Experts are calling it the African “Smack Track”: a circuitous route to smuggle heroin from Afghanistan to Europe, passing through east Africa. Two drug busts in November, netting 712kg of the stuff, closed a record year for heroin seizures off the coast of Kenya. The haul is less a sign of improved policing and more evidence of the growing importance of the route. The largest seizure took place in April, when an Australian warship found more than a tonne of heroin hidden among sacks of cement on a dhow in international waters.

Most heroin from Afghanistan travels to Europe by two main routes: a northern one through Central Asia and a western one via Iran. The minor “southern route” through east Africa has existed since the 1980s, but last year’s seizures—totalling some 3,500kg, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)—point to a growth in traffic.

Alan Cole of UNODC says the shift was caused by “improved law enforcement in central Europe and the conflict in Syria”. Stricter border-security checks along the Balkan Route, combined with the increasing risk of getting caught up in expanding wars in the Middle East have made the overland passage less attractive.

Instead smugglers have taken to the seas. Shipments of heroin are unloaded from dhows and cargo ships off the shores of Kenya and Tanzania, and taken ashore on small speedboats. They are then broken up into still smaller packages before being “muled” to Europe from international airports in Kenya and Ethiopia. Sometimes they are consolidated and sent by lorry to South Africa for onward shipping. Some of the heroin enters the African market to feed nascent demand, particularly in Zanzibar, Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, where heroin use is slowly rising. Heroin is also smuggled to consumers in South Africa and Nigeria.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

East African states are being undermined by heroin smuggling

The wars of Africa are fueled by narcotics. That is an exaggerated over-simplification, but what is less well known than it should be is that many of the internal conflicts of today’s Africa are driven in part, sometimes a substantial part, by profits being made from the trafficking of hard drugs and precursor chemicals. The battles in Mali, in the Central African Republic, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia are influenced by criminal drug syndicates allied to al-Qaeda-linked insurgents. The Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria also has its narcotics component. “Follow the money” is an aphorism relevant for Africa as well as the Middle East.

In the last decade, there has been increasingly big money made from moving cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, marijuana (hashish), and similar drugs first from Colombia and Venezuela into Africa and north to Europe and, more recently, from Pakistan and India through East Africa to Europe. Once largely confined to West Africa, both the narcotics trade and personal use of such hard drugs has spread to eastern, central, and southern Africa. Almost none of Africa’s 54 nations is without a drug problem, the crime and criminal gangs that shepherd and promote it, the vast proceeds and corruption that accompany and facilitate both trade and abuse, and the social ills that follow.

According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), about 30 tons or $2 billion worth of cocaine passes through West Africa from Latin America to Europe every year, up from about half that amount in 2010. Those totals represent 35 percent of all cocaine smuggled into Europe. About 2000 West Africans are arrested in Europe for cocaine trafficking, about 30 percent of the total number of foreigners caught in Europe for this offence. Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia grow coca and transform coca leaves into cocaine. Where it was once flown directly to West Africa from Colombia, now most of the Europe-bound cocaine that passes through Africa is spirited across the Atlantic Ocean from Venezuela, where crime and corruption are rampant and controls lax. A decade or so ago, ship transport was in vogue. Propeller aircraft followed. Now most of the cocaine from Venezuela to West Africa arrives by jet aircraft, sometimes even combined with otherwise legal cargo.

Drugs, crime, and terror in Africa

When people get cancer, most endure agonizing pain and other distressing psychological symptoms. In Uganda, many cancers go undetected until late when curative treatment may not be available. More often than not, the solution for such patients is palliative care.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines palliative care as an approach that improves the quality of a patient facing life-threatening illnesses through early identification and treatment of physical, psychosocial and spiritual pain. It’s usually availed to cancer and HIV/Aids patients. In recent years, Uganda has made progress in awareness, palliative care policy formulation and human resource development, according to a new report, integrating palliative Care by the African Palliative Care Association (APCA).

“There is good progress in palliative care policy formulation on the continent. The final draft of a national palliative care policy has been developed and is undergoing the approval processes of the ministry of Health before presentation to the cabinet and parliament for final ratification,” said Dr Emmanuel Luyirika, the executive director of APCA.

This national policy will ensure that palliative care is entrenched into the Ugandan healthcare system. The report also notes that 147 professionals, including; 98 health workers and 49 district-based legal practitioners and paralegals in Uganda were trained in palliative care between 2013 and 2014.

The factors slowing down palliative care service provision in Uganda include inadequately trained health professionals, lack of clear understanding and targets for palliative care, inadequate awareness, support and training institutions.

