Despite billions spent in drug control, European drug policies have failed to protect the health and safety of our communities.

Drug use is reaching historical records. New substances are entering the EU market every year. War-on-drugs policies have been unable to stop the growing power of organised crime. Evidence shows that prevention, treatment, and harm reduction are necessary to save lives and protect our communities, but services for people who use drugs lack resources and political support.

The 2024 European elections must bring a paradigm shift. This manifesto lays down a vision for a pragmatic, innovative, and human rights-centred European drug policy that will deliver healthier and safer communities. We invite all European civil society organizations, parties, and candidates to endorse the following calls to action.

Together, we will build a drug policy that prepares Europe for the future.

Open To Everyone, Initiated by Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network, the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), NEWNet Enjoying Safer Nightlife.

The Principle of the Drug Policy Manifesto:

Ramp up investment in health and social care

Drug use in Europe is at record levels, and the growing presence of new psychoactive substances, including synthetic opioids, has raised the alarm. Law enforcement and drug control will not stop this new threat, just as they have failed in other regions of the world. To be prepared for the future, the EU institutions must prioritise support and funding for integrated health and care services that are proven to work. A focus on services that support, rather than punish, people who use drugs is necessary to save lives and keep communities safe.

EU drug policy must be rebalanced, ending the current prioritisation of law enforcement over health. The EU institutions must ramp up investment and support for selective and indicated prevention programmes, evidence-informed voluntary treatment, life-saving harm reduction (including HIV/AIDS and HCV prevention, opioid assisted treatment, take-home naloxone, drug checking services, and drug consumption rooms), and community-based and community-led services that can reach out to everyone in need.

It is time to abandon war-on-drugs policies that, despite costing billions, have failed to reduce the size of illegal drug markets, to curb the power of organised crime or to reduce violence. Policies and narratives that stigmatise and blame people who use drugs and marginalised communities must be replaced with interventions grounded in evidence, inclusion, and human rights.

To ensure an integrated, holistic, and intersectional approach to drugs, EU health bodies must have a pivotal role in shaping EU drug policy. Drug policy must be mainstreamed across social, health and economic policies, and not be left at the hands of law enforcement alone.

The EU institutions must mainstream an inclusive, human rights and gender-based approach to drugs, including an unequivocal support for the decriminalisation of people who use drugs as a measure to remove stigma and improve access to services.

The new EU Drugs Agency must create indicators that monitor the effectiveness and impact of current drug policy approaches such as crime prevention and demand and harm reduction, including on stigma, access to services, and human rights, and conduct more policy-oriented research. EU bodies mandated to uphold human rights, EU values and the rule of law must also be involved.

Ensure civil society and community participation

A safer and more effective drug policy requires the involvement of civil society organizations that work every day with communities, can reach out to vulnerable populations, and are best informed of new trends in drug markets. EU drug policy must reflect the principle ‘nothing about us without us’, involving first and foremost affected communities and people who use drugs.

Mechanisms for civil society participation in EU drug policy, including the Civil Society Forum on Drugs in the EU, should be appropriately funded, supported, and meaningfully consulted by the European Commission, the EU Drugs Agency, and all relevant EU institutions. They should include representatives of affected communities, including people who use drugs, young people, women, and those disproportionately affected by criminalisation, stigma, and discrimination.

Explore innovative approaches, including responsible regulation

A pragmatic drug policy requires exploring innovative approaches to drug markets, including the responsible regulation of drugs such as cannabis, as a key measure to protect the health and human rights of communities, and reduce the power of organized crime. The EU should facilitate these innovations, and monitor their impact on health, safety, and human rights.

European policy makers must ensure that European laws and policies facilitate the adoption of innovative approaches to drug markets, including responsible regulation. The EU Drugs Agency should monitor the impact of drug policies and regulation, to allow for evidence-informed policy making. This will support mutual learning, increase uptake of best practices, contribute to pragmatic solutions, and prepare Europe for the future.

Alliance Nationale des Communauté pour la Santé (ANCS)

Asociace poskytovatelů adiktologických služeb, z.s.

