Ghana has taken significant steps towards rethinking its drug policy. The 

passage of the Narcotics Control Commission Act, 2020 (Act 1019)

 marked an important shift away from custodial sentencing as the default response to drug use. By introducing alternatives to incarceration, including fines, the Act created a legal basis for a public health, human rights and evidence-based approach to drug policy.

In a region where criminalisation remains the dominant response, Ghana’s reform represents a significant paradigm shift. It also creates space for further dialogue on how the law can be strengthened, implemented and translated into meaningful improvements for people who use drugs and affected communities. This is where the challenge now lies: ensuring that Act 1019 moves beyond its legal promises and is fully translated into practical systems, accessible services and consistent institutional practice.

To help bridge the gap between legislative reform and practical delivery, the 

University of Ghana School of Public Health

‘Executive Short Course on Drug Policy, Human Rights and Public Health Approaches’

 from 13–17 April 2026. Bringing together over 25 senior representatives from the health, law enforcement and justice sectors, as well as civil society participants, the programme created a valuable platform for practical learning, interdisciplinary dialogue and a critical reflection on how Ghana can operationalise its new approach. IDPC was honoured to be invited as one of the expert speakers and facilitators on the course.

Across five days of discussion, field visits and technical engagement, one message emerged clearly: Ghana’s drug policy reform will be judged not by the ambition of its law, but by the strength of its implementation

Drug use must be treated as a public health issue

The course opened with a fundamental message too often obscured by criminal legal narratives: drug use is a public health issue. Evidence presented by the School of Public Health showed that West Africa is experiencing some of the highest prevalence rates of non-medical synthetic opioid use globally, while the non-medical use of falsified tramadol products among young and vulnerable populations in Ghana continues to be a concern. These are complex health and social challenges that punitive responses have failed to resolve.

Despite the legislative change in Ghana, stigma and discrimination remain among the greatest barriers facing people who use drugs. Fear of judgement, mistreatment and ongoing criminalisation continue to deter many from seeking healthcare and support services. For women who use drugs, these barriers are often intensified by gender-based violence, social exclusion and the absence of tailored services.

 demonstrated the transformative potential of community-led harm reduction services. By offering safe, low-threshold and non-judgemental access to care, such spaces create vital entry points for individuals who are often excluded from mainstream systems. Participants also visited the Pantang Psychiatric Hospital, where the shift from punitive responses towards clinical treatment for drug dependence is beginning to take root in practice.

Act 1019 creates the legal foundation for harm reduction

A central focus of the course was aimed at unpacking the practical significance of Ghana’s Narcotics Control Commission Act. By recognising problematic drug use as a health and social issue, Act 1019 provides legal space for interventions that were once absent from mainstream policy conversations, including needle and syringe programmes, opioid agonist therapy, overdose prevention and management through naloxone, and diversion from arrest and incarceration into treatment and support services.

Technical sessions throughout the week focused on internationally recognised and evidenced harm reduction interventions. A visit to the Iris Place Rehabilitation Centre reinforced the importance of embedding harm reduction within the broader continuum of care one that includes evidence-based and voluntary treatment, psychosocial support, rehabilitation and long-term reintegration.

Participants also explored the need for integrated service delivery, recognising that people who use drugs often face overlapping challenges including HIV, hepatitis, tuberculosis, mental health conditions and social vulnerability. Fragmented systems cannot adequately respond to these intersecting needs. Harm reduction is not a peripheral intervention. It is a practical, evidence-based and rights-affirming response to drug use.

The future of reform depends on meaningful action

The Executive Short Course underscored a vital truth: drug policy reform does not end with legislation. Ghana has created the legal foundations for a more humane, evidence-based and rights-centred drug policy framework. The challenge now is to ensure that this vision is translated into functioning systems, accessible services and institutional practice.

While Act 1019 provides a progressive legal framework, implementation remains Ghana’s greatest test. To translate legal reform into lived reality, participants identified several urgent priorities:

Reducing stigma through workforce training and sensitisation

Educating and sensitising judges on the need to apply the new law to ensure that nobody faces a prison sentence merely for drug use

Establishing operational diversion mechanisms away from the criminal legal system for low-level drug offences to ensure that prisons are used as a means of very last resort

Securing sustainable domestic financing for harm reduction services

Expanding gender-responsive and trauma-informed interventions

Strengthening inter-agency coordination across sectors

Ensuring meaningful participation of people with lived and living experience in policymaking, in the implementation of the law, and in the provision of services.

