Drug control efforts across the world are a threat to human dignity and the right to life.

In 2017, more than 70,000 people died from a drug overdose in the US. Among the reasons for these deaths are the lack of access to health and harm-reduction services, as well as the fear of legal repression, which often dissuades people who use drugs from asking for help.

More than two-thirds of these deaths were linked to opioids. At the same time, millions of people across Africa have been unable to access opioids for pain relief because of decades of fear of these drugs being diverted to the illegal, recreational market, forcing people there to endure – and often die in – serious pain.

In the Philippines, thousands of people have been killed extrajudicially in a brutal anti-drug campaign that began in 2016. And in Colombia, two years after a historic peace agreement, and the promise of better livelihoods, rural communities are braced for a return to crop eradication by aerial spraying with the chemical glyphosate.

These stories reflect just some of the harmful consequences of drug control. But why are these violations still taking place? In several declarations and documents, governments have committed to “respecting, protecting and promoting all human rights, fundamental freedoms and the inherent dignity of all individuals” in the development and implementation of drug policies. What is happening in Colombia, in Africa, in the Philippines and in the US tells us that something is very wrong with this global commitment.

The campaign for a 'drug-free world' is costing lives

In 2019, February more than 40 womxn from Europe and Central Asia met in Barcelona to work together on intersectional feminism, drug policy, harm reduction and human rights, where the Barcelona Declaration was initiated. If you/ your organization would like to support the Declaration, please complete the form below.

On International Women’s Day 2019, we declare that the War On Drugs is a war on Womxn Who Use Drugs

The War On Drugs is racist, sexist, classist and heterosexist, and disproportionately affects womxn of colour, youth and womxn in poor communities.

As womxn, trans and gender non-conforming people surviving this war, we reject the widespread stigma, discrimination and criminalisation we face in our daily lives. We call for complete reform and transformation of the current system of prohibition. We call for an end to the ignorant and negative rhetoric.

Drug treatment services are gendered, classed, sexualised and racialised. Drug ‘treatment’ itself is based on spurious and outdated research, and allows unbridled and unregulated power over the individual. We reject these methods and the ideologies underpinning them.

Global and systemic oppressions violate our rights, as womxn, trans and gender non-conforming people who use drugs, and situate us in multiple, interconnected, vulnerable positions, which lead to numerous harms:

As womxn who inject drugs, we have a higher prevalence of HIV and Hepatitis than men. Despite this, we don’t appear in data and endure discrimination and exclusion from social and health services. The few resources we have tend to be masculinised and inaccessible as well as often not meeting our needs, interests or expectations.

We are disproportionately impacted by structural violence and social control from the State (policing, limited access to legal aid, extortion, long prison sentences, rape, extrajudicial murder and capital punishment).

The majority of womxn in prison are sentenced for non-violent drug related offences. Womxn of colour, ethnic minorities, non-binary or trans, and the homeless are particularly targeted. In several countries, we face detention in compulsory, unregulated ‘treatment” centres , often for indefinite periods with little or no access to judicial processes. Incarceration in closed settings creates a context for increased human rights violations, such as rape and extortion.

We often experience endemic violence and exclusion within our own communities and families. Not only are we more likely to be assaulted by our partners, but we are less likely to have recourse to justice and protection

We suffer intrusion into our bodily and physical integrity, maternal and family life and domestic space. We face routine violations of our sexual and reproductive health rights, by both community and state such as coerced sterilization and pregnancy termination.

Stigma that assumes womxn who use drugs cannot take care of their children and misinformation on the effects of drug use feeds into strong pressures to end pregnancy. When we don’t terminate our pregnancies, there’s a strong possibility we will lose custody of our children.

Those of us who are sex workers, and especially trans womxn and womxn living with disabilities cope with an unacceptable and compounded web of stigma, discrimination and social exclusion.

Despite living with these and other multiple forms of violence daily, Womxn Fighting back Against the War On Drugs are resourceful, enterprising, creative and strong. We possess remarkable resilience. We fight back against prohibition with solidarity, mutual support and leadership, building our networks from the grassroots to the global, from immediate action to long-term strategies to end this war on womxn who use drugs. We embrace intersectional and anti-prohibitionist feminism that integrated queer/trans-inclusive and non-ableist approaches, racial justice and the right to use drugs and experience pleasure. We work to reclaim our bodily sovereignty, including rights to the full range of sexual and reproductive health, gender-sensitive health services, and rights to use drugs. We do not ask for charity but for solidarity. We demand to live in safety and freedom.

