Some of the greatest harms from using illicit drugs are because they are illegal. Illegal drug production is unregulated and many drugs are manufactured in backyard labs. Users cannot be sure what’s in them or how potent they are, so the risk of adverse reactions, including overdose and death, is high.

A large proportion of the work of the justice system – police, courts and prisons – is occupied with drug-related offences. Many people have a criminal record for possessing drugs intended for personal use, which can affect their work prospects. Drug busts have little impact on the availability of drugs and, as we continue to see more harms including overdoses and deaths, it is clear we need a new approach to illicit drugs.

This week, a parliamentary drug summit, convened by the Australian Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy and Law Reform, is debating drug policy reform in Australia. This includes the options for reform: depenalisation, decriminalisation and legalisation.

There are many different legal frameworks governing the use and supply of drugs:

: drug use, possession and supply are criminal offences and result in a criminal record and sometimes prison sentence

: drug use and possession are still criminal offences but with lighter penalties (referral for assessment, education and/or treatment); drug supply remains a criminal offence

: the removal of criminal penalties for drug use or possession. Illicit drugs remain illegal but criminal penalties are replaced with civil penalties (such as fines). People who use or possess drugs can still be charged, especially if they do not comply with paying the fine or attending the assessment. Drug supply remains a criminal offence

: use of a drug is legal as is drug supply.

What legal frameworks apply in Australia?

In Australia, legislation is state-based. Different penalties apply to different drugs in different states.

South Australia, the ACT and Northern Territory have decriminalised cannabis by applying civil penalties, if a person meets certain eligibility criteria. All other states have no decriminalisation options for any illicit drugs. All Australian states have depenalisation systems in place for cannabis, through diversion to education, assessment or treatment for those who meet eligibility criteria. Non-attendance at education, assessment or treatment can still lead to criminal charges. All states, except NSW and Queensland, have depenalisation options for drugs other than cannabis.

How does decriminalisation affect drug supply and use?

Most research on decriminalisation is based on cannabis and has shown a number of consequences of decriminalisation. One negative effect of decriminialisation is net-widening: an increase in the number of people arrested or charged. The way decriminalisation is implemented can affect the extent of net-widening. On the other hand, several studies have shown that decriminalisation does not increase drug use among existing or new users. It reduces demand on, and the cost of, the criminal justice system.

Portugal decriminalised the use and possession of all illicit drugs in 2001. At the same time, it expanded investment in drug treatment, harm reduction and social reintegration. Impacts of this reform included a reduced burden on the criminal justice system, reductions in problematic drug use, reductions in drug-related HIV and AIDS, reductions in drug-related deaths, and reduced social costs of responding to drugs.

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

Australia’s recreational drug policies aren’t working, so what are the options for reform? 

A United Nations body which oversees global drug treaties has warned so-called legal highs present a "growing threat" as the number of substances rocketed last year.

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said the drugs, known officially as "new psychoactive substances", had "continued to emerge in increasingly high numbers over the past year"."By October 2015, members states had reported 602 new substances.

"This represents a 55 per cent increase from the previous year, when 388 new substances were reported," said a new report.

The agency, which is independent but oversees the way countries deal with drugged banned under UN treaties, added: "Keeping up with this pace represents a key challenge for the international drug control system, which will need to come up with more flexible and workable approaches to tackle the threat of new psychoactive substances." It added that the drugs represented a "growing threat".

In a significant shift of language, the INCB said the international drug control treaties which it oversees "do not mandate a 'war on drugs'".

Werner Sipp, the INCB president, said: “It is not the case that the world must choose between ‘militarized’ drug law enforcement on one hand and the legalization of non-medical use of drugs on the other; but rather to put health and welfare at the centre of a balanced drug policy.”

It comes after another UN drug agency was caught in an embarrassing row last year after Sir Richard Branson, the British businessman, leaked an official document which appeared to back decriminalising possession of drugs. The document from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said liberalisation of laws on controlled substances may need to be carried out world-wide. But the significance of the two-page paper was contested by UN chiefs in Vienna, who said it did not amount to official policy.

