On Friday September 23, 2011, the French NGO AIDES, ASUD and Fédération Addiction are organizing a public meeting in Paris dedicated to promoting drug law reform.
The Liberal Democrats have voted to establish a panel to consider decriminalising the use of all drugs in the UK. The panel would also consider a less radical alternative: that possession would remain illegal, but those caught would have to appear before a panel and made to undertake "appropriate education, health or social interventions", replacing the existing fines and jail sentences on the statute book.
The White House added El Salvador and Belize to its list of drug producing and transit countries, placing for the first time all seven Central American nations on the list in a sign of how awash in illegal narcotics the region has become.
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria has raised concerns over the high prevalence rate of these infections among intravenous drug users, despite continuously supporting harm reduction programmes. The concern was raised during a recent visit by a Global Fund executive to follow the progress of an Aids prevention programme in Thailand.
Some 51 percent of the HIV/AIDS-infected households in Cambodia are living in hunger, said a new UN survey, calling for more attention to the need for HIV-sensitive social protection mechanisms.
Newly installed Peruvian President Ollanta Humala is facing the first serious challenge to his authority as coca farmer unions have gone on strike to protest the resumption of coca plant eradication. Last month, Humala's government announced a temporary halt to eradication in the Upper Huallaga River Valley, but now eradication is again underway, and the coca farmer unions are up in arms.
The President of the INCB emphasized that millions of people around the world are afflicted by mental illnesses, which are non-communicable diseases and which include substance use disorders. Substance abuse requires prevention and treatment and is a contributing factor to some other non-communicable diseases.
Bolivian President Evo Morales said that a regional South American bloc should "decertify'' the U.S. in its counternarcotics efforts, hitting back at Washington's criticism of his South American nation on drugs. Morales accused the United States of being the root cause of the international drug trade as a leading consumer of cocaine.
Calderon urged nations that are the biggest buyers of illegal drugs to consider "market alternatives" if they can’t find ways to reduce consumption.
Some 80,000 farmers' families in Colombia depend on illicit coca bush cultivation to survive. UNODC runs projects to wean farmers off illicit crop cultivation by encouraging them to pursue alternative livelihoods
Cambodia has opened the country’s first methadone-treatment programs/centers in September 2011, in approach to help heroine users. The methadone program will be strictly voluntary.