In 2006, Mexico adopted a national security policy firmly focused on the “war on drugs”. Under the justification of combating crime, the Armed Forces were called on to perform the role of the police and, twelve years later, hundreds of people have been killed in conflicts and thousands of others are missing.

The Mexican case bears similarities with what is being done in Brazil with the operations to Guarantee Law and Order (GLOs) and, more recently, the federal military intervention in public security in Rio de Janeiro. Both in Mexico and in Brazil, soldiers have taken on functions they are not equipped to perform and if they kill civilians, they are judged by military courts.

Data from the Rio de Janeiro Public Security Institute reveal that, in the first month of the military intervention in the state, the main indices that measure violence worsened and there was also a significant reduction in police activities, such as the seizure of weapons and drugs.

What Brazil can learn from the militarization of Mexico

It is a great pleasure to be here in Vienna for the first time as Secretary-General.

I thank the United Nations staff based here, the representatives of Member States, civil society and all our partners, for your work on some of the most challenging problems the international community faces today: transnational crime, human trafficking, corruption, drug policy, cybercrime.

My overriding priorities since taking office are preventing conflicts and crises, and mobilizing efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and this Commission, have a crucial role to play.

I would like to say a few words about your work, in the context of our global efforts.

I welcome the three resolutions on human trafficking tabled at this Commission. This heinous crime is flourishing, as a result of protracted conflicts, growing inequality and the absence of an organized international response to migration.

The results are all around us: appalling deaths on the high seas and across deserts; forced labour and sexual servitude; the recruitment of child soldiers and many other forms of exploitation and abuse.

But these are just the visible signs of vast, cross-border criminal networks. We need to tackle these networks in their entirety, from recruiters to ship captains and brothel owners, all the way to the gang bosses who make fortunes from human misery.

This will require much stronger cooperation among Member States, based on the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and its Protocol on human trafficking.

The UN Security Council is targeting the financing of human traffickers.

The Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration that will be adopted later this year should be another milestone.

When we discuss crime prevention and criminal justice, we should always remember that laws work by compliance rather than coercion. It is the public’s perception of what is fair and just that best guarantees the effectiveness of law and its enforcement efforts.

This brings me to the top of the list of contemporary criminal justice issues: the fight against corruption.

I attach great importance to your work against this crime, which denies people opportunities, undermines economic growth and the rule of law, and damages people’s faith in governments.

Thanks to 24-hour news and social media, corruption is increasingly visible. It is rejected and repudiated by ordinary people all over the world, who want leaders and institutions that demonstrate transparency and accountability.

Combating corruption requires a culture of integrity, led from the top.

The UN Convention against Corruption, agreed fifteen years ago and adopted by 184 parties, is delivering real change. Legal institutions around the world are taking action.

I commend UNODC’s work in this area – but much more needs to be done. I urge you to strengthen the UN’s support to Member States in tackling corruption, strengthening good governance and the rule of law.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime also has a key role to play in addressing the global menace of drug abuse and trafficking.

When I was Prime Minister of Portugal, I used the flexibility afforded by the three international drug-control conventions to introduce non-criminal, health-based responses to the possession of drugs for personal use.

We increased the resources allocated to prevention, treatment and social reintegration programmes, and we retained a very strict policy on the criminalization of drug trafficking. The policy was hailed as a major success. HIV rates among injecting drug users fell dramatically; drug use rates also fell by almost fifty per cent. Portugal now has one of the lowest death rates for drug use in Europe.

So I strongly endorse a balanced, comprehensive approach to drug policy, giving full weight to prevention and treatment, in line with progress made at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem in 2016. I hope the next Ministerial meeting will build on these agreements.