Correlation European Harm Reduction Network (C-EHRN)

Episteme - Investigació i Intervenció Social

International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC)

RefletsduReel (RdR) - Asud auto-support usagers de drogues

For a drug policy that makes Europe safer, healthier, and more just - Drug policy manifesto for the 2024 European Parliament elections

A few years ago, Howell Miller was in prison in New York State, walking laps around the track with a fellow-inmate he’d befriended, who happened to be a former U.S. congressman. Prior to the prison stint, Miller, a cheerful guy in his early fifties, had run a construction company and a serious marijuana operation, simultaneously. “I was a silent baller,” he told me. “Then one of my guys got caught with forty-four hundred pounds on a truck.” As Miller neared the end of a twelve-year sentence, he began hearing stories of people getting rich running weed shops: “I was thinking, Why the hell am I still in jail?” His ex-congressman friend, Anthony Weiner, told him on the track that day that the first dispensary licenses were going to be awarded to people who had marijuana convictions. “I thought, I’m gonna get out and look into that,” Miller said.

What Weiner had described was the Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary program, or CAURD. It’s the flagship program of the Office of Cannabis Management (O.C.M.), the agency created, in 2021, to oversee the legalization of marijuana in New York. The state’s cannabis restrictions had been loosening for almost a decade, but that year the government passed a law that would have seemed unthinkable just a short while before. The governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, had been pushed left on the issue during a primary challenge from Cynthia Nixon; after his reëlection, he found himself knee-deep in multiple scandals, and unusually pliable. The law not only made pot legal for adults; it also allocated forty per cent of weed-related tax revenue to communities where cops had made disproportionate marijuana arrests, and it set a goal of awarding half of all licenses to “social and economic equity” applicants: women, people of color, service-disabled veterans, distressed farmers, and residents of those overpoliced communities.

CAURD went a step further, mandating that the first licenses for the sale of recreational weed go to people who had, or whose family members had, a marijuana-related conviction. In the previous four decades, according to an analysis by the Legal Aid Society, police in New York had made more than a million marijuana arrests. Although weed is consumed in roughly equal proportions across the racial and economic spectrum, as recently as 2020 people of color were subjected to ninety-four per cent of marijuana arrests and summonses in New York City; arrests in the city were also much heavier in high-poverty areas. The idea for CAURD was plain: legal weed as reparations.

Legal weed in New York was going to be a revolution. What happened?

Availability remains high across the main drugs used in Europe, evidenced by the large and in some cases increasing quantities that continue to be seized in the European Union. In addition, the market for illicit drugs is characterised by the diversification of consumer products and the widespread availability of a broader range of drugs, including new psychoactive substances, often of high potency or purity. Specialised equipment may be required to meet the detection and monitoring challenges posed by this diversification. 

The recent emergence of highly potent opioids, particularly benzimidazoles (nitazenes), poses a particularly complex threat to public health due to their increased risk of life-threatening poisoning. The potential emergence of new patterns of consumption in Europe is also a key threat, due to the availability of cheap and highly potent or pure drugs. This is particularly the case for cocaine, which has seen unprecedented levels of availability.

EU drug markets analysis 2024: key insights for policy and practice

On 22 March, German lawmakers finally adopted a bill that will decriminalise cannabis possession and home growing, and will create a regulated framework for supply through non-profit cannabis clubs. While a significant step, the draft law retains a prohibitionist framework and will create two-tiered cannabis justice. While middle-class white users are likely to have easier access to cannabis, people from racialised groups will continue to face policing and prosecution. How we got to this place—and the current uncertainties about how the bill will be implemented makes clear that we must centre racial justice and social equity in efforts for cannabis regulation in Germany and across Europe.

In Germany, people from racialised and migrantised communities have been disproportionately criminalised for drug-related offenses. This is driven by practices such as 

, and local laws that grant police authority to control people without individualised suspicion in self-designated crime “hotspots”, 

 neighbourhoods. Police control cannabis on a wide scale, with 214,242 cannabis offenses recorded in 2022. Of an estimated 40,000 cannabis cases sentenced each year,² 28% are against non-German citizens,³ with enormous consequences for people’s mental health, employment prospects, and more.

