It’s a Rio de Janeiro classic. Officers of the civil, military or army police make an incursion into a 

. They arrive in armored vehicles, carrying assault rifles. Soon they issue a statement justifying their actions as necessary to stamp out illegal drug suppliers who “dominate” the area. They say that in order to tackle organized crime, you sometimes need to produce corpses and orphans in the process. It’s a drug war, and there are always casualties in war.

One day before the May 6 Jacarezinho Massacre, President Jair Bolsonaro met with Rio de Janeiro’s governor, Cláudio Castro, at the Palácio das Laranjeiras. I wonder if they talked about the operation that would become the deadliest in the long history of police violence in the Wonderful City.

In June 2020, the Brazilian Supreme Court had prohibited police raids in Rio’s favelas—due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By the next month, under the reduction in police incursions, the number of people fatally shot in favelas dropped 70 percent. Then police forces started ignoring the ruling.

The Jacarezinho Massacre exposed the current government’s necropolitics. Heavily-armed police officers entered a poor community and murdered at least 28 men in 10 different areas of the neighborhood. The vice president of the republic then dismissed the dead as “all thugs.” Bolsonaro called the victims “drug traffickers who steal, kill and destroy families,” and congratulated the police officers for a successful operation. Conservative media rushed to disclose the victims’ aliases and criminal records so that the public could shrug off the incident. The police surely had both the license and the duty to put these criminals down.

The Jacarezinho massacre and lethal drug policy enforcement in Brazil

1. Underlines the importance of a positive outcome at the UN High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS to be held from 8 to 10 June 2021; requests that the Council contribute to the adoption of a set of forward-looking and ambitious commitments in the political declaration;

2. Reaffirms that everyone is entitled to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health, as well as equality conducive to living life in dignity;

3. Commends the EU’s role in the multi-sectoral global AIDS response and calls on the Commission to address AIDS as a global public health crisis and accelerate all efforts to meet the 2025 targets, including through scaling-up investments in UNAIDS and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria;

4. Insists on the essential provision of sufficient means for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in order to enable it to make decisive contributions to the fight against HIV/AIDS;

Accelerating progress and tackling inequalities towards ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030

If you’re in Japan, keep this mantra in mind: never do drugs in this country. Ever.

The United States, Australia, and other countries are hardly perfect with their drug laws. Celebrities, however, have long appeared to play by different rules. This is not true in Japan, where if the rich and famous are caught with illegal substances, it’s not a speedbump on their careers, but a stop sign.

Japanese society is built on very high expectations. The expectation is that if some has broken the law, a company should not profit from that person’s work. The taint of crime, especially drug-related, is seen to reflect on the larger group. Making money off an alleged criminal is certainly not a good look in image-conscious Japan.

Why Japan Is so strict about drugs

The Rastafarian Society of Kenya has filed a petition to decriminalise the use of cannabis or bhang for 'spiritual' purposes.

They argue that followers and believers of the Rastafari faith use cannabis by smoking, drinking, bathing or burning incense for spiritual, medical, culinary and ceremonial purposes as a sacrament to manifest their faith.

In their petition, they also argue that Rastafarians are apolitical and therefore have no political power. They say they are subject to prejudices such as intimidation and searches on their homes because of their use of cannabis.

Kenya Rastafari group seeks to legalise 'spiritual' cannabis use

2020 marked the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (the Bangkok Rules). There are over 740,000 women and girls in prison worldwide, and although they are a minority compared to the number of men in prison (2 to 9% of national prison populations), their number increases every year, more often at a higher rate.

Drug policies in Latin America have resulted in increasingly harsh penal responses to drug-related offences and have disproportionately affected women. These policies provide very little space to explore non-custodial alternatives and reduce the number of women in prisons, bearing in mind that women are often single mothers who are the primary carers for their children and families.

Unfortunately, Peru is no exception to this trend. In the current context of the so-called War on Drugs there is an increasing need to prioritise the use of non-custodial measures for women who become involved with the criminal justice system. Indeed, women detained for drug-related offences in Peru – almost six out of ten – are all too often in a situation of increased vulnerability or socioeconomic precariousness. Still, they usually are minor actors in the drug trade, especially cocaine trafficking in Peru (and Latin America at large), who bear the full brunt of the law. In addition, like many countries, Peru’s burdened prison system was built to accommodate a male population and takes little account of the specific needs of women – from harsh security measures to scarce work and education programmes, family and conjugal visits and differentiated health-care services.