Sir Richard, who sits on the Global Commission on Drug Policy, broke an embargo on the document before its official release at a conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October.

Number of 'legal highs' soaring, warns United Nations body

Over a year into its pilot methadone program, Senegal is paving the way for harm reduction in West Africa.

The Centre for the Integrated Management of Addiction in Dakar (CEPIAD) opened in December 2014 and is the first publicly funded opioid substitution treatment (OST) program in West Africa. Located in Fann, a low-income 

 in the capital Dakar, the OST program provides a needle exchange program, skills training programs, anti-retroviral therapy and counseling, among other services.

In its first seven months of operation, some 250 people accessed the center’s services, three quarters of whom use heroin, reported 

, while around 100 people currently utilize the OST on offer with more on the waiting list.

The provision of methadone (an opioid substitute often administered at OST programs) and needle exchange programs could help combat HIV and hepatitis C rates among injecting drug users in Senegal, which were at 9.4 percent and 38.9 percent respectively, according to a 2011 study. Not only does the HIV rate in particular sit well above the national average — 0.5 percent among the adult population (15-49 year olds) – the 2011 study also found that 33.9 percent of people had last injected outside of their homes, thus lacking a safe and potentially sterile environment, and over 10 percent of people had shared needles. Both of these practices significantly increase the spread of blood-borne viruses.

By providing funding for OST, the Senegalese government has joined just a handful of similar initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa, namely those based in Kenya, Tanzania and Mauritius. Elsewhere in Africa, such as in Burkina Faso and South Africa, people can only access OST privately, according to the 2014 Global State of Harm Reduction.

However, while Dakar’s program is a positive anomaly, it is still too early to determine its impact. In a private conversation, some service users commented that the centre’s location, as well as the travel time and cost to CEPIAD, meant that they were not always able to access the OST program during opening hours. Arguably these barriers make it more difficult for all CEPIAD service users to stick to a daily OST provision, and increases the risk that people will instead use heroin if OST isn’t available.

Senegal will hopefully continue to pave the way for harm reduction in West Africa through continual evaluation of its program so as to best serve the people who need it most.

This article was originally published on 1st March 2016 on Talking Drugs.

Senegal leading the way on methadone provision in West Africa

What can the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the world drug problem achieve? In this feature, we share perspectives from people working in South America, West Africa and Asia and in global development.

Coordinator, Center for Studies on Public Security and Citizenship, University Candido Mendes, Rio de Janeiro

I am hopeful that the UNGASS 2016 is the first of the many next steps we need to take to move forward to a time when the use of all drugs will, again, be considered a normal part of life. To begin with, we need a clear sign that the criminalisation of users will not be accepted any longer, anywhere.

But we need much more than that, particularly in Latin America, which is the most violent region in the world. In Brazil alone, there were more than 50,000 homicides in 2014, and these numbers have been dramatically similar for the last years. A big portion of these homicides are related to the so called ‘War on Drugs’. On top of that, also in the name of fighting this ‘war’, the Police forces kill six people every single day in the country.

We need to stop this senseless and bloody war that makes victims everywhere and has been absolutely incapable of reducing illicit drug use. May the UNGASS 2016 inaugurate a new era of rational and humane drug policy in the world.

Programme Coordinator, The Transnational Institute, Amsterdam

As in 1998, the Special Session of the UN General Assembly will provide an opportunity for governments and civil society to take another step towards recovering common sense in drug policy and giving meaning to democracy.

This long and slow process is painstaking sometimes, and one wonders if it is worth all the trouble. At the 2015 Commission on Narcotic Drugs, fundamental differences in approaches became increasingly visible so many civil society representatives could deliver statements and contribute to the debate to a large extent.

At the same time, while a positive paradigm shift from drugs as a crime issue to being a health issue is becoming increasingly accepted, as reflected in formal country statements, a similar development is not clear on another important and fundamental issue: the people growing the plants needed to produce the drugs. Thousands of famers’ families immersed in poverty, targeted by eradication, facing criminalisation and human rights abuses for the past four decades, need to have their voices heard in UNGASS, and attention must be drawn to the urgent need to shift the paradigm in supply control towards sustainable livelihood targets.

