In country after country a vast array of new psychoactive substances, rapidly spread via online sources, is causing havoc for law and policy makers. Attempts to arrest their harms almost routinely fail, and many are now looking to the example of recent New Zealand legislation. Max Daly asks whether we have got it right, or does regulation just lead to further problems?

The proliferation of new psychoactive substances (NPS) and legal highs has changed the drug world forever and thrown a spanner into the Drug War machinery.

This armoury of chemicals, and the way they are produced and sold, has left policy makers dazed and confused amid a hail of chemical formulae, brands, legal loopholes, underground chemistry labs, virtual currencies and online encryption.

At the start of the Drug War, the enemies were more honest, simply made from plants. Later came LSD, speed and ecstasy, which were made in labs, but everyone knew what they were. Then the NPS revolution happened in the 2000s, and the enemy had changed.

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

Synthetic solutions: The global response to ‘legal’ highs

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is a great innovation of the Treaty of Lisbon, enabling EU citizens to call directly on the European Commission to propose a legal act, if they can obtain the support of one million of their fellow citizens. The "Weed like to talk” campaign, launched by three French university students this year, aims to collect one million signatures from at least seven EU countries to call for a common cannabis policy based on a legally regulated market. One of the students, Pierre Balas, a Parisian graduate student of European Affairs, says there is no commercial or political agenda behind the campaign. They are students who are simply fed up with ineffective policies and wish to explore innovative tools of direct democracy. The success of the campaign will not automatically lead to cannabis legalization but the EU Commission will be legally bound to undertake transparent action on cannabis policy.

Europe, it’s time to regulate cannabis!

Follow the journey of a teenage ex-gang member as he heals the wounds of his past and tries to imagine a better future.

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

The effects drug trafficking on young people invovled in gangs in Honduras

Russia faces an alarming situation with its fastest-growing HIV epidemic. Russia is home to the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemic. Driven by injection drug use, it is now becoming generalized. If you use injection drugs in Russia, you likely have HIV, hepatitis C, and more often than not, tuberculosis.

Although the Russian constitution grants the right to free access to health services in government facilities, it does not provide effective care to those who have these multiple infections. And it bans opioid substitution therapy—the most effective opiate addiction treatment.

In many ways, the story of Max, who you meet in this video, is typical of the hundreds of thousands of Russians who use drugs. As an intravenous drug user, he contracted HIV and hepatitis C.

Fighting an epidemic in Russia from 3,000 miles away

The world’s nations have begun talks ahead of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs in 2016. This is a time of increasing high-level calls for drug policy reform and a sense that policies long dominated by prohibition and law enforcement in many parts of the world have failed miserably. Countries may be better served with a public health policy approach instead.

Canada has long been a world leader in implementing harm reduction policy when it comes to drug use at home.

So it was almost shocking to see it aligning itself to countries such as Russia and China in vocally opposing the inclusion of “harm reduction” in a new a new set of UN principles that will guide talks at the special session in 2016.Canada is adopting a controversial position towards drug policies by undermining harm reduction interventions.

Canada’s drug policy is in with the wrong crowd

The Lawyers Collective welcomes the passage of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Amendment) Bill, 2014 (“NDPS”) by Parliament late last week. The amendments make important, path breaking changes for medical access to narcotic drugs by removing barriers that date back to 1985, when the Act was first introduced. The amendments also include provisions to improve treatment and care for people dependent on drugs, moving away from abstinence oriented services to treating drug dependence as a chronic, yet manageable condition.

India is one of the leading producers of morphine, yet patients in the country could not access it owing to the stringent licensing requirements under the NDPS Act and Rules framed by State Governments. Statistics reveal that the medical use of morphine declined by 97% after the NDPS Act came into force.

This will now change as Parliament has adopted a new category of “

” in section 2(viiia) of the Act - a list, which the Central Government can notify on the basis of expediency in medical practice. Drugs identified as essential will be subject to Central Rules under section 9(1)(a), which will apply uniformly throughout the country, bringing to an end the unwieldy and inept practice of obtaining multiple State licenses for possession, transport, purchase, sale, distribution, use and consumption.

The amendments broaden the object of the NDPS Act from containing illicit use to also promoting the medical and scientific use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. The language incorporated in section 4, which is an overarching provision, reflects the principle of ‘balance’ between control and availability of narcotic drugs, which is at the heart of international drug control but has eluded the NDPS Act so far. This widening of scope, it is hoped, will pave the way for more research on the beneficial use of narcotics, which up till now, remained out of bounds for the medical and scientific community due to the overtly prohibitive nature of the law.

Importantly, medical use has not been specified and could include a variety of medical conditions, besides drug dependence and pain relief.

Health and rights of people who use drugs

Other salutary changes have been introduced in section 71, which significantly impact the health and rights of people who use drugs. The NDPS Act now allows for “

” of drug dependence, thereby legitimizing opioid substitution, maintenance and other harm reduction services. Secondly, it authorizes the Government to “

” treatment centres, which currently operate without license or accreditation, and inflict violence and torture on drug users. The amendments will allow for instituting evidence based and human rights compliant standards for drug treatment facilities, whether public or private.

The latest amendments introduce some changes in penal sentencing for drug offences.