Enforcement of cannabis has targeted people from racialised and migrantised groups despite evidence of similar levels of drug use among groups in Germany

Enforcement of cannabis has targeted people from racialised and migrantised groups despite evidence of 

 among groups in Germany. In addition to that, 

90% of drug supply is estimated to occur behind closed doors

, in a market served primarily by white Germans. This means that the concentration of police powers in racialised populations and neighbourhoods is little else than an arbitrary practice, grounded on prejudice rather than evidence. We at the 

, an organization focused on discriminatory criminalisation of people in Germany, find that the new cannabis law will do little to remedy these disparate impacts of cannabis criminalisation.

Under the new law, people in Germany will be able to grow and possess cannabis, with a limit of 25 grams of cannabis (50 grams at home), and up to three plants per person. They will also have access to a regulated supply via non-profit cannabis clubs.

But these liberalising measures are accompanied by other policies that continue patterns of punitive punishment for cannabis offenses. For example, there is a restrictive limit on the quantities users can legally possess,⁴ and people can be fined for using cannabis within 100 meters of schools or in cannabis clubs. The draft law is also restrictive in the design of the clubs, requiring, for example, that members cultivate their own cannabis and 

 that can be shared among enforcement authorities. Many from already-marginalised groups are unlikely to have capacity to contribute to cannabis clubs and many will be unwilling to share personal data. As experience in other countries shows, including in Uruguay, when cannabis regulation is too stringent, people are unable to benefit from the law.

Just as regulated cannabis reflects a rethinking about the criminal culpability of consumers of cannabis, so should it prompt an overhaul in how people are criminalised for supply outside of regulated channels, as has been the case in some jurisdictions in the United States that have regulated cannabis.

The persistence of a prohibitionist framework is most visible in how supply outside of cannabis clubs will be sanctioned going forward. Just as regulated cannabis reflects a rethinking about the criminal culpability of consumers of cannabis, so should it prompt an overhaul in how people are criminalised for supply outside of regulated channels, as has been the case 

While the ceilings for punishment for some cannabis-related offenses will be reduced (from five years to three), some of the most arbitrary and harsh aspects of the current law remain in place. Under one provision, people face a mandatory one-year prison sentence for cannabis supply labelled as “commercial”. Our interviews with defence attorneys suggest it is often the most vulnerable who are deemed to be selling commercially, because they sell for survival, a reality for many.The law will also increase some mandatory minimum prison sentences. Our experience suggests that it will be people from racialised and migrantised groups who are racially profiled by police that will continue to be punished for cannabis supply. Nowhere in the law do we find the kind of reparations frameworks adopted in some US jurisdictions, including social policy to facilitate current suppliers’ employment in another field.

Why does Germany’s bill fall short in these ways? In part, it is because the bill was drafted with a more privileged white cannabis user in mind. The debates surrounding the bill were focused on questions of youth and the health effects of cannabis, certainly important considerations. Crowded out was a robust rethinking of what justice should mean under a new, regulated cannabis regime in Germany.

Instead, when it comes to matters of justice and the criminal legal system, law-and-order rhetoric from justice officials—including the police, 

, and prosecutors—has been always at the centre of the cannabis debate, seemingly almost derailing the passage of the bill at various points. They have argued that the illegal market will continue to dominate, and that they will also have more work as they oversee cannabis clubs. Most telling, they have been vocal against the very limited social policy in the law. The bill requires that people who possessed now-allowed quantities may apply to have their records erased, and existing German regulations require retroactive relief to people with open cases. According to these actors’ arguments, the administrative burden of these provisions is simply too high, and the bill should have been reconsidered, or at least delayed. Thankfully, this has not come to pass, but nor have stronger measures been adopted that place the responsibility in the hands of the state to erase records, without applications from individuals.

But every night in jail is one too many for those impacted, every day with the burden of a criminal record harms people’s life prospects, and every additional police control generates more harm.