My hope for UNGASS is that we will be able to bring these issues to the fore, being comprehensive in our objectives to regain justice for all those actors on the world drugs market who have been invisible until now. A Global Forum will be organised in January by TransNI, together with partners, to ensure this.

Persaudaraan Korban Napza Indonesia (PKNI) and Asian Network of People Who Use Drugs (ANPUD) [pic 3]

UNGGAS 2016 represents one of the highest-level platforms from which to influence the strategic direction and content of drug policies. Despite the significant number of people who use drugs in the Asia region, only a minority of Asian voices are being heard in global drug debates. Countries in Asia have some of the most punitive drug policies, combined with insufficient support for harm reduction, and as such, there is a critical need for voices from Asian civil groups to be heard.

The UNGASS negotiations must prioritise ending the criminalisation of people who use drugs. We call on all Asian governments to eliminate penalties for drug use and possession of drug paraphernalia.

We must fund comprehensive harm-reduction and health services. UN agencies recommend the implementation of a comprehensive package of nine health and social care services to prevent HIV and other blood-borne viruses and enable services such as needle exchange programmes, opioid substitution therapy and overdose prevention. Adequate, annual budgets must be set for these programmes, as well as programmes promoting reproductive health and rights, legal assistance and peer outreach for people who use drugs. Reducing HIV and hepatitis C by 75 percent globally amongst people who inject drugs in the next five years should be set as a bold target

Respecting and protecting the human rights of people who use drugs is also important. Human rights violations against people who use drugs have been extensively documented in many countries across Asia. We urge all governments to improve monitoring and accountability for human rights violations, while ensuring the availability of social and legal protections with adequate access to justice and legal aid.

We must close compulsory centres for people who use drugs and scale up voluntary community-based drug treatment dependence services. The evidence convincingly demonstrates that compulsory detention and forced treatment have been ineffective, costly and out of line with international best-practice guidelines and human rights obligations.

We also demand the rapid scaling up of voluntary, evidence-based and community-based drug dependence treatment.

We must meaningfully involve and facilitate the participation of people who use drugs in international policy processes such as UNGASS. We call on relevant UN and donor agencies to promote, facilitate and financially support the meaningful participation of people who use drugs and civil society groups in local, national, regional and global forums relating to drug policy.

International Drug Policy Consortium Consultant for Africa, Ghana

As preparations begin for UNGASS in April 2016, the key debates are being actively engaged in by civil society and regional groups such as Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU). Drug use, trafficking and production are serious concerns for West Africa and the rest of the continent, but what are these stakeholders expecting from UNGASS?

In West Africa, a range of meetings have been facilitated to raise awareness of the UNGASS and drug policy issues more broadly. The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) partnered with the West Africa Commission on Drugs and others to run capacity-building workshops in 2015 for civil society and the media. Within several countries, the West Africa Civil Society Institute and the West Africa Drug Policy Network have brought together civil society and government officials, and both ECOWAS and the AU have hosted high-level meetings to deliberate on their respective ‘asks’ for UNGASS.

The target is to get our governments to engage more in the international discussions and to support an agenda for a human rights-centred approach to tackling drugs, more focus on harm reduction and addressing the issue of drug use and dependence through a public health lens rather than criminal justice.

Progressive voices in the region are also calling for the harmonisation of drug legislation and for people who use drugs to be given support and care rather than being punished and given criminal records.

Achieving this shift requires greater resources for health services, increased support to ensure the provision and availability of essential and controlled medicines for palliative care and pain relief and for alternatives to incarceration or punishment for minor, non-violent drug-related offences. There is a call for more balance between supply and demand reduction efforts, with more emphasis on harm-reduction services. There should also be proportionality in punishments when it comes to drug laws at the local, national, regional and international levels.

There are ongoing challenges as we seek to ensure this approach is listened to. There is a very real lack of African voices and engagement in the international drug policy debates. Many African governments do not have a physical presence in Vienna (where the international drug debates are held), so there is an urgent need to increase their participation and understanding of the issues and options being discussed.

