The Rising Wave 

By Daniel Mejía, Mounu Prem and Juan Vargas

According to figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2017 the extent of coca cultivation in Colombia reached a record high of 171,000 hectares. This figure has risen consistently since 2013 and represents almost a fourfold increase over that period. This steep rise set alarm bells ringing in Washington. On May 2017, during an official visit by then president Juan Manuel Santos, the White House expressed its concerns, and a month later the US Secretary of State asked Colombia to resume aerial coca-spraying campaigns. Four months later, President Trump threatened to decertify Colombia in the fight against illegal drugs due to the extraordinary spread of illicit-crop cultivation.

But was suspension of aerial spraying responsible for the rise in the first place? Here there is significant disagreement between Duque and his predecessor Santos.

At a public hearing on the issue in March 2019, Santos dismissed the view that suspension of aerial spraying was to blame. There were, he said, four other key factors:

Devaluation of the peso, which increased the profitability of drug trafficking

Falling gold prices, which decreased the opportunity cost of cultivating coca

Repositioning of criminal gangs in areas previously controlled by FARC guerrillas

Early announcement of an incentive programme for switching from coca to legal crop

Our recent research confirms that on these third and fourth points in particular, Santos was absolutely right.

On 16 May, 2014, the government and FARC delegations announced that there would ultimately be a Comprehensive National Programme for the Substitution of Crops for Illicit Use “in order to generate the material and intangible conditions for well-being and good living amongst populations affected by crops for illicit use, in particular for rural communities in situations of poverty that currently derive their subsistence from these crops.”

Crucially, the words “material conditions” created the possibility that farmers would expect to receive direct monetary transfers in exchange for voluntary substitution of illegal crops.

Good incentives, bad timing: Crop substitution, coca cultivation, and aerial spraying in Colombia

The Polish Psychedelic Society (PTP) is an initiative formed by Polish Drug Policy Network to popularize and support scientific research on psychedelic substances (psychedelics) and to provide space for essential debate regarding their potential application in science, medicine, psychotherapy and culture, which might positively contribute to the development of society. The Polish Psychedelic Society brings together experts representing multiple areas of science and numerous professions, including: activists, social anthropologists, artists, biologists, chemists, journalists, ethnobotanists, pharmacists, doctors, lawyers, psychologists, sociologists and herbalists, as well as individuals interested in supporting the development of science and debate on psychedelics in Poland.

Mestosław and other speakers present what the Polish Psychedelic Society is as well as introduce some of their main arguments. In particular, they focus on the medical advantages that psychedelic subtances can have as well as the policy that currently governs their regulation in Poland.

The Polish Psychedelic Society has also begun a crowdfunder to support the activities of the initiative.

Polish Drug Policy Network launches Polish Psychedelic Society

By the Public Health Association of Australia

The Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) supports medically supervised pill testing as an integral part of Australia’s harm-minimisation approach to drug use.

Taking illicit drugs, especially ecstasy, is becoming more common among young people in Australia.

70% of pills taken by young people in a 12 month period were taken at clubs, festivals and dance parties.

The growth in new psychoactive substances and evolving chemical composition of illicit drugs means users have no way of knowing what they are taking and the potential risks involved.

Testing of pills by appropriately trained health professionals can inform users about the content and thereby minimise the risk of injury or death.

Evidence from several European countries indicates pill testing may reduce use, and health-related harms including deaths.

Public Health Association of Australia – Pill testing policy position

History was made last week in Lyon, when governments, philanthropic donors and the private sector pledged US$14 billion for the Sixth Global Fund Replenishment, more than any other global health institution has ever raised. Harm Reduction International, Eurasian Harm Reduction Association, International Network of People Who Use Drugs and the India HIV/AIDS Alliance congratulate the Government of France, the Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) and the broad network of health advocates, academics and policy makers on this tremendous success.

Recognising that a strong and fully-funded Global Fund is vital to the harm reduction response, over 150 organisations and parliamentarians around the world signed on to the Call to Action on harm reduction funding earlier this year.

However, US$14 billion was the minimum amount required for the Sixth Replenishment and will not be enough to meet 2030 targets. The Global Fund also assumes a very ambitious 48% increase in domestic resources from low- and middle-income governments between 2021-2023. Yet, most governments have not prioritised harm reduction in their spending to date, even where the epidemic is concentrated among people who use drugs.

A seismic change is needed if we are serious about achieving Sustainable Development Goals and ending AIDS and combating viral hepatitis among people who use drugs by 2030. Much more is needed to address the funding and political crisis for harm reduction around the world.

