The transition from the repressive alternative development initiatives conditioned on forced eradication of coca to a model grounded in the principles of inclusive citizenship and sustainable development has been a revolutionary process in Bolivia.

For the past 20 years, AIN’s Kathryn Ledebur has been studying the impact of coca cultivation and development efforts aimed at limiting coca cultivation in Bolivia. She has witnessed the change from the repressive and ineffectual alternative development initiatives conditioned on forced eradication to a model grounded in the principles of inclusive citizenship and sustainable development.

This past April, Ledebur participated in the Illicit Economies & Development Colloquium held in London, where she discussed the benefits of the Bolivian model for crop regulation and sustainable development.

Ledebur highlights the following points in a video published by IED :

Illicit crop cultivation is about poverty and people needing to feed their families.

Famers can diversify their sources of income once their basic needs are met and when they aren't under the threat of military intervention or losing their source of livelihood.

Famers need to be at the center of these policies and engaged and treated as citizens in a productive role with the state and international institutions.

Addressing the development implications of illicit economies

Southeast Asian authorities are not shy about doling out the death penalty to punish drug traffickers, and yet narcotics abuse has not abated. If anything, it is on the rise, which begs the question of whether the region’s war on drugs is working. The latest report on global trends from the United Nations shows that while Colombia remains the world’s top source of cocaine, Asia is now emerging as a hub for both transportation and consumption of the drug. In 2016 cocaine seizures tripled across the continent in the span of just a year, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in its June report. But methamphetamine is making even bigger leaps in Southeast Asia because it is not as geographically restricted as cocaine, which depends on cultivation of the coca plant. Officials in countries around the Mekong region seized 65 tons of methamphetamine in tablet and crystalline form in 2017, the UNODC said in a separate report -- that is nearly 600 percent more than the amount seized a decade earlier.

Southeast Asia drug use persists despite death penalty

Austria has always had a unique role in international drug policy, being the host and the defender of the multilateral organizations that define drug control measures. This role is further enhanced as the country assumes the EU Council Presidency for the next six months, and thus bears the responsibility for coordinating and strengthening a single EU voice on this issue.

This is particularly important in light of the United Nations’ high-level meeting in March 2019 on drug policy, when the international community will convene in Vienna to review how every country has fought drugs in the past ten years, to examine what has worked and what has been a failure. With the steadily increasing prevalence of drug use, production and trafficking, we know that the international drug control system has failed to achieve any of its objectives. Many governments around the world know it as well, and are starting to introduce different drug policies, including the decriminalization of drug consumption, the provision of maintenance therapies to those heavily dependent on drugs, and as far as legally regulating some substances such as in Uruguay and Canada.

The meeting next March is a major milestone and offers a unique opportunity to change course. Rarely do the UN member states discuss in any depth the flaws of prohibition – not only its failure to curb supply and demand, but also its negative consequences on public health such as HIV and hepatitis transmission, on the lack of enjoyment of human rights due to police abuse and traffickers’ violence, and on the rule of law, with regard to the arbitrary nature of drug interventions, which mainly target the already vulnerable communities.

Commissioner Solana: All drug policy roads lead to Vienna in 2019

A new video produced by MENHARA documents the current status of harm reduction in the Middle East and North Africa region. The video utilises a cartoon named Ahmad who highlights the successful needle-syringe exchange and substitution therapy programs that have been created to reduce harm in the area. However, while acknowledging the positives of these measures, Ahmad notes that the rest of the region still needs to take action and implement similar policies and programs. Instead, war, political unrest, stigmatisation, and criminalisation have prevented drug users from obtaining the services and care they need. In order to overcome these obstacles, countries must commit politically to creating better policies and supporting the PWUD community instead of resorting to punishment.

Harm reduction situation in the MENA region

Earlier this week we announced the launch of the International Activities Fund, which will assist SSDP activists around the world who don’t have access to the same resources often used by young people in the United States. Our goal is to raise $10,000 during the month of July to kickstart the fund. Today, we want to share a story from 

Estudiantes por una Política Sensata de Drogas México (EPSD), the Mexican chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, was founded in 2010 by youth activists in Mexico City. Since former President Felipe Calderón openly declared a War on Drugs in 2006, failed drug policies have led to many deaths and disappearances in our country. México has experienced a period of violence that has particularly affected the youth population. For this reason, a group of concerned young people decided to form an SSDP chapter in order to counteract the harm caused by the War on Drugs. Our goals are to influence public policy through communication with government officials and to develop a drug education program. We want to inform people about the effects of drugs and drug policy using scientific evidence and without moral judgments that stigmatize drug users. EPSD members are currently present in 14 Mexican states, which is important because we need members in different parts of the republic and not only in Mexico City. Now that our voices are being heard and we are starting to have an impact in our country, we are optimistic about the changes we can make.