Palliative care improving in Uganda

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. In 2011, fatal drug overdoses in the UK (3,338) exceeded the number of road accident deaths (1,960). These deaths are preventable. Jamie Bridge joins us to talk about how rethinking both product design and service design have the potential to save lives in the administration of overdose medication. Naloxone was developed in the 1960s

Rethinking overdose intervention

In this lecture at a conference at Edinburgh Law School, Dr Rick Lines gives an overview of his work on interpretive approaches to international drug control law.

The 'fifth stage' of drug control: International law, dynamic interpretation and human rights

Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira, 53, was arrested in 2003 after police at Jakarta airport found 13.4 kg of cocaine hidden in his hang glider. Brazil says he was the first Brazilian national to be executed abroad and has warned it will damage relations. Five other convicts from Indonesia, Malawi, Nigeria, Vietnam and the Netherlands, were executed on Sunday.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said in a statement that she was "outraged and dismayed". "Relations between the two countries have been affected," said Ms Rousseff. "The Brazilian ambassador to Jakarta has been recalled for consultations," she added. The Netherlands has also recalled its ambassador, after Foreign Minister Bert Koenders called the execution of Dutch citizen Ang Kiem Soe, 52, "an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity". Indonesia has some of the world's toughest drug laws. The country resumed executions in 2013 after an unofficial four-year moratorium.

Brazil 'outraged' by Indonesia drug trafficking execution

In the coming years, Myanmar will legally sell coffee to China instead of illicitly selling opium; at least that is how the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is planning (again) to tackle rising poppy cultivation in the country.

A recent New York Times report into Myanmar's rising opium poppy cultivation highlighted how the UNODC is trying to promote an alternative development program that would allow poor farmers in southern Shan State where the majority is grown to abandon their poppy fields and replace them with an expensive, high-grade variety of coffee.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

Alternative crop programs for Myanmar opium farmers: Doomed to fail?

Attorney General Eric Holder issued an order establishing a new policy prohibiting federal agencies from accepting civil asset forfeiture assets seized by state and local law enforcement agencies unless the owner is convicted of a crime.The U.S. Treasury Department, which has its own forfeiture program, is issuing a similar policy. The Department of Justice becomes involved after a state or local law enforcement agency seizes property pursuant to state law and requests that a federal agency take the seized asset and forfeit it under federal law.

Attorney General Holder ends incentive for law enforcement to seize property in the USA

Concerns are growing over the disruption in treatment for people living with HIV and tuberculosis in Eastern Ukraine where fighting in the rebel-controlled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk has interrupted crucial medical supplies.

Following a decision by the Ukrainian government to halt supplies to these areas, and with the border now blocked, major stockouts of antiretroviral drugs, opioid substitution therapy (OST) and other life-saving treatments are anticipated by the end of February. More than 300 OST patients in Donetsk and Luhansk have lost access to treatment since the conflict began. A further 550 patients on methadone will run out of drugs imminently if emergency supplies cannot be delivered.

Lives at stake in eastern Ukraine

India's patent office has rejected an application from U.S.-based Gilead Sciences Inc for its hepatitis C drug Sovaldi, paving the way for local drugmakers to launch cheaper generic versions of the $1,000-a-pill medicine.

The application had been opposed by Indian generic drugmaker Natco Pharma Ltd and New York-based Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK) on the grounds that the drug, chemically called sofosbuvir, is not inventive enough compared with a previous formulation, according to patent office order documents seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

The rejection will allow the Indian generic companies to make and sell versions of the drug in country where a majority of people live on less than $2 a day and health insurance is scarce.

 India rejects Gilead's hepatitis C drug patent request

The Drugs, Security and Democracy (DSD) Program strives to create a stronger, more systematised knowledge base on drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean; to build capacity—both institutional and individual—by supporting relevant research; and to encourage policy-relevant, evidence-based research that informs the development of alternatives to present-day drug policies in the region and beyond.

Drugs, security and democracy program: Supporting research in Latin America and the Caribbean to inform drug policy

The Foreign Minister of Guatemala, Carlos Raúl Morales, and the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today presented to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) the resolution on the drug problem adopted by the XLVI OAS Special General Assembly in Guatemala in September 2014, to be considered as an input for the special meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGASS 2016) on the issue, to be held in 2016.

Following the presentation of the document, Foreign Minister Morales said “the historic opportunity to agree on a more humane and more effective global drug policy must begin at UNGASS 2016.” He said, “In discussing and exploring new strategies and policies to address the world drug problem, we have to consider not only prohibition and liberalization.”

For his part, Secretary General Insulza highlighted that the OAS “has been very active over the last three years” on the issue of drugs, “analyzing the issue from technical and political points of view.” The OAS leader recalled that the institution presented in 2013 an extensive Report on the issue, which was the result of a mandate from the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia in April 2012.

Foreign minister of Guatemala and secretary general Insulza presented OAS resolution on global drug problem to the UN commission on narcotic drugs in Vienna