We’re not there just yet: A joint statement on harm reduction and the Global Fund Sixth Replenishment 

It is not our search for pleasure that is so damaging to the environment, but corporal greed, social injustice, and inequality.

“You can’t call yourself a climate change activist if you’re doing coke,” says Dan Burkitt in his opinion piece for the Metro. “MDMA is killing trees,” says a video on VICE. It seems the idea that drug users should be blamed and shamed for destroying the planet is a very virulent one. The environmental damage these people refer to is real and it is related to the production of substances many people use, such as cocaine or MDMA. However, if you have a closer look at the arguments, you will see that it is not people who use these substances who should be blamed – but governments who keep the production of these drugs unregulated.

In the early 20th century the coca leaf was a legal agricultural commodity and cocaine was a legal substance widely used in medicine. The German pharmaceutical company, Merck, imported coca leaf and crude cocaine paste from South America to produce hundreds of kilos of cocaine in its laboratories in Frankfurt. An Italian entrepreneur, Angelo Mariani, invented a popular beverage called Vin Mariani, containing low levels of alcohol and cocaine. He also imported coca leaf from Peru and produced thousands of bottles in his factory in Neuilly, France.

Drug users are not damaging the environment, the war on drugs is

As a Thematic Network, we have the opportunityto produce a Joint Statement. This JointStatement has been co-created by NLOinitiative participants with input from broaderstakeholders via theEU Health Policy Platform.

In health and social policy, the EU’s main roleis to support and complement the activitiesof Member States by encouraging cooperationand best practices. The EU can introduce policyframeworks that foster good health by supportingdynamic health systems that are integratedand people-centred, as called for by the G7 andOrganisation for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment (OECD), and address inequalitiesby engendering financially sustainable socialprotection and inclusion policies.

This Joint Statement aims to providepolicymakers with a range of priorities, principlesand recommendations on how to improve accessto health and social care for Europe’s mostunderserved people. It aims to translate theunderstanding of the determinants of poor healthand unequal access, together with good practicesand experiences of target communities, intoconcrete calls to action. Inequity is not inevitable.

Improving healthcare access for marginalised people

The drug-overdose crisis is the most acute health emergency that Canada has faced in a generation. More than 12,800 people have died of an opioid overdose since Health Canada began counting in January 2016.

There are now so many fatal overdoses that this single cause of death has stalled the average life expectancy for the entire population. “Life expectancy at birth did not increase from 2016 to 2017 for either males or females, a first in over four decades,” Statistics Canada warned last May.

There’s a federal election less than one week away, on October 21. And yet more than 4,000 fatal overdoses each year is something that no one is talking about.

The word “overdose” appears in the incumbent Liberal party’s 85-page election platform exactly once.

“The opioid crisis is the greatest public health emergency since the AIDS epidemic,” it reads. Then there are only another two paragraphs.

The Liberals promise “new investments” in treatment services and briefly outline a plan to divert people charged with possession away from the criminal system and into “drug treatment court”. In addition, injection sites will hopefully operate with longer hours. That’s it.

The Conservative party’s 2019 platform gives the opioid epidemic a little more space, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. Andrew Scheer’s plan to reduce overdose deaths appears to be nothing more than the same tough-on-crime, abstinence-only approach to addiction that’s failed in every jurisdiction across North America for more than half a century now.

Canada's 2019 election shows that nobody in any position of power cares how many drug users die

"Do you feel that some drugs are inherently worse for the user than others?”

A man had approached the stage at the Horizons NYC 2019 psychedelic conference on Saturday, where Dr. Carl Hart, a Columbia University psychology professor and harm reduction expert, was taking questions after his keynote address.

“I have seen methamphetamine have very destructive consequences for a lot of people, and opioids even more so in my view,” the man continued.

“You should probably broaden your scope of people who use them,” Hart responded. “You’re looking at someone who uses all of those drugs.”

Hart’s closing address at New York’s largest annual psychedelic science event, held at The Cooper Union, was titled “Dispelling the Lies that the Psychedelic Community Believes About Drugs.” He explained to an audience of psychedelic researchers, advocates, and enthusiasts why the concept of “psychedelic exceptionalism” is so destructive (among other topics).

Psychedelic exceptionalism is an ideology that claims purportedly less-harmful or less-addictive drugs—such as cannabis, psilocybin mushrooms, or ayahuasca—to be inherently better, safer, or more desirable for people to use than other drugs.

