Brazil’s prison population tripled in 20 years, resulting to a total of 770,000 inmates in 2,600 prisons. This is due to an increased recourse to detention. The incarceration rate of 133 in 2000 has grown to 466 in nearly two decades. The narration of women imprisonment seems to follow the same trajectory. The number of female prisoners multiplied by six between 2000 and 2016. For almost two thirds of them, the usual grounds for imprisonment are drug-related offences. The Land, Work and Citizenship Institute (

, ITTC) focuses on these women as well as issues relating to gender, justice and drugs.

Cátia Kimis a lawyer. She works with ITTC since two years on two projects, ‘Gender and Drugs’ and ‘Migrant Women’. Marcela Verdade Costa Amaral is a lawyer and a researcher. She is working on the ‘Justice Without Walls’ programme. Prison Insider met them and asked them three questions.

Brazil: Drugs, walls and being a woman

The current IDPC website, launched in 2012, remains useful and has attracted around 2.5 million views over the last 5 years.

However, our team also acknowledges that much could be done to facilitate navigation and further align the website's 

 to our strategy and vision for drug policies that promote human rights and social justice.

The new website should be ready for launch in February 2021, with initial designs and concepts ready for review and feedback in November 2020.

Proposals should be submitted by Friday, 16 October 2020, via e-mail to Juan Fernandez Ochoa, IDPC Campaigns & Communications Officer (jfernandez[@]idpc.net).

Call for proposals: IDPC website re-development

In the first week of September, in a sensational twist to the Sushant Singh Rajput death case, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) arrested the late actor’s girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, her brother Showik and 10 others for the alleged possession, transportation and purchase of ganja (weed) and charas (hash), all derivatives of the cannabis plant. In its charge-sheet, the NCB says it has recovered 59 grams of weed and five grams of a dark brown substance suspected to be hash from three suspects so far. The quantity recovered is far less than the 1 kilo specified as ‘small quantity’ under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances or NDPS Act, 1985. As Suhas Gokhale, former chief of the Azad Maidan unit of Mumbai’s anti-narcotics cell, declared two days after Rhea’s arrest, “A sadhu’s chillum holds more marijuana than what she is being convicted of.”

Indeed, cannabis consumption is common across the country and does not attract the kind of stigma attached to other narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances being consumed illegally in India. In a 2019 study commissioned by the social justice and empowerment ministry, 31 million people in India were reported to have consumed a cannabis product in the past year, of which 13 million had used weed and hash. Cannabis consumption was higher in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Sikkim, Chhattisgarh and Delhi than the national average. Based on the annual figures held by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNoDC), a 2018 study by German data firm ABCD placed Delhi third on the list of 120 cities with the highest consumption of cannabis, ahead of Los Angeles, Chicago and London. Mumbai was sixth.

In fact, in the past few years, there has been a growing clamour by non-governmental organisations to legalise the recreational use of cannabis, as other countries have done. On November 7, 2019, the Delhi High Court sought the government’s stand on one such petition filed by the Bengaluru-based advocacy non-profit, the Great Legalisation Movement India Trust. The organisation, founded in 2014, wants cannabis removed from the NDPS Act. The legalisation of marijuana, the organisation believes, can help create jobs, battle stress, improve human concentration, resolve medical problems and provide sustainable agricultural incomes, among other things. Cannabis, the petition argued, is integral to the country’s cultural fabric; its criminalisation leads to needless harassment and stigma.

Given this widespread prevalence of cannabis consumption and calls for its decriminalisation, the NCB arrests in the Rajput case have triggered a furious debate across the country on whether the agency’s enthusiasm was misplaced or even hypocritical. Going by the logic of Rhea’s prosecution, cannabis legalisation advocates say, thousands who smoke weed and hash openly during the Kumbh Mela or on Shivratri should be arrested. Defending their action, a top NCB source said that while cannabis use has been widespread in India, its consumption of late has gone up, as have the dangers associated with it. “It has become serious in the sense that every strata of the population is into it, poor, middle-class or rich,” he says. “Illegal imports of the weed from US or Canada have become popular among the upper echelons of society.” Denying that the agency was being vindictive against Chakraborty, the source said, “We are looking at the problem from a professional point of view. Parties where drugs are being misused have become common in Bollywood and other places. By investigating such complaints of drug abuse, we can detect the network of peddlers and the big illegal commercial suppliers. We want to send the message that this is a wrong thing to do and we need to create awareness across agencies and governments to have it eradicated.”

Should India make cannabis legal? 

Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Youth RISE are two international organizations focused on engaging young people in harm reduction and drug policy reform. This mini-series focuses on 6 young activists who are working around the world to fight for drug policy reform and to protect human rights.

SSDP has 5,000 members in over 30 countries, and is a network of primarily university-based chapters that work towards the shared goal of ending the war on drugs. Joining SSDP gives you access to the organization’s Peer-to-Peer education program, Just Say Know. It also grants you access to a worldwide network of people with on-the-ground experience, though they may be working in anything from cannabis policy reform to psychedelic-assisted therapy to low-threshold harm reduction. By joining the organization’s Facebook groups, you become aware of breaking articles, webinars and events, and access a wealth of knowledge from other members. If you are looking for a specific type of information or support, they do their best to connect you to someone or some resource within their network.

