The Philippines interior ministry said on Wednesday that it plans to acquire pistols for community leaders willing to fight crime, sparking fears of more lawless bloodshed in the country’s violent crackdown on drugs. Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president, said on Tuesday that he was considering arming community leaders, known as “barangay” captains, after pledging that officials who opted to fight the war against drugs would have his full support. Last week he promised to provide the same legal protection to barangay captains as he did to soldiers or police, vowing that they “will never go to jail” if they shot suspected criminals while performing their official duties.

Pledge to arm Philippine community chiefs sparks 'Wild West' fears

The death toll in a Bangladeshi “zero tolerance” crackdown on drugs has risen to 140, with about 18,000 people arrested, the government said on Thursday, as a group of activists urged the United Nations to step in to stop the bloodshed. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina approved the anti-narcotics campaign in early May to tackle the spread of methamphetamines but the killings have raised fears among rights groups of a bloody Philippine-style campaign to wipe out drugs. “In a manner reminiscent of the Philippines drug war, Bangladeshi police justified these killings as supposedly happening during ‘gunfights’ with rival gangs or law enforcement officers acting in self-defense during anti-drug operations,” the International Drug Policy Consortium said in a statement, urging U.N. agencies to act.

Bangladesh body count mounts; group urges U.N. action to stop drug war

The 63rd Session of the Commission on Drugs OAS’s Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) took place from 25 to 27 April. As part of the official proceedings, a meeting of the CICAD’s working group on the Implementation of the UNGASS 2016 recommendation was convened. To supplement discussions by Member States, civil society representatives were invited to deliver relevant statements. Ann Fordham (IDPC), Lisa Sánchez (MUCD) and Zara Snapp (ATS) highlighted remaining challenges in recalibrating drug policies to ensure they respond to public health, human rights and development challenges. Below, we share the statement in full by Ann Fordham.

IDPC CICAD statement

Laura Andrade recently walked out of a pharmacy in Uruguay cursing loudly because she couldn’t buy legal pot. The wine sommelier had taken a bus since pharmacies in her neighborhood don’t sell the drug, but a pharmacy employee told her to come back the next day. “I work, I can’t come here every day,” she complained. “Today, I’ll have to buy from an illegal dealer. I have no choice. This system is crap. It’s useless!”

Marijuana went on sale in Uruguay last year under a 2013 law that made it the first nation to legalize a pot market covering the entire chain from plants to purchase. But the country is still working out how to meet demand in its effort to undercut drug traffickers who control the black market.

“The demand is greater than our productive capacity,” the head of Uruguay’s National Drugs Council, Diego Olivera, told The Associated Press. “We have to address that challenge.” It’s exactly the opposite of the problem facing some U.S. states that have legalized marijuana — an oversupply. Oregon and California have such a glut that sellers are slashing prices.

Uruguay struggling to meet demand for legal marijuana

Substance abuse continues to be one of the major struggles of today. A factor that is significantly contributing to the problem is, on top of drugs, scarcity of information about their dangers and practical ways to mitigate those. Facebook banned harm reduction information, in an effort to mitigate drug profiteering hurting educators and self-help communities.

Banned are “ instructions for use of non-medical drugs” and talk about “use of non-medical drugs unless posted in a recovery context”. (FB Community Standards, I. Violence and Criminal Behavior, 5. Regulated Goods, section “Do not post”), which constitute the foundation of a pragmatic life-saving approach called harm reduction, designed for people who have not reached recovery but want to improve their safety already.

Harm reduction is a proven, pragmatic and effective approach to solve that problem by providing accurate scientific information to reduce harms derived from drug misuse, and this approach has gained major international recognition (i.e WHO http://www.wpro.who.int/topics/harm_reduction_injection/en/due to its great acceptance, better respect for human rights and effectivity compared with the old “taboo” ineffective approach that promotes dangerous misinformation.

