 – which decriminalised growing cannabis for private use – have affected Mpondo small-scale growers.

“The prices went down rapidly,” says Lungisani Khumbafathi, who farms cannabis with his wife, Nonkanyiso Bhulabhula, in Dikidikini. “I used to make R2,000 or R1,500 for a bucket [20 litres] but now it’s only R500,” Khumbafathi told GroundUp while trimming the leaves off freshly harvested cannabis.

Initially growers like Khumbafathi tried to compensate for the drop in prices by growing larger quantities of cannabis. “Because of the low pricing, we had to clear more land and grow more dagga. I had to make sure I sell at least four buckets (20 litres) in order to buy groceries and other basic necessities like clothes for my children,” said Khumbafathi, who, like most people in the area, does not smoke the plant known locally as Ntsangu.

But this created an oversupply of cannabis from the area. With a dwindling customer base, Khumbafathi says they have had to burn part of their harvest that they could not sell.

South Africa: Mpondoland cannabis growers left out to dry

Drug Consumption Rooms are safe spaces where people can use drugs under hygienic conditions, with support, and without fear of violence or legal repercussions. Today, more than 140 legally-sanctioned DCRs operate in 11 European countries, as well as in Australia, Canada, Mexico and the USA. Join us on a global video tour to discover why they were established, how they support their local communities and how these life-saving harm reduction facilities have evolved over time. Watch the full film co-produced by Drugreporter and Correlation - European Harm Reduction Network.

Drug consumption rooms around the world - Video

Thailand’s government may be backing away from a promise to ban recreational marijuana use, with one minister suggesting that it will instead seek to regulate the booming cannabis industry.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, the leader of the Bhumjaithai Party, said that Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin had 

 for a draft bill to regulate the sale and use of cannabis, rather than banning it outright.

“I would like to thank the prime minister for considering this issue and deciding to enact an act,” said Anutin, whose party was a driving force in the historic decriminalization of cannabis in mid-2022. He added that the government will allow political parties to 

 to parliament for consideration alongside Bhumjaithai’s proposed legislation.

Thailand will draft bill to regulate cannabis, Minister says

The criminalisation of the personal possession of drugs was introduced with “good intentions” but the data shows the policy “is simply not working”, the Oireachtas Drugs Committee has heard.

The special committee has been set up to consider the report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs, which recommended the decriminalisation of the possession of all drugs for personal use and the diversion of people to health services.

Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, program director of Drugs Policy Open Society Foundations, told the committee that countries criminalised drug use in the hope it would “deter people from using drugs” — but said it had failed.

“Look at the data, more people are using today than ever before,” she said. “It is simply not working and it is also producing incredible violence and corruption.

“It had good intentions, but we have learned it's not working. Now decades later we continue to do the same thing. It’s time for change, it’s time for countries to be brave.”

Ireland: Criminalisation of personal possession of drugs 'simply not working', committee told

23 July 2024, Kabul, Afghanistan – Substance use and substance use disorders remain a significant public health burden in Afghanistan, devastating families and communities across the country. Substance use claims hundreds of lives each year, with substance dependence among women on the rise.

Since 2023, WHO has played an important role in improving the public health response to substance use disorders in Afghanistan. WHO has supported community-based efforts to prevent initiation of substance use; has integrated mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) services into general health programmes; and has provided quality treatment for those in need. It has done so thanks to support from donors like the European Union and partners like the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

WHO Afghanistan has further provided strong support to specialized centres for the treatment and rehabilitation of people with substance use disorders. In 2023, these efforts helped about 1000 people to complete residential treatment and move into the relapse prevention phase, during which they receive ongoing support to reintegrate into their communities.

This approach is based on evidence that a substance use disorder is a chronic disease that can be prevented and treated. It is inspired by the lives of people who have benefited from evidence-based treatment and harm reduction interventions, allowing them to rebuild their lives.

Abdul Rahim Rajaye, aged 62 years, is one of those people who has turned his life around. As founder and chief executive of the Bridge Hope Health Organization (BHHO), a nongovernmental organization (NGO), he now dedicates himself to helping others do the same.

Each June, Abdul Rahim and BHHO mark the Support. Don’t Punish Global Day of Action. This global campaign calls for better drug policies that focus on health and human rights instead of punishing people who use drugs. With its emphasis on support and rehabilitation over punishment, the campaign serves as an alternative to the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.


WHO strengthens public health response to substance use in Afghanistan

Two activists gave away untainted heroin, cocaine and meth . They say they saved lives. The federal government says they’re drug traffickers. 

Eris Nyx has always been rebellious. Growing up in the suburbs outside of Toronto in the mid-2000s, she spent much of her adolescence using drugs, getting into trouble with police and crashing at friends’ houses. Her transgender identity wasn’t accepted at home, and after high school she moved away for good, heading to Vancouver to study at the University of British Columbia. She worked as a bike mechanic for a while, before finding a job as an attendant at a homeless shelter on the city’s Downtown Eastside, a poverty-stricken neighbourhood with one of Canada’s highest rates of injection drug use.