But every night in jail is one too many for those impacted, every day with the burden of a criminal record harms people’s life prospects, and every additional police control generates more harm. Despite the magnitude of these consequences, arguments for justice and equity—for example, through more robust social policy, expansive decriminalisation, or reinvestment—are scarcely heard amidst a tough-on-crime chorus.

In our view, the reason for this is that the cannabis conversation has, since the beginning, mostly left out the voices of people policed and criminalised for cannabis. Policy makers avoid discussing racial and ethnic disparities, hiding behind a lack of official data on these issues—while also, for example, painting lopsided populist pictures of racialised “criminals” involved in the cannabis trade.

In the last months, we’ve tried to address this shortcoming in the cannabis reform conversation, bringing together a coalition of drug policy advocates and racial justice activists. We developed an 

about these disparities and are demanding politicians address the injustices we’ve so clearly identified, in implementation and when Germany’s law is reviewed in a few years. What is also clear to us is that this law could have been stronger if these considerations had shaped the new regulatory framework from the outset: We may have had a law tailored to remedy past injustices and avoid similar harms from occurring in the future.

European jurisdictions have a lot to learn from places in the US and elsewhere that have: reinvested in the people and communities criminalised under prohibition, including with robust social policy and employment opportunities; erasing people’s past cannabis-related criminal records automatically, including for supply; easier access to cannabis markets for consumers; and more aggressive decriminalisation, including for supply and higher thresholds for possession.

As momentum for cannabis regulation continues to grow across Europe, it is likely that other countries will take this model as a starting point, just as Germany was inspired by Malta – the first European country to regulate cannabis in 2022. It is essential that we learn the lessons learnt from the German experience and apply them elsewhere in the continent. And so, we urge activists elsewhere: Racial justice in cannabis regulation in Europe, from the beginning.

And so, we urge activists elsewhere: Racial justice in cannabis regulation in Europe, from the beginning.

 “Migrantised” is a term similar to “racialised”, to suggest that there is a social process through which, in this case, certain areas are understood as “migrant” and associated with certain stereotypes.

 In 2022, of the total 60,754 drug cases sentenced were against non-German citizens. In 2022, 64% of police-recorded drug offenses were for cannabis.

 Criminal legal system data is unavailable in Germany by racial or ethnic group. Therefore the closest proxy we have for quantifying racism in the system is data on the number of non-German citizens in the criminal legal system. This number is necessarily an over and under count: It is an overcount because not all non-German citizens are from racialised groups and it is an undercount because German citizens from racialised groups are also criminalised.

 By contrast, Minnesota's cannabis regulation, which became law in May 2023, has a domestic possession threshold of 2lbs (907g). In Spain, the threshold is 100g. A moderately experienced grower can easily harvest 150g from 3 plants. The thresholds as they stand are divorced from the reality / practice of growers and users.

As cannabis regulation becomes a reality in Europe, racial justice must be at the centre of our movement’s advocacy

The Government of Saint Lucia, through the Ministry of Commerce, Manufacturing, Business Development, Cooperatives and Consumer Affairs, has been engaged in the revision and development of policy, legislation and a regulatory framework for cannabis in Saint Lucia.

In keeping with these advancements, the Government of Saint Lucia will be hosting a two-day Cannabis Symposium from March 19 – March 20, 2024 as an open-ended regional policy discussion on matters relating to cannabis.

This symposium will afford relevant stakeholders and Cannabis Authorities within the region an opportunity to hold candid discussions on some of the issues and challenges experienced throughout the region.

Subsequently, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) will be signed by the aforementioned parties, guided by a common interest to establish and maintain robust, inclusive and safe regimes surrounding cannabis cultivation, manufacturing, sale and use in the individual states of the region.

This MOU will, in effect, establish the Caribbean Cannabis Forum—a mechanism to encourage and host joint discussions on national, regional or international cannabis matters of relevance to the Caribbean region.

Saint Lucia to host Caribbean Cannabis Symposium

This issue of Caribbean Quarterly interrogates the Caribbean cannabis landscape from a range of perspectives, addressing issues such as the socio-cultural significance of the plant and its uses, regulatory challenges and opportunities, reparatory measures for Rastafarian communities and enduring limitations in research.