The current prohibitionist drug policies in México only focus on security instead of health. The government has invested a lot of money in the issue, but the expected results of ending drug trafficking and reducing drug consumption have not been achieved. That is why it is important to push forward reforms that focus on health and respect for human rights that protect people who use drugs and even those who do not use drugs.

In Mexico, SSDP activists fight violence and stigma caused by the war on drugs

Earlier this week we announced the launch of the International Activities Fund, which will assist SSDP activists around the world who don’t have access to the same resources often used by young people in the United States. Our goal is to raise $10,000 during the month of July to kickstart the fund. Today, we want to share a story from SSDP Ghana founder and Board member Juana Boateng:

I have always been compassionate about others and believe in the possibility of change. I come from a country with a population of about 26 million people and a high degree of drug trafficking and misuse. The drug policies in Ghana focus more on criminalization and imprisonment with no directive on rehabilitation or public health.

Many young, intelligent, and skillful individuals are thrown into prison without a fair trial because people involved with drugs are automatically considered guilty. There are hundreds of people in prison who have been forgotten by the state. The only home they know is the four corners of the Nsawam prisons or any other prison they may find themselves in.

Most drug users are branded as criminals or junkies with society giving little to no attention to their needs. Believing this necessitated a paradigm shift in Ghana’s drug policy, I joined Students for Sensible Drug Policy online. After doing some research, I was amazed at the impact young people are making in their countries and communities. SSDP was the first youth-led group in Ghana fighting to end inhumane drug policies. We started advocating for the rights of people who use drugs by taking to the streets and talking to people about our cause. We used the media to reach the masses, writing articles and launching annual educational events to keep the discussion going. We also met with stakeholders to talk about the need for a shift in Ghana’s drug policy system. We have support from the former president of Ghana, JJ Rawlings, who believes in empowering youth and in drug policy reform. It has been a tough road for us as we had minimal funds to accomplish this work.

How SSDP inspired me to make a difference in Ghana

In June 2014, I joined the Students for Sensible Drug Policy staff after earning my B.A. in International Studies from Dickinson College, where I founded and led an SSDP chapter. Because of my knowledge and interest in global drug policy, I was immediately put in charge of managing our international chapter network, which at the time consisted of only a handful of chapters in Ireland, Mexico, and Nigeria. While excited, I quickly realized the complexity of the challenge I had been assigned. During this point in SSDP’s history there were legitimate questions about whether or not we could support an international network due to budget limitations and our overall lack of experience in global organizing. I still remember a debate at the 2014 Strategy Summit where some argued that SSDP should only exist as a US network, and thinking to myself that if I could just have a chance, everyone else would see the same potential for SSDP’s international chapters that I saw.

Four years later, SSDP’s status as a global network is no longer in doubt and has become one of our greatest strengths. We now have chapters in over 30 countries and counting on every habitable continent. Take a look at any list of SSDP accomplishmentsand you’ll see plenty of actions that took place outside of the United States. We’ve taken action around regional issues such as the Ayotzinapa student massacre and extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, co-hosted a global convening of youth drug policy activists in Bangkok, and organized numerous workshops in West Africa along with four straight annual conferences in Ireland. We have seriously stepped up our game at the United Nations. During the 2015 and 2017 Reform conferences, we educated dozens of our members on international drug policy through our Model UNGASS simulation. We brought 10 members to the real UNGASS in 2016 and organized a rally at the UN the day before with over 150 people in attendance. At the most recent CND, we co-hosted a side event that had so many attendees we ran out of seats. We even had an SSDPer elected as treasurer to the Vienna NGO Committee, the body that oversees the relationship between civil society and member states at the UN. All of this is only a snapshot of SSDP’s accomplishments outside of the United States over the last few years.

Support SSDP's global chapters by giving to the international activities fund

The reconvened Civil Society Forum on Drugs discussed how to put drug policy back on the EU’s political agenda at its first meeting in Brussels.

