On Tuesday, Laurie Brooks received the news she's waited more than 100 days to hear — she now has the legal right to use magic mushrooms.

"I was pretty emotional. I was surprised," the 53-year-old Abbotsford, B.C. mother of four told CBC.

"Just to have that recognition … that what I was fighting for was worthwhile, it meant a lot to me."

Brooks has had two bouts with colon cancer and has struggled with psychological distress as she reckons with the possibility of imminent death.

She's one of four Canadians with terminal cancer who received approval this week from the federal government for an exemption from drug laws that have made psilocybin — the active ingredient in magic mushrooms — illegal since 1974.

Psilocybin has shown promise in relieving end-of-life distress for palliative cancer patients, but it's still undergoing clinical trials that are necessary before it can be made widely available to the public.

The four patients applied for their exemptions with help from the advocacy group TheraPsil, which argues that terminally ill patients deserve compassionate access to something that might help with their anguish when other treatments have failed.

The group's founder, Victoria psychotherapist Bruce Tobin, applauded the federal government for allowing the patients access to psilocybin.

Four Canadians with terminal cancer win the right to try magic mushrooms

France will introduce on-the-spot fines nationwide for drug users, particularly targeting cannabis, from September.

The move comes amid concerns about drug-related violence and was announced by PM Jean Castex on a trip to Nice, which has seen weeks of unrest.

The roll-out of fines follows tests in cities such as Rennes and Marseilles.

The €200 ($233; £182) fixed fine will reduce to €150 if paid within 15 days. France is one of the leading consumers of cannabis in Europe.

Legislation on recreational cannabis use varies widely from country to country. Several nations, like Canada, have legalised it while others have policies of minor punishment. But many others impose severe jail terms.

France drugs: Prime Minister Castex to impose on-the-spot fines nationwide

In this 10-episode series, Drugreporter and INPUD document how people who use drugs around the world have organised and formed collectives and unions to protect and defend the health and human rights of their community.

Episode 1: The Netherlands, Belgium and France

Since January 1981, when the first drug user group ‘Junkie-bond’ was established in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the drug user movement has grown exponentially: people who use drugs have continued to organise and form collectives and unions to protect and defend the health and human rights of their community. This struggle for autonomy, self-determination and empowerment of people who use drugs has been, and is, a global phenomenon.

In the early ‘90s the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) was formed in response to the HIV crisis and overdoses among people who use drugs. The tireless work of Ann Livingston and VANDU contributed to significant changes in how people who use drugs were treated in the city. Among the various harm reduction services that formed, they contributed to the opening of the first legal drug consumption room in North America and trials with heroin prescription programs.

With the emergence of fentanyl in the illegal drug market, the overdose epidemic skyrocketed, and in 2018, more than 10,300 Canadians died as a result of an apparent opioid-related overdose. Activists like Zoë Dodd from the Toronto Drug Users Union and the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society reacted by opening up illegal overdose prevention sites, saving many, many lives. Their civil disobedience has changed the landscape of Canadian Drug Policy: those illegal sites eventually became legal.

Many people are still dying every day in Canada, and drug user activist groups like VANDU, the BC-Yukon Association of Drug War Survivors, and the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs (CAPUD) are fighting for a safe drug supply, so people in need have access to an unpolluted source of their drug of choice.

This year JES network in Germany celebrated its 30th anniversary, and is one of the oldest drug user groups in the world. Dirk Schäffer – a member of the network – tells us how with the support of Deutsche Aidshilfe, the JES drug user network contributed to the availability of harm reduction services in Germany, including drug consumption rooms and heroin prescription programs.

The drug user groups in Denmark and Norway were also crucial to achieve the opening of these kinds of life-saving services in their own countries. The Danish Drug Users Union (Brugerforeningen), under the leadership of Jørgen Kjær, has been a model for drug user organisations all over the world. The drug user groups in Norway, led by Arild Knutsen from the Association for Humane Drug Policy, have changed the drug policy landscape significantly. Drug consumption rooms are available, heroin prescription and other innovative substitution programs are planned, and a major drug policy change is happening right now, with a move away from punitive measures and towards a more humane and evidence based decriminalisation model, based on the experiences of Portugal.

