In June, the Chinese government hosted a delegation of East African government officials and HIV and drug treatment workers to share their experience of innovative harm reduction techniques being implemented in Yunnan province. The African delegates observed and learned about local approaches to needle and syringe exchange, community-based drug treatment, and take-home methadone treatment.

The take-home methadone programme was initiated by AIDS Care China (ACC, the Alliance Linking Organisation in China), which has advocated effectively to gain government support to scale up this model and for implementing other innovative harm reduction interventions.

Tina Luo, Executive Director of ACC, described her organisation’s approach to advocacy in China, and how it differs from the approach of its counterparts in other countries: “What AIDS Care China does is very innovative. Our approach is to lead from behind, not with protests or direct action, but rather work with the government.”

ACC partners with communities and government to develop and pilot innovative methods that are responsive to both the programmatic needs and political imperatives at play in China. They then use the results from the pilots to gain buy-in from municipal, provincial, and national officials. Once the higher echelons of the government are convinced of the interventions’ effectiveness, they are scaled up, funding is allocated, and policies are changed. The good practices are then promoted within China and abroad to consolidate support throughout the government and in communities.

Promoting harm reduction in China by sharing good practice abroad

Global Drug Survey (GDS) runs the world’s largest drug survey. GDS is comprised of a network of international experts in the field of drugs, health, epidemiology and public policy. GDS uses an encrypted, online survey platform to conduct annual anonymous surveys. Over the last 6 years over 550,000 people have taken part in our surveys.

Now in its 8th year, our latest survey GDS2019 which launches in November 2018, will be translated into 23 languages with partners in over 35 countries. Partnering with global media and news networks from across the globe and working with harm reduction organisations and the entertainment industry, GDS focuses on issues that are often ignored by traditional research organisations and government funded centres.

Because we are independent we are free to explore issues of relevance to people to use drugs and can focus our attention on achieving our mission of making drug use safer regardless of the legal status of the drug. All our research is approved by university ethics committees and to date has led to 50 peer reviewed publications in the last 6 years.

Global Drug Survey 2019

On October 28, repressive drug policy secured a powerful platform in Brazil, the world’s fourth-largest democracy, with the election of far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. He raked in 55 percent of the vote.

Bolsonaro’s military background informs his violent approach to drug policy. The former artillery unit captain has frequently expressed support for police killings of people merely 

 of drug trafficking. This position echoes that of Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, who is currently conducting a large-scale drug war that has killed, without trial, over 12,000 people suspected of drug-law violations.

Bolsonaro’s potential drug policies are ideologically rooted in broader social bigotry. He has a long track record of advocating a military dictatorship, publicly disparaging women, gay people and Afro-Brazilian and indigenous communities. Indigenous leaders in Brazil have expressed fears of genocide, at the prospect of Bolsonaro’s election. Bolsonaro has also suggested that drug use causes people to become gay, and that drug legalization "benefits" traffickers, rapists and hostage takers.” He offers no evidence for these beliefs.

Though some US publications repeat Bolsonaro’s message that he is like Trump, some experts in Brazil warn that, given the context, Bolsonaro may be even more dangerous.

Brazil heading for an even deadlier drug war after election of president Jair Bolsonaro

LONDON (29 OCTOBER) – Bangladesh’s parliament passed a bill on 27 October that expands use of the death penalty for drug offenses in the country. The Narcotics Control Act 2018, an update to the 1990 Act, now makes the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine pills – known as ‘yaba’ – punishable by death.

Crimes related to other illicit substances, such as heroin and cocaine, already face the death penalty in Bangladesh under the 1990 Act. It is unclear if the country has ever executed anyone for drug offenses. Bangladesh’s government launched a brutal crackdown on the drug trade in May, which has resulted in the possible extrajudicial killings of over 200 people, and imprisonment of more than 25,000.

Naomi Burke-Shyne, executive director of Harm Reduction International, said: “There is no evidence that imposing the death penalty for drugs offences has any impact on the drug trade. This punishment is in clear violation of international human rights law, and most often impacts upon the most poor and vulnerable people. Bangladesh’s violent drug war and regressive move to expand the scope of its death penalty laws will only lead to a further breakdown of human rights in the country.”

According to Harm Reduction International’s research, at least 33 countries have the death penalty for drugs in law, though only a handful – such as Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, Indonesia and Singapore – have carried out executions in recent years. This year has seen a marked decline in the number of executions carried out for drug offences, primarily due to a 2017 law reform in Iran.

