IDPC expresa su apoyo a las redes de poblaciones clave que organizan la conferencia VIH2020. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) stands in support of the HIV2020 conference in Mexico City, which has been created in solidarity with communities who are unable or unwilling to participate in AIDS2020, which will be taking place in the United States.

HIV2020 is an alternative event led by key population networks – following the decision to hold AIDS2020 in San Francisco and Oakland, meaning that many individuals (including people who use drugs) will be unable to attend due to US laws and the Trump administration’s discriminatory immigration laws, detention and family separation policies, and deteriorating human rights conditions.

HIV2020 is informed by a mutually agreed upon set of values and principles:

: ensuring diverse voices are heard and reflected, including the broadening of GIPA principles to ensure the meaningful involvement of key populations. ‘Nothing about us, without us.'

-led programs and solutions that amplify community voices and show community commitments to global health and human rights responses.

: ensuring communities are equal partners (or leaders) in new research, tools, policies and strategies.

Linking global, regional and local networks through activities that strengthen global, regional and national advocacy for local impact.

IDPC has already formally endorsed the conference and supports the INPUD Statement. More information about the event can be found on the official website – https://www.hiv2020.org/ – as well as on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Declaración del IDPC en apoyo a ‘HIV2020: las comunidades reclaman la respuesta'

El estudio agrega peso a un cuerpo de investigación sobre los usos terapéuticos de los compuestos psicodélicos. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

A single dose of psilocybin, the compound found in magic mushrooms, can have anti-anxiety and anti-depressant effects which can last for nearly five years after being administered, new research suggests.

Researchers at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine said that the compound, when given to patients alongside psychotherapy, resulted in improvements in emotional and existential distress in cancer patients.

The use of the drug was first detailed in a landmark study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology in 2016, where the new research has also been published.

It found that psilocybin "produced immediate, substantial, and sustained improvements in anxiety and depression" in cancer patients, who can often be demoralised by the disease.

A follow-up assessment half a year after the dose found up to 80% of participants had clinically significant reductions in their depression or anxiety, as well as improved attitudes toward death.

Psilocibina: compuesto de los “hongos mágicos” ofrece efectos ansiolíticos que duran por años, según estudio

Los resultados de las discusiones informarán la elaboración de una Guía de buenas prácticas para autoridades gubernamentales. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

Vienna (Austria), 20 January 2020 - The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), with the support of the Government of Canada, convened 50 experts from 25 countries and 5 international organisations from 14 to 16 January to contribute their expertise and experience to an initiative on how to address stigma around substance use.

Stigma is an enormous challenge in the field of psychoactive substances, including controlled substances, strongly and negatively affecting people with substance use disorders, their families and friends, as well as the services that they are offered and seek.

Research shows that stigma around substance use is much higher than that around mental health disorders and that it amplifies the negative health and social effects of substance use, including the burden of the disease and mortality.

In recognition of this situation, the Government of Canada, together with Uruguay and Bolivia, tabled a resolution at the 61st session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which was endorsed with the co-sponsorship of 19 other Member States: 61/11 "Promoting non-stigmatizing attitudes to ensure the availability of, access to and delivery of health, care and social services for drug users". As a follow-up to the Resolution, UNODC, with the support of the Government of Canada, launched an initiative on how to address stigma around substance use.

Inclusión, no exclusión: la ONUDD discute el estigma relacionado el uso de drogas

La OMS organizará una audiencia pública para recibir comentario sobre el enfoque del documento guía. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

In June 2019, WHO announced the revision of two pain management guidelines. A full web statement on this revision can be found here.

The document “Ensuring balance in national policies on controlled substances: Guidance for availability and accessibility of controlled medicines (2011)” is being revised in accordance to the methods and procedures outlined in WHO Handbook for Guideline Development.

The new guideline will assist policy makers as well as programme managers and experts in countries in the formulation and implementation of balanced policies to ensure access to and safe use of controlled medicines while preventing their diversion, misuse and harm to health.

As part of the revision of this document, WHO is carrying out an online public hearing on the scope of the guideline on 

Additional information on how to register for this public hearing can be found here . The deadline to register interest in submitting a written or oral statement at the public hearing is 11 February.