The rapid development of harm reduction services in recent years in South Africa has largely been influenced by the movement of people who use drugs in the country. 10 years ago, there was no needle exchange program in the country, and now there are multiple, providing 2 million sterile syringes a year for people who inject drugs. The South African Network of People who Use Drugs, supported by the non-governmental organisation TB HIV Care, tirelessly campaigns for the humanisation of people who use drugs. They managed to change the aim of the South African drug strategy to focus on providing support for problematic drug use, rather than creating a drug free society. People who use drugs are consulted when developing the country’s drug strategy. Their advocacy for visible policing resulted in fewer arbitrary arrests, and the South African Police Services stopped the use of quota systems, which required a certain number of drug users to be arrested. There is still a lot to do to end the criminalisation of people who use drugs, and to end the racial injustice and discrimination of women, which are widespread in the country. Watch the film featuring Angela McBride, Nelson Medeiros, and Shaun Shelly of SANPUD.

Disclaimer: SANPUD believes in representativity and diversity. This film features three of the four founders and does not reflect the current diversity of the board, staff, or membership of SANPUD.

In the country which coined the term "War on Drugs", people who use drugs have been fighting against extreme levels of criminalisation and stigmatisation for decades. Despite this, drug user activists have achieved impressive victories over the last several years. In this episode Louise Vincent (Urban Survivors Union), Robert Suarez (VOCAL-NY and Urban Survivors Union), and Hollis (San Francisco Drug Users Union) discuss both their achievements and the work still to be done as North America continues to suffer from unprecedented levels of overdose stemming from decades of neglectful policy.

This episode features four pioneers of the drug user movement in Australia: Jude Byrne from the Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL), Annie Madden and Charles Henderson from the New South Wales Users and AIDS Association (NUAA) and Geoffrey Ward from the Canberra Alliance for Harm Minimisation and Advocacy (CAHMA). The movement has achieved some incredible successes since the 1980s, including the opening of medically supervised injecting rooms in Sydney and Melbourne, and their work is far from over.

In Asia, the mere existence of drug user groups is a testament to the resilience and strength of the community. Despite dealing with torturous labor camps and detention centers, capital punishment, extrajudicial killings, and incredibly harsh societal stigmatisation, the movement of people who use drugs all over the diverse region have achieved incredible victories. In this episode Anand Chabumgbam and Bikas Guring (Asian Network of People who Use Drugs), Simon W. Beddoe (Indian Harm Reduction Association), and Edo Agustian (PKNI) discuss how they have called aattention to human rights violations and expanded harm reduction services within these conditions.

Episode 8: Afghanistan, Tanzania and Mexico

This episode takes us to three different regions to examine familiar themes on the subject of drug user organizing. In Afghanistan, Abdur Raheem Rejaey (Bridge Hope Health) shows how his organisation is distributing syringes to people who inject drugs under extremely harsh and neglectful conditions. In Tanzania, Happy Assan (Tanzania Network of People who Use Drugs) talks about amending her country's drug bill in 2015 to lessen penalties for drug offences. In Mexico, Brun Gonzalez (Latin American Network of People who Use Drugs & INPUD Board Chair) discusses some of the major barriers for drug user organising including the false equivilancy of people who use drugs with "Narco culture", amidst other forms of religious and cultural stigma.

In this episode we meet activists in three countries with some of the most harsh drug laws in the world. In Russia, which is infamous for both its punitive drug policies and resistance to advocacy as a whole, there is still a vibrant harm reduction community dating back to the story of FrontAIDS activists in the early 2000s. In Georgia, youth movements of people who use drugs and those in the techno music scene have led tens of thousands of people into the streets demanding change after state raids on clubs in the name of drug prohibition. In Ukraine, a well established drug user movement has set an example for others in the region while continuously fighting against the same levels of stigma and discrimination felt by others in the region.

The final episode of the series focuses on activists from the UK and the International Network of People who Use Drugs. Just as in many other countries we've visited, the drug user rights movement in the UK started as a response to the HIV crisis. Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt, the widow of Mainliners founder John Mordaunt, discusses some of the history of the first peer-led support group of people who use drugs living with HIV. Meanwhile Mat Southwell discusses his work putting together numerous drug user groups in both the UK and Europe as a whole after learning community organising through gay men's organisations. The series concludes by talking to Judy Chang, Executive Director of INPUD, about bringing all of the voices you've heard throughout the series to the international level to advocate for the rights of people who use drugs.

Taking back what's ours! - An oral history of the movement of people who use drugs

On June 26, 2020 a number of events were held within the framework of the global campaign “Support. Don’t Punish” in the countries of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) region with the support of the Eurasian Network of People Who Use Drugs (ENPUD), the Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA), the International Consortium on Drug Policy (IDPC) and other networks and organizations, as well as with personal support of the activists and initiative groups. The COVID-19 pandemic made its adjustments to the campaign. However, the restrictive measures did not stop the activists, and they managed to hold the activities and events albeit in a changed format.

