Around the world, more governments are beginning to openly question the effectiveness of enforcing repressive drug control policies. Overwhelmingly in Asia, however, the use and supply of controlled drugs are still seen as a social evil that must be eradicated; justifying the implementation of severe, disproportionate punishment ranging from compulsory detention for people who use drugs to the death penalty for trafficking.

As rapidly expanding drug markets emphasise the failure of current drug policy approaches, along with their negative consequences for people who use drugs (e.g. high rates of HIV and Hepatitis C amongst people who inject drugs) and broader society (e.g. growing rates of arrest and imprisonment for low-level drug offences), and the UN General Assembly Special Session on the world drug problem scheduled for April 2016 approaches, what are the prospects for drug policy reform in Asia?

Gloria Lai is a senior policy officer for the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC). Based in Thailand, she leads IDPC's Asia regional programme. She previously worked as a senior policy advisor on law enforcement and drugs, and as a lawyer for the Australian government.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

A human rights case for drug policy reform in Asia

A film to explain why families around the world are campaigning for reform of international drug laws. This contains five stories - each with a different perspective - but all demonstrating how drug laws cause more harm than drugs themselves. The families are asking for donations so they can go the U.N. next year to tell their stories. Something that has never been done before.

Video: Families who lost loved ones to the war on drugs break their silence

The decree also authorises the sale of medicines containing derivatives of the plant.

The document has not officially been published, but Associated Press obtained a copy ahead of the formal announcement.

Under the law, the sale of cannabis, as well as the planting and transporting it, will still be illegal and carry a prison sentence of five to 10 years.

Chile’s Congress will now debate the legality of the drug, and could possibly relax the laws on medical and personal use. It comes after a Chilean municipality became the first in the country to legalise medical marijuana as part of a Government-backed pilot programme to help ease the pain of cancer patients.

Cannabis removed from 'hard drugs' list by Chile

This is a statement from Dana Asbury of Healthy and Free TN on their invitation to present information about the Tennessee pregnancy criminalization law to a United Nations working group examining human rights and discrimination against women:

“The United Nations Working Group on the Issue of Discrimination against Women in Law and in Practice [UN WGDAW] is comprised of independent human rights experts. They contribute to the development of international human rights standards and report annually to the Human Rights Council of the UN. They are convening advocates in Montgomery, Alabama to look at issues affecting rural and Black women, including laws that criminalize pregnant women.

Healthy and Free TN will be discussing the law that is currently in effect in Tennessee that allows a women to be charged with assault for the use of narcotics while pregnant. As a result of this policy, women are being separated from their families and put in jail or forced into drug court treatment programs that are often inappropriate or insufficient to meet their health and recovery needs.

We are telling women that they can seek treatment in order to avoid jail time, but there are not enough programs that are licensed and able to treat pregnant women and mothers. Further, we know that the cost of medication assisted treatment, the recommended protocol for pregnant women, is pushing it out of reach for many people.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the

United Nations working group set to consider pregnancy criminalisation law

By American Association for the Advancement of Science

(NEW YORK - December 10, 2015) Access to harm reduction programs such as syringe exchange is lowest in rural and suburban areas, where rates of addiction to heroin and other opioids are on the rise, according to a study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published online today in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Over the last decade, there has been an increase in drug injection in the United States, primarily the injection of prescription opioids and heroin among persons who started opioid use with oral analgesics before transitioning to injecting. Syringe service programs (SSPs) allow people who inject drugs to exchange used needles and syringes for new, sterile needles and syringes. These programs reduce the chances that people who inject drugs will share injection equipment and thereby contract infections like HIV and hepatitis C. Many SSPs also distribute a medication called naloxone, which is proven to reverse opiate overdoses.