This declaration is an invitation to join forces with womxn like us, womxn who demand an end to the War on Drugs and the negative impact it has on all our lives.

“Let us all cause some trouble and begin to change the world with and for women who use drugs with our powerful conceptual armaments in hand

Our bodies – our choice, our rights, our voice.

The Barcelona declaration

With a regional seminar organised on 22-23 February 2019 in Tangier, the Ministry of Health of the Kingdom of Morocco and the Pompidou Group celebrated 10 years of the introduction of opioid agonist treatment in the country. Taking place within the 2019 MedNET work programme, the seminar brought together addiction treatment centers from across the Kingdom of Morocco, as well as experts from Tunisia, Jordan, Portugal and Switzerland - which just joined MedNET as its 16th member country.

One of the main outcomes of the seminar was the proposal to set up a network of professionals working in the different addiction treatment centers in the country, in order to exchange knowledge and expertise, harmonise practice, elaborate guidelines, share data and collaborate with the Moroccan Monitoring Center on Drugs and Drug Addiction with the aim of improving communication between practice (professionals), research (data collection) and policy (Ministry of Health).

Morocco celebrates 10 years of opioid agonist treatment

Colombia’s Constitutional Court met today to discuss the government’s plans to reinstate aerial spraying of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, using aircraft and the herbicide glyphosate. President Iván Duque was the first to address the high court; he asked the justices to “modulate” their past rulings to allow more spraying.

The U.S. government supported this “fumigation” program between the early 1990s and 2015, when the Colombian government, under then-President Juan Manuel Santos, suspended it. During those nearly 25 years, U.S. contractor pilots and Colombian police sprayed glyphosate onto 4,420,000 acres of Colombian territory (1,790,000 hectares, an area larger than Connecticut but smaller than New Jersey). Colombia was the only country that allowed aerial spraying of glyphosate for counter-drug purposes.

The Santos government suspended the program in 2015, after a World Health Organization literature review found that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide RoundUp, is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” In 2017, Colombia’s Constitutional Court placed important restrictions on any future use of glyphosate from aircraft, but did not ban the practice. Since 2013, coca cultivation has increased sharply in Colombia; in 2017, more than 119,500 families made a living off of the crop, up from 61,700 four years earlier. Under pressure from the Obama and Trump administrations, the Colombian government has committed to reducing the nation’s acreage by half by 2023.

Restarting aerial fumigation of drug crops in Colombia is a mistake

The decision comes after PITCH embarked on a year of advocacy to convince the Ministry of Health of the need for the clinic.

“We first put forward the proposal for the clinic during a PEPFAR regional planning meeting in Johannesburg in March last year,” says Gracias Atwiine, PITCH country focal point in Uganda.

“The Ministry of Health claimed drug use was not a big issue in Uganda, also that it was a sensitive, multisectoral issue that needed the Ministry to work with other departments such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs, so they are not misinterpreted as promoters of drug use in Uganda. The Minister of Health [Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng] also said that she had not seen any size estimation report [on the number of people who inject drugs] to warrant or justify such a clinic.”

Uganda approves first-ever OST clinic

The Robert Carr Fund (RCF) wants to hear from you to help shape its future. 

The RCF is undertaking an exercise to develop a strategic plan for 2020-2024. It invites you to complete a brief survey to share your opinions and experiences related to the work that RCF has done since its launch in 2012, and the direction in which it should move during its 2020-2024 strategy period.

In English - https://forms.gle/T11hhfAjqQg6GzBQ6

In French - https://forms.gle/qRkeptoLpYopvDW36

In Spanish - https://forms.gle/weveBEakDoC5RV8y6

In Arabic - https://forms.gle/HLRZhBsppVnJafaM7

In Russian - https://forms.gle/JECrt7x21btHbpVY8

This survey will take about 20 minutes to complete. The survey is open until April 12th. Responses are anonymous. If you have any problems accessing the survey, please contact the consultant team that is managing this process: RCFstrategy@apmghealth.com

Robert Carr Fund stakeholder survey for strategic planning

Drug consumption rooms (DCRs) are expected to be introduced in Iceland, as MPs and the Minister of Health have backed calls for an amendment to the national drug law.