“I’ve learned so much since joining SSDP about how to stay safe while using drugs that I wouldn’t have otherwise known. That’s just from me educating myself so that I can then educate others…you get a much better understanding of how to stay safe and keep your friends safe,” shared Dasha Anderson, who currently leads SSDP United Kingdom.

Concrete opportunities available to SSDPers are the opportunity to be trained in UN advocacy and to attend the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, an annual international meeting on global drug policies held in Vienna each March. Another opportunity is to access scholarships for the biannual International Drug Policy Reform Conference, organized by the US-based Drug Policy Alliance. Members can network with high-level organizations including the International Drug Policy Consortium. Even if a member works only within their local chapter, they can develop valuable advocacy skills.

Young people in drug policy advocacy - Part 1: Stop “protecting” young people from drugs and start listening to them

By Eurasian Network of People who Use Drugs (ENPUD)

On August 31, the world community celebrates an important date-international overdose awareness Day. This is a global event that aims to raise awareness about overdose around the world.

The government have responded with violence, beatings, and killings of peaceful protesters. The streets of the cities were filled with rivers of people who did not agree with the existing regime. All Belarusians say that they The Eurasian network of people who use drugs (ENPUD), as always, joined the International day of overdose awareness. On this day, we remember people who died from drug overdoses, and situations when we or our friends were left alive thanks to timely assistance. The call that is the main theme of The international day of raising awareness about overdose is" Time to remember, time to act " (Time to remember, time to act). This means that we must not only remember our loved ones and all those who have died from overdoses, but also act so that our friends no longer die from drug overdoses.

While global figures are hard to come by, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated the number of overdose deaths between 195,000-292,500 people annually. The number of overdoses in the world is growing every year. And we are not talking about one-time cases, but about an increase in the number of overdoses associated with a fatal outcome by tens of percent. Non-fatal overdoses can leave drug users with significant health problems, such as muscle breakdown, kidney failure, heart problems, seizures, nerve damage, or cognitive impairment.

Death and the negative consequences of an overdose are completely preventable. Most of the dead could have been saved if someone had been with them, if someone had known how to recognize an overdose, and most importantly, how to provide the necessary help. The infinite value of each person and the ability to save their life negates all the fears, prejudices and stigma against people who use drugs.

ENPUD Information Digest # 9 (July-August)

Six months after her death, Breonna Taylor's killers are still looking for drugs. In March, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Officers Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankison of the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department arrived at Taylor's door under the pretext of a drug raid, used a "no knock" warrant to enter, and killed her while she slept. No drugs were ever found, but now prosecutors in the case have offered a plea deal to another suspect, urging him to name Taylor as a co-defendant in a drug syndicate in exchange for reduced charges.

This isn't a new approach by law enforcement. Taylor's death magnifies the mechanism by which too many instances of violence and police misconduct, especially against people of color, are often rationalized: by pinning it on drug involvement.

At a time when advocates across the country are calling for reprioritizing funding for traditional law enforcement, it's essential that reforms also include the removal of draconian and overly punitive drug laws, which are at the heart of why so many Black people are harassed, arrested and imprisoned by police in the first place. Black people are almost four times as likely as their white counterparts to be arrested on marijuana charges, despite similar rates of consumption.

When it comes to their conduct, police officers have demonstrated that they will exploit drug use in just about every instance. The defense attorney for former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin recently argued that illicit drugs identified in George Floyd's toxicology report at the time of his death caused Floyd's death — not Chauvin's knee on his neck for eight minutes. The 2016 shooting of Philando Castile was supposedly justified because Officer Jeronimo Yanez, in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Anthony, smelled "burnt marijuana" and felt afraid.

Want to reform the police? That must start with decriminalizing drugs

By David Nutt, Steve Bazire, Lawrence D Phillips, and Anne Katrin Schlag - Drug Science

In November 2018 when the UK made cannabis-based products for medicinal use (CBPMs) legal most people assumed these would immediately be made available to patients, but they were wrong. In the year since almost no National Health Service (NHS) prescriptions have been issued and less than a hundred have been made available from private providers at a cost of at least £1000 a month.

For these reasons, some parents of children with severe epilepsy continue to go overseas to get their children access to the only treatment which has proven to be effective for their condition, that is, a cannabinoid medication. Moreover, the vast majority of the estimated 1.4million medical cannabis users source from the black market with its problems of illegality, unknown quality, content and provenance. Given the substantial evidence of the utility of CBPMs in many disorders as identified in the US National Academy of Sciences review in 2017 this failure of delivery in the UK seems odd and, to many, inexcusable.

So near yet so far: why won’t the UK prescribe medical cannabis?

Colombian President Iván Duque, who spoke in the United States in 2018, has his own plan for the cocaine trafficking: resuming air spraying to destroy coca cultures.

