Georgia, a country where every third prisoner is serving time for drugs, may be about to transform its strict drug policy into a far more liberal system. Activists and reformers are hoping that new legislation could change Georgia’s system away from what they call ‘the war against the people’.

On 15 September 2016, a 46-year-old man slashed his own stomach outside the Georgian Government Chancellery, where dozens had gathered to protest the country’s drug policy. He claimed police had terrorised and pressured him into implicating his friend, a drug user, saying the investigation into his case would not be just.

In 2013, Beso Khutsishvili had just been released from prison where he had served 8 years on drugs charges. Several days after his release, 3 police officers took him to the police station demanding cooperation, he claims.

‘You must help us arrest Lasha Bakhutashvili, they said. Had I refused, they threatened the safety of my children. I didn’t care about myself, but when they mentioned my children… There was nothing human about them, they were totally capable of doing it’, Khutsishvili said, in a video published on 30 May 2016 by the White Noise Movement, a group campaigning for a softer drugs policy.

Khutsishvili says police would take him to the pharmacy to buy precursors, but he would cook the drugs and consume them immediately, to avoid implicating his friend. This continued for a month until he wasn’t able to avoid them any longer, and he was forced to implicate a friend, he explains.

Georgia’s ‘war against the people’ and the war against a broken system

Speakers discuss the growing opioid epidemic in cities across the United States, the influx of inexpensive heroin and potent synthetics such as fentanyl, and the lessons the United States can learn from other countries in curbing the deadly crisis.

The growing U.S. opioid crisis: lessons from around the world

In the UK, men are more likely to try drugs than women and they significantly outnumber women in accessing treatment, reinforcing the view that male drug use is the norm. But there are limitations with the way drug use is calculated and serious issues with women accessing treatment.

Drug policy and the allocation of budgets for drug prevention and treatment are informed by surveys such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales. The survey shows that twice as many men as women use drugs. However, the survey misses some key groups, such as homeless people and university students. The latter is particularly important as there are more young women in university than men.

Another important group not included in the survey are prisoners. Female offenders are more likely than their male counterparts to use drugs and to report needing help when they enter prison. As a result of these issues, the number of women who use drugs is probably massively underestimated.

Estimates of female drug use matter as we know that women use drugs not just for pleasure but to cope with difficult life circumstances, such as domestic abuse. There are clear links between experiencing abuse and trauma and having problems with drugs and alcohol. The connection between these issues is explored by the authors on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour.

Women are thought to progress more rapidly from starting to use drugs to the point where they develop problems, such as dependency – a phenomenon known as “telescoping”. Given this phenomenon, it is concerning that 11- to 15-year-old girls are more likely to drink alcohol or try cigarettes than young boys. Girls also match boys of the same age in their use of drugs.

This rapid journey into a problematic relationship with drugs could be a contributing factor to the significant rise in drug-related deaths among females. Drug-related deaths have risen for men and women over the last decade, but the sharpest rise has been for women. And this rise could be underestimated as coroners are less likely to investigate unnatural deaths in women, compared with men.

Women also use drugs – not that you can tell from drug policy in the United Kingdom

What does good health mean in a context where people who use drugs desperately struggle just to survive another day?

The right to Health has been established as a Right since 1948. Governments and policy makers are well aware of the universal declarations yet they consciously decide to condemn people who use drugs to an early death.

What part of the words ‘Universal’ and ‘Human Rights’ do they not understand?

Many might disagree thinking ‘something is better than nothing’ but we want all of it because it is our right. This is not the future we were promised by our leaders. HIV among people who inject drugs in Asia and the Pacific The Asia and the Pacific Region has the second highest number of people living with HIV in the world and one third of world’s population of people who inject drugs live here. (1) More than one in eight People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) are living with HIV and one out of ten people living with HIV are PWID. (2) Despite the substantial progress in the HIV response, UNAIDS suggests that there was no decline in the annual number of new HIV infections among people who inject drugs between 2010 and 2014. (3)

My life, my right

Earlier this fall, an international team of researchers sounded a grim warning about the state of the global HIV epidemic among people who inject drugs. In two long-awaited research papers published in the Lancet, they laid out the evidence that not only is the scale of this epidemic worse than we thought, but that most countries are failing to provide the basic harm reduction interventions, like needle and syringe exchange programs and opioid substitution therapy, that are crucial to halting its spread.