Svandís Svavarsdóttir, the health minister, told Parliament on March 21 that her government would like to amend existing drug legislation so that DCRs could legally open and operate in the country.

A DCR in Iceland, she said, would be a “legally protected environment where eighteen-year-olds and older can consume [illegal drugs] under the supervision of healthcare professionals. Where care is taken to ensure full hygiene, safety, and infection control.”

DCRs prevent deadly overdoses from taking place, as healthcare professionals oversee people’s drug use and are therefore able to administer naloxone – a medication that reverses opioid overdoses – when necessary. Among the nine European countries operating DCRs, there has never been a fatal overdose within a facility.

DCRs also provide sterile equipment and safer environments for drug use, thereby reducing the spread of blood-borne diseases for service users, as well as reducing antisocial behaviour associated with public drug use – including the discarding of drug litter, and public intoxication.

Iceland expected to introduce drug consumption rooms

It would be hard to dispute that the War on Drugs, instigated by President Nixon in 1971, has deliberately targeted lower-income communities and communities of color. Nixon’s own counsel and domestic affairs advisor, John Ehrlichman, confessed in 1994 that the War on Drugs was designed as an assault on “the antiwar left and black people.”

Ever since, we have been able to see the crippling impact of this sinister and deceptive strategy on these communities. We can see it simply by visiting any prison or jailhouse—or by viewing the demographics of incarcerated populations.

But what is not talked about enough is the drug war’s effects on parents in these communities. It has long been strategically intertwined with the child protective system in such a way that it can be sold to stakeholders under the guise of “saving the children.”

If you take the time to spend a day in any family court, what you will see is disturbing: Benches full of parents of color and little black and brown children in despair.

See, what is not talked about in the same breath as mass incarceration are the rates at which families of color are being torn apart. More meaningful to me than statistics is the real suffering of these families that I have often witnessed.

We need more focus on how the drug war attacks parents of color

The U.S. opioid epidemic is being driven by an unprecedented surge in deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opiates. Fentanyl's powerful effects are long-lasting, and even tiny amounts of the drug can lead to an overdose. Antidotes, such as naloxone, do not last long enough in the body to fully counter the drug, requiring repeated injections. Now, scientists report that they are developing single-dose, longer-lasting opioid antidotes using polymer nanoparticles.

The researchers will present their results today at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Spring 2019 National Meeting & Exposition.

"We became interested in this problem while trying to make non-addictive pain medications," Saadyah Averick, Ph.D., says. "In that course of research, we realized the limitations of current opioid antidotes."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, opioids, such as heroin, oxycodone and fentanyl, were implicated in more than 47,000 deaths from overdose in 2017. These drugs all bind to the mu opioid receptor (MOR) in the brain, which is the body's natural pleasure receptor, explains Averick, a scientist at Allegheny Health Network Research Institute. "The drugs bind, turn on the receptor and stimulate a euphoric feeling. The synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, turn this on really, really well," he says.

And their effects are long-lasting. Fentanyl, which is much stronger than morphine, another opioid, can be absorbed into fat tissue, which protects it from being metabolized right away. It is then slowly released from this tissue, causing effects for several hours. Naloxone, an MOR antagonist and antidote, only stays in the system for about 30 minutes to an hour, however. Because of this mismatch, repeated doses are required to help the patient recover. But not all patients want to undergo the entire treatment course, and they can end up succumbing to an overdose after the naloxone is metabolized.

To overcome this challenge, Averick and his colleagues developed a drug delivery system intended to ensure that a steady, sufficient dose of antagonist is delivered over 24 hours. The researchers reacted naloxone, which has a multi-ringed chemical structure, with polylactic acid (PLA), thus creating a naloxone polymer. They then prepared covalent nanoparticles (CNPs) by adding this polymer to a solution of polyvinyl alcohol. They used a variety of analytical methods to purify and analyze the resulting particles, which are 300 nanometers in diameter.