For any further queries, please contact controlled.medicines@who.int

Guía de la OMS sobre asegurar políticas nacionales balanceadas para el acceso y uso seguro de las medicinas fiscalizadas – Proceso de revisión

Las personas usuarias de drogas registradas al servicio pueden obtener hidromorfona de calidad segura, una manera de reducir el riesgo de sobredosis relacionado a un mercado de opiáceos dominado por el fentanilo. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

Health advocates say a safe supply of opioids is critical to help prevent people from overdosing on tainted street drugs.

Now, a pilot project in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside provides some high-risk users with access to an automated machine that dispenses opioids prescribed by a doctor.

The machine, called MySafe, is stocked with hydromorphone tablets that are released on a pre-determined schedule to high-risk opioid users. A user must scan their palm on the machine to identify themselves. The machine recognizes each individual by verifying the vein pattern in their hand and then dispenses their prescription.

Made of steel and bolted to the floor, MySafe resembles an ATM or vending machine. It logs every package that is released and sends that information to a web feed that only program administrators can access.

Thousands of Canadians have lost their lives to the opioid crisis. In British Columbia, close to 5,000 people have died from overdoses since the province declared a public health emergency in 2016.

A toxic drug supply, often contaminated by a powerful opioid called fentanyl, is responsible for at least 80 per cent of overdose deaths in B.C. in the past three years, according to the province's coroners service.

"I think the only ethical response in this situation is to at least give people an alternative of a safe pharmaceutical drug that they will not overdose on," said MySafe founder and infectious disease doctor Mark Tyndall.

Tyndall says unlike methadone treatment, which is considered an abstinence-based program and helps addicts only with cravings and withdrawal symptoms, prescribed hydromorphone still gives users a high without the risk of death.

La máquina expendedora de drogas de Vancouver: ¿Por qué existe y cómo funciona?

La personas negras y asiáticas reciben más sentencias privativas de libertad, y más largas, que las personas blancas. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

Black and Asian men are more likely to be jailed for drug dealing offences in England and Wales than white men, a study of 14,000 people suggests.

The Sentencing Council looked at the penalties received by defendants aged 26-50 for possession with intent to supply from April 2012 to March 2015.

Its analysis also found men were more likely to be jailed than women.

The council said it was seeking views on whether its sentencing guidelines could lead to discrimination.

Its study found that for possession with intent to supply a class B drug, 37% of white offenders would be expected to receive an immediate custodial sentence, compared with 46% of Asian, 44% of black and 46% of Chinese and other ethnicities.

For a class A substance, around 93% of white offenders, 95% of Asian offenders and 95% of black offenders would be expected to be jailed.

The length of sentence also differed, with Asian offenders being jailed for an average of 4% longer, equal to around one month extra, than white counterparts.

Black and other ethnicity offenders did not have statistically different sentence lengths to white offenders.

The researchers also compared men and women and found 37% of men would be expected to be jailed for possession with intent to supply a class B drug, compared with 20% of women.

Las minorías sociales en Reino Unido son más propensas al encarcelamiento por delitos de drogas

Las organizaciones de la sociedad civil emiten una carta abierta sobre la situación alarmante de la respuesta a la epidemia en el país. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

The implementation of the Global Fund grant came to an end on 31 December 2019 and the new transition grant is not still signed yet. By 1st of January, all NGOs providing services to key population run out of any kind of support. Access to the services of 1800 people who inject drugs and 380 methadone clients, 1200 MSM, 290 sex workers, 30 prisoners and up to 200 people living with HIV is being jeopardized.

NGOs are required to shut down services, cut human resources and return all assets to the principal recipient (Ministry of Health and Social Protection): computers, printers, minivans, tables, furniture and even remaining rapid tests. This is disturbing for those NGOs which are renting spaces.

There is a total lack of information from all institutions, including CCM, how the project will continue, what will be the role of each actor and how the sustainability of services will be ensured, if it will be.

Los servicios de prevención del VIH en Albania están al borde del colapso

La matanza continúa en un clima de impunidad casi total. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

(Manila) – The Philippine government’s murderous “war on drugs” remained the Philippines’ gravest human rights concern in 2019, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its 

. Security forces were also implicated in often deadly attacks on activists.