From Hand Measures to Gram Weights, Ganja Becomes More Precise

Distorted Directions in Cannabis in the Commonwealth Caribbean - Did We Exhale?

The Methodology of Initiation Fifteen Years Later

Creating Cannabis Identity through Cannabis Use

The Contribution of Traditional Farmers to Cannabis Reform in St Vincent and the Grenadines

Lessons in Developing a Formal Cannabis Sector and Culture in the Caribbean

The Art of Cannabis Advocacy in Reggae Music

Ganjapreneurship, Hypocrisy and the Jamaican Nation State

Towards Purpose-driven and Responsive Laws to Regulate Jamaica's Cannabis Industry

A Cultural Beacon Pioneering Jamaica's Cannabis Events' Space

And a number of poems and book reviews are available 

New approaches to cannabis culture

judicial review of Canada’s decision to deny a peer-led safe supply group an exemption to operate legally will begin on March 7 in the Federal Court of Canada in Vancouver.

In August 2021, Vancouver-based groups the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) and the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), 

 (CDSA). This would have allowed DULF to run a not-for-profit “compassion club”—to purchase, test and sell drugs at cost, in order to protect a small group of adults who use drugs from the adulterated street supply.

 anyway, until it was forcibly halted by Vancouver police on October 25, 2023. Co-founders Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum were arrested and released on certain conditions

Days after the arrests, British Columbia’s chief coroner, Lisa Lapointe, 

 that the province establish and expand non-prescription safe supply programs to reduce deaths.

BC’s drug supply has only grown more dangerous over the last five years. Coroners Service data show 

 related to unregulated drugs in 2023, the highest number ever recorded.

Future of DULF compassion club will hinge on judicial review

There was another landmark moment for cannabis reforms last month, ss Germany's upper house voted to bring its 80 million citizens one step closer to legally regulated cannabis access. This follows on from Malta’s recent establishment of a regulated non-medical cannabis availability (through non-profit membership associations), Luxembourg legalising possession and home growing, and ‘research pilots’ of legal retail production and sales in the Netherlands and Switzerland. These European countries have become the new leaders in ending the historic failings of prohibition, with Germany the most politically significant yet.

Transform has supported these reform processes over recent years, acting in an advisory role for the Luxembourg and Maltese Governments, and though ongoing engagement with senior policymakers in Germany, Czechia, and Switzerland. Our efforts continue to support and inform the development of cannabis policies throughout Europe that center public health and social justice. Last year, the newly updated third edition of Transform's 

 was translated into German and distributed to key policymakers.

What are the cannabis reforms happening in Germany?

After several years of debate and political wrangling, Germany’s upper house (the Bundestag) has passed a 

 with a majority (407 to 226). The new Act decriminalises possession of up to 25g of cannabis (50g at home), allows for private cultivation of up to three cannabis plants for personal use, and establishes a framework for licensed not-for-profit membership-based associations (also known as Cannabis Social Clubs) to grow and supply cannabis amongst their members (max 500 per association).



In theory the law will come into force on April 1st. However, it still needs to be passed by Germany’s lower house (the Bundesrat) that represents the 16 German Lander (the sub-national jurisdictions under Germany’s federal government). Some of these more conservative regional Governments, notably Bavaria, are opposed to the reform and may hold up the process. A particular issue has been raised by regional justice ministries regarding the law’s requirement to delete previous criminal records for cannabis (offence expungement), with concerns that the process may overburden their judicial systems. This may mean there would be a ‘mediation committee’ between upper and lower chambers to discuss possible changes to the law - with the expungement element potentially at risk which would be a huge blow for ensuring justice. Whilst it seems very unlikely the new law will be derailed completely, implementation could potentially be delayed until October. A worst case scenario is a longer delay, pushing the reform beyond next year’s general election which, should the current coalition dissolve and the Christian Democrats (who opposed the reform) win, could potentially lead to it being abandoned or, if already passed, repealed.

