The UK, which had funded UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV & AIDS, £15 million a year for the past five years, has just announced it plans to provide only £2.5 million this year – a more than 80% cut.

This slashing of UNAIDS’ budget mirrors drastic cuts across the board for HIV civil society and community organisations doing critical work in the HIV response. This includes £72 million in loss of funding for IPPF which will mean massive reductions to the U.K.’s flagship WISH (Women’s Integrated Sexual Health) programme. This initiative delivers life-saving contraception and sexual and reproductive health services for women and girls in some of the world’s poorest and most marginalized communities.

These cuts couldn’t have come at a worse time for the HIV pandemic. AIDS remains the number one killer of women of reproductive age and 1.7 million people acquired HIV in 2019. COVID-19 is now threatening to reverse years of progress and increase deaths, with nearly 75% of lifesaving HIV, TB and malaria programs disrupted.

These cuts could jeopardise UNAIDS’s work supporting some of the most marginalised people, including LGBTQI+ people in developing countries who face arbitrary arrest; hurt its work to help girls education and empowerment; and lessen its ability to help countries end AIDS – furthering the continuation of a pandemic that threatens us all. People who use drugs, sex workers, people in prison and LGBTQI+ populations account for a small fraction of the world’s population, but globally (together with their sexual partners), comprised 62% of new HIV infections in 2019.

UK to slash funding for the global HIV response, including cutting UNAIDS’ funding by more than 80%

Early experiences of cannabis legalisation have brought the issues of social and racial justice to the fore. In the US, fledgling ‘social equity’ schemes have sought to promote market access to communities disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs, or ensure the benefits of the emerging markets are shared equitably and support wider social justice goals in other ways — to varying degrees of success.

The dynamics of cannabis prohibition have been different throughout the world, but in each case there have been marginalised communities and vulnerable individuals disproportionately impacted by law enforcement. As non-medical cannabis markets have been rolled out across the US, a key developing theme has been the role of social equity programmes and equitable licensing policies that seek to promote market access to marginalised or impacted communities. Many states have sought to acknowledge the disproportionate harms of cannabis prohibition, faced predominantly by Black communities and people of Latin American descent, through measures that facilitate market access for these communities, and which are also reparative in nature.

The impact of such measures so far has been limited, but practice is still developing and it is clear that this is a key policy concern going forward. Licensing requirements in some Canadian provinces and territories have similarly sought to promote the interests of Indigenous communities, though US-style social equity programmes have not yet been well developed and both Black and Indigenous people remain underrepresented in the fledgling Canadian cannabis industry.

Designing more equitable legal cannabis markets

By Michael Plant & Peter Singer / NewStatesman

Forty years ago, Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one”. This marked the start of the “War on Drugs”, a global escalation in police and military efforts to crack down on drug users and the illicit drug trade.

In the past four decades, three things have become clear. First, the War on Drugs has not been won. Although a 1998 UN special session aimed to create “a drug-free world” by 2008, illicit drugs are still plainly available today in nearly every town and city in the world. In fact, a 2013 paper in the 

 found that, between 1990 and 2007, the prices of heroin, cocaine and cannabis in the US dropped by over 80 per cent while their purity increased. The story was similar for Europe and Australia.

Second, the War on Drugs cannot be won. People take drugs hoping to feel pleasure and soothe their distress. These desires are not going away. People who want drugs are not deterred by criminal sanctions either: a 2014 report by the UK’s Home Office did not find “any obvious relationship between the toughness of a country’s enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country”. It is also effectively impossible to stop the supply of such profitable products – a kilo of cocaine can be bought in Colombia for $1,500 but sells for 40 times that on American streets. Enforcement suffers from the “balloon effect” : successfully squeezing production in one area merely moves it elsewhere.