UNGASS 2016: Hopeful global voices

Building on the success of the Beyond 2008 initiative and after reviewing best practices of civil society involvement in other recent high-level United Nations General Assembly meetings, the Vienna NGO Committee on Drugs (VNGOC) and the New York NGO Committee on Drugs (NYNGOC) collaborated on setting up the Civil Society Task Force (CSTF) for the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the world drug problem in 2016.

The mission of the CSTF is to serve as the official liaison between the United Nations and civil society in the preparatory process of and at the UNGASS, with the aim of ensuring a comprehensive, structured, meaningful and balanced participation of civil society during this process.

In fulfilling its role of offering grassroots NGOs the possibility to share their valuable on-the-ground experience in the preparatory process of and at the UNGASS, the CSTF is organizing a Civil Society Forum on 18 April 2016 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in conference room 12 (UNHQ, New York).

To apply for a civil society speaker role at the Civil Society Forum, please fill out this form below until 1 April 2016.

Also, please make sure to register here, to participate in the UNGASS by 28 March 2016.

Kindly note, however, that the CSTF will not be in a position to cover any related travel and accommodation costs. Applicants also need to make their own visa arrangements, if applicable. For this purpose, the CSTF will provide invitation letters.

Further information on the work of the CSTF is available here and on the Special Session of the General Assembly on the world drug problem here.

Application Form: Civil Society speakers for the Civil Society Forum at UNGASS 2016 

This International Women’s Day, in the run up to the UN’s General Assembly on the ‘World Drug Problem’ we’re focusing on women who use drugs who are often overlooked in HIV and harm reduction programmes, despite being increasingly affected.

Women are especially vulnerable to HIV and hepatitis C transmission. HIV rates are generally higher among women who use drugs, compared with men who use drugs. Women who use drugs often suffer the consequences of harmful drug policy more intensively than men. Women are incarcerated for drug offences, mostly non-violent, more than for any other crime.

In Ukraine, where the Alliance’s largest HIV and harm reduction programme operates, women account for almost half of all HIV cases among adults.

The sharing of injecting equipment is the main driver of HIV transmission in Ukraine, though increasing numbers of new infections are attributed to unprotected sex. Despite this, very few HIV programmes have integrated harm reduction and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services.

“There is a general idea that people who use opiates are not capable of having sex,” believes Liudmyla Shulga, head of the technical support team at the Alliance for Public Health.

In Kenya, where an estimated 18,000 people inject drugs, research showed that only around 15% of people who inject drugs receive SRHR services, which means women are missing out on vital interventions including condoms and family planning, access to safe abortion, and maternal health services including prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) services.

In Kenya and Ukraine there are also two examples of Alliance Linking Organisations addressing this imbalance by combining harm reduction and SRHR services.

The Gender Project: For women who use drugs

As the West throttles down on its 45-year-old war on drugs, acknowledging that the trillion-dollar price tag has only fuelled civil conflict in Latin America, crowded the prisons at home, and harmed more addicts than it has healed, another bloc of nations is gearing up to implement the self-same failed policies. So guess who’s with China, Indonesia, Russia and the Middle East on this? Yup, South Africa, under the inspired guidance of the Hawks.

“Home page of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation”. That’s what it says above the URL address bar where the announcement that forms the backbone — or, more accurately, the central bone of contention — of this article appears. As per the announcement, there is a new acronym in the global war on drugs, which at first glance seems as bland and inoffensive as any other acronym that occasionally gets beamed down to us from the Starship Geopolitics: RAADD, short for Russia-Africa Anti-Drugs Dialogue. But before we tell you exactly who the Hawks (aka the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation) have chosen to “dialogue” with in the Russians, and before we explain why calling this an “Africa”-wide partnership is wishful thinking at best, let us lay out the principles upon which RAADD has been set up.