The Civil Society Forum on Drugs (CSFD) is an expert group of the European Commission, advising decision makers on drug policies. The members of the Forum are selected by the Commission, based on their expertise and knowledge in the field, for a three year mandate. The membership of the new Forum (2018-21) had its first meeting in Brussels, hosted by the Organised Crime and Drug Unit of the DG Home of the EU Commission. More than 40 professionals and activists gathered from all regions of Europe, including some EU candidate countries, to discuss how civil society can contribute to making and evaluating drug policies at the EU level.

Members were welcomed by Floriana Sipala, head of the Unit, who gave an overview of the drug situation and recent policy developments. She highlighted the ongoing external evaluation of the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the most important EU research institution in the drug field based in Lisbon. The evaluation can show the importance of the EMCDDA in these difficult times when there are polarised debates about the future of the EU, and some governments would like to curtail the budget on social and health policies.

Civil society forum on drugs reconvenes in Brussels

An online study – conducted by Drugreporter – of more than 1100 Hungarian students revealed that there are serious problems with drug prevention in schools. It is provided mostly by police officers with outdated methods, focuses on scare tactics, and does not include much interaction with students.

An online questionnaire has been distributed (with the help of social media ads) among Hungarian young people who are attending high school or have finished secondary education within the last five years. There were 1133 valid responses. 95% of respondents were aged between 14 and 25 years, 50% of them girls. They represented all types of secondary education. Approximately one quarter of them went to school in Budapest.

According to the study, the most prevalent drug prevention delivery method used in Hungarian schools is lecturing (reported by 85% of respondents) and watching movies (32%). Interactive methods such as play/drama (10%) are much less prevalent, while personal (4%) or family (3%) counselling is a rarity. More than half of the students reported that the person who delivered the program was a police officer (54%), while only 42% of respondents reported other social professionals delivering the program.

We asked students to identify the subjects and themes of the drug prevention programs. The vast majority of programs focused on raising awareness of the dangers of drug use (82%), information about the types and effects of drugs (68%), raising awareness of the prohibition of substances (44%), and teaching students how to say no to drugs (40%). Only a minority of students reported programs on safer nightlife (30%), how to help other students with drug problems (27%), harm reduction (11%), or management of personal relations (9%).

How do students see drug prevention in Hungarian schools?

Mrs Maria-Goretti Loglo, the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC ) Consultant for Africa has called on Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) working on drug abuse issues to intensify efforts and harmonise their motives to whip up government’s interest in the welfare of individuals with substance abuse disorders. Speaking at the World Drug Day event organized in Accra by the West Africa Drug Policy Network Ghana (WADPN) in partnership with the West Africa Civil Society institute (WACSI), she noted that disunity among civil society organisations in Ghana is hindering efforts to draw the needed support from government to support individuals with substance abuse problems. To get government to prioritize the needs of these individuals, “CSO’s must organise themselves and intensify their efforts. What I have realised is that CSOs are doing things separately. There is the need to harmonize, intensify and speak with one voice to get government involved.” She bemoaned the practice where people with drug abuse problems are punished and bundled up in prison together with hard core criminals which according to her, makes matters worse for these people.

CSOs need a unified voice to reach government on the plight of people who experience drug addiction

The dismantling of the prohibition of marijuana in its totality across member states is a key recommendation contained in the report of the CARICOM Regional Commission on Marijuana 2018, which will be reviewed by heads of government at the 39th conference of the regional body to be held in Montego Bay, St James, from July 4-6.

In its report, the Commission, comprising professionals with expertise in the fields of law, ethics, sociology, psychiatry, medical, and social research, and criminology, argued that a strictly regulated framework for marijuana akin to that for alcohol and tobacco, should be introduced. Alcohol and tobacco are harmful substances that are not criminalised in CARICOM states.

"The commission is unanimous in its view that the current classification for cannabis/ marijuana as a 'dangerous drug' with 'no value' or narcotic should be changed to a classification of legal cannabis as a 'controlled substance'," the report stated.

CARICOM heads to consider dismantling marijuana prohibition


Sri Lanka announced on Wednesday, July 11, it would start hanging drug dealers, ending a near-half century moratorium on capital punishment as officials promised to "replicate the success" of the Philippines' drug war. President Maithripala Sirisena had told the cabinet he "was ready to sign the death warrants" of repeat drug offenders, government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said Wednesday. "From now on, we will hang drug offenders without commuting their death sentences," he said. Sri Lanka has commuted death sentences for serious crimes to life in prison since 1976, when the last execution took place. Senaratne said there were 19 drug offenders whose death sentences had been commuted to life. It was not clear if they would be hanged under the government's policy shift. But authorities say a tougher approach is needed to combat what they say is an increase in drug-related crime.

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