Governments across the world have invested in the war on drugs for decades. The complete eradication of drug crops and prohibition of their consumption has been the only goal. In this process, terrible pain and suffering has been inflicted around the world in the name of pursuing the fantasy of a drug-free world.

The United Nations has been the primary international mechanism upholding the prohibitionist approach for the past several decades, but this month they are convening a Special Session on drugs (UNGASS) in New York – the first such worldwide meeting since 1998. While many such gatherings have rubber stamped the status quo, the drugs UNGASS is an opportunity to reconsider current policy and to give space to voices who urge a new approach that prioritises health, social inclusion, development and human rights over interdiction, prohibition and punishment.

The clamour for change is growing louder, from former heads of state in South America and Western Europe to rural farmers in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan. Rather than demanding drug crops be destroyed, attempts are being made to manage production. Instead of insisting people quit using drugs entirely, ways are being sought to reduce the harm drugs can cause. In place of using criminal justice as an ineffective deterrent, information and social support is offered.

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International drug policy: an engine for social injustice

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein appealed to Iran to halt executions for drug offences until Parliament debates a new law that would remove the mandatory death penalty for drug crimes.

Five men were hanged last weekend, three of them on charges of narcotics trafficking. The other two men were convicted of murder. In at least one of the cases, that of Rashid Kouhi, there were serious concerns about the fairness of the trial and the denial of his right to appeal. Kouhi was sentenced to death in 2012 after he was found in possession of 800 grams of crystal meth. He was executed on Saturday, 9 April in Gilan province in northern Iran.

Last year, at least 966 people were executed in Iran – the highest rate in more than two decades – the majority for drug offences. At least four of those executed in 2015 were juveniles.

However, in December last year, 70 Members of Parliament presented a bill to amend the existing mandatory death penalty for drug offences. The bill, which was introduced in Parliament in January this year, provides for life imprisonment in such cases. It remains to be seen whether it will be taken forward in the new Parliament.

Zeid calls for an end to executions for drug offences in Iran

Drug use can be dangerous but prohibition makes them more dangerous even deadly. We’ve had 60 years of prohibitionist drug policies in Australia in yet drug use is at an all-time high. Surely it’s time to try alternative approaches to drug policy that reduces the damage that prohibition does to our young people.

Drug prohibition isn’t saving our children, it’s killing them

Canada’s statement read like a checklist of progressive drug policy positions.

The applause persisted until the chair of the session eventually gavelled it to an end. The occasion? Canada’s statement last month at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna, where countries were negotiating the text of a declaration to be adopted next week at the UN General Assembly’s Special Session on drugs (UNGASS) in New York.

The last time the General Assembly met on this issue was in 1998, when it absurdly declared it would pursue the goal of a “drug-free world,” largely through yet more drug law enforcement. The reality, of course, is that we cannot end drug use, whether problematic or otherwise, through prosecution and punishment. Indeed, a growing number of states are starting to openly question the orthodoxy of drug prohibition and calling for reform, while some countries are simply moving ahead with sensible, evidence-based reforms to their domestic laws in order to better protect both public health and safety.

Canada on drugs at the UN: Standing up for a long-overdue policy shift

The Ministry of Public Health officially urges all Lebanese hospitals to refrain from their usual practice of reporting drug users to the police upon their arrival to the Emergency Department.

This practice discourages many young individuals from seeking treatment and in many cases leads to tragic consequences.

As stated in the memo below, the law mandates treating individuals suffering from drug addiction as any patient who has the right to quality care and respect of his/her privacy, without any stigma or discrimination. The law is also designed to encourage drug users to seek treatment and rehabilitation, rather than be criminalized or punished.

Lebanese ministry of public health urges Lebanese hospitals to refrain from reporting drug users to the police

April 15, 2016 — As a coalition of interveners* in the Supreme Court of Canada case, R. v. Lloyd, we applaud the Court for recognizing that a mandatory minimum sentence (MMS) for certain drug offences is not only harsh and damaging, but also unconstitutional. We hope that this decision is one more step towards ending Canada’s harmful, punitive approach to drugs, and promoting instead an approach based on public health and human rights.

Under the previous federal government, Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act was amended to mandate a minimum one-year sentence for certain drug offences. This change was pushed through despite objections from opposition lawmakers and legal and medical experts, and despite overwhelming evidence about the harmfulness and ineffectiveness of MMS laws.

As we argued in Lloyd, and as the Court concurred, the MMS before the Court unjustifiably violates the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, per section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We are pleased that the Court recognized the fact that individuals caught by the MMS law may be drug-dependent, and sentencing them to a one-year MMS could be grossly disproportionate, including because it may undermine treatment for their drug dependency.

However, it is also important to note, as the coalition did in our argument, that many such individuals might also be living with HIV and/or hepatitis C virus (HCV). Mandating prison time for these individuals can mean disruptions in treatment because of inadequate health care in prisons. Furthermore, prolonging incarceration puts people who use drugs at increased risk of returning to their communities with HIV or HCV, and of suffering fatal overdose because of lack of adequate prison-based harm reduction services. Not only do MMS laws cause these negative health consequences, they completely fail to deter drug-related crimes or protect public health.