UN Secretary-General's remarks to the 27th session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice

In 2015, something strange happened in Japan – something which made the country, for a moment, think differently about its past. Akie Abe, the wife of the Prime Minister, was photographed standing in a field of very large cannabis plants. This was not an accident. She was arguing for the revival of a cannabis culture that had prevailed in Japan for at least 2000 years – until it was stamped out by foreigners, in living memory.[1]

Japan today has some of the harshest drug laws of any advanced democracy. If you are found in possession of cannabis in Japan for personal use you could receive a maximum prison sentence of five years, and if you are caught growing it, you can be sent to prison for up to seven years. Each year, the laws are enforced against 2000 people, who are brutally publicly shamed before, during and after their prison sentence.[2] For example, when the actress Saya Takagi was caught with cannabis, all reruns of the dramas she appeared on – like the popular detective series Aibo - were scrubbed from the TV schedules.[3] She had written the theme song for another TV show: it was immediately ditched. Or to give another example, when a rugby player for Japan’s national team was caught with the drug, he was banned from ever playing again, and the electronics giant Toshiba suspended all sponsorship of his regional team.[4] To be associated with cannabis in Japan is to be destroyed.

So at first glance, Akie Abe’s call to restore Japan’s earlier culture – even saying she had considered growing hemp herself – seemed baffling to many Japanese people. What was she talking about? “Most Japanese people see cannabis as a subculture of Japan but they’re wrong. For thousands of years, cannabis has been at the very heart of Japanese culture,” Japan’s leading expert on cannabis, Takayasu Junichi, told the Asia Pacific Journal in an interview.

Japan, the place with the strangest drug debate in the world

BANGKOK, 13th May 2018 (NNT) – The new draft narcotics law to be proposed to the Cabinet this month will allow the manufacturing, import, distribution, and possession of cannabis for research purpose and medical use, says official.

The Narcotics Control Board (NCB) Secretary-General, Sirinya Sitdhichai, said the development of the move to allow cannabis research and usage for medical purposes in Thailand was a result from years of joint working between the NCB and the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH). This had led to the drafting of a new narcotic code.

The new narcotic code will give the authority to the Minister of Public Health, under the suggestion of the NCB, to authorize the production, import, distribution, and possession of cannabis for research and for medical use. The law will also give the authority to the NCB to announce areas for cannabis farming for research and for medical use.

The new narcotic law is expected to be purposed to Cabinet meeting for approval within this month.

However, he said, this new narcotic law will not allow any manufacturing or use of cannabis for recreational purposes, making the manufacturing of cannabis by unauthorized person remains illegal and punishable. All procedures of cannabis research and medical use will be performed under strict control of the NCB and the MOPH.

New law in Thailand to allow cannabis research, medical use

The world’s first clinical trials exploring the use of MDMA assisted therapy for treating alcohol dependency have begun in the UK.

The study is being led by researchers from Imperial College London. It consists of multiple therapy sessions, with two of the sessions - in week three and week six - being MDMA assisted. The study’s initial sessions have already begun, with the first MDMA doses set to be administered in the coming weeks. The study could provide valuable insights into alternative therapies for mental health conditions.

TalkingDrugs spoke with Dr Ben Sessa, a consultant child psychiatrist and senior research fellow at Imperial, who is working on the trials. He highlighted how the currently available treatment options are simply not working for a lot of people.

According to the US’ National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, approximately 90 per cent of people dependent on alcohol are likely to experience at least one relapse over the four-year period following treatment.

“There’s no other part of medicine that would tolerate that”, Sessa told us. “Imagine those kind of outcomes in surgery or immunology or even oncology. Doctors wouldn’t tolerate that. After a 100 years of modern psychiatry, it’s outrageous! If we can do any better than 90 per cent relapse rates then we’re onto something.”

World’s first MDMA trials for treating alcohol dependency begin in United Kingdom

They drink it in alleyways and markets, at bars and in private homes. They take it straight or mix it with Coca-Cola, making their purchases underground or in pharmacies, with a prescription or without.

It's codeine cough syrup, and Nigerian lawmakers estimate that the residents of just two states in the country's north consume more than 3 million bottles of it each day. “There is no family now that is not affected,” said Oluyemisi Ogun, the medical director at a psychiatric hospital in Lagos, at a symposium in Nigeria last year. “Our children are at risk as much as our husbands, wives and other relatives.”