Burke-Shyne added: “There is a clear trend globally toward ending use of the death penalty for drugs, highlighted by Malaysia’s recent announcement of plans for total abolition. Our research shows that only those countries on the extreme fringe of the international community remain committed to executing people for drugs. Bangladesh’s move bucks the trend toward abolition, and risks placing the country firmly in the category of pariah state.”

Over 4,000 people have been executed for drugs in the past decade, while the UN Office on Drugs and Crime admitted in 2018 that “both the range of drugs and drug markets are expanding and diversifying as never before.”

Harm Reduction International condemns new Bangladesh law expanding use of the death penalty for drugs

For decades poor farmers in countries like Jamaica and Morocco have risked the wrath of governments and gangsters to grow cannabis as a cash crop.

But as Canada becomes the first country in the Group of Seven leading industrial nations to fully legalize marijuana, those countries where the crop has traditionally been grown risk losing out on new legal markets worth billions of dollars.When people think of cannabis production in developing countries, they tend to picture drug cartels and bandits.The truth, says Martin Jelsma of the Transnational Institute (TNI), a Dutch drug-policy research organization, is that most growers are poor farmers, often women, who cultivate marijuana on small holdings in the hills and mountains.

Canada's legalization of marijuana could hurt farmers in poorer countries

Among more than 72,000 deaths in the U.S. last year, fentanyl—a highly potent prescription opioid often used to lace other heroin or cocaine, but hard for drug users to detect—factored into many of cases.

In the search for solutions, a team of researchers led by Brandon Marshall, an associate professor of epidemiology at Brown University's School of Public Health, provided rapid-acting fentanyl test strips to young adults at risk of overdose in the state. New research by the team found that most of those young adults used the strips—and many who detected fentanyl reported changing their behavior to reduce overdose risk.

"We found that fentanyl test strips are an effective harm-reduction tool to prevent overdose," Marshall said. "Harm reduction is important because everyone deserves to be able to take care of themselves and make informed decisions about their health, whether they use drugs or not. These tests strips could be a life-saving intervention for many young adults who use drugs."

The findings were published on Thursday, Oct. 18, in the International Journal of Drug Policy.

The fentanyl test strips work like an over-the-counter pregnancy test, said Max Krieger, a research assistant in Marshall's lab and the lead author of the study. Each single-use strip is dipped into water containing a bit of drug residue, and after a minute, either one or two red lines appear—one line means the liquid contains fentanyl, and two lines means the test did not detect the drug.

Fentanyl test strips prove useful in preventing overdoses

To explain why he grows coca, the raw material for cocaine, rather than food crops on his 5-acre farm in southern Colombia, Luis Tapia does the math.

Every three months, Tapia, 60, harvests the bright green coca leaves with his bare hands, then mixes them with gasoline, sulfuric acid and other chemicals to make coca paste. He then sells the paste to drug traffickers who turn it into powder cocaine. A pound of paste, he says, sells for more than one ton of corn.

"That's why everyone grows coca," Tapia says.

Last year, Colombian farmers like Tapia produced 422,550 acres of coca, the largest coca crop in Colombia's history, according to a United Nations survey released last month. That's enough to make about 1,500 tons of cocaine, the report said.

Colombia is growing record amounts of coca, the key ingredient in cocaine

Thailand is on the verge of becoming the first country in Asia to legalize medical marijuana, with some advocates saying that nationwide legalization for recreational use might not be far behind.

It would be a landmark decision in a part of the world with some of the harshest drug laws on Earth. Thailand has the largest prison population in Southeast Asia, and the sixth-largest in the world. Inmates convicted of minor drug offenses make up the largest percentage of that population, and only 15 years ago, the country embarked on its own Dutere-style war on drugs that left hundreds of alleged drug dealers dead - including several weed dealers.

Thailand is about to legalize medical marijuana and it could change everything

As President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed sweeping legislation aimed at curbing the opioid epidemic, experts on the front lines hailed the bipartisan efforts on the opioid package, but cautioned about celebrating prematurely, especially when tens of thousands of Americans' lives are at stake.