“The contemporary global drug phenomenon is unprecedented in its scale and implications,” we read in the announcement, “as it threatens security, stability, undermines sustainable economic development and adversely affects the health and well-being of human beings. The global illicit drug trade has assumed macroeconomic proportions and is rapidly diversifying to new markets (the so-called balloon effect). Africa’s drug landscape is constantly evolving. In the past Africa predominantly produced and abused cannabis, but more recently there is greater availability of harder drugs such as cocaine, heroin and synthetic drugs. Africa is in the spotlight as it has emerged as a corridor for large-scale transshipment of Latin American cocaine and Afghani heroin to the drug markets. South Africa is also directly and indirectly affected by these mega-drug flows.”

Nope, if we’re to believe our own beloved Hawks, the 45-year-old global “war on drugs” has 

 and top officials in President Barack Obama’s White House have told us it’s been. According to the tenor of RAADD’s proclamation, we should ignore the statistics out of the Drug Policy Alliance that puts the number of people killed in Mexico’s drug war since 2006 at upwards of 100,000, the number of US fatalities from drug overdoses in 2014 at upwards of 47,000, and the number of US tax dollars spent in the last four decades to fight the war on drugs at upwards of $1-trillion.

What’s happening here, all too clearly, is another species-wide parting of the ways, a fracture in the notion of what constitutes success in the battle against our common penchant for self-destruction, and it’s just as 

 noted in May 2015: “[As] one drug war begins to wind down, another is cranking up across Asia, Russia and the Middle East.”

In making this simple yet momentous statement, the magazine was referring to the evidence that was there for all to see. China’s president calling for “forceful measures to wipe drugs out”; Indonesia’s state leader deeming drugs a “national emergency” and giving the green light for a string of firing-squad executions of traffickers; Russia lobbying for a) Afghanistan’s opium-poppy fields to be sprayed out of existence, and b) its neighbours to institute the same ban on methadone, the heroin substitute for recovering addicts, that it had proudly promulgated a few years before.

Comrades in arms: South Africa, Russia, and the new global war on drugs

In Brazil’s old colonial capital of Salvador de Bahia, February means Carnaval, a six-day Dionysian celebration often called the biggest street party in the world. But behind the merriment hides a striking example of Brazil’s endemic structural racism.

Though Salvador’s population is 80 percent black, the 

 dancing down the cordoned-off avenues are mostly white, protected from the masses by largely black, rope-holding sentinels. Bleachers packed with white spectators are defended by still more black security guards. Police patrol the crowds, demonstrating radically different attitudes toward the carousers depending on the color of their skin. It’s black Brazilians’ unequal status made manifest in a week-long party—a reality all the more maddening given the Afro-Brazilian origins of both Carnaval and Salvador.

That’s why my fellow activists and I chose Carnaval season to speak out about the racism that permeates our society. Specifically, we’re setting our sights on the so-called war on drugs, which might be more accurately seen as Brazil’s war on black communities. In its official launch, the Black Initiative for a New Drug Policy took to the streets of Salvador during Carnaval with a group whose samba theme urged spectators, “Tire seu racismo do caminho que eu quero passar com a minha co

(Get your racism out of my way, I want to pass by with my color).

The mission of the Black Initiative, launched in partnership with Brazil’s Collective of Black Entities and the Latin American Network of People Who Use Drugs, is to build a movement of black organizations and activists advocating a new approach to drug policy.

Our aim is to highlight the disproportionately negative impacts of current drug policies on Afro-Brazilian communities in advance of April’s UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the “world drug problem.” This event, and the preparatory meetings leading up to it, offer an historic occasion for communities negatively impacted by drug policies—not just communities of color, but indigenous populations, women, youth, and people who use drugs. In the presence of some of the same people who originally launched the war on drugs so many years ago, it’s our chance to present and assess possibilities for purging our world of such harmful paradigms.

Punitive drug laws—and enforcement of those laws—have had disastrous results for Afro-Brazilians. Approximately 53 percent of Brazilian society identifies as black (

). Yet black and brown people represent eight of every ten homeless people, 77 percent of homicide victims, and a large majority of those incarcerated in the country’s overcrowded prisons, where half a million people survive in subhuman conditions.