The Supreme Court’s decision presents an opportunity for the federal government to undo Canada’s punitive arsenal of harmful drug laws. The federal government has already expressed support for a new approach to drug policy based on human rights and public health. This approach should include eliminating all MMS laws for drug-related offences, ensuring access to comprehensive harm reduction services and medical treatment for drug dependence and infection with HIV and HCV, both inside prisons and out, and decriminalizing possession of all drugs for personal use.

HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario
Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS
Prisoners with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN)
Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs


Communications and Outreach Officer
Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
lkronick@aidslaw.ca


Communications Coordinator
British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS
cdobuzin@cfenet.ubc.ca

Supreme Court of Canada decision on mandatory minimums

The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on The World Drug Problem (UNGASS) will be held in New York next week. Diplomats in Vienna have negotiated the text of the Outcome Document to be recommended for adoption at this meeting.

Although it is good to see the inclusion of a stand alone section on access to controlled medications, the draft reveals a limited understanding of the negative impact of the international drug control conventions on public health.

The document’s subtitle: ‘Our joint commitment in effectively addressing and countering the world drug problem’ contains language that is biased towards a law-enforcement approach to controlled substances.

Systemic human rights violations in the War on Drugs

In this article, I will focus on access to medicines controlled under the three UN Drug Control Conventions, but first, I will refer to a guest editorial by Damon Barret, Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy.

He describes the evolution of his thinking on the relation between human rights violations and the War on Drugs.

Initially, he saw these violations as collateral damage, but now he considers them to be a systemic problem.

What states are legally required to do under the UN drug control treaties can be exceptionally risky from a human rights perspective.

For example, he points out that the application of the death penalty for drugs increased after the 1988 drug trafficking convention was adopted.

Today, Barret considers human rights violations in the War on Drugs as institutional violations caused by the conventions.

Institutional barriers in access to opioid analgesics

By Magdy Martínez-Solimán - The Guardian

When the world’s nations committed to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) last year, they probably weren’t thinking about drugs. But they should have been. Without effective drug control strategies, marginalisation, poverty and inequality will persist in societies. Evidence shows that prohibitionist approaches have not worked – from 1998 to 2008 the number of people using illicit drugs did not change significantly and neither did the area used for opium poppy cultivation. Conventional policies have failed in reducing addiction and production.

Drug policy is connected to core areas of sustainable development: health and wellbeing, gender equality, justice and strong institutions. The population ofwomen imprisoned for drug-related offences is on the rise (pdf). Prison sentences for women may result in the incarceration of their infants and young children, who stay with them for all or part of their sentence.

Thumbnail: Flickr US Embassy Kabul Afghanistan's

The war on drugs has failed: Time to stop fighting and start thinking

The war on drugs is dead. The only remnants of the once dominant paradigm exist in the form of three United Nations treaties controlling drugs. As the UN begins the Special Session on the World Drug Problem (UNGASS) on Tuesday, it is time for Canada to exercise the often ignored flexibility contained within these treaties, and move forward with the legalization and regulation of cannabis.

Though international drug control treaties have been around since 1907, it was not until the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs that the world coalesced around one set of rules to prevent distribution and use of narcotic drugs except for medical and scientific purposes. While the “drug war” as we knew it claimed its legitimacy from this treaty (and its companions passed in 1971 and 1988), such heavy-handed responses were not necessarily the intention. Countries were only required to make possession of cannabis illegal in the 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs. But even then, at the height of the crack epidemics, no one could have imagined the self-inflicted brutality that would emerge to combat drugs in the final decades of the 20th century.

It is now time for the international community to acknowledge the beginning of a new era, and provide support for countries trying new ways to regulate drugs in a safe and responsible manner.

The war on drugs is dead: Canada can help lead the peace

Reform of international drug control is urgently needed. The war on drugs has left a trail of suffering and criminality in its wake and has manifestly failed to achieve its objectives. The UN special session of the general assembly (Ungass) this week presents an opportunity. Many reformers put drug users at the centre of changes to international drug policies, but the people growing the plants producing the substances they consume are often overlooked.

Farmers’ livelihoods and their communities’ sustainable development are inherently linked to reform of international drug policies. For hundreds of thousands of farmers’ families, existing crop control laws and practices cause conflict and poverty (pdf), and crush hopes for economic improvement.

In January, representatives of cannabis, opium poppy and coca cultivating communities, from 14 countries, gathered in the Netherlands to discuss global drug control policies and the urgent need for reform (pdf). They soon discovered they had more than livelihoods in common.

To win the war on drugs, stop brutalising farmers who grow them

Uganda Harm Reduction Network (UHRN) is a youth led drug user initiative established in 2008 and registered under Reg. No. 181733 to respond to the drug use crisis in Uganda. The network works to advocate for practical interventions aimed at supporting and addressing issues of people who use drugs. The network also seeks to provide a national platform for health and policy programs that promote good practices and advocate for a supportive environment for the adoption, implementation and expansion of harm reduction programs for people who use drugs (PWUDS) in Uganda.