In light of this evidence, world leaders and global agencies charged with leading the HIV response need to recognize that they can’t continue with business as usual. It’s time for them to call on governments to rethink their approach to drug policy and invest in harm reduction.

At Harm Reduction International, we’ve been tracking the global state of harm reduction since 2006, but the new data still surprised and alarmed us. The research shows that just one percent of the world’s people who inject drugs live in countries with widespread availability of two lifesaving harm reduction measures. Only 16 percent of them have access to opioid substitution therapy or medicines prescribed for opioid dependence—which is proven to significantly reduce transmission of HIV and hepatitis.

Meanwhile, harm reduction programs across the globe provide only a third of the number of sterile needles and syringes the World Health Organization deems necessary. The failure to invest in effective harm reduction measures has had a devastating effect. The new data suggests the UN has significantly underestimated the scope of the epidemic—the number of people who inject drugs who are living with HIV could be as high as 2.8 million worldwide, a huge leap from the 1.6 million figure currently used by UN agencies.

Although some of this gap may be the result of different research methods, it should still set alarm bells ringing. By providing a global snapshot of the experiences of people who use drugs, these studies also hint at the reasons behind the shortcomings in the worldwide HIV response. For example, the second of the two papers estimates that a staggering 57.9 percent have a history of incarceration—proof that in far too many countries, there is always money for police raids and prisons, even as harm reduction services go unfunded. Governments continue to focus on drug control, even as the evidence mounts that the “war on drugs” has been a public health catastrophe.

Why harm reduction is crucial to the fight against HIV

Are you passionate about global drug policy? IDPC is looking for a dynamic and motivated new volunteer to support our communications work!

The selected candidate will help us enhance IDPC’s visibility by helping our communications work, and providing some research and administrative support to our small team of advocates. Ideally, the volunteer would commit to work at IDPC for a minimum period of three months (either part- or full-time, depending on the person's availability). For more information about the position, have a look at the full description below.

If you are interested in volunteering for us, please 

to Juan Fernandez Ochoa at jfernandez@idpc.net. Please note that we can only welcome volunteers who have the right to volunteer in the UK.

IDPC does not currently have the capacity to pay its volunteers. However, we will reimburse travel costs and lunch expenses incurred during the volunteer’s working days.

IDPC is searching for a new communications volunteer

Deaths from the potent prescription drug fentanyl have rapidly increased in Australia, with a senior doctor calling the trend a "national emergency". A report from the National Coronial Information Service (NCIS), commissioned by Background Briefing, shows 498 fentanyl-related deaths occurred between January 2010 and December 2015. This figure marks an 1,800 per cent increase on the previous decade, where NCIS data records 27 fentanyl-related deaths.

The increase reflects data in the United States,where the opioid crisis was recently declared a national emergency. Over 71 per cent of Australia's recorded deaths were men, with the majority of deaths occurring for those aged in their 30s (37.3 per cent) and 40s (29.1 per cent). Bastian Seidel, the president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, said the figures were a "national emergency" and should prompt concern. "Those deaths are entirely avoidable," he said.

Overdose fatalities 'completely unacceptable'

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, roughly 100 times more potent than morphine. Historically used for the treatment of chronic and severe cancer pain, the patch form of fentanyl has been listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme for other types of chronic pain since 2006. Dr Seidel said some GPs, emergency doctors and specialists were overprescribing the opioid, as they wanted to make sure they were not introducing harm. "Certainly, the opioids that are out there now are causing more harm than any good. In some cases they're causing death — and that's completely unacceptable," he said.

Fentanyl crisis: Figures show 1,800% rise in overdose deaths from potent painkiller in Australia

United Nations (UN) human rights experts, including special rapporteur Agnes Callamard, have renewed their call for the Philippine government to promptly investigate the killings in the country despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s strong condemnation and threats against the group for criticizing his brutal drive against illegal drugs.

The three rapporteurs – Callamard as special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; Michel Forst as special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; and Diego García-Sayán as special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers – issued a joint statement last Thursday from Geneva, Switzerland seeking probe into the killings in the Philippines.