Researchers assessed the landscape and availability of syringe service programs across the United States, finding that 69 percent of SSPs surveyed were located in urban areas, leaving only 20 percent in rural areas and 9 percent in suburban locations. The findings indicate that harm reduction services are lacking for people in communities where they are often needed most. A recent study published in the Journal of Urban Health reports that half of all IV drug users live outside of major urban areas. The range of services offered at SSPs also varied by region. For example, only 37 percent of programs surveyed in rural areas offered naloxone, compared to 61 percent of urban programs that provided this service.

Harm reduction services less available in areas plagued by rising IV drug use and HIV infections

8 December 2015 - More than 30 researchers from around the world who work in the field of drug demand reduction, together with over 200 participants from 85 countries, are gathering in Vienna this week to discuss the latest findings in drug prevention and drug dependence treatments. They will also discuss programmes that have proven to be effective in stopping or reducing the negative health and social consequences of drug use. Running from 8 to 10 December, the 

Scientific Consultation on Prevention of Drug Use and Treatment of Drug Use Disorders

 aims to strengthen global drug policy with the latest research, considering the dignity of people affected by drug use disorders as a priority.

The event, hosted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), highlights the science behind evidence-based prevention and treatment interventions. It also supports Member States in developing policies, strategies and methods based on scientific research and ethical standards. The meeting, additionally, adheres to Sustainable Development Goal 3: "To ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages'', and its corresponding target 3.5: "Strengthening prevention and treatment of substance use disorders.''

"This meeting provides a space for experts to share their research and views on the most urgent and crucial issues related to the science of drug use prevention and treatment and care of drug dependence," said UNODC Executive Director, Yury Fedotov, at the opening. Also present were Ambassador Khaled Shamaa, Chair of the Board tasked with the preparations for the Special Session of the General Assembly on the world drug problem (UNGASS); Vladimir Poznyak, WHO Coordinator of Management of Substance Abuse, Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse; and Esbjörn Hörnberg, Chair of the Civil Society Task Force.

Science of drug prevention and treatment discussed by global experts

Preparations are well under way for next April’s UN General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem, the outcome of which will be a “short, substantive, concise and action-oriented outcome document comprising a set of operational recommendations”.

The discussion is currently focused on what the outcome document should say. Various nations, regional bodies and members of civil society have submitted their proposals for what they would like to see in the “zero draft”.

Here, you can read excerpts from some of the submissions for the outcomes document. It is clear that drug policy is still highly controversial, and achieving consensus at UNGASS will be a difficult task.

Responses based on a survey filled in by civil society organisations between April and July 2015. The preliminary report summarises data (where available) only from the English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Italian, Persian, Turkish and some Spanish surveys, as translations from Arabic, French, Russian and some Spanish were not yet available.

Harm reduction services should be widely available and freely accessible to all people who use drugs.

It is crucial that substance dependence treatment is grounded in evidence and is culturally appropriate. Such treatment should be accessible, affordable or free for those who seek it. Governments and UN agencies should continue efforts to ensure that the right of all people to health care is recognised and that all efforts are directed at ensuring that discrimination against people who use drugs does not prevent the fulfilment of this fundamental human right.

Members of civil society have expressed concern for the disparities in arrest and sentencing for drug charges, as well as the proportionality of punishment for drug offences.

Civil society organisations around the world feel that the death penalty is an extreme punishment that is disproportionate to the harms of drug possession or drug trafficking and is a violation of the right to life.

Reaffirm that drug use should be treated as a public health issue, not one related to criminal justice. Drug use should be treated as an issue of access to information, harm reduction and public health, meaning using drugs should not make people subject to punishments such as criminal sanctions, Police extortion, arbitrary arrests, harassment and imprisonment or other forms of repression.

Ensure that policies and health programmes on drugs are not limited to prevention and treatment and ensure public policies prioritise harm reduction perspective in all health programmes. Recognise harm reduction strategies as a set of evidence-based and respectful of human rights interventions and rely on the examples of good practices set by other countries such as Portugal.

The preamble of the outcome document should firmly oppose legalisation of drugs in any form.