The neighbourhood was then in the early stages of an overdose crisis that would soon become a state of indefinite emergency. In 2015, around the time Nyx began working at the shelter, overdoses claimed nearly 500 British Columbians. The next year, when the province declared a public-health emergency, 800 people died; a year after that, nearly 1,300. Most of the casualties were due to fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid dealers were cutting into heroin and pressing into fake oxycontin pills. Drug users could no longer be certain what was in their supply, nor how powerful it would be. On the Downtown Eastside, where people were dying at a rate more than 25 times the national average, the overdose crisis felt like a massacre. Nyx was surrounded by death.

The provincial government responded with more funding for recovery and treatment programs and made it easier to open overdose prevention sites, where people could use drugs in a supervised setting. To Nyx, all of this fell short. Recovery programs could take years to work, if they ever did. Overdose prevention was good, but it didn’t address the underlying problem: a poisoned product. Nyx believed the key was to provide users with safe supply—a legal, untainted and regulated supply of drugs traditionally bought on the illicit market. Nyx also believed that anyone using drugs, even recreationally, deserved the same consumer rights as users of legal substances like alcohol, a product clearly labelled with information about potency and quantity.

In 2018, Nyx founded the Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War. Its goal was to create a peer-to-peer narcotics shop for clean drugs, and its image was transgressive. Its logo was a multi-headed creature with a syringe and pill bottle, surrounded by the faux-Latin phrase illegitimi non carborundum, or “don’t let the bastards grind you down.” This punk-rock attitude was in contrast to more established groups, like the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, founded in 1998. It too was committed to the principles of harm reduction, which aim to mitigate the negative consequences of drug use, like overdoses, rather than promoting abstinence above all else. Its founders had also been involved in illegal activism. But VANDU had long since earned a seat at the table with the city’s political and decision-making class. Nyx’s coalition, on the other hand, put forth a list of implausible demands to government: pardon everyone imprisoned on drug charges, repeal the Controlled Drugs and Substance Act and defund the police.

Canada: The war over safe drug supply in Vancouver

The Drug Harm Reduction Advocacy Network (DHRAN) is making significant strides toward a future where Nigeria’s health policies and drug laws are guided by humane, evidence-based approaches.

This commitment was evident in the third edition of its Drug User Community Dialogue, an annual international virtual event focused on addressing critical issues impacting people who use drugs in Nigeria.The event also coincided with this year’s International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, themed ‘The Evidence is Clear: Invest in Prevention.’

Held on July 2nd, this year’s dialogue, titled “Rethinking Nigeria’s Drug Law: Harm Reduction and Other Evidence-Based Approaches,” attracted over 200 virtual attendees, including members of the Nigerian drug user community, stakeholders, experts, and advocates, government Agencies and parastatals, Human Rights Institutions and the general public . Participant member organisation of DHRAN organised engagement of people who use drugs at their offices with a minimum of 6 drug users joining from the centres.

Death penalty bill: DHRAN pushes for reform in Nigeria’s drug laws at National dialogue

In recent days, cannabis social clubs (CSCs) in Barcelona have faced a series of administrative inspections resulting in economic sanctions and, in some cases, closure orders. This situation, driven by the new mayor Jaume Collboni from the Socialist Party of Catalonia, threatens to dismantle a model internationally recognized as a safe and responsible alternative to the unregulated cannabis market.

CSCs have operated in Barcelona for more than twenty years, providing safe spaces for cannabis consumption and promoting a public health approach. Authorities allege irregularities in the clubs’ licenses and activities. This measure is perceived as a political strategy and does not respond to social demand. However, various entities and professionals warn that without comprehensive regulation, the situation could worsen.

ICEERS has consistently defended the validity and benefits of cannabis social clubs. In January, we submitted a letter to the Barcelona City Council, backed by 179 signatures of experts and representatives from 53 countries, advocating for the protection and proper regulation of these clubs. Unfortunately, our proposals were not considered, and the administrative persecution continues, contrasting with advances in other countries like Germany, where the first legal CSC has opened. This lack of response and transparency from the City Council shows a worrying trend towards prohibitionist policies that have proven more problematic than resolutive, generating more problems than those they are intended to solve.

The current situation is the result of a combination of structural and circumstantial factors: police and judicial repression, lack of support from the Barcelona Public Health Agency, the entry of commercial actors, demobilization of law firms, internal conflicts, mafia presence, and worn-out leadership, all of which have sown distrust and disorganization in the activist network. In this context, Deputy Mayor for Security, Albert Batlle, could jeopardize a reality that many considered established.

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