The campaign declares that health care and human rights must be installed in the core of drug policy. Activists took to the streets to publicly protest cruel and senseless government policies aimed at people who use drugs. Every year this campaign is held all over the world with the purpose of drawing attention to this unsolved problem over and over again!

June 26 is also the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Such a discriminatory and repressive name for this day was invented at the UN. Of course this is not surprising, taking into account the roles played by the United Nations in the never-ending "war on drugs" around the world, and in cowardly disregard or support by various structures and agencies of this organization of the methods of repressive drug policies of many countries around the world.

On the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking many countries talk about how they have “contributed” to a successful “war on drugs”. In past years, some countries celebrated this day with public executions or public beatings of people who committed drugrelated crimes.

On the other hand, the UN has designated June 26 as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. It is intended to remind us that torture did not remain in the distant Middle Ages together with inquisition, alchemy, bubonic plague and cities without sewers.

However, it is in the name of the "war on drugs" that people are subjected to murder, torture and violence. Torture and punishment are at the heart of modern drug policy. Thus, participation in the international campaign “Support. Don’t Punish” is an opportunity to support a proper and humane understanding of this important day.

ENPUD Information Digest No. 8: Support. Don’t Punish - Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) - 2020

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its analysis of overdose deaths from 2019. The new projections indicate that the United States has failed to maintain the marginal progress represented by 2018’s slight fall in fatalities. The nation is projected to have seen a 4.8 percent increase in deaths in 2019.

Tragically, 70,980 people are recorded as having lost their lives last year. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids were involved in over half of these deaths, with cocaine and methamphetamine involvement rising. CDC officials are pointing to the introduction of fentanyl to other drug supplies, like meth and cocaine, as a major factor.

Traditional addiction treatment organizations and harm reduction groups are alarmed by this, although many are not surprised.

With the 2020 presidential election looming, the new data could become a political hot button, potentially inspiring calls for more repressive law enforcement tactics. The White House took credit for the drop in fatal overdoses from 2017 to 2018, and Trump personally campaigned on the issue in 2016.

Diving into the new data on a regional level, a more complex story emerges than the overall worsening situation. Most states did indeed experience at least a small rate of increase. However, most of the nine states in the Northeastern region managed to reduce their rates of overdose deaths significantly from 2018 to 2019. Other states that saw significant drops include Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Utah and Nevada.

Beneath tragic new United States overdose figures, there are wide regional variations

Reports from Kenya suggest violence against women who use drugs rose during the COVID-19 lockdown, fuelled by tensions as incomes disappeared and couples found themselves in close confinement with one another.

Both men and women who use drugs are also being unfairly blamed and beaten for petty crimes, often without evidence, which are on the increase due to a lack of wages.

But Kenyan partners from the Partnership to Inform, Transpire and Connect the HIV response (PITCH) are finding ways to address the situation. To link women to various forms of support they have formed a response team with police and a referral system with legal and medical services. Peer workers are also receiving training in counselling, mediation and conflict resolution, while advocacy is underway to ensure the lockdown experiences of women who use drugs are being heard and understood.

“Gender-based violence has escalated during lockdown, it has taken a turn for the worse,” says John Kimani, director of the Kenya Network of People using Drugs (KeNPUD). “Before, these cases [of violence] were there but there were not as many and they were not as extreme.

“We are seeing an increase in women becoming homeless as a result of this. Fewer women are also accessing healthcare, particularly antenatal care, for fear of emotional or verbal abuse.”

In Nairobi it is common for women who use drugs to engage in sex work to support themselves, their partner and their children. But Bernice Apondi, Policy Manager at VOCAL Kenya, says lockdown made sex work impossible as bars and lodges where many women find business shut down and curfews meant people were no longer allowed on the street.

First responders: The peers providing psychological first aid for women who use drugs in Kenya

The new Security Union strategy would “fight” against drugs together with child abuse and arms trafficking. This is a bad approach.

The European Commission has published its new EU drug strategy (now called the Drugs Agenda), which is part of a wider Security Union strategy entitled “Delivering on a Security Union: initiatives to fight child sexual abuse, drugs and illegal firearms.” While I celebrated the previous Action Plan as the most progressive ever, I think this document has come as a disappointment for civil society organisations that have been advocating for a sensible, balanced approach in drug policies.

Here are 4 reasons why (this article is not a comprehensive review and it does not reflect the official position of the Civil Society Forum on Drugs or other organisations but only my personal views).