Calls upon member states to promote the prevention of drug use through educational programmes targeted and involving children and youth.

Early days for UNGASS 2016 declaration

Stop and searches may be decreasing in England and Wales, but those carried out for drugs are on the rise as a proportion of the overall figure. Can the police still reasonably say this power is being used to tackle violent crime?

According to the latest Home Office data, police carried out 539,788 stop and searches under section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) Act 1984 in England and Wales during the year ending March 31, 2015. This marks a dramatic decrease of 40 percent compared to the 2013/14 period and is the largest year-on-year fall.

The number of drug-related stops and searches under section 1 also fell (34 percent) but less significantly than for other reasons. As a result, drug-related stop and searches as a proportion of the overall number increased to 59 percent.

Sadly, this trend is far from new; the proportion of drug-related stop and searches has been on the increase since 2006/7 when it constituted 42 percent of the overall figure. Alarmingly, the proportion of stop and searches carried out for stolen property and offensive weapons decreased on the year by 4 percent and 3 percent respectively.

Additionally, though the rate of arrest rose for drug-related stop and searches to 11 percent of all those searched, this is below the already paltry arrest figure of 14 percent for all suspected crimes.

Not only does the low arrest rate raise serious questions over the use and efficacy of this power, it also undermines police claims that stop and search is vital tool in tackling violent crime. For example, this is taken directly from the London Metropolitan Police's website:

"The use of stop and search powers allow the police to tackle crime (particularly violent crime) and keep our streets safe. [It] is targeted and intelligence led, taking place predominantly in areas where violence is taking place and on people who are known or suspected to be involved in violent crime."

Keeping the focus on London, from September 2014 to August this year, stop and searches for drugs as a proportion of the total outstripped the 2014/15 national stats.

UK Police focus increases on drug stop & searches, despite futility

Federal drug control efforts have failed to meet any goals to curb illegal drug use and related deaths set five years ago, new testimony from the Government Accountability Office concludes.

In 2010, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the White House office that oversees all drug control spending, set a number of ambitious goals to guide drug policy during the Obama administration. The agency planned 10 percent to 15 percent reductions in monthly drug use among teenagers and adults, overall chronic drug use, drug-induced death and disease, and drugged driving rates.

This year is the deadline for achieving these targeted reductions. And while official data for this year won't be available for some time, the latest available data strongly suggest that none of these goals will be achieved this year, according to the GAO and the ONDCP. On a number of them, no progress has been made. On several, the indicators have gotten worse. Overall, the GAO found that the federal government has only made progress on one of the goals-- the overall rate of teen drug use.

Of most concern from a policy perspective is the lack of progress on reducing drug-related deaths. The ONDCP set a goal of reducing drug-related deaths from 39,147 in 2009 to 33,275 this year. But in 2013, the latest year for which numbers are available, 46,471 people died due to drugs -- a nearly 20 percent increase over the baseline.

The ONDCP notes that if you take marijuana use rates out of the equation, the picture on several of the drug measures looks much better. "The apparent lack of progress on several other measures is entirely attributable to the increase in marijuana use in recent years," ONDCP press secretary Mario Moreno Zepeda said in an email. "For example, the 2015 reduction targets for past 30 day use of illicit drugs among youth (12 to 17 years old) and young adults (18 to 25 years old) would have been met by 2014 if marijuana was excluded."

Federal data show that since 2009, past-month marijuana use increased among young adults, and essentially stayed flat among teens.

But drug reform advocates aren't surprised at what the GAO describes as an overall lack of progress. "The government continues to fail in its drug policy goals because it still places too much emphasis on enforcement, rather than treating drug use as a public health issue," Michael Collins of the Drug Policy Alliance said in an email. "The drug control budget still dedicates over $2 billion annually to the DEA -- a failed and flawed agency -- while harm reduction and treatment are woefully underfunded. Unless this changes, the government will continue to fall short in its aims."

