La Comisión Global sobre Políticas de Drogas exhorta la eliminación de la criminalización y del abandono que sufren las personas que consumen drogas y que alimentan estas pandemias mundiales, instando a la ampliación de los servicios y al reconocimiento del liderazgo comunitario. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

The prohibition and criminalization of drug use and possession continue to fuel the global HIV and viral hepatitis epidemics — sharply increasing risks for people who use drugs, obstructing efforts to prevent new transmissions, and hindering treatment. Proven harm reduction interventions are scarcely resourced, while billions are spent to enforce punitive drug laws and policies. People who use drugs are routinely caught up in the criminal justice system, frequently remain the target of abusive policing practices, and are incarcerated at massively disproportionate levels — all of which further increase their risks for HIV and viral hepatitis. Meanwhile, stigma and discrimination created and perpetuated by criminalization drive people to use drugs in increasingly dangerous settings and impede their ability to use drugs safely. At the same time, people who use drugs face prohibition- and law enforcement-related barriers to accessing services within and beyond the health sector.

Even on its own terms, prohibition is a failure. As the Global Commission on Drug Policy noted more than a decade ago, current drug control efforts have failed to reduce drug use or supply, or to reduce the risks for HIV and viral hepatitis among people who use drugs. While people who inject drugs are at particular risk, there has been no appreciable decline either in the prevalence of injecting drug use, nor in HIV, hepatitis C (HCV) or hepatitis B (HBV) prevalence among people who inject drugs.

People who use drugs have been left behind. Among people who inject drugs, one in seven is living with HIV, one in five is living with chronic HCV and one in 12 is living with chronic HBV.

None of this has to be the case. Globally, the end of the HIV and viral hepatitis epidemics is within grasp. Aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN has set achievable targets for ending HIV and eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030. The scale-up of antiretroviral treatments for HIV over the past 20 years has been a dramatic success, reducing HIV-related deaths to their lowest in almost three decades. And yet… because of denial or willful neglect, many countries have failed to address epidemics among people who use drugs

A course correction is greatly needed. Effectively addressing HIV and viral hepatitis among people who use drugs could end both epidemics. On the other hand, the continued failure to systematically confront HIV and viral hepatitis among people who use drugs will thwart global efforts.

We have the knowledge and the means. But such a shift will require political will — and for governments and societies to embrace a new way of thinking about drugs. It has been more than a decade since the Global Commission called on the international community to act urgently to avert the significant public health harms that result from HIV and viral hepatitis. We need a new path forward. The time to act is now.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy calls on the 

Fully and effectively implement the UN Common Position on Drugs

 (2018), which calls for changes in laws, policies and practices that threaten the health and human rights of people. UN agencies should implement the United Nations system common position supporting the implementation of the international drug control policy through effective interagency collaboration77 through joint actions at regional and country levels to support decriminalization of drug possession for personal use and measures to reduce stigma and eliminate discrimination faced by people who use drugs.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy calls on 

Decriminalize drug use, drug possession for personal use, and the possession of drug paraphernalia. 

Decriminalization entails eliminating all punitive measures associated with drug use or possession. It is also critical to address police harassment, coercion, extortion and violence against people who use drugs. Where drug use or possession remains illegal, people who use drugs must be guaranteed due process and judicial responses must be proportional. Legal impediments to opioid agonist treatment, or to the availability of harm reduction programs, such as drug paraphernalia laws, should be eliminated. The death penalty for drug-related offenses is a never justifiable violation of human rights that must be abolished. 

Implement anti-discrimination measures to protect people who use drugs from discrimination in accessing benefits or services, including healthcare, education, housing, social benefits, and employment. 

Ensure the availability of drug dependence treatment. 