How Brazil’s drug war became a crusade against people of color

It is impossible to know how many people have been deterred from using cannabis out of deference to the law. Decades of prohibition have not prevented the drug from establishing itself as a part of the repertoire of psychoactive substances that British people use for leisure and, for a few, non-recreational medication. Despite the theoretical threat of prosecution, cannabis use has become sufficiently uncontroversial for stories about David Cameron dabbling in his youth to have surfaced without measurable impact on his standing as prime minister.

That is not to say the drug is harmless. It appears to put young users at a heightened risk of developing serious mental illness, although only a small minority will be afflicted. Heavy, long-term use is associated with a number of unhappy social and physical conditions, although cause and effect are always hard to disentangle. And, of course, smoking is a dangerous habit with or without cannabis thrown in. The challenge for policymakers is to draft laws that deal with some citizens’ proven appetite for drugs while maximising safety for all, in accordance with the best available evidence. British governments have routinely failed that test. So the publication this week of a report by an expert panel, outlining a potential model of cannabis decriminalisation, is welcome as a step towards rational debate. The report, commissioned by the Liberal Democrats ahead of their spring conference this weekend, envisages a regulated system of legal sale and small-scale production, with a pricing mechanism that steers users towards milder forms of the drug.

Such a document is always vulnerable to criticism from all sides. For libertarians, it looks like another futile effort by the state to manage pent-up market forces. For prohibitionists it is another slip down the slope towards unbridled, licentious mass intoxication. The whole exercise is academic in any case, since the current government has no interest in such a scheme. Its recent effort at legislation in this area, the psychoactive substances bill, created an unenforceable blanket ban on pretty much any chemical compound that might be ingested for kicks. This demonstrated lazy, wilful ignorance of the practical realities of drug use and how best to police it. The Home Office is interested in neither scientific evidence nor lessons from overseas in this field.

There is no perfect template for reform. Different countries have had vastly different experiences. Culture, fashion, demographics and economics all play a part – arguably a bigger part – than state enforcement. But the international trend is moving away from the crudest form of ban-and-punish regime. Most cannabis users do little harm to themselves or others, except by funding organised crime, a function of illegality. Many who might otherwise dabble unscathed end up harmed by the consequences of prohibition: street products of unpredictable strength; career-ending convictions for minor offences; retail contact with gangsters.

Decriminalisation would not fix all the problems with cannabis, and – even if that path were pursued – it is not guaranteed that the model advocated this week would be the best variant. But it is obvious that the existing regime is failing and that a rational, evidence-led review is overdue. Anything that steers the debate a little in that direction must count as progress.

 The Guardian view on UK drug laws: high time to challenge a failing prohibition 

While other jurisdictions have begun implementing Good Samaritan laws, allowing those at the scene of a drug overdose to contact emergency services without fear of police intervention, the UK is lagging woefully behind in their implementation.

At the launch event for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) UK on February 29, Rose Humphries spoke of how two of her son had suffered fatal heroin overdoses, attributing their needless deaths to punitive drug laws.

Speaking as part of think tank Transform’s campaign Anyone’s Child: Families for Safer Drug Control, Rose mentioned in particular how 13 years after the death of her younger son, Roland, she was still wondering whether the delay in calling the ambulance was because his friends were worried about getting in trouble with the police.

Medical amnesty, a concept which has yet to be enshrined in UK law, could have prevented this situation. Also known as a “Good Samaritan” policy, caller amnesty grants legal protection to people who give assistance to those who they “reasonably believe” to be in danger, and, in some cases, imposes a legal duty to assist. In the context of drug overdoses, it would provide reassurance to witnesses that they, and the person overdosing, would not be arrested after calling for help.

Under current UK law, this is not a guarantee. Callers in life-threatening overdose scenarios face the risk of the police attending their ambulance call out, and the fear of undergoing searches for drugs and arrests for possession. Penalties for possession of heroin, for example, can be up to seven years in prison.