The US drug war is failing on multiple fronts, government watchdog says

British law enforcement officers have been working with drug officers in Colombia since 1989 in a bid to stem the flow of cocaine into the UK. For the first time, the National Crime Agency has provided a glimpse of the work it is doing there.

In the early hours of the morning, covered by darkness, a group of anti-narcotics special forces surround a cocaine-producing lab in a mountainous and forested area at Norte de Santander, north-eastern Colombia, close to the border with Venezuela.

They wait silently while a constant drizzle falls on them.

At about 5am, when the lab workers start to arrive, the officers raid the site - a complex of some five big green and black canvas tarpaulins set up within the dense forest - filled with big cans of chemicals, microwaves, a press, and other devices used in the cocaine production process.

They manage to capture one man and collect evidence - among it the carved plastic slates used to brand the cocaine bricks - before blowing the lab up with C4 explosives.

The intelligence needed to find the lab and carry out the raid was gathered with help from officers of the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) working in Colombia.

One of the NCA's officers, whose identity cannot be revealed, was at the raid.

"Very happy, yeah, very happy after today. We've had a good exchange of intelligence with neighbouring countries and other NCA officers in other countries, so yeah, it's been a good result," he said.

"It just means that the flow of cocaine going into the UK is lessened. I mean, obviously, this is a small lab and this happens all the time but the more that we can do here working with the anti-narcotics police, the better."

The UK agents tackling Colombia's drug barons

People caught with small quantities of cannabis will face on-the-spot warnings from police rather than prosecution.

The change in enforcing drug laws is part of a major overhaul of how officers handle petty offending to free up police and prosecutors’ time.

Scottish officers will next month start issuing new "Recorded Police Warnings" to many of the tens of thousands of people a year found committing minor offences such as carrying cannabis, urinating in the street or petty shoplifting.

Senior police sources stress they are looking for a "proportionate" and "effective" disposal to the kind of offences that until now would either result in a fixed-penalty notice or a report to the Crown Office that ended either in no proceedings or a fiscal warning.

The change in tactic means that - for the first time - casual users of cannabis can expect to avoid the stress of a formal report to fiscals that - in recent years - has rarely resulted in anything more than a written rebuke.

One source said: "We think a warning on the spot - from an officer using his or her discretion - is much more effective than a letter in the post months later saying nothing will be done.

"This means that officers will not have to spend their time writing standard prosecution reports and can do police work instead."

The new recorded police warnings scheme, formally to be introduced on January 11, replaces a series of adult police warnings used in different ways across the the old eight legacy police forces.

Cannabis users to be given on-the-spot warnings to free up police time

A significant positive outcome has already emerged from next year’s UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs in the form of much more direct engagement in key drug policy issues from a range of UN agencies - beyond the prohibitionist silo of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Civil society organisations have, for years, been attempting to highlight the negative impacts of the international drug control system on issues relating to the core UN pillars of human rights, development, and peace and security. But these are not thematic areas that have been routinely evaluated or reported on in any consistent or in-depth way by the key UN drug control bodies – the UNODC, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) or the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND). You will not, for example, find chapters on the human rights or development implications of drug enforcement in the UNODC’s flagship annual 'World Drug Report'.

But the invited submissions to the UNGASS process from the wider family of UN agencies, representing a much more diverse body of thematic expertise, have not held back in tackling what has previously been off limits in the high-level UN drug debate. Stand out contributions include those from the UN Development Program, UN Women, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, and UNAIDs. And another outstanding submission has arrived this week from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Dainius Pūras.

Special rapporteurs are appointed by the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and are mandated by the United Nations to "examine, monitor, advise, and publicly report" on specific human rights issues – often relating to a specific right, in this case the right of everyone to the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health. As independent experts serving in an advisory role they are not bound to any agency or government, and have – in the high level debate at least – an unusual level of freedom to act as officially mandated critics of whatever they deem appropriate within their specific remit. This page provides more information on the special rapporteur.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert

News