UN experts call to break the cycle: from punishment to care and support for all

Building on our previous statements, we, the UN human rights experts, reaffirm our call for drug policies that are firmly grounded in human rights, emphasizing rehabilitation and mental health support over punishment and criminalization. On World Drugs Day 2026, we urge States, the United Nations system, and civil society to break the cycle: from punishment to care and support for all.

At a time of severe funding cuts and growing shifting political priorities, the case for harm reduction and evidence-based legal regulation has never been more urgent. UN human rights experts have long documented that punitive and militarised drug policies cause serious human rights violations, and the evidence now clearly shows these approaches have failed. The experts demand a different response: one grounded in human rights based prevention, treatment, harm reduction, regulation, care, and support. Over-criminalisation, stigmatisation, and discrimination are not incidental features of punitive drug policy, they are its structural logic, functioning as barriers that deny people who use drugs and affected communities the healthcare they are legally entitled to. On World Drug Day 2026, we call, with greater urgency than ever, for a fundamental shift towards decriminalization, care and support.

The human and environmental costs of the “war on drugs” is staggering and well-documented. In its most recent report, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recognized that “the world drug problem has a major impact on the enjoyment of human rights”. The death penalty for drug-related offences remains one of the starkest manifestations of punitive drug control policies, despite such offences not meeting the “most serious crimes” threshold under international human rights law. More broadly, in some contexts the “war on drugs”, in which the use of private military and security companies to provide intelligence, training and logistical support to national armed forces, has degenerated into patterns of State-sanctioned killing so systematic that international criminal justice mechanisms have begun to recognise them as potential crimes against humanity.

Several governments are compounding these harms by increasingly conflating drug trafficking and organized crime with terrorism, contrary to best practice international standards. This dangerous trend has resulted in illegal uses of lethal force, domestically and across borders, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, refoulement of refugees and asylum seekers, the arbitrary expulsion of migrants and the degradation of the environment. It has also led to attacks on civil society and undermine accountability mechanisms. It also erodes the rule of law, silences civil society and directly attacks human rights defenders working on related issues, including health workers amongst others. Furthermore, we recall the importance of ensuring non punishment of victims of trafficking for forced criminality, and compliance with human rights law.

These policies have disproportionately harmed the most marginalised: Black persons and other racialized groups, Indigenous Peoples, people living in poverty or experiencing homelessness and/or exploitation, migrants, women and girls, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and other gender-diverse (LGBT) persons, sex workers, people with disabilities, and people living with HIV, tuberculosis or hepatitis C, while failing to reduce drug markets, and are at times creating an opportunity for exploitation of their vulnerabilities. These groups are also affected by the release of toxic chemicals into the environment.

We sound the alarm on the severe and converging funding cuts hitting the United Nations, civil society, and the global health response, cuts placing lifesaving harm reduction services at serious risk. Civil society organisations who work to promote protect and defend the right to health through providing needle and syringe programmes, supervised consumption facilities, naloxone distribution, and peer-led interventions face resource constraints that threaten their very existence. These services are an essential component of the right to health. States must fund them sustainably, guarantee that such organisations can continue to operate in safe and supportive environment, and ensure that people who use drugs and affected communities are meaningfully engaged in all reform processes.

Furthermore, we warmly welcome the establishment of the first-ever independent expert panel mandated to provide actionable set of recommendations to enhance the implementation of international drug control norms, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to align global drug control with international human rights law, including the right to health and right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

This year's World Drug Day campaign calls to “Break the cycle”. We share that aspiration, but the cycle to be broken is not only that of organised crime. It is also the cycle of punitive policies, structural discrimination, and institutional neglect. Drug policies must be gender-responsive, trauma-informed, and anchored in the dignity of every person.

Evidence consistently shows that militarised and punitive approaches fail to reduce drug markets, instead driving displacement, adaptation, and escalating violence while leaving underlying economic incentives intact. Prohibition fuels illicit profits, strengthen organized crime, and increase risks through unsafe supply. The international community can only build drug policies that genuinely protect and promote the health, dignity, and rights of all. By addressing the root causes of drug use, poverty, trauma, social exclusion, and structural inequality.

Rather than criminalising those who suffer the consequences, the international community can build drug policies that genuinely protect and promote the health, dignity, and rights of all.