Opioid agonist treatment should be a basic and essential service standard for the treatment of opioid dependence. 
Rigid requirements for daily clinic visits and observed dosing are demeaning and counterproductive, as they may limit retention and impede employment. Abstinence requirements or other conditions, such as compulsory psychosocial care or requirements for negative urine tests, constitute an unjustifiable barrier and should be eliminated. 
Compulsory drug dependence treatment should be discontinued. Compulsory drug treatment detention centers must be closed.

Fully resource and scale-up HIV and viral hepatitis prevention (harm reduction), diagnosis and treatment programs, including in prisons and other closed settings. 


Resources should be reallocated from prohibition-driven law enforcement to health programs, including HIV and viral hepatitis prevention and treatment. HIV and viral hepatitis services should be integrated with programs to address overall health needs, including drug dependence treatment, mental health, and sexual and reproductive health services, and should be accessible and acceptable to people who use drugs. At minimum, prevention programs should provide sufficient coverage of needle-syringe programs, opioid agonist treatment for opioid dependence, and take-home naloxone for overdose management. Individuals who test positive for HIV or viral hepatitis should be offered treatment immediately and without conditions, preferably on the same day and at the same site. Ideally, rapid point-of-care diagnostic testing (for multiple pathogens) should be offered in settings that facilitate access, including primary care, harm reduction sites and prisons. Self-testing and community-led testing initiatives should be expanded. HIV and viral hepatitis prevention and treatment services must be available in prisons and other closed settings, both when people are incarcerated and via linkages upon release.

Support the exploration, development and evaluation of innovative harm reduction strategies — including drug consumption rooms, drug checking, heroin-assisted treatment and safe supply initiatives.


Harm reduction strategies have the potential to mitigate the multiplicity of risks faced by people who use drugs and connect them with HIV, viral hepatitis and drug dependence treatment services. While many programs target people who inject opioids, some newer initiatives help people who inject non-opioid drugs such as stimulants, use non-injection drugs such as smoked crack cocaine, or use novel psychoactive substances.

Involve people who use drugs in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all HIV and viral hepatitis programs.

 Many people who use drugs experience directly the harms caused by prohibition, including discrimination, incarceration, police violence and overdose, and are well positioned to understand and mitigate service barriers, contribute to program design, monitor the extent to which programs meet targets, and in many instances, deliver services, enhancing their effectiveness.

VIH, hepatitis y reforma de las políticas sobre drogas  

La comunidad internacional debe sustituir el castigo por el apoyo y promover políticas que respeten, protejan y cumplan los derechos de todas las personas. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking

GENEVA (23 June 2023) – The international community must replace punishment with support and promote policies that respect, protect and fulfil the rights of all, UN experts* said today. Ahead of the

International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking 2023, they called for transformative change in the international approach to drugs, focusing on health and other human rights and issued the following statement:

“The ‘war on drugs’ may be understood to a significant extent as a war on people. Its impact has been greatest on those who live in poverty, and it frequently overlaps with discrimination directed at marginalised groups, minorities and Indigenous Peoples. In our reporting and experience, we have 

 that such discriminatory impact is a common element across drug policies with regard to the widest range of human rights, including the right to personal liberty; freedom from torture, ill-treatment and forced labour; fair trial rights; the right to health, including access to essential medicines, palliative care, comprehensive drug prevention and education, drug treatment, and harm reduction; the right to adequate housing; freedom from discrimination and the right to equal treatment before the law; right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; cultural rights and freedoms of expression, religion, assembly and association.

Globally, drug control has had massive costs for the dignity, humanity and freedom of people of African descent, with reports showing that people of African descent face disproportionate and unjust law enforcement interventions, arrests and incarceration for drug-related offences. In various countries, the ‘war on drugs’ has been more effective as a system of racial control than as a tool to reduce drug markets. Policing interventions based on racial profiling remain widespread, whilst access to evidence-based treatment and harm reduction for people of African descent remains critically low.