"Despite all the polarization, Democrats and Republicans were able to agree on a number of effective policies," said Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University who worked with Senate and House staff on the legislation. "That's impressive that, at least on this issue, they were able to collaborate in a way they haven't been able to do on anything else." Added Guohua Li, a professor of epidemiology and anesthesiology at Columbia University: "It is heartening to see our elected officials put national interest above partisan politics and join hands to tackle a public health problem. The legislation represents an elevated federal response to the opioid epidemic, including increased financial support and some sound and sensible policy initiatives."

Trump claims on opioid crisis met with mix of skepticism and hope by experts as deaths plateau

By Cross-party parliamentary Drug Policy Reform Group (DPRG)

The cross-party parliamentary Drug Policy Reform Group (DPRG) has welcomed a report compiled by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) that criticises the lack of progress made by the United Nations in the implementation of its 10 year strategy to tackle drug trafficking and consumption around the world.

The report finds that, despite loud declarations made by the international community in 2009 – to eliminate or significantly reduce illegal drug production, trafficking and use – the past ten years has seen big rises in the scale of illegal markets, and the harms that they cause to individuals and communities. Examples include a 130% increase in cultivation of the opium poppy, and a 34% increase of coca bush cultivation; a global 31% increase in the number of users of illegal drugs; and a 145% increase in drug related deaths.

Ministers from all national governments are meeting in Vienna next March to review global drug policy. However, growing awareness of the failure to make any progress has led to an unwillingness of the United Nations itself to publish any results against the targets set in 2009. The report from the IDPC does their job for them, and makes for distinctly uncomfortable reading.

Co-Chair of the Drug Policy Reform Group, Baroness Molly Meacher, said:

 ‘We have to commend IDPC for their excellent research casting light on the monumental failure of the international drug control system to meet its own objectives.

Many countries are now recognising that new approaches are necessary, and we call on Ministers to use the formal review meeting to signal an end to the failed and counterproductive war on drugs, and focus on policies that protect the health, welfare and human rights of their citizens’.

Parliamentary group in the United Kingdom welcomes NGO report slamming United Nations ‘war on drugs’

People in chronic pain and the terminally ill will have to wait until at least mid-2020 to legally obtain medicinal cannabis, according to a Ministry of Health document – a wait criticised as far too long.

The Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill, introduced by Health Minister David Clark in December 2017 under the Government's 100-day plan, is expected to become law by March 2019.

A Health Ministry document, released under the Official Information Act to National's associate health spokesman Shane Reti, shows it is working to a timeline that assumes a "go-live date" in mid-2020.

"And this is just for the required regulations. It is highly unlikely that dispensing would begin at that point and it would almost certainly be much later. This is unacceptable," Reti said.

National supported the Government's bill at first reading but then pulled its support in July with its own bill in Reti's name. National said its bill set out a more comprehensive and well-researched regime for the use of medicinal cannabis.

"The Government needs to adopt National's bill which would make medicinal cannabis products available to New Zealanders who need them with an appropriate regime in place in a fraction of the time of their current plan."

Greens drug law reform spokeswoman Chloe Swarbrick, whose own medicinal cannabis bill was voted down in January, said her party would like to see the Government's bill go live much sooner than mid-2020.

Swarbrick said she had been speaking to Clark and Reti to get all parties working together.

"We think that it's important to ensure that we are getting the best possible outcomes for patients here. It's unfortunate that politics has obviously got in the way," she said.

New Zealand Health Ministry works to mid-2020 date to legalise medicinal cannabis 

Malaysia's cabinet has agreed to abolish the death penalty and halt pending executions, a move that has been hailed by international human rights groups and foreign diplomats.

A proposed bill on abolishing capital punishment is likely to be discussed by the government when the Malaysian parliament meets on Monday.

"All death penalty will be abolished. Full stop," a Channel NewsAsia report cited Law Minister Liew Vui Keong as saying.

Keong called for a halt on all executions until the decision is in effect, saying: "Since we are abolishing the sentence, all executions should not be carried out."

"We will inform the Pardons Board to look into various applications for convicts on the [death penalty] waiting list to either be commuted or released," he said.

Communications and Multimedia Minister Gobind Singh Deo confirmed that the cabinet, which met on Wednesday, had resolved to end the death penalty.

"I hope the law will be amended soon," he told AFP news agency.

More than 1,200 people are on death row in Malaysia, which mandates hanging as punishment for a wide range of crimes including murder, kidnapping, drug trafficking and treason, among others.