Women deprived of liberty and excessive use of pre-trial detention in Peru

In 2001, Portugal decriminalised the personal possession of all drugs as part of a wider re-orientation of policy towards a health-led approach. Possessing drugs for personal use is instead treated as an administrative offence, meaning it is no longer punishable by imprisonment and does not result in a criminal record and associated stigma. Drugs are, however, still confiscated and possession may result in administrative penalties such as fines or community service.

Whether such a penalty is applied is decided by district-level panels made up of legal, health and social work professionals, known as ‘Commissions for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction’. Where an individual is referred to a Commission for the first time and their drug use is assessed as non-problematic (low risk), the law requires their case to be ‘suspended’, meaning no further action is taken. Fines can be issued for subsequent referrals. Where some problematic trends are identified (moderate risk), brief interventions are proposed — including counselling — but these are non-mandatory. In ‘high risk’ cases, where more serious problematic behaviours and dependence are identified, individuals may receive non-mandatory referrals to specialised treatment services.

In the vast majority of instances, problematic drug use is not identified, and cases are simply ‘suspended’. Individuals referred to the Commissions overwhelmingly view their purpose as helping to reduce use and educate on drug risks. They are non-judgemental in nature, and a primary focus is safeguarding the right to health of those referred.

Importantly, the decriminalisation of personal possession is only one part of broader health-centred drug policy reforms that involve an increased focus on harm reduction and treatment provision. By ‘accepting the reality of drug use rather than eternally hoping that it will disappear as a result of repressive legislation’, Portuguese reform allows drugs to be treated as a health, rather than criminal justice, issue. The benefits of these reforms, therefore, arise from both decriminalisation itself and the establishment of a wider health-based response to drug problems.

Drug decriminalisation in Portugal: Setting the records straight

Cannabis is the most widely used illegal substance around the world, accounting for an estimated 192 million consumers out of the 269 million people reported to have used drugs in 2018. In Malta, this trend proves true as well, with a prevalence of cannabis use of 4.3 per cent among adults.

These figures, in Malta and abroad, are reported by governments and based on data of people arrested or on those who sought emergency care and are conservative and partial as people with unreported occasional cannabis use or personal production of small quantities might be much more numerous.

These figures, nevertheless, highlight that current drug policies, based on repression and aimed at eliminating drug use and trafficking, have clearly failed to achieve any of their objectives: in Malta as elsewhere, use, consumption and trafficking are increasing steadily. In addition, over-incarceration, budgetary displacements towards law enforcement rather than health and social services as well as social stigma are just few of the harms aggravated by repressive drug control.

In the face of the failures of drug control – while the ‘war on drugs’ continuously rages on – the consumption of cannabis has increased globally from 147 million to 192 million consumers in two decades, requiring a new response to cannabis control globally. This needed response must combine the decriminalisation of the possession and of consumption of cannabis on one hand and the decriminalisation of the production of quantities needed for one’s own needs on the other.

Malta: An inspirational novelty in drug policy

Philippine jails are known for two things –the dancing inmates of Cebu who to the tune of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” landed a Netflix series called “Happy Jail” and a smothering 534% national congestion rate, making it as one of the most overcrowded prison systems in the world.

While the dark irony of inmates dancing in full choreography at day while taking turns so they could sleep at night has piqued global attention, the right to health and general well-being of these detainees had not become part of national conversations. They brought amusement to the public and by virtue of their youtube hits, became the source of some twisted sense of national pride. But come COVID-19, particular concerns about sanitation, ventilation, and lack of access to healthcare inside Philippine jails have become the source of new panic. Reports of infection and deaths in detention facilities all over the country created a delayed sense of urgency. Visitors were not allowed to enter, in-court hearings were suspended, and a set of guidelines to decongest prisons were issued.

According to the Philippine Supreme Court, 81, 888 inmates had already been released as of October 16, 2020. This, according to them, is due to serious efforts to decongest jails through virtual hearings, streamlined rules on early release, and reduction of bail. But this going rate is nowhere near enough to ease prison overcrowding in the country, even before the pandemic. At a basic level, much more is needed to even impose a social distancing standard inside these human cages. For long-time prison reform advocates, these efforts have never been adequate; the national failure to decongest comes as no surprise.

