About 5,000 people have been arrested for drug use and trafficking since July in the second phase of an ongoing controversial drug crackdown, bringing the total number of arrestees this year to almost 13,700 people.

According to the Interior Ministry, 13,691 people were arrested in 6,205 cases over the past nine months – more than 7,200 of them suspected traffickers, and almost 6,500 alleged users. More than 8,000 people were arrested in the first half of the year. The Anti-Drug Department also confiscated 68 cars, 1,624 motorbikes, 16 guns and more than 153kg of drugs, including methamphetamine, heroin, ketamine, cocaine and marijuana.

Rhona Smith, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, last Wednesday warned of overcrowding in the Kingdom’s already-packed prisons. “This year the situation has deteriorated to dangerous levels,” she said.

Thousands more drug arrests in Cambodia

With the support of the Global Partnership on Drug Policies and Development (GPDPD), a project implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, a team of three Mainline researchers conduct a study into effective harm reduction interventions for stimulant users. The study includes a detailed description of eight best practices in different world regions.

As most harm reduction interventions are funded under the umbrella of HIV, most of the research and project funding also goes to analyse the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS strategies. This means that both programmes and the evidence focus on those drug users who inject their drug and they leave out those who smoke, snort or swallow. The people who can benefit from harm reduction interventions are most often injecting opioid users, and harm reduction often becomes associated with heroin use alone. At the same time, people using stimulants may face somewhat different problems, regarding health as well as psychosocial and legal circumstances. As this leaves many marginalised stimulant users underserviced, there is a need for the harm reduction field to broaden the scope and to structurally include stimulant users.

Harm reduction for stimulant users: a Mainline-GIZ study

Ghana is poised to become the first African country, and the first country outside of Europe and the Americas, to decriminalise the personal possession and use of all illegal drugs.

Ghana’s Narcotics Control Commission Bill, 2017 (the ‘Narcotics Bill’), which will repeal and replace existing drug offences, is expected to be passed later this year. The proposed legislation seeks to address drug use as a ‘public health issue’.

Implementing it would mark a significant departure from Ghana’s previous drugs policy, which, like those in other West African countries and around the world, wielded punitive sentencing as a key weapon in a ‘war on drugs’. Currently all drug offences in Ghana, including purchase and personal use, are punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of five years’ imprisonment. This rises to 10 years for possession.

Ghana’s bold step away from the ‘war on drugs’

The Australian Capital Territory Liberal party has taken credit for blocking a pioneering pill-testing trial at an Australian music festival after organisers announced it will no longer go ahead.

On Friday ACT Liberals congratulated the shadow attorney general, Jeremy Hanson, for “intervening” to block a pill-testing trial at the Spilt Milk festival in Canberra.

The trial had been approved by the ACT Labor Greens coalition government in September. At the time the health minister, Meegan Fitzharris, had said pill testing would “keep people safe”.

But on Thursday one of the festival organisers told ABC radio the trial would no longer go ahead because the group contracted to conduct the trial, Safety Testing Advisory Service at Festivals and Events, or STA-Safe, a consortium of pill-testing advocates, had not provided the relevant “documentation”.

Australia's first pill-testing trial cancelled – and ACT Liberals take credit

More than 25 million people, including 2.5 million children, die in agony every year around the world, for want of morphine or other palliative care, according to a major investigation.

Poor people cannot get pain relief in many countries of the world because their needs are overlooked or the authorities are so worried about the potential illicit use of addictive opioids that they will not allow their importation.

“Staring into this access abyss, one sees the depth of extreme suffering in the cruel face of poverty and inequity,” says a special report from a commission set up by the Lancet medical journal.

More than 25 million people dying in agony without morphine every year

So often in Australia, we are astounded to discover that good policy has been subverted by political mismanagement. Think NBN, gas supply, the marriage plebiscite and … medicinal cannabis.

A resounding 85 per cent of Australians support legislation permitting the use of cannabis for medical purposes.

And medical specialists can indeed apply to the Therapeutic Goods Administration to prescribe cannabis-based products to their patients under the Special Access and Authorised Prescriber schemes.

However, the most recent figures show that only 153 patients nationwide have been authorised to receive medicinal cannabis products under the Special Access Scheme. And only about 30 Australian doctors have been granted Authorised Prescriber status, prescribing cannabis products to a further 101 patients.

Why so few Australians are using medicinal cannabis on prescription

Drug laws should be devolved to Scotland so the government in Holyrood can make moves towards decriminalisation, SNP party delegates have said.