“President Duterte’s anti-drug campaign remains as brutal as when it started, with drug suspects being killed regularly across the country,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director. “Four years into the ‘drug war,’ the need for international mechanisms to provide accountability is as great as ever.”

, its 30th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in nearly 100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth says that the Chinese government, which depends on repression to stay in power, is carrying out the most intense attack on the global human rights system in decades. He finds that Beijing’s actions both encourage and gain support from autocratic populists around the globe, while Chinese authorities use their economic clout to deter criticism from other governments. It is urgent to resist this assault, which threatens decades of progress on human rights and our future.

Duterte’s appointment in November of Vice President Leni Robredo as co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee Against Drugs (ICAD) raised hopes that drug campaign violence would be tempered. But Duterte fired Robredo, an opponent of the anti-drug campaign, just days later.

Filipinas: Los asesinatos de la “guerra contra las drogas” no decrecen

El gobierno mexicano reporta que al menos 61,637 personas han desaparecido en medio de la violencia. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

MEXICO CITY — More than 61,000 people have disappeared in Mexico, authorities announced Monday, sharply raising their estimate of those who have vanished in more than a decade of extreme violence by and among organized-crime groups.

The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador released the new figure after an exhaustive analysis of data from state prosecutors. The previous official estimate, released in April 2018, put the number at 40,000.

While hundreds of cases date to the 1960s, over 97 percent have been reported since 2006, when Mexico launched an all-out offensive targeting drug trafficking and criminal organizations.

Karla Quintana, head of Mexico’s National Search Commission, which coordinates the effort to find the missing, said that at least 61,637 people had been reported disappeared and not been found. “These are data of horror, and behind them are stories and narratives of great pain for families,” she said at a news conference.

The numbers confirm that Mexico is suffering one of the worst crises of “the disappeared” in Latin American history.

In the 1970s and 1980s, forced disappearances in the region became a global human rights concern as governments systematically detained and killed opponents — most suspected of involvement in leftist insurgencies.

Around 40,000 people went missing in Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996. An estimated 30,000 disappeared during Argentina’s “dirty war,” which lasted from 1976 to 1983.

Unlike those countries, though, Mexico has not been at war — at least, not officially. And while militaries were behind most of the Cold War disappearances, narco-traffickers and other criminals are the likely culprits in the majority of the Mexican cases. Authorities suspect many of them worked with corrupt police and politicians.

Más de 60,000 personas han desaparecido en México en la “guerra contra las drogas"

Los derechos humanos deben ser priorizados en todos los aspectos de la respuesta a los retos relacionados a las drogas. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

By Damon Barrett, Julie Hannah, and Rick Lines, Health and Human Rights Journal

 comes at an interesting time in international drug policy. Not long ago, references to human rights could be, and were, easily vetoed from draft UN drug policy resolutions. At best, human rights were included in declaratory preambles of omnibus resolutions, and largely forgotten in any substantive sense. Drug policy NGOs, for the most part, did not tend to foreground human rights, while human rights NGOs all but ignored drugs.

The past decade, however, has seen changes. Human rights are now central to international drug policy debates and are causing considerable controversy. Drug policy NGOs have made significant progress in highlighting the human rights dimensions of the field, while human rights NGOs have more and more come to see the issue as one warranting close attention. Indeed, it has become something of a cliché to say that a ‘human rights-based approach to drug policy’ should be adopted. The fact that this is so frequently heard, from NGOs and some governments, is a major step forward. But while much of the work to date has involved identifying rights violations in drug control, we still have not unpacked what adopting a human rights-based approach might mean.

Reconceptualising drugs issues as human rights issues

Over the years we have heard a good deal of scepticism about human rights in drug policy. Usually this has to do with the political palatability of human rights language when trying to achieve a certain goal. There is merit to that worry. No sensible human rights advocate claims your best foot forward is always human rights

. But if human rights are reduced to simply a functional strategy to some other end, then they can be used or discarded at will. This does not do justice to so fundamental an idea.