The European Union should not fight drugs but reduce harms

While Latin American countries face deteriorating conditions in prisons and the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on incarcerated people, one group in conditions of vulnerability continues to be rendered invisible: trans women deprived of liberty. Although countries have the responsibility to protect the physical and mental health and well-being of all people in their custody, in particular those who come from more vulnerable situations, the majority of governments in the region have not implemented specific measures to protect LGBTI+ people behind bars. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trans women deprived of liberty has been disproportionate in comparison with other groups, particularly because of the diverse intersectionalities affecting their lives.

In light of this worrisome situation, civil society organizations led by and/or that work with trans people deprived of liberty have developed various initiatives to ensure the full exercise of this group’s dignity and protection of their human rights. In this context, these organizations convened a workshop entitled Trans Women Behind Bars: Strategies for Resistance in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic, with the aim of sharing experiences and resistance strategies, along with good practices and challenges that are being faced by civil society groups.

In addition, trans women fit the criteria established by the United Nations High Commissioner to be eligible for alternatives to incarceration in the context of COVID-19, since they are people who 1) face a greater health risk if they were to contract the disease; 2) experience inhuman and unsafe prison conditions and situations of violence; and 3) have been criminalized, resulting in their excessive incarceration. However, the measures announced by various countries in the region to reduce the number of people behind bars have not taken into account trans people’s specific needs.

During the workshop, trans women who have been in prison advocated for alternatives to incarceration and underscored the need to incorporate intersectional perspectives and a differentiated approach that would protect the rights of LGTBI+ people. These recommendations include:

Take immediate action to release trans women who have greater health risks and who find themselves in inhuman and unsafe prison conditions. Their release could be implemented via alternatives to incarceration, pardons, sentence reductions, or other means, in accordance with the legal and judicial system in a given country.

Ensure that LGTBI+ persons deprived of liberty have access to information on the COVID-19 situation.

Establish a Penitentiary Monitoring Program on COVID-19 with a gender and sexual diversity perspective in order to identify the differentiated effects on groups in situations of vulnerability.

Provide all of the inputs needed to prevent, control, and safeguard the health of LGTBI+ persons deprived of liberty in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Guarantee that trans women have adequate access to comprehensive health care and counseling suited to their needs and specificities, particularly in light of possible COVID-19 contagion. For women who opt for it, the continuity of hormone treatments and reassignment surgery should be ensured.

Promote constant awareness-raising and training on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression for prison workers, and other actors and officials in the judicial system. These trainings should be coordinated with specialized civil society organizations that have experience in these matters and should include the active participation of trans women.

Support reentry for trans women who leave prison by ensuring, at the very least, tests to detect COVID-19, proper medical services, a safe form of transportation home or to a halfway house, and the immediate provision of official identification documents.

Implement programs and partnerships between the state and civil society organizations—including the private sector when appropriate—to ensure access to work, personal development, health, housing, and education to people who have been deprived of liberty.

Promote the participation of trans women who have been deprived of liberty in spaces for planning and implementing public policies aimed specifically at promoting the human rights of the trans population.

Trans women behind bars: Strategies for resistance in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic

Merri Utami was sentenced to death after airport authorities found drugs in her handbag.

On 29 July 2016, Merri waited to be led before a firing squad. She listened to the execution of four other people before her execution was halted at the last moment. Four years later, Merri remains in prison and her petition for clemency has gone unanswered by Indonesian President Joko Widodo

The death penalty for drug offences is unjust, ineffective, and a violation of international human rights law. It must be abolished.

Sign the petition and demand clemency for Merri.

Indonesia: A death sentence for a drug offence

Anton Basenko is worried. He fears all the hard-won progress made in fighting the AIDS epidemic is on a collision course with the urgent needs of the coronavirus pandemic.

"For people with HIV, it's double, triple the crisis since the start of the lockdown," says the Ukrainian AIDS advocate. "I have a bad feeling that organizations and governments are so concentrated on COVID that they are completely forgetting about HIV. For marginalized people, it's a question of life and death."

Basenko is no stranger to health crises. After years of injection drug use, he contracted HIV (which he now lives with) and hepatitis C (which he's now cured). He started opioid substitution therapy in 2004.

Today, he works for the Alliance for Public Health in Ukraine as a coordinator for harm reduction programs that help IV drug users get clean needles or safer alternative drugs like methadone.

On July 10, he led a session at the 23rd (virtual) International AIDS Conference on the impact of COVID-19 on AIDS.

Suddenly, he and other AIDS advocates, researchers, doctors and patients have a 40-year-old epidemic 

 a brand new pandemic to worry about. "The concern is that AIDS is already being set back by COVID-19," says Dr. Monica Gandhi, director of the University of California San Francisco Center for AIDS Research.