Next-generation single-dose antidotes for opioid overdoses

The CDPE has conducted an international cross comparison of illegal drug policies to create an online tool – the 

 – to demonstrate the alignment and gaps between the metrics that countries use to assess the success of their drug policy and the actual drug policy-related outcomes they experience.

Globally, supply side strategies to reduce the scale of the illegal drug market have been prioritized by policymakers seeking to reduce drug-related harms. This has led to the development of a narrow set of indicators that are largely process-oriented – that is, they do not capture the real world impact of drug policies – to determine the effectiveness of drug policies. These include: the number of hectares of illegal drug crops eradicated by counternarcotics operations, the number and quantity of illegal drug seizures per year, and the number of people who use or traffic drugs that are arrested or in custody. However, a large body of evidence demonstrates the relative ineffectiveness of these approaches in managing the problems associated with drugs. In fact, research has shown that such policies have contributed extensively to producing a range of harms to the health and safety of individuals and communities affected by these policies.

Recently, a number of countries have sought to implement drug policies that focus on the health and safety of communities. To support this reorientation, a broader set of outcome indicators – those that measure the impact of drug policies on individuals and communities in the real world – are also required. To support this reorientation, the CDPE has proposed the adoption of the following domains for evaluations of drug policy: Health, Peace and Security, Development, and Human Rights. These domains enable a more comprehensive assessment of the impact of drug policies on a range of outcomes relevant to communities. They are also in alignment with many of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

There remains a range of approaches countries use to evaluate domestic drug policies. The 

 allows users to comparatively assess how countries determine policy success or failure in this regard, while also providing access to United Nations datasets on country-level drug policy-related outcomes. We intend for this tool to help users identify evaluative approaches that support effective drug policies.

Drug policy metrics map

The film tells a story about the anti-drug law enforcement practice, prison conditions in the penitentiary institutions of Belarus, and everyday life challenges that former prisoners and people who use drugs face. To convey to the viewer the origins of stereotypes, numerous clips from the anti-drug videos of the USSR, Russia, and Belarus are used in the film.

“Criminalisation of people who use drugs, impossibility to defend oneself in the court, and forced labor in punitive camps are direct manifestations of the authoritarian regime. The society does not respect the right of people to their own bodies, their freedom of choice. State propaganda, anti-scientific information, and stereotypes distort people’s notion about reality. Drugs users are called “narcomaniacs” and treated worse than murderers.

Uniformity of views of the state and society on this issue leads to mass uncontrolled violence on an incomparable scale. People who use drugs are an extremely vulnerable group in such a situation. Innocent people are convicted for years of isolation in inhumane conditions. We have to stop it as soon as possible”, Piotr Markiełaŭ, one of the creators of the film, says.

Narcotisation and authoritarianism: A film about the drug war in Belarus

Global drug policy, born out of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, has been plagued by the harmful “Vienna Consensus.” This bureaucratic apparatus that governs the application of global drug laws from this city is limited by inertia, and resists recognizing the urgent need to replace substance prohibition with more intelligent and efficient policies. However, this consensus, thankfully, is showing signs of rupture.

The 52 countries that are part of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND)—the organ that governs drug treaties—and hundreds of civil society actors gathered once more in Vienna on March 14th and 15th for the Ministerial segment of the 62nd session. In 2019, the the action plan with the objective of achieving a “world free of drugs” turned 10 years old. From the start of this program to the present, the world has not only failed spectacularly, as demonstrated by a shadow report presented by the International Drug Policy Consortium, but has furthermore caused substantial damage in its effort to achieve an unrealistic goal.

It doesn’t help that these negotiations are always held in Vienna. Unlike other multilateral negotiation spaces of the United Nations, such as climate change or the trafficking of endangered species, whose Conference of the Parties changes location every meeting and includes all of the States who have signed the treaty, the substance control regime meets every year in the same city, with only the countries from the CND. This factor limits the participation of many countries, both because it is impossible for them to be in Vienna, and because of the disarticulation with other spaces that are fundamental parts of other debates on human rights and sustainable development, such as Geneva and New York.

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