A human rights approach to any issue foregrounds the relationship between the individual and State power; this is especially the case with drug control. At present the burden falls on those opposing certain drug laws, such as criminalising personal possession, to explain why they don’t work. A human rights approach reverses that burden, placing it instead on the government to justify the limitations on rights and freedoms that such laws entail, and to be accountable for their decisions. Few governments have ever done this. But when these laws have been challenged on human rights grounds in constitutional courts, Governments have lost, as they did with regard to cannabis possession and the right to privacy in South Africa.

¿Qué significa adoptar un enfoque de derechos humanos a las políticas de drogas?

Alberto Garzón y Salvador Illa compartirán edificio. El primero es, desde este lunes, ministro de Consumo y, el segundo, ocupará la cartera de Sanidad. Un dueto que enciende las esperanzas de los defensores de la regulación del uso del cannabis en España, la familia de plantas de la que deriva la marihuana.

Por un lado, Garzón ha defendido públicamente la legalización de la marihuana en este país como líder de IU. Por otro, Illa aterriza en el Ministerio tras ocupar el cargo de número dos de la formación socialista más activa en esta materia, como es el Partido de los Socialistas de Cataluña (PSC).

El escenario es favorable y nadie lo niega de forma oficial, pero se afronta con prudencia. Según explican fuentes cercanas al ministro de Consumo, todavía no se ha establecido una hoja de ruta para conocer cuándo se puede abordar el debate de la marihuana y existen dudas sobre qué cartera debería abordar esta materia.

Existen dos vías para afrontar este asunto: la medicinal y la integral (que incluye el consumo para ocio). La primera dependería, principalmente, del Ministerio que liderará Salvador Illa. La línea ideológica del ministro se vincula con la postura del PSC, que es la única formación dentro del PSOE que en su congreso federal votó a favor de una regulación del cannabis y redactó una iniciativa legislativa popular en Cataluña, que luego se encargó el Tribunal Constitucional de anular.

El nuevo Gobierno acerca la regulación del consumo de la marihuana en España

El 31 de enero vence el término para hacer observaciones ciudadanas al borrador del decreto con el cual el Gobierno piensa volver a las fumigaciones sobre cultivos ilícitos, supuestamente cumpliendo con los requisitos establecidos para esa reanudación por la Corte Constitucional en la Sentencia T-236 de 2017 y en el Auto 387 de 2019.

Ese plazo va a vencerse casi sin debate público, tal vez porque el Gobierno publicó ese borrador el 30 de diciembre, cuando Colombia estaba de fiesta y de vacaciones. Pero este debate es necesario, pues este tema es trascendental, no solo para las comunidades directamente afectadas, sino para la paz y la democracia.

Desde hace tiempo, muchos analistas hemos criticado las fumigaciones por varias razones: primero, porque a pesar de ser muy costosas, no son eficaces, pues su capacidad de reducir durablemente los cultivos ilícitos es bajísima. Por ejemplo, la Oficina de Washington para América Latina (WOLA) publicó en 2008 un estudio que mostró que en ciertos años, como 2006, la relación fue 27 a uno, esto es, por cada 27 hectáreas asperjadas pudo reportarse solo la reducción de una. Daniel Mejía ha hecho igualmente estudios econométricos que muestran la muy reducida eficacia de esta estrategia.

Segundo, porque tiene efectos dañinos, tanto sobre el medio ambiente como sobre las personas. Un ejemplo dramático: desde 2015, la Agencia Internacional para la Investigación del Cáncer (IARC, por sus siglas en inglés), que forma parte de la OMS, señaló que el glifosato, que es el herbicida usado en las fumigaciones, es probablemente cancerígeno para seres humanos.

Tercero, porque afecta gravemente la legitimidad de nuestra precaria democracia, pues las poblaciones locales tienden a rechazar a un Estado que, con fumigaciones, contamina sus aguas y tierras, afecta su salud y destruye sus fuentes de ingresos, sin ofrecerles claramente desarrollos alternativos. Por ello las fumigaciones han sido una de las mejores propagandas para que los grupos armados locales (Eln, disidencias, neoparamilitares, etc.) logren un cierto apoyo de estas poblaciones.

Ni este Gobierno ni los anteriores han ofrecido argumentos sólidos contra estos tres cuestionamientos a las fumigaciones, lo cual debería ser suficiente para no reanudarlas. Pero además el borrador de decreto no cumple con las exigencias establecidas por la Corte.

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