Isolation, drug-supply disruptions and other effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have sent North America’s already-high overdose rates soaring. Here in Canada, the Liberal government has belatedly taken a significant step in response.

On August 17, the director of public prosecutions issued new guidelines under which federal prosecutors are to resort to criminal prosecution for possession

nly in the “most serious” cases—that is, where accompanying circumstances or conduct are deemed to pose a risk to others. It’s a potential, tentative 

 decriminalization. Recommended responses to possession of smaller quantities comprise addiction treatment (including Indigenous cultural or abstinence-based recovery centres), counseling, or restorative justice (including Indigenous restorative justice programs) among others.

Some media outlets instantly announced that Canada was decriminalizing. Others, including 

Decriminalization has been on the agenda in the United States, too. Decriminalization of possession may now come to pass in Oregon, where Measure 110, replacing arrests with fines and funding treatment, is on the November ballot. That initiative has been heavily backed by the political arm of the Drug Policy Alliance,* which in August released a “model bill” for federal decriminalization. And numerous local jurisdictions have taken steps like curtailing possession arrests during the pandemic, or deprioritizing enforcement of naturally occurring psychedelics.

Canada looks likely to achieve national decriminalization sooner, however. The August announcement was preceded by numerous encouraging signs.

By 2018, a majority of residents of Vancouver—until recently the Canadian city hardest hit by opioid-involved overdose deaths—supported dropping criminal penalties for drug possession. And as the toxic drug supply crisis has deepened across the country, long-held prohibitionist attitudes have gradually given way. By February of this year, one poll found some 47 percent of Canadians in favor of decriminalizing possession of small amounts of illegal drugs. Mayors of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal called for the same—as did major public health figures, often also proposing the further step of legal regulation. By July, even the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police had followed suit.

And yet, Canada’s Liberal government, which legalized cannabis in 2018 and which is not philosophically opposed to decriminalization, has consistently refused growing calls to enact it.

How a Canadian decriminalization model can improve on Portugal

IDPC is looking for an Online Training Consultant to design, plan and implement a regional online training workshop and training fellowship programme covering topics relating to decriminalisation of drug use (and possession for personal use), including harm reduction and human rights approaches.

To apply for this consultancy, please submit an expression of interest by sending a cover letter, CV and two samples of your relevant work by Wednesday 14 October 2020 to: Ms. Tae Wattanawanitchakorn, IDPC Programme Officer, e-mail: pattamon[@]idpc.net.

Call for expressions of interest: IDPC Online Training Consultant

After offering technical assistance to Duterte, the United Nations risks being complicit in the human rights crisis in the Philippines

Today, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted by consensus a resolution that encourages technical assistance on human rights matters to the government of the Philippines, while ignoring calls for an international investigation into the nation’s ‘war on drugs’. The resolution also fails to recognise the extent of the human rights violations in the Philippines, adding insult to injury for thousands of victims as well as human rights defenders who risk their lives daily to seek accountability for the Government’s abuses.

In spite of the repeated calls by UN human rights experts, human rights defenders, and local and international civil society to establish an international investigative mechanism on the situation in the Philippines, and a recent UN report exposing at least 8,663 killings due to the so-called ‘anti-drugs’ campaign, today the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution that merely encourages the UN system to provide technical assistance and capacity-building to the Philippines. Pursuant to the resolution, cooperation would cover various human rights issues, including drug policies, domestic accountability, engagement with civil society, and counter-terrorism.

The Human Rights Council assumes that technical cooperation will be enough to end widespread human rights violations in the Philippines, despite the progressive deterioration of the situation on the ground, and the demonstrated defiance and hostility of the Government towards UN human rights bodies. People who use or are engaged with drugs continue to be killed, while President Duterte incites violence and calls for the death penalty for drug offences. The Philippines recently adopted a highly contested Anti-Terror Law that could be used to silence government critics, while civil society continues to be targeted and killed. The internal review panel recently announced by the Government to investigate the deaths caused by the ‘anti-drugs’ campaign is neither impartial nor independent by any standard, as it is headed by the same government agencies that are to be investigated.

In engaging in technical cooperation with the Philippines, the United Nations must be mindful of its own human rights obligations, ensure that its assistance is not used to cover up these failings, and that survivors, families, and witnesses are not put at danger by domestic processes. Civil society organizations must be actively and meaningfully engaged by both the United Nations and government agencies, and their safety equally ensured.

The resolution adopted today also mandates UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to report back to the Council within a year. We urge the High Commissioner to seize this crucial responsibility to document the ongoing violations in their full extent, to assess domestic accountability mechanisms, and to evaluate the impact of UN assistance.

The UN Human Rights Council and its Member States are now responsible for the effectiveness of technical assistance and cooperation in ending the human rights crisis in the Philippines, ensuring that violations and abuses are independently and effectively investigated, and that those responsible are brought to justice. When it comes to drug control alone, cooperation should lead to an immediate end to the killings associated to the ‘anti-drugs’ campaign, the reform of drug policies to bolster evidence-based harm reduction, the end of compulsory detention for drug use, and rights-based drug treatment – among others.