Members of the party, which dominates north of the border, have voted for a motion at their conference in Glasgow for a radical shake-up in policy.

The motion calls for drug law powers to be passed to Edinburgh so the Scottish Parliament can consider “all options for harm reduction, including drug declassifcation, decriminalisation and regulation”.

It does not set out any policy on any specific drug.

It says, however, that power-holders should conduct a “comprehensive review of policy” which sees “substance misuse as a public health issue rather than a criminal matter” and works towards “lifting the stigma associated with addiction; remove barriers between police and communities and allow policy to reflect the values of our progressive society.”

Scotland should have the power to decriminalise drugs, Says SNP

For over half a century, various activist groups in the UK have launched campaigns to legalise cannabis, but with little success. One of the most effective arguments used by those opposed to reform is the absence of any existing regulated legal markets for selling cannabis. This is no longer the case. Over the past five years, eight US states (including California) have voted to legalise cannabis. Next July, Canada will become the first country to legislate with a general election mandate to do so.

So this issue will inevitably become more salient in the years to come. What is already clear is that reform takes place within particular social and cultural contexts. Local conditions dictate its priorities.

Here in the UK, the debate around cannabis cannot ignore the issue of mental health. For years, there has been conjecture in this area as the potency of cannabis, its addictiveness, the impact it has on young people, its links with psychosis, and the best way in which to address its illicit market have all been debated at length.

This report provides a concise and compelling new account of the deleterious consequences of leaving cannabis in the hands of the black market. Drawing on insights from world class academics and original research, it was commissioned to stimulate a better informed and more nuanced public debate.

Street lottery: cannabis potency and mental health

The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna is holding a series of intersessional meetings this autumn to discuss how governments are implementing the many policy tasks they set themselves in the Outcome Document (OD) of the 2016 United Nations General Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug Problem.

Each intersessional focuses on one of the OD’s seven chapters. The Vienna Non-governmental Organisations Committee on Drugs invited David to serve as an expert panellist for Chapter 2, “Ensuring the availability and access to controlled substances exclusively for medical and scientific purposes, while preventing diversion.” UN member states and organisations (such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), as well as other civil society organisations) reported on progress and challenges in implementation of the recommendations contained in that chapter.

David spoke in his capacity as an EAPC Board Member and representative on the European Union Civil Society Forum on Drugs. Katherine contributed in her capacity as IAHPC Advocacy Officer while other civil society interventions, in the form of video presentations, came from Dr Sunita Panta, from the Nepal Military Hospital in Kathmandu, Dr Sami Alsirafy from the Palliative Medicine Unit at Cairo University, Egypt, and Busi Nkosi from the International Children’s Palliative Care Network.

Improving access to controlled essential medicines – report from the commission on narcotic drugs meeting

An amended resolution on drug reform has been passed at the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) annual conference.

Conference agrees that current drug policy requires a comprehensive review and believes approaching substance misuse as a public health issue rather than a criminal matter would greatly support families and communities; lift the stigma associated with addiction; remove barriers between police and communities and allow policy to reflect the values of our progressive society.

There was also a later amendment to the resolution which included:

Conference further calls for all powers relating to drugs policy to be transferred to the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government, so that the review can consider all options for harm reduction, including drug classification, decriminalisation, legalisation and regulation.

SNP agrees that drug use should be seen as ‘health issue rather than criminal matter’

When it comes to end-of-life care and pain treatment, Francophone Africa has a long way to go. But, Senegal is one country working to change this.

A 2012 study found 16 of 22 countries in Francophone Africa have no healthcare providers specializing in palliative care, which focuses on pain treatment and quality of life. Yet, each year about 912,000 people there, including 214,000 children, require palliative care. That number is likely to grow.

In countries with limited resources, where death from malaria or respiratory infections is common, palliative care is often viewed as a luxury. However, our work in Senegal with local partners and the health ministry shows progress can be made.

Senegal makes strides on palliative care

The bodies turn up in public restrooms, in parks and under bridges, skin tone ashen or shades of blue. The deceased can go undiscovered, sometimes for hours, or days if they were alone when they injected heroin and overdosed.

Terrell Jones, a longtime resident of the Bronx, was pointing to the locations where overdoses occurred as he drove through the East Tremont neighborhood, the car passing small convenience stores, rowhouses and schools.

“This is sometimes where people are being found, in their houses, dead,” said Mr. Jones, 61, looking toward a housing project along 180th Street. “Especially in the South Bronx, you have so many people in housing who overdose. To actually sit there and witness this whole thing? You’re watching this person turn all different colors. You know what I’m saying?”

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