In practice, this is rarely enforced: NHS guidelines for drug helpline operators advise that local ambulance protocol for overdose responses has in many areas been changed, such that the police no longer routinely attend unless there has been a death, a child is involved, or the ambulance crew perceive themselves to be at risk. In localities where police attendance is routine, callers can be reassured that police normally do not conduct searches for drugs.

The uncertainty, however, can be enough to deter someone making a potentially lifesaving call, and the guidelines highlight that many drug users delay calling for help as a result of their fear. For Roland, this may have been fatal.

Well-written medical amnesty laws can prevent this, and indeed they already exist elsewhere in the world, including in large parts of the United States, and are being explored as a possibility in Canada. In the former, notable developments have occurred on college campuses, with the intent of reducing judicial consequences both from drug use and underage drinking.

Tackling overdose deaths: It’s time for the UK to introduce good Samaritan laws

In April 2016, the member states of the United Nations will gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug Problem. This will be close to 18 years since the last UNGASS on drugs took place in 1998.

For over 50 years, we have never had this much momentum being created by governments who express utter displeasure in the current approach to addressing the global drug problem. These current approaches – often referred to as the “war in drugs” – havenot only stigmatized people who use drugs, but have also led to misguided and bad policy making in Africa and around the world.The UNGASS provides an opportunity to rethink what Ghana, as a nation, has been doing for the past 24 years. Contemporary global circumstances have changed, and the world drug policy also has to change to address current and newly emerging issues. As a result, the UNGASS has been described by Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, as “an excellent opportunity for a wide range of open debate that considers all options”.In the last UNGASS on drugs in 1998, world leaders pledged to have a drug free world by 2009: a goal that is, to put it politelty, unrealistic, but one that has also contributed enormously to the criminalization of people who use drugs. This has contributed to HIV and hepatitis epidemics and the gross violations of fundamental human rights.The prohibition-led regime has not only a marginalized the majority of our citizens, but it has also left many without access to essential pain relief medications such as morphine and other opiates which have been tagged as harmful drugs.Today, countries must regard the UNGASS as an opportunity to have an open debate to extensively discuss policy issues as they pertain to the current drug problems we face in the world. We need to acknowledge and make visible the negative economic and social consequences of the “war on drugs”.

UNGASS offers us an opportunity to discuss whether it is still relevant to tackle the global drug problem from one perspective – punishment and the punitive approach –rather than from a comprehensive approach that takes into account development, public health, justice, human rights and all other relevant human and social factors.

What is UNGASS: How Important is it in the conversation on drug policy reform in Ghana? 

After almost a year of debate since its initial proposal, the Psychoactive Substances Bill reached Royal Assent on the 28th of January 2016, and will become law on the 6th of April 2016.

It is essential that all staff at drug services, services supporting people who use unbanned new pyschoactive substances, and people who use drugs are aware of the law and what this new Act potentially means for them.

The Act will make it an offence to produce, supply or offer to supply any psychoactive substance if the substance is likely to be used for its psychoactive effects, regardless of its potential for harm. The only exemption from the Act are those substances already controlled by the Misuse of Drugs Act, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine and medicinal products.

The Act doesn’t replace the Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) so laws around existing illegal (controlled) drugs will remain the same. Temporary Class Drug Orders (TCDOs), which are rapidly implemented temporary bans, can still be applied and the Human Medicines Regulations (2012) will remain the same.

The Intoxicating Substances Supply Act (1985) will be scrapped, which made it an offence to sell volatile substances (e.g. glues, gases) to under 18s if it was believed they would be inhaled to cause intoxication.

At present a substance causing concern must be reviewed by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to assess any potential harm. The ACMD then advise the government on a course of action. The government do not have to take this advice, but are bound to consult with the ACMD first. The ACMD will still have a role and a ‘new’ or emerging psychoactive substance can still be brought under the Misuse of Drugs Act, but this Act was introduced without fully consulting the ACMD and will fundamentally change drug legislation.

Is it a criminal offence to possess a banned psychoactive substance?

Possession of a psychoactive substance will not be an offence, except in a ‘custodial institution’ (prison, young offender centre, removal centre etc.). Possession with intent to supply, importing or exporting a psychoactive substance will all become offences.

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