As civil society organisations and the community of people who use drugs, we will continue to follow the cooperation closely to see if these outcomes are delivered. If this effort at technical assistance do not deliver a clear and significant improvement of the human rights situation soon, the Human Rights Council will need to follow up with the establishment of an international, impartial, and credible investigation on the human rights violations.

UN fails to respond to human rights violations in the Philippines

IDPC is looking for a communications expert to work with the IDPC Regional Director: Asia, on a short-term and part-time consultancy basis, until the end of December 2020, to design and implement communications strategies that support the delivery of our workplan in Asia. Due to the fact that most of our work now has to be delivered online, the consultant does not need to be based in Bangkok, but preferably within Asia.

Call for expressions of interest: IDPC Communications Consultant

We are seeking proposals from experienced e-learning expert consultants to guide, design and implement an engaging, accessible, interactive and flexible e-learning course. Knowledge of drug policy issue is not required, as the successful applicant will work closely alongside the IDPC team (based in London and Bangkok) as well as a fellow consultant who is being recruited to write / script all of the actual content for the e-learning course.

We welcome proposals from consultants with a demonstrable track record in creating effective and attractive e-learning courses – preferably using a range of different methods and tools.

For more information on the application process, please check the Call below. Any questions ahead of the deadline may also be sent to jbridge@idpc.net.

All proposals must be sent to Jamie Bridge, IDPC Chief Operating Officer (jbridge[@]idpc.net) by Sunday, 18 October 2020.

Call for proposals: Consultant for the development of a new e-learning course

Why don’t more mainstream aid organizations work on the issue of illegal drugs like cannabis, coca or opium poppy? We’ve known for decades that the prevalent approach to these – prohibition – harms small-scale farmers that grow them, fuels violence, undermines the rule of law and contaminates politics (the UN estimates the illegal drugs trade is worth $500bn a year – that buys you a lot of politicians).

 happen’ topic in my 7 minutes of fame on a panel last week, organized by a logotastic smorgasbord of thinktanks and NGOs in the ‘drug policy’ community. The other speakers were making an impassioned case for ‘legal regulation’ (we don’t call it legalization/decriminalization any more, apparently) as an alternative to prohibition, including launching these rather good 20 principles for how to approach it.

Helen Clark, who has just taken over as Chair of Global Commission on Drug Policy kicked off with a summary of the case for treating drugs as a development and health issue, and concluded ‘‘we see no justification for 

My question was, why aren’t more development organizations listening?

Why are illegal drugs still a cinderella issue in development?

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte administration’s bloody “war on drugs” worsened during the Covid-19 lockdown, according to the government’s own statistics.

Police killed 50 percent more people between April to July 2020 than they did in the previous four-month period. In total, since Duterte took office in June 2016, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has officially recognized 5,810 persons killed as of the end of July 2020.

Human Rights Watch analyzed the government’s statistics and found 155 persons were killed in the past four months. Before the Covid-19 crisis, police killed 103 persons from December 2019 to March 2020.

The number of fatalities in these ostensible drug enforcement raids, in which the police routinely claimed that the victims fought back, jumped dramatically from the 26 deaths recorded by the PDEA in five months from July to November 2019.

The PDEA’s figure of 5,810 killed only covers deaths in police anti-drug operations. Thousands of other drug suspects have been killed by unidentified assailants, many of whom are believed to be plainclothes police officers or vigilantes operating in coordination with local authorities. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, acting on a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2019, reported more than 8,600 people have died in Duterte’s “drug war.” Human rights groups believe the actual number could be triple that. Only one case out of thousands has resulted in the conviction of police officers.

Since March 16, the Philippine government has imposed varying types of quarantines and lockdowns. The lockdown in Metro Manila, enforced mainly by police, has been relaxed, although movements are still restricted, and malls and restaurants operate on limited capacity. Filipinos aged less than 20 or above 60 years old are not allowed outside their homes, except for serious medical reasons.

The Human Rights Council should once again tackle the issue of rights abuses in the Philippines when it convenes this month. The government is expected to continue to deny the allegations rather than offer a constructive response. But as the government’s own statistics show, the atrocities in the “drug war” have worsened, even as the country suffers the worst in the region from the pandemic.

Killings in Philippines up 50 percent during pandemic

The grand jury’s decision in the Breonna Taylor case is infuriating. It was also, perhaps, inevitable.

While scholars will spend years debating whether a single indictment for “wanton endangerment”—for imperiling Taylor’s neighbors, not her—was a technically correct interpretation of Kentucky law, the grand jury’s decision fell far short of anything nearing meaningful accountability.

Of course their conclusion would likely have been different had the victim not been Black. We must continue to fight the racism that helped to drive this injustice, and work to rid our country of the bigotry that all-but-ensured this indefensible outcome.

Many individuals share the blame. It’s clear the cops involved in the “drug raid” acted with “extreme indifference to the value of human life,” as wanton endangerment is defined. Their superiors are also at fault—both for obtaining the legally questionable warrant and for the egregiously irresponsible way the officers delivered it. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s decision to mislead the grand jury and deliberately withhold information from the public should also be criticized.

The circumstances surrounding Taylor’s murder dispels the myth of “a few bad apples.” But it’s also critical we acknowledge culpability extends far past the spoiled bunch. Law enforcement’s institutional rot isn’t the only thing at fault.

Breonna Taylor travesty must renew focus on the racist drug war

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.

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