Now the country’s health ministry has banned the import and production of the painkilling medicine-turned-street-drug. This week’s ban came immediately after the BBC released "Sweet Sweet Codeine," a documentary that shows pharmaceutical-company staff selling large amounts of cough syrup to undercover BBC reporters. The government claims the ban is the result of an internal investigation and not related to the BBC’s report.

Nigeria bans codeine cough syrup to stop an addiction epidemic. But something worse could take its place.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is currently seeking contributions for its report on the implementation of the UNGASS Outcome Document.

The mandate for the report derives from the Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution 37/42, adopted on 23 March 2018. The resolution requests the Office of the High Commissioner to prepare a report, in consultation with States, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and other United Nations agencies, civil society and other relevant stakeholders, on the implementation of the joint commitment to effectively addressing and countering the world drug problem with regards to human rights, and to present it to the Human Rights Council at its thirty-ninth session, and also requests the Office of the High Commissioner to share the report with the Commision on Narcotic Drugs (CND), through the appropriate channels, as a contribution to their work in this field and in preparation for the sixty-second session of the Commission, which will include the 2019 Ministerial Segment.

Any relevant information (max. 1,500 words) should be sent

 either electronically to registry@ohchr.org (zmahmood@ohchr.org) or by post to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Office at Geneva (c/o Zaved Mahmood), CH 1211-Geneva 10, Switzerland.

The Office will make all submissions publicly available on its website, unless otherwise advised by the contributor.

Report of the OHCHR on the implementation of the UNGASS Outcome Document with regard to human rights

A second pill-testing trial at an Australian music festival is likely to take place following its success at Canberra's Groovin the Moo, a leading drug expert has said. The president of Harm Reduction Australia, Gino Vumbaca, said it's a matter of when, not if, that a second trial would take place after the first round of testing in the country happened last weekend.

"I think that would be a natural conclusion to draw. I know there's been a lot of discussion with governments, but most governments outside the ACT have taken a position against it, but now they have an understanding of how it operates," he said. "What they should do is reopen political discussion on pill testing, now there's Australian-based evidence."

More pill-testing at festivals on the cards after Canberra success

New York's mayor is pushing for a plan to bring safe injection sites for illegal drug users to the US metropolis in a bid to reduce ever-rising overdose numbers.

The United States—plagued by an epidemic of fatal overdoses related to opioid use—does not yet have any such sites, which have seen success in Canada and Europe.

"After a rigorous review of similar efforts across the world, and after careful consideration of public health and safety expert views, we believe overdose prevention centers will save lives and get more New Yorkers into the treatment they need to beat this deadly addiction," Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on Twitter Thursday.

The mayor's missive came after the publication of a detailed report on the issue from the city's Department of Health.

Though crime in New York has fallen to a historic low for modern times, it recorded 1,441 overdose deaths in 2017—a record since the city began taking such statistics.

New York aims to launch safe injection sites to fight opioid abuse

One of the two leading candidates in the upcoming Colombian presidential election has denounced the country's militarised drug war and its apparent subservience to US counter-narcotic interests.

Gustavo Petro - the founder of the country’s progressive Progresistas movement, and the former mayor of the capital Bogotá – has sharply criticised militarised drug policies for failing to counter the growth of powerful drug cartels nationally and regionally. This failure, he says, has contributed to the “balkanisation of the Colombian territory from very well armed private armies” - referring to the fragmentation of a region into hostile or warring areas, as took place in the Balkan Peninsula in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Speaking on May 1, Petro said that Colombia’s “militaristic approach to drugs has been ineffective”, and that the country should instead implement “social policies in the regions where drugs are cultivated [and] help people escape the mafia”.

Leading candidate in Colombia presidential elections wants to end the war on drugs

This post was also shared on the INCB Watch.