What happens when a pandemic and an epidemic collide

There is genuine hope that by sharing her story as a woman who grows opium, Nang Kham could help encourage other women farmers to speak out, and encourage the wider community to realise the collective benefits of gender equality.

Nang Kham (a pseudonym) is 32 years old and lives with her husband and two children in a mountainous village in southern Shan State, Myanmar. Like many women around the world, she bears a disproportionate share of household work. She is also one of the tens of thousands of women who cultivate opium as a means of survival in Myanmar. She lives in a high-altitude area, where opium fields stretch out as far as the eye can see.

Cultivation for household needs such as traditional medicines has been common in Nang Kham's village for some time, but larger scale cultivation is a relatively new phenomenon. The violence and insecurity that followed the conflict in the late 1990s forced Nang Kham and her fellow villagers to flee.1 When they returned years later they discovered that all their crops and domesticated animals had disappeared. The only viable cash crop at the time was opium. It grows relatively quickly, is low in volume and high in value and traders come to the village so there is no need to travel to the nearby market. And as the roads are in bad shape, and conflict sporadically flares up, opium was and is a life saver cash crop.

Nang Kham earns more than 70 percent of her annual household income with one season of opium cultivation and harvesting per year. Most of this income is spent on food, healthcare, and education. She also grows a small amount of food for household consumption, as well as tea and coffee to be sold to local cooperatives.

A day in a life of a woman opium poppy farmer in Myanmar

The Netherlands has been a global leader for ensuring the health and human rights of people who use drugs and has contributed significant funding over the past decade for harm reduction and drug policy reform. Within this frame, recent funding decisions signify a withdrawal from this critical agenda.

This letter, signed by 330 civil society and community networks from across the globe, calls on the Dutch government to recommit to their brave and long-standing political and financial support for harm reduction and drug policy advocacy and to continue to build on their significant investment in this issue.

Dear Minister Kaag, Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation,

CHANGE IN DUTCH FUNDING PRIORITIES WILL SIGNIFICANTLY DISRUPT GLOBAL HIV AND HEPATITIS RESPONSE FOR PEOPLE WHO USE DRUGS

The Netherlands is a global leader for health, human rights and development. Within this frame, the Netherlands has steadfastly aimed to shift the focus of drug policies away from counterproductive and damaging punitive measures, towards ensuring the primacy of human rights, health and development commitments for people who use drugs. In particular, since the inception of harm reduction as a response to drugs in the late 1970s, the longstanding and continuous leadership of the Netherlands in championing this approach has been unparalleled. The Dutch global leadership in the harm reduction movement throughout the past two decades has saved thousands of lives and positively influenced countries towards adopting health, human rights-based and evidence-based approaches to drug use.

Just two years ago, at the 2018 AIDS Conference, hosted by the Netherlands in Amsterdam, there was a special focus on Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA), where HIV is predominantly driven by unsafe injecting drug use. The Dutch government used the opportunity to re-iterate its commitment to harm reduction and to addressing the HIV epidemic in EECA. Consistent with this commitment, the current policy ‘strengthening civil society’ and in the Ministry’s SRHR Theory of Change, prioritises people who use drugs and mentions harm reduction explicitly.

In sharp contrast to this, the latest round of funding decisions under the SRHR Partnership Fund represents a drastic shift away from these long-standing and critical priorities. None of the selected partnerships include comprehensive, consistent and high-quality harm reduction service delivery or advocacy for drug policy reform. Moreover, the selected programmes that include HIV as a topic do not substantially include regions such as EECA, the Middle East and South-East Asia – where HIV incidence among people who use drugs is still rising.

There are an estimated 15.6 million people around the world who inject drugs. Just 1% of them live in countries with high coverage of harm reduction services. People who inject drugs are 22 times more at risk of HIV compared with the general population. The 2018 research report ‘the Lost Decade’ demonstrated there had been a 24% decrease in harm reduction funding from international donors between 2007 and 2016; amounting to a shocking 87% shortfall in funding for harm reduction in low- and middle-income countries. In this context, the Dutch have stood out for its ongoing and outstanding commitment to funding harm reduction in low- and middle-income countries. Until now.

The ramifications of the current Dutch funding decision are wide and far-reaching. This letter makes an urgent appeal to the Dutch government, to continue funding life-saving, rights-affirming interventions and drug policy reform work.

The undersigned call on the Dutch Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation to validate a strong Dutch tradition of promoting a human rights and public health approach. And with that we urge the Netherlands to recommit the brave and long-standing political and financial support for the health and rights of people who use drugs.

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