Ghana’s reform will succeed only if these commitments are matched by resources, coordination and the meaningful participation of affected communities. With urgency and accountability, Act 1019 can move beyond a progressive legal framework to become a practical route to care, dignity and justice for people who use drugs. This would improve outcomes for affected communities while strengthening Ghana’s role as a regional leader in humane, evidence-based drug policy reform.

Ghana’s drug policy reform must move beyond law into practice

Accra, July 8, GNA – Mr. Ebenezer Okletey Terlabi, the Deputy Minister for the Interior, has called for the urgent passage of the Legislative Instrument (LI) to operationalise the Narcotics Control Commission Act, 2020 (Act 1019).

He said Ghana must move beyond policy commitments to fully implement reforms that treated drug use as a public health and human rights issue.

The Deputy Minister was speaking at the Second National Dialogue on Drug Policy, Human Rights and Public Health, organised by the Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC) and partners in Accra, on the theme: “Advancing from Law into Implementation.”

Although Act 1019 established a more balanced legal framework, inconsistencies in its implementation mean that people accused of minor drug offences continue to enter the criminal legal system when alternative interventions should be available. Thousands of people experiencing drug dependence also lack adequate health and social services, while HIV testing remains low and concerns over preventable infections and overdose are increasing.

Interior Ministry pushes for full implementation of Ghana’s drug law 

Kenya's High Court has dismissed a bid by a Rastafarian group seeking to legalise the use of cannabis for religious purposes.

The Rastafarian community had argued that the ban on smoking cannabis infringed on their rights to freedom of religion and belief guaranteed under the constitution.

In a landmark judgement, Justice Bahati Mwamuye said the community had failed to prove drug laws violated their constitutional rights, but acknowledged the need for a broader national debate on cannabis.

There has been a continued push to legalise cannabis in Kenya, with advocates arguing that its regulated cultivation and trade could create jobs, boost tax revenue and support industrial and medicinal uses.

Rastafarians in Kenya fail in bid to get cannabis legalised for religious purposes

On the 26th June 2026, as communities around the world mark the Support Don’t Punish campaign’s 

, South Africa will launch the Drug Decriminalisation Coalition (or 

) – the first national coalition on drug decriminalisation in Africa and an important milestone in the evolution of drug policy reform efforts.

For too many years, conversations about drug policy reform in Africa have largely taken place in silos. Harm reduction organisations have focused on expanding access to health services, human rights groups have highlighted the harms associated with criminalisation, researchers have generated growing bodies of evidence on the social and public health impacts of punitive drug policies, and networks of people who use drugs have continued to advocate for dignity, inclusion and meaningful participation in policy-making processes. While these efforts have produced important advances, they have often operated independently of one another.

The launch of the Drug Decriminalisation Coalition reflects the growing recognition that meaningful policy reform requires a coordinated collective approach.

The Drug Decriminalisation Coalition has been established as a multi-sector platform bringing together people who use drugs, harm reduction and drug policy advocates, researchers, legal experts, civil society organisations, public health stakeholders, practitioners, community organisations and human rights defenders committed to advancing evidence-based drug policy reform in South Africa.

Its founding Steering Committee reflects this diversity, comprising representatives from networks of people who use drugs, civil society organisations, legal and policy experts, and public health practitioners. This broad representation reflects a shared recognition that drug policy reform cannot be achieved through isolated interventions but requires collaboration across sectors and meaningful participation by those most affected by criminalisation.

The Coalition is guided by the following vision statement:

“A South Africa which is safe, healthy, and inclusive. A society where no person is criminalized for their drug use. Our country’s response to drug use is rooted in compassion, evidence, health, human rights, and social justice. Decriminalisation of all drugs for private purposes is a move towards an ethical and constitutional imperative that reduces public harm, increases access to health and social services and may ease the burden on our criminal justice system. Together, with government, civil society, private sector, and the people most affected, we can endeavour to dismantle stigma, prevent disease, and redirect public resources to affirm public health, human rights and safety.”

This vision reflects a growing body of evidence demonstrating that criminalisation often exacerbates the very harms it purports to address. The Coalition’s vision further recognises decriminalisation as a public health, social and human right intervention. By removing criminalisation penalties for personal drug use and possession, resources can be redirected toward health services, harm reduction services, treatment, social support and community wellbeing.

The Coalition emerges at a time of significant policy discussion within South Africa. Over the past decade, there has been increasing acknowledgement that punitive approaches have not achieved their intended objectives. Despite continued criminalisation, drug markets remain resilient, drug-related arrests continue to place pressure on the criminal justice system, and many people who use drugs continue to face barriers to accessing healthcare, harm reduction services, housing, employment and social support.

