Prof Hart in Ghana to deliver lecture on drug policy reforms

Wikipedia Commons - CC BY 2.0 - Eileen Barroso

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Prof Hart in Ghana to deliver lecture on drug policy reforms

2 August 2019

By Iddi Yire, GNA

Professor Carl Hart, a Neuroscientist Drug Researcher at the Colombia University, on Wednesday arrived in Accra to deliver a public lecture on drug policy reforms.

He said, he was tipping Ghana to be the first African country to consider decriminalisation of drug use, especially marijuana.

He noted that this would be a good step for Ghana since other countries had done so, because they see drug users as their own brothers and sisters.

Prof Hart made these remarks in an interview with the Ghana News Agency upon his arrival at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra.

Studies had consistently failed to establish the existence of a link between the harshness of a country’s drug laws and its levels of drug use.

The widespread criminalisation and punishment of people who use drugs, the over-crowded prisons, mean that the war on drugs is, to a significant degree, a war on drug users — a war on people.

Prof Hart is headlining the first public lecture on drug policy on Thursday, July 18, as the main speaker, an event organised by the POS Foundation, in collaboration with the West Africa Drug Policy Network and Crime Check Foundation.

The overall objective of the lecture is to engage communities, citizens and government officials on approaching drug policy formulation, compliance and implementation from a human right and public health perspective.