Why drugs should be not only decriminalised, but fully legalised

On 28.04.2021 HOPS- Options for Healthy Life Skopje organized the regional meeting on the topic “Children who use drugs”. Presentations on the topic had Liljana Ignjatova, Ph.D., Professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje, Department of Psychiatry, and Head of the Center for Prevention and Treatment of Drug Addiction, the Republic of Northern Macedonia from RSM, Eranda Berisha – Center for Social Work Pristina, Kosovo, Skerdi Zahaj, consultant in “Initiative for Social Change” ARSIS from Albania, Marija Mijovic social worker at the NGO Juventas from Montenegro and Denis Dedajic, NGO Margina from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

From the presentations of all speakers, it can be concluded that the rate of children and young people using drugs and other psychoactive substances is increasing. Health and other relevant institutions do not have an adequate answer to this question, and in all countries in the region, there is a complete lack of appropriate treatment programs for children who use drugs.

Conclusions from the regional meeting 'Children who use drugs'

Michael has struggled with kidney disease since he was in his early 20s serving in the military. The high stress of the job ultimately put him in the hospital, and he was not able to return to the service due to his condition. The 37-year-old Virginia Beach resident, who requested his name be changed because of concerns about retaliation from future employers, said that a nurse mentioned during that hospital stay that marijuana could help alleviate many of his symptoms, like nausea and vomiting. But at the time, the substance was not legal in Virginia.

In order to pursue that treatment, Michael had a relative send him marijuana from a state where it was legal. But police tracked the package back to Michael, and he was arrested and charged with felony possession and intent to distribute in 2015. He was convicted and sentenced to three years of probation.

At the time, Michael was working in an administrative role for a federal government contractor, and having two felonies on his record prevented him from advancing in his job.

“Since that day, I wasn’t able to be promoted or even try to grow in the company or in the job field, because that would be cause for further background checks,” Michael said. After getting sick with the coronavirus last year, he developed further kidney complications and had to go on dialysis, as well as undergo a second kidney replacement. He left his government job for health reasons, and while marijuana will soon be legal to possess in Virginia, he still has a criminal record he worries will present roadblocks in his job search.

As more states legalize marijuana, people with drug convictions want their records cleared

At least 25 people have been killed after heavily armed police stormed one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest favelas in pursuit of drug traffickers, in what was the deadliest raid in the city’s history.

About 200 members of Rio’s civil police launched their incursion into Jacarezinho in the early hours of Thursday, sprinting into the vast redbrick community as a bullet-proof helicopter circled overhead with snipers poised on each side. By lunchtime at least 25 people were reported dead, among them André Frias, a drug squad officer who was shot in the head. Police and local media described the other victims as “suspects” but offered no immediate evidence for that claim.

Santos Silva, a researcher from Rio’s Centre for Studies on Public Security and Citizenship, said his city’s war on drugs was effective when it came to killing but did nothing to protect citizens or reduce crime. “It’s repugnant,” he said of the photographs showing Jacarezinho’s streets littered with dead bodies.

“Irrespective of whether they were ‘traffickers’ or residents, these are lives, these are bodies – somebody’s child, somebody’s brother,” Santos Silva added. “There’s no way of looking at these photos and not wanting to cry over just how sick our society it.”

Rio de Janeiro: at least 25 killed in city’s deadliest police raid on favela

By Sessi Kuwabara Blanchard / TalkingDrugs

In a small Dutch city outside of The Netherlands, drug user activists from around the world gathered in 1999 for the fourth annual International Drug Users Day (IDUD) conference.

As Mat Southwell, a British activist, delivered a presentation, he could “hardly see the audience” he told 

, “because everybody was chasing,” or smoking drugs off of foil. The event was like no conference he had ever attended. “There was so much smoke coming up from the audience. You could hardly hear people speak over the rustle of silver foil.”

One of the things that made the event particularly special for Southwell was the involvement of people who supplied drugs, something that he himself would soon be working on back in the United Kingdom. A group of Dutch suppliers called the Hard Drug Dealers Union sponsored the event run by the Dutch National Interest Group of Drug Users (LSD).

Today, the contributions of drug suppliers towards harm reduction efforts remain mostly neglected by history, although some within the grassroots end of the movement still emphasise their critical role. The work of Van Dam in The Netherlands and Southwell in the United Kingdom is part of a mostly-forgotten history of drug dealers organising themselves and alongside drug-user activists to advance the health and wellbeing of people who use drugs.