On May 1, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland appeared before the Canadian Senate’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (AEFA) to discuss the international dimensions of Bill C-45 to regulate cannabis. She acknowledged that regulating cannabis would entail “contravening certain obligations related to cannabis under the three UN drug conventions,” adding that, “we have to be honest about that.” Asked about the ‘inter se’ proposal, whereby like-minded nations can negotiate amongst themselves to contract out of certain provisions of the treaty, Minister Freeland replied that the government had discussed the ‘inter se’ concept and that it was worth thinking about: “We are definitely open to working with treaty partners to identify solutions that accommodate different approaches to cannabis within the international framework.”

Last month, in the course of studying Bill C-45, the Senate’s foreign affairs committee received a brief from the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board (INCB, the UN drug treaty monitoring body), basically arguing that derogating from the cannabis provisions would be impossible. The document, dated 13 April 2018 and available on the AEFA website, indicates it was authored by the Chief of the Convention Evaluation Section of the INCB Secretariat, Paul Rabbat, but was submitted to the Senate “as a statement of the Board’s policy.” The INCB has previously made clear its view that the UN drug treaties do not allow for the legal regulation of cannabis for non-medical uses. And we quite agree on that point, as we highlighted in our Senate testimonies last month.

The reality is that Canada and other jurisdictions are planning to regulate non-medical uses of cannabis despite the fact that the drug treaties expressly forbid doing so. The INCB, for its part, could attempt to facilitate a constructive dialogue about these very real treaty tensions. But if the brief submitted to the Committee is any indication, the INCB has chosen the route of bluster and intimidation, warning that Canada’s cannabis regulation, if implemented, may have “serious negative ramifications for the integrity of the international legal drug control framework” and calling for Canada to “reconsider the adoption of Bill C-45.”

If the INCB indeed meant to intimidate Canada against moving ahead with Bill C-45, the brief submitted to the Senate by Mr. Rabbat—supposedly in the name of the entire Board—seems unlikely to do the trick. Instead, the brief’s harsh tone and spurious legal arguments seem more likely to insult than intimidate, and can only serve to erode the INCB’s own credibility.

In bid to intimidate Canada on cannabis regulation, INCB is reckless and wrong

The Zimbabwe Civil Liberties and Drug Network (ZCLDN) welcomes and applauds the recent announcement by the Government in legalising the production of cannabis for medicinal and scientific purposes.

On 28 April, 2018, the Health and Child Care Minister Dr David Parirenyatwa announced in a Government Gazette under Statutory Instrument 62 of 2018 (Dangerous Drugs – Production of Cannabis for Medicinal and Scientific Use Regulations).

The benefits by the government of legalising cannabis production are immense as palliative patients will be able to access treatment from easily available and affordable cannabis herbs. It is also welcome news when we consider the potential of the government raising tax revenue from export sales.

Research carried out by respected international scientists has shown that chemical compounds present in cannabis prolong life, improves judgment and quickens the mind.

Medicinal cannabis is also known to treat diseases such as; Alzheimer, asthma, chronic pain, Hepatitis C, epilepsy, cancer and hypertension.

Cannabis can also be used in various forms such as nutritional supplements, animal feed, paper products, body care products, construction and as essential oils.

The agriculture sector is also set to grow as more people will be employed in cannabis production and processing while farmers also become more productive.

However, we note with concern the high charges of $50 000 for one to get a licence from the government to grow the plant. The figure is not only exorbitant but drives away ordinary farmers from being assisted by their government. We, therefore, urge farmers to engage the government so that they are able to benefit from the policy and are not left out.

The announcement by government is the beginning of a broader policy shift towards a more comprehensive drug policies in Zimbabwe. We applaud the good move, and hope to see changes in policy and legal responses to drug use in Zimbabwe towards a more human, health, scientific and evidence based approach in the near future.

Once the process of cannabis production put in place, the ZCLDN will advocate that some of the proceeds channeled to assist drug users in accessing relevant health services.

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