The most recent attack was Duterte’s threat to slap Callamard if the latter would investigate him for the alleged extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.

UN rights experts renew plea for Duterte gov’t to probe EJKs in PH

PETALING JAYA: Padang Serai MP N Surendran has slammed amendments to the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, saying the new bill tabled for first reading in Parliament today does not remove the mandatory death penalty and breaches the doctrine of separation of powers.

Surendran, who is also a lawyer, said according to the new Section 39B (2A), only those who received a certificate from the public prosecutor verifying that they were only the couriers and had assisted in disrupting drug trafficking activities would be spared the death penalty.

“The court still has no option but to sentence to death all those accused persons who are denied the attorney-general’s certificate.

“Thus, the attorney-general and his prosecutors will effectively hold the power to decide whether an accused person faces the hangman’s noose or not,” he said in a statement.

He added that the court would be unable to question the giving or denial of the certificate, as the bill provides that this be done at the “sole discretion” of the public prosecutor.

On Aug 7, the cabinet unanimously agreed to allow judges to impose an appropriate penalty on drug traffickers instead of the mandatory death sentence under an amendment to Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Azalina Othman Said said the cabinet had decided that the act should allow judges the right to decide on more appropriate sentences such as jail terms.

In the past, she said, judges had been forced to pass the death sentence on drug traffickers as no other sentences were available.

Death penalty for drug traffickers: New bill in Malaysia not enough, says MP

MEXICO CITY, Mexico – Mexican drug cartels are forcing indigenous children and teens to join their ranks, torturing or killing those who refuse, the United Nations warned Friday, November 17.

The UN's special rapporteur on indigenous rights, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, said she is "particularly worried" about violence against minors after speaking with indigenous communities around Mexico during a 10-day tour.

"In areas affected by organized crime and the production and trafficking of drugs, the only choice left to young people is to join these groups or be tortured, disappeared or killed," she told a press conference at the end of her visit.

Mexico drug cartels force-recruiting indigenous children – UN

In October 2017, authorities in Berlin repealed their zero tolerance policy towards cannabis possession in a city park – bringing cannabis legislation into the headlines, and reigniting the debate. So what exactly is happening with cannabis in the German capital?

In April 2015, Berlin authorities introduced a zero-tolerance policy on cannabis possession in Görlitzer Park – affectionately referred to as 

 – in the Kreuzberg district. Authorities decided to crack down in Görli because it had “become a symbol of drug selling in Berlin,” according to the mayor of Kreuzberg, Monika Herrmann. Due to its location, in between two of Berlin’s party hotspots, the park had become known as a “24 hours drug supermarket”, Herrmann added, attracting tourists and locals alike. People who wanted to smoke in public or sell small amounts avoided Görli and went elsewhere in the city; the approach simply resulted in a shift of sale and consumption areas, and a rise in law enforcement costs.

This made the park the only area in the city in which Berlin’s narcotics law was fully enforced. Officially, the cultivation, possession, and trade of cannabis are criminal offences in Berlin. However, if someone is found to be carrying up to 15 grams of cannabis, they are very unlikely to be prosecuted – unless they are deemed to be promoting cannabis use to minors.

Berlin has acknowledged the futility of fighting cannabis use – what comes next?

The war raging in Rocinha, Latin America’s largest favela, has already been lost. Rooted in a dispute between gangs for control of drug trafficking, it has disrupted the daily life of the community in Rio de Janeiro since mid-September. With the sound of shots coming from all sides, schools and shops are constantly forced to close. Recently, a stray bullet killed a Spanish tourist. The war is not the only thing being lost.

For decades, Brazil has had the same drug policy approach. Police, weapons and numerous arrests. It does not take an expert to conclude the obvious: the strategy has failed. Drug trafficking and consumption have only increased. Einstein is credited with a saying – though apparently it is not his – that applies well to the case: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

In a case still before the Brazilian supreme court, I voted for decriminalising the possession of marijuana for private consumption. The case has been suspended and no date has been set for its resumption. I also proposed to open a broad debate on the legalisation of marijuana, to begin with – and then, if successful, cocaine. The subject is extremely delicate, and the outcome hinges on a decision from the legislature.

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