Colombian police at the traffic control point felt something lazy about an ambulance on the way to Santa Marta, a city on the Caribbean Sea. The driver looked nervous. Given the mandatory national shutdown associated with the coronavirus and the ban on unnecessary domestic travel, officials thought they should better inspect the emergency vehicle.

They found approximately 240 pounds of cocaine hydrochloride, valued at millions of dollars, apparently illegally transported, along with a man they suspected was pretending to be sick. The officers confiscated the drugs and arrested him, his companion, a nurse, and the driver.

A coalition of left-wing lawmakers, fed up with Colombian drug control efforts, recently included the details of the June arrests in a proposal to halt the lavish and often violent cocaine trafficking that has plagued the South American country for decades.

The plan favored by lawmakers is one that virtually everyone recognizes will be very difficult to integrate or enforce. She calls on the national government to take control of the drug market by buying crops of coca and regulating cocaine sales. Challenges include costs, setbacks from an international community seeking to maintain the status quo on drug policy, and the possible response of an illegal drug empire that does not hesitate to use force to get its way.

Colombia’s lawmakers seek to take control of the cocaine market. It’s a long shot.

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine government needs to revoke policies and rhetoric that lead to killings and other human rights violations, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Monday.

In her opening statement at the 45th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Bachelet called for the upholding of human rights principles, norms and actions that she said will bring better social, economic and political stability.

Those principles include social protections, as well as institutions that promote respect for the views and rights of all members of society as well as policies that "require accountable policing and access to justice help to avert the escalation of tensions and grievances into violence and conflict."

Referring to the the UN rights office's work in the Philippines, Bachelet acknowledged that the Department of Justice committed in June to review 5,655 anti-illegal drug operations where "drug personalities" were killed. The government has repeatedly said that extrajudicial killings are not government policy and that the dead "drug personalities" forced law enforcement personnel to shoot back and kill them.

UN rights chief calls for end to policies, rhetoric that lead to abuses and killings in Philippines 

French deputies on Wednesday urged President Emmanuel Macron's government to stop dragging its feet over testing cannabis for medical use, saying its tardiness compared to other European countries was "worrying".

Presenting its interim report on the controversial question of legalising the therapeutic use of cannabis, a parliamentary committee said France should consider state-controlled production of the plant, which is currently banned in France.

"It's time that France emerged from the dark ages concerning cannabis, which is a drug but can also be a medicine," said Jean-Baptiste Moreau, the chief author of the report.

"For patients today, it is unbearable to have to wait a little longer," he said.

The government had failed "to act in a sufficiently pro-active way", the committee's president, Robin Reda, added at a news conference.

French government urged to speed up medical cannabis trials

There are few things in India that enjoy religious and cultural sanctions as much as the use of cannabis does. And yet, it’s consumption is illegal.

If the mainstream rhetoric around the alleged death by suicide of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput is anything to go by, cannabis—or its resin (hash) and flowers (weed)—is the epitome of evil. The only paradox is that till 35 years ago, this view of the indigenous plant and its psychotropic by-products was not viewed as a crime. And Indians have been smoking up for thousands of years before that.

The association of cannabis with crimes, and by extension social stigma, is actually an import from the US. Though India opposed the classification of cannabis alongside hard drugs during the 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs, it eventually buckled under the pressure in 1985. “This was the Cold War era, and India needed the US as an ally and access to American technology,” explains Kartik Ganapathy, senior and founding partner, IndusLaw.

India enacted the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act in 1985, effectively criminalising the use of the fruit and flower of cannabis, but excluding the leaves. The leaves, which Indian grind on a mortar & pestle to make a paste called 

, have deep connections with the Hindu religion, especially the cult of Shiva, the god of destruction. Commonly used as an ingredient in cool drinks and sweets during the festivals of Holi and Shivratri, the sale and consumption of 

How did marijuana become illegal in India?

An innovative legal aid programme has been launched as a collaboration between HumanRights360 and Steps. The 'Street Lawyering' programme will provide legal aid to street-connected people in situations of vulnerability, including people who are homeless, people who use drugs and sex workers.

The programme responds to the needs of socially-marginalised people who do not have adequate access to the country's welfare and support infrastructure. People who are impacted by precarity (incl. victims of the financial crisis, people who use drugs, sex workers and migrants in situations of distress) will now be able to discuss legal challenges and receive information and guidance on how to affirm their rights.

Acknowledging the challenges of navigating justice, police, administrative and bureaucratic procedures, the programme seeks to support street-connected people in overcoming legal issues that may be at the heart of, or accentuate, exclusion, precarity and vulnerability.

The programme's lawyer, Katerina Pournara, will provide legal advice in downtown Athens 3 days per week. 'Usually, the lawyer sits on their desk providing advice or solutions already determined from the initial request. We invert this common practice, in a world that is already upside-down, by going to the streets to understand realities, investigate requests and provide advice and assistance to people who may not be initially in a situation to ask for it', said Pournara, who will oversee the programme.

For more information, please contact Emmanouela Soldatou, Research and Advocacy Coordinator in STEPS, email: soldatou@steps.org.gr, tel.: 6989776739

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