Cruel cages: How the most overcrowded prison in the world ignored a pandemic

Over 15 participants representing the community of people who use drugs and the academia with an expertise in public health, human rights, prisons and closed settings attended a two-day multi-stakeholder consultation.

“The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health services for people who use drugs who are living with or are vulnerable to HIV”

 was organized on the occasion of the 64th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs by the UNODC HIV/AIDS Section in close collaboration with the International AIDS Society (IAS), World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the International Network of People Who Use Drugs (INPUD).

On behalf of all co-organizers of this meetings, Ms Fariba Soltani, the Chief of HIV/AIDS Section and Global Coordinator for HIV/AIDS, underlined in her opening remarks that with a help of this meeting the organizers are aiming to put together the key lessons learned from the intersecting HIV and the COVID-19 pandemics and support member states in identifying strategic actions to be implemented at a global, regional and country level.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health services for people who use drugs who are living with or are vulnerable to HIV.

As organizations and individuals committed to the liberation of people who use drugs, and progressive, rights-based drug policy reforms including decriminalization, we, the undersigned, call on the City of Vancouver to address three major concerns regarding its current application to the federal Health Minister to decriminalize simple drug possession locally. We also call on Health Canada and the federal Health Minister, Patty Hajdu, to refrain from imposing unnecessary and unjustified restrictions on any exemption issued to enable decriminalization in Vancouver or other municipalities or provinces that may follow suit, and we call on the Vancouver Police Department to stand down, vacate the process of decriminalization, and sign off on community-established thresholds.

We support the City of Vancouver’s initiative as the first jurisdiction in Canada to formally pursue decriminalization of simple drug possession. We are also keenly aware that the process leading to, and the substantive outcome of, this policy change are likely to become a precedent for jurisdictions considering similar initiatives, such as British Columbia. It is essential, therefore, that the “Vancouver Model” of decriminalization proceeds correctly. This means taking the utmost care to consider the lived and living realities of people who use drugs and ensuring the approach adopted does not lead to more harm than good.

Decriminalization done right: A human rights and public health vision for drug policy reform in Canada

With hundreds of local partners worldwide, 

 is enriched by the knowledge and experiences of thousands of campaigners in over 100 countries.

For that reason, spaces for discussion and collective strategising are a fundamental part of building power and solidarity within our campaign.

Our challenges and priorities may be different from place to place, but there’s also a common thread in the logics of punishment and criminalisation of the ‘war on drugs’ that we seek to subvert. As such, exchanging tactics across borders to advance sustainable alternatives that centre our communities’ health and well-being is incredibly valuable.

Foreseeing long-lasting blocks to in-person events during the COVID-19 pandemic situation, the campaign organised the ‘This is not a webinar’ workshop series, three global capacity-strengthening events on topics selected in consultation with campaigners:

The application process received 121 responses from all corners of the world and concluded with the selection of 49 people from 25 different countries! Each one of the facilitators (community and thematic experts) were invited to participate in the anonymised selection process, to encourage familiarisation with the profiles and interests of prospective participants, reduce bias and promote fairer regional and gender representation.

Connecting struggles: Notes from the Support. Don't Punish ‘This is not a webinar’ workshop series

New research published today indicates that significant numbers of people who use drug checking services at UK festivals have reported ongoing behavioural change when using illegal substances.

At three UK festivals in 2017, 1,482 people checked their drugs for strength and purity using the free service delivered by a UK-based NGO called The Loop. As well as having your drugs tested, the service includes a 15-minute harm reduction-focused consultation. Of 130 users who answered a follow-up questionnaire three months later, nearly two-thirds reported that this brief intervention has made a positive impact on the way they use drugs.

“This study sheds light on the decision-making process for drug users,” says Fiona Measham, co-author of the research and co-founder of The Loop. “We can see that, by and large, people are considered and careful. It really challenges some of the biggest stereotypes about drug users and young adults.”

Other standout findings were that 32.3 percent of respondents said they were more careful with poly-drug use, 26.8 percent were now less likely to buy drugs from strangers and 19.7 percent continued to use smaller doses. While these numbers represent a minority – albeit a significant one – overall, just 7.9 percent said their experience had no impact whatsoever on their drug-taking choices since.

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