Facebook: Allow for life-saving harm reduction “instructions for non-medical drugs”

Cesar Gaviria Trujillo
Ex-president of the Republic of Colombia
Member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy

The undersigned organisations express our deep concern about your endorsement of a presidential candidate that promotes drug policy proposals contradictory to the recommendations made by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, of which you are a member. The Commission’s recommendations are crucial for the transition process in which Colombia finds itself and in order to achieve the transformation of a policy that requires structural change – the reason for which the Commission was created in 2011.

To date, the Global Commission has published 7 reports that have promoted:

Breaking the taboo: Promoting an open debate and policies that effectively reduce consumption, as well as prevent and reduce the harms related to drug use and drug control policies. This includes increased investment in the research and analysis of the impact of different policies and programmes.

Replacing the criminalisation and punishment of people who use drugs with the provision of health services and treatment for those who need them, including harm reduction programmes.

Eliminating criminal punishments for peasants and day laborers involved in the drug market by participating in the cultivation, processing, transportation or sale of drugs as a means of subsistence for their families; policies should instead focus on long-term socio-economic development efforts.

Encouraging governments to experiment with models for the legal regulation of drugs (like cannabis) that are designed to undermine the power of organised crime and safeguard the health and safety of citizens.

The proposed drug policy included in the government programme that you – and the party which you lead — have publicly supported are contrary to the Global Commission’s recommendations and the evidence from available research. The proposal:

Does not support drug policy change, although this is the reason for the existence of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Opposes the core elements of point 4 in the peace agreement.

Calls for the return of forced eradication strategies such as aerial spraying, which has proven to be ineffective in containing or reducing the cultivation of crops declared to be illicit.

Fails to embrace harm reduction as a strategy to protect the health of people who use drugs, while the Commission’s recommendation, based on a public health approach, has been precisely the opposite.

Proposes the prohibition of a ‘personal dose’, which in practice criminalises people who use drugs.

Opposes voluntary crop substitution, while supporting the return of aerial fumigation and the implementation of hard-line policies towards growers, while the Commission has recommended reducing the harms related to drug control policies in rural areas.

Does not agree with market regulation strategies, including that of medicinal cannabis.

It is also important to highlight that the Global Commission was explicitly included as an international monitor for the implementation of point four in the peace agreement between the government and FARC, which refers specifically to drug policy. This is particularly worrisome given that the government plan that you publicly support includes the revision and modification of point four of the accord.

We express deep concern that the positions that you have taken regarding drug policy in Colombia, despite your role as a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, weakens the role that the Commission may play with regards to the Colombian peace process.

We ask that you clarify your stance on the drug policy proposals made by the presidential candidate in question, that you state your position on these proposals, and consider whether that implies a change in your position with respect to those taken by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

In conclusion, the peace process currently underway in Colombia necessitates a transformation of drug policy, along the lines of the recommendations provided by the Global Commission. The presidential candidate that you and your party have publicly supported contradicts everything that the Commission defends and proposes drug policies whose effectiveness have proven to be counterproductive for the protection and the guarantee of human rights of the people involved in illegal economies.

The civil society organizations listed below as signatories will continue working to support peace in Colombia, accompanied by a transformation in drug policy that is consistent with human rights, health, development and social justice.

Open letter to Cesar Gaviria on the upcoming Colombian elections

On 28 May 2018, the Transnational Institute and the Epicurus Foundation co-hosted the second edition of the “The Transparent Chain,” a conference on transparent cannabis supply chains in Utrecht, Netherlands.

The conference brought together academics, entrepreneurs, advocates and policymakers, from within the Netherlands and from other jurisdictions with experience regulating cannabis, to discuss the future of a government-led cannabis cultivation “experiment” planned for Dutch municipalities. In this context, TNI Drugs and Democracy Programme Director Martin Jelsma shared insights on how local developments in the Netherlands might pave the way for modernisation of the global drug control system.