Around the world, women who use drugs face significant stigma and discrimination in accessing harm reduction programmes, drug dependence treatment and basic health care. Although one in three people who use drugs are women, women constitute only one in five people in treatment. Women are also 

 affected by criminalisation and incarceration, with 35% of women in prison worldwide having been convicted of a drug-related offence compared to 19% of men. The causes of women’s interaction with the criminal justice system in relation to drugs are complex, often linked to other factors such as poverty and coercion, and may reflect systemic gender inequality in society more broadly. Of note, most women in prison for drug related offences have little education.

Under international law, States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose capital punishment for the ‘most serious crimes’, meaning crimes of extreme gravity involving intentional killing. Drug offences clearly do not meet this threshold. However, drug-related offences are still punishable by death in over 30 countries, and human rights experts have raised concerns about evidence of its discriminatory impact on individuals belonging to minorities.

Everyone without exception has the right to life-saving harm reduction interventions, which are essential for the protection of the right to health of people who use drugs. However, according to UN 

, only 1 in 8 people with drug dependence have access to appropriate treatment, and the coverage of harm reduction services remains very low. The situation is particularly critical for women, LGBTIQ+ persons, and other marginalised groups, for whom harm reduction and treatment services may not be adapted or respond to their specific needs. Women and LGBTIQ+ persons also face even higher levels of stigma, including self-stigma, and discrimination than men who use drugs.

As the world grows older, drug use among people over 65 has also increased. The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the health and well-being of older persons, and studies show an increased use of pain relievers, tranquillizers, and sedatives among this age group. Older drug users are also more often using the dark web, social media, and online forums to obtain illicit substances resulting in a rise of drug-related deaths among older populations.

The criminalisation of substances traditionally used by Indigenous Peoples such as the coca leaf can also result in the suppression, undermining and marginalization of traditional and indigenous knowledge systems and medicine, which has wide-ranging health impacts and is rooted in discriminatory hierarchies and conceptions. Forced eradication of crops, including through the aerial spraying of highly hazardous pesticides, can cause serious harm to the environment and clean water, as well as to the health and welfare of Indigenous communities. Indigenous Peoples that might be affected by these and other drug control operations must be meaningfully consulted, and guarantees should be given that their lives, cultural practices, lands and natural resources are not violated.

Criminal laws and the punitive use of administrative and other sanctions stigmatise already marginalised populations. Criminalisation results in significant barriers to access to health services (including those for HIV and palliative care) and in other human rights violations. As called for by the UN system Common Position on drug-related matters, drug use and possession for personal use should be decriminalised as a matter of urgency. Drug use or dependence are never a sufficient justification for detaining a person. Compulsory drug detention and rehabilitation centres need to be closed and replaced with voluntary, evidence-informed, and rights-based health and social services in the community.

“People first: stop stigma and discrimination, strengthen prevention”

 the United Nations and the international community have a historical responsibility to reverse the devastation brought about by decades of a global ‘war on drugs’ on communities that have been marginalised and discriminated against.

, we call on Member States and all UN agencies to ground their drug policy responses in international human rights law and standards. States and international bodies that provide financial or technical assistance on drug policy should ensure that these policies are gender-responsive while upholding and actively seeking to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms.

We urge Member States and international bodies to supersede their current drug policies with ones grounded in the principles of the application of a comprehensive, restorative and reintegrative justice approach. Effective, community-based, inclusive, and preventive measures are equally important.

Now more than ever, the international community must replace punishment with support and promote policies that respect, protect and fulfil the rights of all.”

Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights

Meskerem Geset Techane and Melissa Upreti

Working Group on discrimination against women and girls

Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences

Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity

Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities

Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health

Special Rapporteur on the right to education

Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences

Special Rapporteur on trafficking in person

Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism

Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment

Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples

Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons

Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions

Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes

of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work voluntarily; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent of any government or organisation and serve in their individual capacity.

Posición común del Sistema ONU en materia de drogas

VIH, hepatitis y reforma de las políticas sobre drogas

Expertos de la ONU piden el fin de la "guerra contra las drogas”