At the same time, harm reduction interventions in South Africa have demonstrated positive outcomes in a number of settings, while civil society organisations, academic institutions, and affected communities have continued to advance evidence-informed approaches to drug use. Discussions around the National Drug Master Plan, alternatives to incarceration, public health-centered responses and broader criminal justice reform have further contributed to an environment in which decriminalisation is increasingly recognised as a legitimate policy option worthy of serious consideration.

Against this backdrop, the Coalition seeks to provide a platform through which diverse stakeholders can engage collectively on questions relating to decriminalisation and drug policy reform.

The launch is also significant because it takes place within a regional context where discussions on drug decriminalisation remain relatively limited compared to other parts of the world. Across Africa, countries continue to grapple with the social, economic and health consequences associated with punitive drug control approaches. However, there are increasing signs of change. Harm reduction services have expanded in several countries. Courts have begun to engage with the questions of proportionality, rights and personal autonomy. Regional bodies and civil society networks have increasingly highlighted the need for evidence-based and human rights centred approaches to drug policy.

The 26th June is the United Nations International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, an occasion that has historically been used to ‘celebrate’ repressive responses. However, for more than a decade now, the global 

 to directly challenge the dominant narrative that punishment is an effective response to drug use. The campaign has helped elevate conversations around health, human rights, social justice and community wellbeing in countries across the world.

The decision to launch the Drug Decriminalisation Coalition on 26th June is therefore intentional. It situates South Africa’s efforts within this wider international movement while also recognising the need for locally grounded responses that reflect African realities, histories and policy contexts.

While drug policy debates are often shaped by global trends, reform efforts ultimately succeed or fail at the national and community levels. The Coalition therefore represents an attempt to bridge international evidence and experience with the specific social, legal and political realities of South Africa. Importantly, it also seeks to ensure that people who use drugs are not merely subjects of policy discussions but active participants in shaping them.

The launch of the Drug Decriminalisation Coalition marks an important movement for South Africa’s drug policy reform movement and a notable development for the African region. Its establishment reflects the growing maturity of drug policy discussions within the country, the strengthening of alliances across sectors and an increasing willingness to engage with alternatives to punitive approaches.

As conversations on drug policy continue to evolve across Africa, the emergence of a broad-based coalition dedicated to advancing dialogue on decriminalisation offers an important example of how diverse stakeholders can come together to explore more effective, humane and evidence-informed responses to drugs.

Support Don’t Punish Global Day of Action

, South Africa joins a growing global movement seeking to reimagine drug policy through the lenses of health, human rights and social justice, while contributing a distinctly Africa voice to that conversation.

South Africa launches Africa’s first national Drug Decriminalisation Coalition

 17 June 2026, 13:00 - 14:00 (Pretoria, South Africa)

This Wise Wednesday webinar will provide an introductory discussion on the decriminalisation of drug use in South Africa. The session will explore what decriminalisation for personal use could mean in practice, and how reform can support public health, human rights and more effective responses to drug use.

, Students for Sensible Drug Policy International

, School of Public Health, University of Cape Town

A beginner’s guide to the decriminalisation of drug use in South Africa - Wise Wednesday series

Harm reduction is a critical component of HIV, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis and overdose prevention. However, coverage across Africa remains low, geographically fragmented, and heavily dependent on external funding.

The scale-up of harm reduction services in the region continues to be constrained by punitive drug laws, limited political will, persistent misconceptions, competing policy priorities, siloed health systems, and the chronic under-resourcing of community-led networks of people who use drugs.

Recent instability in global funding — including shifts affecting the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — alongside broader reductions in international development assistance, has further exposed the fragility of harm reduction systems across the region. In this context, there is growing recognition of the need to embed harm reduction within broader public health agendas, strengthen regional leadership, and support context-specific models that can be sustainably scaled.

The 2025 Policy Day was convened alongside the INHSU Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, with the aim of generating concrete and actionable recommendations to advance harm reduction implementation and policy reform.

Strengthen understanding of progress made in advancing harm reduction across Africa

Identify and prioritise strategies to overcome key political and operational barriers to scale-up and sustainability

Support multisectoral collaboration, recognising that meaningful progress requires coordination between community organisations, health authorities, law enforcement, policymakers and funders

Elevate community leadership as a central component of effective harm reduction responses

Share case studies to enable cross-country learning and adaptation of effective, context-specific approaches

These objectives were designed to move beyond problem identification and instead focus on practical, achievable pathways to change.