German cannabis legalisation explained

In 2022, the Drug User Liberation Front opened an unsanctioned compassion club in Vancouver where members could purchase illicit drugs that had been rigorously tested to ensure quality and a lack of potentially fatal contaminants. We sought to evaluate the impact of access to this novel safer supply intervention on non-fatal overdose.

Data were obtained from 47 club members via surveys completed at 3-month intervals between August 2022 and October 2023. We conducted multivariable generalized estimating equations (GEE) analyses to examine the association between club enrolment and the outcomes of: (1) any non-fatal overdose; and (2) any non-fatal overdose involving naloxone administration.

The final sample, including 47 study participants, contributed a total of 225 observations and 44.4 person-years of follow-up during the study, and a median follow-up duration of 12.2 months (quartile 1 - 3: 10.4 – 14.7) per participant. In multivariable GEE analyses, enrolment in the compassion club was associated with reduced likelihood of non-fatal overdose (Adjusted Odds Ratio [AOR] = 0.51, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 0.26 – 0.99) and non-fatal overdose involving naloxone administration (AOR = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.16 – 0.84) after adjusting for potential confounders.

In this study, enrolment in an unsanctioned compassion club was found to be associated with reductions in any type of non-fatal overdose and non-fatal overdose involving naloxone administration. These findings highlight the need for ongoing research on safer supply interventions, as well as the potential of non-medicalized compassion clubs to complement existing safer supply programming and reduce overdose events.

The impact of an unsanctioned compassion club on non-fatal overdose

Using the ‘war on drugs’ in Colombia as its case study, this paper reflects on the recent findings and recommendations of Colombia’s Truth Commission to make a case for a transformative approach to end ongoing cycles of drugs-related violence. In Colombia, the armed conflict and repressive prohibitionist drug policies are deeply entangled, and violence is ongoing. A peaceful future, we contend, requires thinking about a world in which we can live well 

 drugs. This would be a clear break from the goal of a ‘drug free’ world that has prevailed under the repressive prohibitionist regime. Legal regulation of drug markets is proposed here as a form of long-overdue reparations for victim groups in Colombia, which could address and repair past inequality and harms engendered by prohibition, and improve the living conditions of people involved in, and impacted by, illegal drug markets. Colombia, with its unique historical trajectory, has much to contribute towards future projections on the global legal regulation of drug markets. By positioning legal regulation of drug markets as reparation, this paper contributes to debates on drug policy reform and reparative justice, arguing that the two are very much connected.

Peace and reparations in legal drug markets in Colombia

Safer supply is controversial among some physicians and researchers, who have raised concerns about its limited evidence base, which includes no randomised controlled trials, and the risk of medications being diverted into the illicit market. Proponents argue that the benefits of reducing unregulated substance use through safer supply will more than compensate for any associated risks. The ongoing lack of consensus means that further evaluation is crucial. Although randomised controlled trials would offer the best evidence, they would be legally, ethically, and methodologically complex, as well as expensive and time consuming. In the context of a public health crisis, decisions must be made on the basis of currently available evidence, and further evidence must be rapidly generated.

Safer supply was introduced in British Columbia in the specific context of escalating deaths due to fentanyl and the covid-19 pandemic; however, similar interventions may reduce harms in other countries with increasing deaths from unregulated drugs. The Taliban have recently prohibited opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, where most of the heroin in Europe originates. This has led to a precipitous decline in production, which could result in the proliferation of more dangerous synthetic drugs. Of particular concern are nitazenes, potent synthetic opioids already being implicated in deaths across multiple European countries.

Click here to read the full article (restricted access).

'Safer supply' alternatives to toxic unregulated drug markets

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema has called for the regulation of the sale and use of cocaine to undermine the economics of criminal enterprises that she said are racking up “billions” in profit.

The mayor, who has also sought to curtail 

 vacationers from visiting the Dutch capital city, has organized a public debate on the matter on Jan. 26 in Amsterdam.

“Let us conclude that hundreds of years of discouragement and repression have achieved very little,” Halsema said in an interview with Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad. “Apparently people have a need for stimulants. There is a market for that.”

Regulated drug markets