By Luis Ferré-Sadurní / The New York Times

After years of stalled attempts, New York State has legalized the use of recreational marijuana, enacting a robust program that will reinvest millions of dollars of tax revenues from cannabis in minority communities ravaged by the decades-long war on drugs.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the cannabis legislation on Wednesday, a day after the State Legislature passed the bill following hours of debate among lawmakers in Albany.

New York became the 15th state to legalize the recreational use of cannabis, positioning itself to quickly become one of the largest markets of legal cannabis in the nation and one of the few states where legalization is directly tied to economic and racial equity.

Previous attempts to legalize marijuana were stymied over disagreements on how the tax revenue from sales would be distributed. Democratic lawmakers, especially those who are nonwhite, insisted that a large portion of the money be earmarked for communities where Black and Latino people have been arrested on marijuana charges in disproportionate numbers; the governor wanted to retain more control over how the money was spent.

The lawmakers prevailed. Forty percent of the tax revenue from pot sales will be steered to those communities, and people convicted of marijuana-related offenses that are no longer criminalized will have their records automatically expunged. The law also seeks to allow people with past convictions and those involved in the illicit cannabis market to participate in the new legal market.

New York legalizes recreational marijuana, tying move to racial equity

Since the first of February this year, anyone in the US state of Oregon caught possessing or using a personal quantity of any controlled drug – including heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine – has been officially not a criminal – or, rather, not liable for criminal prosecution. Instead, they will have the choice of paying a $100 fine or completing a health assessment at an approved addiction recovery centre.

The state government reported late last year, that Oregon had suffered a 40% increase in drug overdose deaths in 2020, in line with with national trends during the Covid pandemic. This dramatic shift from a criminal justice approach for drug users to one centred around health (a move the American Public Health Association called for as far back as 2013, came not from the state's elected politicians, but from the voters themselves, who last September approved Measure 110 by a 16-point margin. The measure also stipulated that funding for the introduction of new healthcare resources, including a a 24/7 telephone addiction recovery centre, would come from Oregon's burgeoning tax revenue from its legalised cannabis market.

The funding component was, says Portland drug reform activist and public radio broadcaster Doug McVay, a political winner". But he also credits an increasingly strong reform movement: "People who use drugs have become vocal and politically active. We've become visible."

McVay says that although Oregon has long led the way on drug policy reform – its needle exchange was one of the first in the US – "conventional wisdom has always been that even talking about decriminalising drugs other than marijuana, let alone legalising and regulating them, is too radical. What Oregon has done is prove that bit of conventional wisdom wrong. Oregon has set an example for the rest of the nation, which becomes apparent when you look at the other states that are now considering broad drug decriminalisation. Politicians in those states need to be bold."

Turning away from the 'war on drugs'

In November 2015, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that four individuals from the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Personal Use (SMART) would be permitted to grow and consume their own cannabis. The court ruled that prohibiting people from growing the drug for personal consumption, personal use and private consumption was unconstitutional as it violated the human right to the free development of one's personality. The case followed several years of patient work by México Unido Contra Delincuencia (MUCD), involving the development of individual cases which could test the legal status of prohibition (so-called ‘strategic litigation’).

After the 2015 ruling, more similar cases followed. On 31 October 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the law prohibiting recreational use of cannabis in Mexico was unconstitutional for the fifth time. Under Mexican law this fifth ruling set a binding precedent across the country's court system — rather than only applying to the individual litigants. The effect of the ruling was that while the law prohibiting cannabis remained in place, it could no longer be meaningfully enforced, since anyone could cite the ruling and demand that their charges be thrown out. Crucially, the ruling also mandated that the government of Mexico move to formally legalise and regulate cannabis within the next 90 days.

The challenging and contentious process of devising a cannabis regulation Bill has led to the 90 day deadline being extended 3 times by the Court — with April 30th of 2021 now being the final deadline.

Cannabis legalisation in Mexico: An explainer

New Zealand’s drug laws are increasingly leaving us behind the rest of the world.

The new Biden-Harris Administration in the United States has made racial equality a top priority, and within that the delivery of criminal justice reform. Their Office of National Drug Control Policy has now made an unprecedented statement about its new priorities, which, at its heart, represents the end of the failed repressive approach to drugs in favour of a health-based approach.

The New Zealand Government is clearly of the view that the use and possession of drugs should not be a criminal offence, as demonstrated when it passed the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 2019 (MODA). That amendment reminded the police that they have the discretion not to arrest and prosecute for use and supply, and that they should consider in each case whether a health-centred approach might be more beneficial to the public interest.

This amendment isn’t working as well as everyone had hoped, and thousands of New Zealanders continue to be convicted of low-level offences each year. The solution is to overhaul our current law and reformulate it, placing health considerations at the centre of how we deal with drugs.

New Zealand: We're being left behind on drug laws

 announce their call for applications for emergency grants in the framework of the Emergency Support Fund for Key Populations. The activities of the Fund are financed by the Elton John AIDS Foundation and Aidsfonds.