In response to an article in Hello tabloid titled “Jackie Health in Red” dated 13th April 2016, the writer narrates how Jackie Chandiru’s (Prominent musician in Uganda) health is too complex for medical doctors in Uganda as family seeks help from Ex-lover for quick intervention. The writer further indicates that Jackie is being treated at a rehabilitation center at CORSU hospital in Kisubi. However as Jackie is seeking for medication on the other hand Moses Kyomukama the commissioner of Police and director in charge antinarcotic unit insists that after her recovery, she will be charged for being in possession and consumption of illicit drugs under the new Antinarcotic Law as soon as she’s discharged she will be apprehended by police. The addiction to drugs is a health concern, not a genuine instance of injustice. The criminalization of a public health issue has created huge and complex obstacles for people motivated to eliminate their drug dependence to seek or obtain necessary health care and support. When public health options are made available, studies have reported dramatic declines in drug dependence, mortality and overdose. If we want to encourage people to seek treatment, we need to assure them that they will not face prison for doing so.

UHRN firmly believes that there must be a stronger focus on the health needs and human rights of all people who use drugs, especially those who inject. There is a serious gap in service provision in Uganda for PWUD where no attention is given to those who need drug dependence treatment services. We as UHRN we are well aware in Uganda there is no treatment centers for people who use drugs, like cocaine, heroin and other opioids. Growing evidence indicates that drug treatment and counseling programs are far more effective in reducing drug addiction and abuse than is incarceration. Treatment like methadone, nalexone that can save her life is still illegal in Uganda and anyone being in possession of those drugs in the later is criminalized if not authorized by the government. Such Medically Assisted Therapy (MAT) is a treatment for persons who are addicted to heroin using prescribed medication. Such kind of treatment is prohibited in Uganda.

The current Antinarcotic law is a blow to public health; the Narcotics Law penalizes possession of illicit drugs with 10 to 25 years in prison. Trafficking—which encompasses everything from small sales to international export—is punishable with a life sentence. Even those who never come across an illicit substance can find themselves ensnared. The law goes so far as to levy a five-year prison sentence for failure to disclose prior prescriptions for narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances (including those held for pets and farm animals) when receiving a new prescription. Punitive laws like this push people who use drugs especially those who inject to higher risks of HIV, Hepatitis and other blood pathogen transmission away from accessing prevention information, health and social services that are vital to managing drug dependence, preventing transmission of HIV, and supporting people to live full and productive lives. By further criminalizing drug use, this law pushes PWUD into the shadows. PWUD are afraid to talk and afraid to seek much-needed medical help because the government has now definitively positioned drug use as a justice issue, rather than a health issue.” The Police action will frighten people who use drugs from accessing the available health services in case they want to withdraw from drug use.

As drug use in Uganda is on the rise, we as Uganda Harm Reduction Network we advocate for a responsive treatment which encompasses the 9 harm reduction interventions which Uganda as a country has not embraced. UHRN has been advocating for inclusion of harm reduction interventions in polices and guidelines as per World Health Organization guidelines. We therefore call upon the government of Uganda not to criminalize drug users seeking health services but rather offer treatment support and non-coercive rehabilitation.

For further information contact; Email: admin@ugandaharmreduction.org / uhrnetwork@gmail.com Tel: (+256) 414 664 730, 704 393 161

UHRN Press statement on the drug use situation for people inject drugs in Uganda

Drug overdose deaths in the United States have tripled since 2010. And so it makes sense that President Obama has announced, as he did late last month, new initiatives to fight the epidemic of prescription drug and heroin abuse in the United States.

As the former head of state of Switzerland, where innovations in drug policy have been front and center for years, I have learned much about how to prevent heroin overdoses, improve the lives of people who use drugs and create a safer environment for their communities. It is a complex puzzle, but there are key pieces that, when used together, create a public health approach with long-lasting positive effects.The United States could take some important lessons from Switzerland's success. In the past 20 years, Switzerland and other countries, such as Portugal and Uruguay, have implemented policies that are people-centered, focused on health and most importantly, keeping people alive -- all while respecting human rights. Switzerland's federal government focused on reducing the harms of drug use among people who inject drugs, creating supervised injection sites and offering substance analysis services and access to opiate substitution therapy, mainly through methadone and even medical heroin. The country also complemented these harm-reduction interventions with prevention programs. To ensure these policies had citizen acceptance, the Swiss government created forums aimed at overcoming the stigma and marginalization of people who use drugs. Our success with these policies is not only reflected in the stories that we hear from people who use drugs, but also from the rigorous evaluation we have undertaken. According to government officials, in the first decade alone, drug-related deaths have been reduced by 50%, and approximately 1,300 dependent users are now given maintenance doses of heroin via 23 specialized clinics, which has resulted in an 82% drop in patients selling heroin on the streets. 

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