Transparent cannabis supply chain in the Netherlands

The State Institute for Drug Control says that medicinal marihuana grown on the domestic market should be available in pharmacies by the end of June. Its price should be 149 crowns per gram without VAT. Presently pharmacies can only offer imported marihuana, which is several times more expensive. Around 880,000 patients with multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS are believed to use medicinal marihuana in the Czech Republic. However patients complain that the doze prescribed per month is insufficient for their needs and that medicinal marihuana in pharmacies is twice as expensive as that sold on the black market.

Home-grown medical marijuana to be available in pharmacies soon in the Czech Republic

Paris’s first two ‘coffee shops’ selling legal cannabis have attracted long queues of customers eager to try a low-strength version of the drug now permitted under French law. The shops opened last week following a softening of restrictions to allow the sale of cannabis containing less than 0.2 per cent of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the main psychoactive ingredient. The shops’ owners insist that their hemp products will not induce the ‘high’ craved by drug users and are purely for those who like the taste and aroma. Although the cannabis has very little THC, it does contain a relaxant.

Parisians queue for cannabis after softening of drug laws 

t’s approaching 5am on a Sunday morning before Christmas, and in the Santo Niño district of Pasay city, Metro Manila, Domingo Mañosca is already up and about. His heavily pregnant wife, Elizabeth, is still fast asleep. Sprawled beside her, in a tangle of little arms and legs, lie their three children: five-year-old Francis wedged up against their shanty’s plywood wall; their eldest, nine-year-old Juliebeth, small for her age, curled up round her 18-month-old sister, Erika, the baby who never stops smiling.

Their second-floor room is rough-hewn, windowless, pokey, nailed together in a patchwork of scavenged shards of planking and ply. All five sleep together on rattan mats, spread over a lino-covered wood platform; none has ever known creature comforts. Upstairs, Domingo’s brother, his wife, and their two children are crammed into another room just off the shared space where they all live and cook. His widowed mother, Maria, also sleeps there.

To make some kind of living, Domingo rents a sidecar, a bicycle-taxi designed for two passengers – but which usually carries more, whole families, sometimes, in addition to their bags and boxes stacked high. Often he doesn’t get back until late; sometimes he works through the night. The early mornings belong to him, though; Domingo slips out, descends three makeshift ladders into the darkness of the alleyway below, and wends his way to the stalls to buy a coffee. He has to be out on the bike by seven.

Duterte Harry's drugs war: how one family was destroyed

There will never be fundamental change in West Belfast’s drug problem without addressing the poverty and conflict legacies affecting it, a report has found. Launched on Monday, the West Belfast Community Drugs Panel’s report examined all aspects of drugs misuse in the area and provided a series of recommendations. The panel was set up in October last year in reaction to a spate of drug-related deaths in the west of the city and is made up of representatives from several government departments, including the Belfast Trust and the Public Health Agency. Families in the area affected by drugs, including bereaved parents, were also invited to give their views through community representatives on the panel, which was chaired by Noel Rooney, former head of the Probation Board for NI. Funding for the report was provided by the Belfast Policing and Community Safety Partnership, which is made up of councillors and representatives from statutory agencies. The report found significant issues relating to drugs misuse in West Belfast, many related to chronic under-funding by successive governments and the lack of a coherent, multi-agency strategy to deal with the problem. It also identified significant contributing factors relating to the area’s social housing provision.

Drugs in West Belfast - report lays bare problems

WASHINGTON — President Trump appeared to break with his own administration’s policy on Friday, saying that he was likely to support a legislative proposal to leave the decision to states about whether to legalize marijuana.

Mr. Trump was asked about a new bill introduced by Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts.

“We’re looking at it. But I probably will end up supporting that, yes,” Mr. Trump said to reporters as he departed Washington to attend the Group of 7 summit meeting in Canada.

Mr. Trump’s view is in stark contrast to measures his administration took this year, freeing federal prosecutors to more aggressively enforce federal laws against the use of marijuana in states that have decriminalized it.

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