Organisations from 10 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

 (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan) can receive small grants.

The maximum amount per grant is € 8.000,-.

 can be awarded the maximum amount, whereas the costs of the sustainability activities cannot exceed € 3.000,- or account for more than 37.5% of the total amount of the grant.

Please note: The Fund will be operational until December 2021; activities funded with an ESF grant should finish no later than October 1, 2021.

and Aidsfonds will support organisations representing key populations in surviving in difficult situations which they face due to legal barriers, stigma and discrimination, financial challenges and political restrictions. Support will be given to organisations carrying out activities that ensure access to HIV prevention, treatment and/or services for key populations, or projects protecting the human rights of key populations.

You can download the complete call here and apply online here.

An example of the form can be found here (that is only the example, not for filling in).

Emergency support fund for key populations in the EECA region

By the Global Partnership on Drug Policies and Development (GPDPD)

Numerous studies examine how the Covid-19 pandemic affects illicit drug markets. We asked ourselves: how does the Covid-19 crisis affect the lives of families who grow the raw materials to produce heroin or cocaine, or who are in the process of escaping the poverty trap of illicit cultivation? The GPDPD commissioned a study on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The study paints an initial picture of the situation in drug cultivation areas in eight selected countries in Asia, Latin America and the Balkans - and what we can learn from this for the development of a sustainable drug policy.

It became clear that the situation is very different - but has one thing in common: Pre-existing problems have worsened since the pandemic began in early 2020. The Covid-19 crisis provides the ideal breeding ground for the spread of illicit economies. Smallholder farmers in areas of drug crop cultivation are now more at risk than ever of slipping deeper into illegality. Yet there are also those who manage to resist this on their own.

Poverty and a lack of alternatives in structurally weak rural areas, where the state is hardly present, are driving people into illegal cultivation. Their lives are already characterised by insecurity and marginalisation: they have no access to a functioning infrastructure, markets, political participation, basic services or educational institutions. Violence and conflict are often part of everyday life. The economic downturn only makes them more dependent on drug crop cultivation.

Resilience and vulnerability in times of the pandemic

Do you use drugs? How many? How often? These are among the questions posed in the latest European Web Survey on Drugs, launched today by the 

 Targeted at people, aged 18 and over, who have used drugs, the survey aims to improve understanding of patterns of drug use in Europe and help shape future drug policies and interventions (1).

The voluntary, anonymous survey — one of the agency’s targeted ‘leading-edge’ monitoring methods — will run this year in 31 countries and 28 languages (2). As in previous years, it will be promoted nationally by the Reitox focal points and their partners, as well as through targeted social media advertisements.

New to this year’s round is the participation of the agency’s partners from the

 area through the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA7) and EU4Monitoring Drugs (EU4MD) projects.

Web-based surveys have the benefit of reaching people who use drugs directly. They are quick and cheap to set up, provide new data rapidly and can help spot emerging trends. If the same questions are used, along with a rigorous translation process, then these surveys can also allow for cross-national comparisons.

The new questionnaire, which will run for six weeks, is structured in modules on: socio-demographics, drug using patterns, access to treatment, access to drugs (amounts usually bought and prices paid) and how COVID-19 has affected patterns of drug use. Its findings will contribute to the emerging knowledge base on drug-using practices in Europe and on the quantities of drugs used. This will help enhance market size estimates at national and European level and contribute to policy development more widely.

While web surveys are not representative of the general population, when carefully conducted and combined with traditional data-collection methods, they can help paint a more detailed, realistic and timely picture of drug use and drug markets in Europe. As such, they are a key ingredient in the EMCDDA’s responsiveness to an ever-shifting drugs problem.

EMCDDA launches 2021 European Web Survey on Drugs to assess patterns of drug use in over 30 countries

MEXICO CITY — Lawmakers in Mexico approved a bill Wednesday night to legalize recreational marijuana, a milestone for the country, which is in the throes of a drug war and could become the world’s largest cannabis market, leaving the United States between two pot-selling neighbors.

The 316-to-129 vote in Mexico’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, came more than two years after the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the country’s ban on recreational marijuana was unconstitutional and more than three years after the country legalized medicinal cannabis.

The chamber approved the bill in general terms Wednesday evening before moving on to a lengthy discussion of possible revisions introduced by individual lawmakers. In its final form, though, the measure is widely expected to sail through the Senate before being sent to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has signaled support for legalization.

The measure, as of Wednesday night, would allow adults to smoke marijuana and, with a permit, grow a small number of cannabis plants at home. It would also grant licenses for producers — from small farmers to commercial growers — to cultivate and sell the crop.

Mexico set to legalise marijuana, becoming world’s largest market

On this International Women’s Day, let’s pause for reflection on the changes of the past 12 months. The COVID19 pandemic has impacted heavily on women worldwide, accentuating pre- existing inequalities. In general, mainstream awareness of these deepening and unacceptable disparities remains very low. One of the barriers to awareness and change has been a tendency towards “otherism” in portrayal and perceptions of women who use drugs.