The forgotten history of European drug-dealer activism

On Monday, 3rd May 2021, the Parliament of Uganda enacted the Sexual Offences Act, 2021, which is now awaiting presidential assent. The Bill was first presented as the Sexual Offences Bill, 2015, published in the Uganda Gazette on 11th December 2015.1 It was tabled in Parliament on 14th April 2016 as a Private Member’s Bill by National Female Youth MP, Monica Amoding under the umbrella of the Uganda Women’s Parliamentary Association (UWOPA).

On behalf of the community of people who use drugs in diversity, Uganda Harm Reduction Network would like express the shared and profound concern at the continued enforcement of discriminatory, stigmatizing, criminalizing and harmful laws which abet bad policies and practices that increase vulnerability to HIV and continue to criminalise the already marginalised population. This proposed bill is yet another step backward in the fight against the HIV AIDS because it is founded on stigma and discrimination and based on approaches that have been condemned by international health agencies as ineffective and violating the rights of people who use drugs living and affected with HIV including; sex workers and sexual and gender minorities.

Drug user communities speak out on the proposed Uganda sexual offences bill

The drop-in centre of the Uganda Harm Reduction Network (UHRN) looks lonely from the deserted suburban pavement. It is a non-descript house, hidden behind an imposing solid pink steel gate, in an equally non-descript neighbourhood.

It looks like so many other drop-in centres in eastern Africa that serve key populations—anonymous and low-key. Necessary characteristics, perhaps, in a region that mostly criminalizes people who use drugs, gay men and other men who have sex with men, sex workers and transgender people.

Once through the gate, visitors are greeted with a hive of activity that belies the quiet exterior. Clients and staff are buzzing around, setting up chairs under the makeshift gazebo in the verdant garden. In a few minutes, a group of people who use drugs will take part in a harm reduction workshop run by one of the centre’s staff.

Pioneers of the harm reduction response in Uganda

The staging of the 64th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) from April 12-16 was the latest annual meeting for the Vienna, Austria-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), for which the CND serves as the governing body and provides policy guidance.

It would probably have passed out without much notice, except that it served as a coming out of sorts for Myanmar's military junta.

The conference appears to signify the first time that a senior figure in Myanmar’s regime—in this case, Lt-Gen Than Hlaing—has participated in a UN forum since the February 1 coup.

As Myanmar's newly installed deputy minister for home affairs, a department that controls both the police and the Special Branch, Lt-Gen Than Hlaing has played a central role in the ongoing violent crackdown that has seen nearly 3,600 people arrested and more than 766 killed in the country’s blood-stained streets.

Myanmar general's speech at UN drug policy conference draws outrage

By Angus Thompson / The Sunday Morning Herald

The commissioner who led the state’s ice inquiry has accused the NSW government of missing a once-in-a-generation opportunity for drug reform and ignoring his recommendations 15 months after handing down a landmark report.

Professor Dan Howard SC said he was deeply disappointed with the government’s failure to respond to the 104 remaining recommendations after rejecting five almost outright, including pill testing and another supervised injecting centre. He said he wanted to know its reasoning for doing so.

The veteran lawyer and teacher also said it was “beyond belief and unacceptable” the government hadn’t responded to a recommendation for more services for Aboriginal communities. He said he had felt personally haunted by some evidence of Indigenous families who remained sceptical the government would help.

‘A disgrace’: Ice inquiry commissioner accuses New South Wales government of ignoring calls for reform

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), stigma is a major cause of discrimination and exclusion and it contributes to the abuse of human rights. Stigma is rarely based on facts but rather on assumptions, preconceptions, and generalizations.

IDUCare, a Cebu City-based organization, aims to counter the stigma that is often faced by persons who inject drugs (PWID).

“Before we started in 2015, we gathered drug users [in the] community and we [had] a three-day consultation with them and we came up with the IDUCare model within that consultation and we laid out the objectives and components of the organization and detailed activities,” Johan Nadela, Founder and Executive Director of IDUCare, said during the Philippine Harm Reduction Summit.

The goal, he added, was to have a peer-based community for people affected by drugs focusing towards behavior change, integral health, and upholding and defending human rights. Through offering legal rights literacy and paralegal services training to PWIDs, IDUCare hopes they could also “help other drug users.”

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