Heroin, alcohol, or crack cocaine are treated as their contrast. When taken to its extremes, psychedelic exceptionalism stigmatizes not just certain drugs but also the people who use them.

How psychedelic exceptionalism harms drug users

Governments, businesses and philanthropists gathered in France pledged just over $14 billion on Thursday to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, exceeding the targeted amount, its chief executive Peter Sands announced.

Beside French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted the replenishment conference and had urged governments to open their wallets wide, Sands said the target was even slightly exceeded, reaching $14.02 billion (€12.07bn). The fund says the money will help save 16 million lives and avert 234 million infections by 2023.

A dozen heads of state and government, mostly from African countries, were attending the two-day conference.

Macron, who was hosting the conference in the city of Lyon, wanted the event to raise more than the $12.2 billion (€11.07bn) brought in at the last conference in 2016.

The French leader urged leaders to accelerate the donations in his opening speech. “If we meet our commitments in the next three years, 16 million lives can be saved,” Macron said. “We must reach $14 million in the next three hours.”

He said this morning that France had raised its pledge by 15 percent to €1.5 billion and later pledged an additional €60 million.

International donors meet target of $14 billion to fight AIDS, TB and malaria at conference in France

Five years later, Inez Feria still remembers the line snaking around the block outside the clinic in Cebu City. Men and women were smiling and laughing as they queued for clean hypodermic needles. For Feria, an advocate for the rights of drug users, it felt like a hopeful moment.

The needle exchange — part of an international push to slow the region’s skyrocketing HIV transmission rate — was the largest of its kind in the Philippines. When it started in 2014, about half the city’s drug-using population (approximately 6,000 people) was HIV-positive, and three-quarters of those people contracted the virus after sharing contaminated needles. By almost every metric, the pilot program exceeded its targets: fewer drug users reported sharing needles, more were being tested for HIV and all could access basic medical services.

But only months after the clinic was up and running, the Cebu City Anti-Drug Abuse Council filed an official letter demanding that it be shut down. In April 2015, five months into the planned two-year program, the clinic’s syringe distribution was suspended due to “political pressure,” according to the American medical non-profit Population Services International (PSI), which started the program.

A few weeks later, Philippine Senator Vicente Sotto gave a speech condemning the service. “Harm reduction strategy is, in reality, a pro-illegal drugs strategy,” he declared. “This nonsense must stop.” Needle distribution at the clinic permanently halted, and, according to a PSI review, “multiple clients were lost to follow up,” while new referrals slowed to a trickle.

“It was really sad,” Feria said. “It wasn’t just about providing syringes. It had a bunch of different services, HIV testing, counseling. People got connected to all these services that they otherwise wouldn’t have. It showed that people do want to take care of themselves.”

Fighting for compassion in the Philippines’ brutal drug war

One year ago, the newly elected government of Malaysia officially announced its intention to abolish the death penalty. This was an historic moment not only for Malaysia — where over 1200 people are currently on death row, overwhelmingly for drug-related offenses — but for the entire region.

Just a few months later, however, the same government started backtracking on its promise, citing a lack of public support for abolition as a key reason for this choice.

This deference to public opinion is not exceptional. Rather, public support is often used as a central justification for pursuing populist policies, including violent drug wars and the death penalty. While examples of populist anti-drug campaigns can be found around the world, in some extreme cases – such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines – these campaigns have triggered calls for the use or reintroduction of capital punishment as a tool of drug control. This stands in contrast with an established global trend of moving away from the death penalty for drug offenses, as recorded by Harm Reduction international.

A closer look at developments in these countries raises the question: what does the public 

think about the death penalty for drug offenses?

In an effort to better understand these phenomena, Harm Reduction International recently analyzed a selection of 39 valid public opinion surveys conducted in 5 key countries in Asia — a region that holds 16 of the 35 countries which still retain the death penalty for drug offenses. This included surveys from China, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines.

From this analysis, we learnt that public support for capital punishment, both in general and for drug offenses specifically, is much more complex and nuanced than often depicted.

Public support for the death penalty appears to be based on a belief in the deterrent potential of capital punishment, and in the conviction that the criminal justice system works perfectly. If and when the public learns otherwise, and especially when it learns of the many people who are wrongfully convicted or executed, support drops significantly.

Public support for the death penalty also appears to be “abstract”, almost a gut feeling: while most respondents claimed to support the death penalty in theory, people were much more measured in their views when presented with real-life scenarios. This suggests that when faced with the human cost of capital punishment, the public may exercise more caution and be more reluctant to support the death penalty.

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