Increasing access to harm reduction services across the African region: Report from the INHSU Policy Day 2025

A law at war with itself: How Ghana’s drug policy is failing its public health mission

South Africa enters the new year still absorbing the revelations of the Madlanga Commission and the uncomfortable clarity it provided about criminal networks, policing failures and the erosion of public trust. And while our own institutions grapple with questions of accountability, the world has been jolted by the US’ military intervention in Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, under the guise of the War on Drugs.

We are justifiably shocked and scandalised and the public conversation has landed on a familiar and deeply misleading place: “drugs” are the problem, and harsher criminal justice responses are posed as the solution. Provocatively, we are asked to reconsider this popular, simplistic narrative: cartels are not infiltrating the state because drugs exist, they are infiltrating the state because prohibition creates a lucrative, unregulated economy, which criminal networks exploit.

South Africa is home to an estimated half a million people who use illicit drugs (such as methamphetamine and heroin), the majority of whom use occasionally, in a non-problematic pattern and in ways that pose little to no threat to the public. Yet our law continues to treat them as criminals, corralling people who use drugs and low-level drug sellers into the same punitive framework designed for large-scale traffickers and cartel operatives.

The Madlanga Commission’s hearings have exposed what research has shown repeatedly, that criminalisation of drug use creates enormous illicit markets, and illicit markets in turn create incentives for corruption. When a product is illegal but widely used, its regulation shifts from the state to whoever is willing to use violence and bribery to control the trade.

Decriminalising personal possession of drugs will not end drug use. But it has the potential to help end the criminalisation of poverty, free up our courts and alleviate our overcrowded prisons. It also has the potential to redirect resources towards prevention, treatment and harm reduction and, importantly, it has the potential to starve criminal networks of the low-level arrests they rely on to distract the public from high-level corruption.

South Africa: Crime, cartels and corruption — The drug policy debate we refuse to have

People who smoke crack cocaine face significant health risks, including communicable diseases and damage to respiratory health, particularly when using shared or homemade equipment. Despite this, there are currently no targeted harm reduction interventions in Wales for this population.

This study presents a rapid Health Impact Assessment (HIA) of a pilot safer inhalation device intervention, exploring its potential impacts on health, wellbeing and health inequalities among people who smoke crack cocaine.

Safer inhalation devices: a rapid Health Impact Assessment of a harm reduction pilot for people who smoke crack cocaine

A growing body of research has focused on the critical analysis of drug policy narratives. Lacking in this literature is research from Africa, especially analysis of narratives around cannabis policy, which is changing across the continent as in the rest of the world. We analysed contrasting accounts of cannabis policy, seeking to highlight the diversity of narratives and the role of hegemonic narratives that reinforce policy stasis through containment of existing alternatives.

We drew upon qualitative interviews with cannabis market insiders (e.g. farmers, transporters, traders), drug advocacy NGOs and policy officials in South-West and South-South Nigeria, focusing on how these actors constructed cannabis as a policy problem. Analysis was thematic and aimed to identify the core narratives in the data and to explore their meanings and functions in policy debates.

We found contrasting representations of cannabis – e.g. ‘cannabis as dangerous drug’, common in policy officials’ narratives, and ‘cannabis as cash crop’, often found in market insiders’ narratives. The latter actors, driven by the realities of poverty and deprivation, emphasised socioeconomic and medical benefits of cannabis and supported equity-based policy reforms to secure cannabis-based livelihoods. Conversely, the former emphasised the negative social and health consequences of cannabis consumption. Their more hegemonic narratives, reflecting ideological and institutional concerns, accommodated piecemeal policy adjustments based on a framing of ‘global best practices’, thus containing reform impetus and reinforcing resistance to substantive policy change.

The article highlights how hegemonic cannabis policy narratives, especially espoused by policy officials, contribute to maintaining cannabis policy stasis.

Drug policy stasis and hegemonic narratives of cannabis in Nigeria

Cocaine trafficking through West Africa fuels local addiction

Two of Zimbabwe’s leading drug rehabilitation hubs, Matrix Rehabilitation Centre and Angel of Hope Foundation, are among a plethora of sprouting correctional centres that are increasingly taking the limelight for human rights abuses and corruption. .

This emerged during an investigation supported by Information for Development Trust, a non-profit outfit promoting accountability journalism in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa.

The investigation established that some of the victims at such detention centres who are being arbitrarily rounded up are as young as nine.



Sub-Saharan Africa