Intersectionality refers to the ways in which different aspects of a person’s identity can expose them to overlapping forms of discrimination and marginalisation. With its roots in the black feminist movement, awareness of intersectionality is very useful for understanding and addressing inequities experienced by women who use drugs. WHRIN work in this space can help to identify where this is affecting women who use drugs, bringing into focus the interrelation of systems of oppression. We can better identify specific needs and help ensure compassionate and effective policies and health options.

Intersectionality and women who use drugs. WHRIN statement on International Women’s Day 2021

A new global Aids strategy is being developed at the United Nations. This really should be breaking news and the subject of major attention around the world. Unfortunately, it is not.

“Epidemics are like large signposts,” the German doctor and founder of social medicine Rudolf Virchow wrote in 1848, “[and] form an inseparable part of the cultural history of mankind.” However, the international community appears to have lost an understanding of the enduring significance of the global response to the HIV/Aids epidemic. The signposts for this are nevertheless all around if we care to look. One topical example is the question: How come Covid-19 vaccines were developed relatively quickly?

As Professor Glenda Gray, the president of the South African Medical Research Council, explained to 

 on 30 November 2020, it has everything to do with the response to HIV:

“Covid-19, Ebola and Zika [virus] have benefited enormously from all the work that has gone into developing platforms for HIV vaccines, so if we had not invested all this money into HIV, we would not have solutions for Ebola, Zika and SARS-CoV-2. It’s because of those platforms that we’ve been able to nimbly move to the next pathogen.”

In a world where recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic is top of the political agenda and vital for everyone’s future, we would do well to relearn some vital lessons about the nature and transformative potential that the HIV/Aids response has exemplified. This is not only because the Aids crisis will remain serious for the foreseeable future – it is also because the global response to HIV/Aids is one of the only successes the international community has had in the past two decades (even if some may describe this success as relative, given the scale of challenges still before us). We need to learn from and build on success. It is rare these days that we have such an opportunity.

What the global response to HIV/Aids can teach us about Covid-19 recovery – and social justice

By Simona Marinescu / United Nations Samoa

Earlier this month, and in December 2020 the government conducted operations that resulted in the confiscation of a total of 1,400 grams of methamphetamine at the border, smuggled from the US. The law enforcement officials (from the Ministry of Customs and Revenue and the Ministry of Police and Prisons) that intercepted these drugs deserve congratulations for their professionalism and skill. Meth is destructive and harmful - and it is good to see this potential threat removed from the community.

As small as this bust is by global standards, 1,400 grams in a couple of months is a record for Samoa (there were only two convictions for methamphetamine possession in Samoa in 2017). Perhaps it is inevitable that we will see an increase in seizures. As COVID-19 ravishes the economy and exacerbates inequality, some may look to less than legal means to supplement their dwindling incomes, and drug use is known to increase in communities facing economic hardship. Governments need to work to reduce drug consumption – especially with respect to more harmful substances like meth and opioids, which have devastated poor communities around the world. For example, there were more than 67,000 overdose deaths in the US alone in 2018. Thankfully, so far, Samoa has avoided this degree of harm.

But while it is sometimes tempting to “crack down” (no pun intended) in the face of an emerging perceived threat, we must resist the urge to increase legal penalties. We should be decriminalizing drug use and possession. Drugs are a serious health and social issue, not a moral one. Reducing consumption requires a health and socially focused response, not moral panic. This must include carefully thought out laws that emphasize prevention, education and harm reduction. We need properly funded community based support services that help and protect vulnerable people, and assist them in escaping degrading and difficult circumstances. Stopping drug use will not be achieved through hastily drafted legislation that further criminalizes addiction. By discouraging the demand for drugs, we can actually be more effective in tackling drug trafficking and putting an end to the human suffering caused by increased consumption.

Drug use is a health issue – we need to decriminalize

The first international conference on the legalization of cannabis and its derivatives in Kyrgyz Republic will be held on March 10, 2021 in Bishkek. The event will be streamed online on the YouTube channel of the 

The world-renowned narcologist professor Zhenishbek Nazaraliev is the main speaker of the event. Professor Nazaraliev is a psychiatrist working on drug dependence.

The conference participants will discuss the benefits for the legalization – starting with the adoption of cannabis in industry and ending with its decriminalization for personal use. Particular attention will be paid to the medical and scientific uses of hemp.

Professor Nazaraliev will deliver his professional point of view on the ongoing discussion in Kyrgyz Republic and answer the following questions:

Why did the talks about the legalization begin in Kyrgyz Republic? What is behind this?

Is it possible to overcome poverty and extreme deprivation in Kyrgyz Republic by starting a new industry which is dynamically being developed in the USA, European Union, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan?

Will this mega-project be able to change the entire nation’s mind and bring the people of Kyrgyz Republic to well-being and prosperity?

March 10, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. Bishkek (15:00 GMT). Address: (Asanbay Center)
Online: https://www.youtube.com/user/DoctorLifeTV For all queries, please contact outofdrug@mail.ru

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