Sentencing under the NDPS Act is dependent on the quantity of the drug found, with the scale of punishment varying from a maximum of 6 months for ‘small quantity’ to 20 years imprisonment for a first offence involving ‘commercial quantity’. The NDPS (Amendment) Bill, 2011 had proposed language that defined ‘small’ and ‘commercial’ quantity on the basis of the total weight of the contraband as opposed to the actual content of the narcotic or psychotropic drug in the seized substance. This would have led more people including persons who use drugs to be sentenced for ‘commercial quantity’, especially since street drugs are heavily ‘cut’ and rarely ever seized in pure forms. These provisions do not form part of the Bill cleared by the Parliament.

Another important change is the Parliament’s decision to recast the death penalty, which, until now, was mandatory for a subsequent offence involving a certain quantity of drugs under section 31A, as an alternative to imprisonment for 30 years under section 31. This is a welcome step but falls short of international human rights standards and constitutional principles that restrict the imposition of the death sentence to the ‘most serious’ and ‘rarest of rare’ crimes. Drug offences do not meet this threshold and should not attract capital punishment at all.

On the flip side, the amendment has increased the punishment for small quantity offences from a maximum of 6 months to 1 year imprisonment. Consumption of drugs continues to be punishable. This is regrettable as Parliament had the opportunity to review and reform punitive provisions against people who use drugs. In the last decade or so, a growing number of countries have moved towards the full decriminalization of use and possession of drugs, with no reported negative consequences on individuals and society. Some are boldly creating legalized markets for the distribution, sale, possession and use of certain drugs. The NDPS amendments seem regressive and out of step, against the grain of international drug policy reform.

The amendment opens the way for private sector involvement in the processing of opium and concentrated poppy straw.

It also offers some protection to persons engaged in licensed drug activities by raising the rank of officers who are authorized under section 42, to search and arrest license holders for alleged NDPS violations.

Parliament has also adopted changes to strengthen the forfeiture of property of persons arraigned on charges of drug trafficking.

The NDPS (Amendment) Bill 2014 was strongly influenced by recommendations of the Standing Committee on Finance, which reviewed the NDPS (Amendment) Bill, 2011 in its 50th report of March 2012. Civil society and sections of the pharmaceutical industry also advocated for change.

The Lawyers Collective made extensive written and oral submissions on the NDPS (Amendment) Bill 2011 to the Standing Committee on Finance and subsequently worked with palliative care activists and the Department of Revenue, especially on medical access to narcotics.

Indian Parliament passes the amendments to the bill on narcotic drugs, 2014: Many gains, some losses

Polish lawmakers are looking at replacing a failed strategy for policing drug offenses with a groundbreaking model pioneered in Seattle.

Legislators in Poland recently hosted James Pugel, former chief of the Seattle Police Department, in order to study the city’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program. The program, which was introduced in 2011, involves steering low-level drug and prostitution arrestees into community-based treatment and support services, instead of processing them through traditional criminal justice system avenues.

Unlike drug courts, which require appearances before a judge, the LEAD program directs people to services at the point of arrest without entanglement in the criminal justice system.

Pugel presented to the Polish parliament, met senior law enforcement officials, and addressed national public health advocates to consider what aspects of the LEAD program are applicable to Poland.

Poland eyes alternative strategy for policing drugs

Torture can happen to anyone. Just ask Juan Méndez. In 1975, while representing political prisoners as a human rights lawyer in Argentina, Méndez was arrested, tortured, and eventually expelled from the country. Today, he is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, investigating human rights violations.

Torture: It can happen anywhere

In this episode of On Point, School of Public Policy Professor, Julia Buxton, discusses how the international drug control system is facing fractured consensus.

CEU on point with Julia Buxton: Consensus fractured in the international drug control system 

The proposition of a law project to legalize and regulate the recreational, medicinal and industrial use of Cannabis was presented at the Brazilian Senate this last Monday (17/02/2014) and will be coordinated by Senator Cristovam Buarque.

Senator Buarque affirmed in his speech at the Senate that this is a very important discussion and should be made with full participation of the society. He wants to analyse the risks involved, potential medicinal advantages and the impact of legalization in reducing the violence.

The Senator, who is seen in Brazil as a moderate, has a long career in politics and was exiled to France during the military dictatorship in Brazil, when he obtained a doctorate in economics by the University of Sorbonne. He was the Minister of Education for President Lula and candidate to the presidency of Brazil in 2006.

Brazilian Senate will discuss the legalisation of cannabis

In this forum, experts, practitioners and policy-makers from around the world discuss how to address the ongoing and emerging challenges for meeting the MDGs in 2015 and for sustaining development gains in the future. The results of this-e-discussion will provide ECOSOC with constructive inputs and policy recommendations for strengthening efforts towards achieving the internationally agreed development goals, particularly the MDGs by 2015, and for sustaining and continuing development gains in the context of the post-2015 development agenda.

Participants might comment, in English, French and Spanish, on any of the discussion threads posted. The facilitators will summarize key points from the e-discussion and keep a log of policy ideas put forth by the participants. Click here for Moderators’ bios

 When adding a comment, please introduce yourself, including affiliation and location.Thank you! See Tips for Participation.

For questions or comments, please email support.amr@unteamworks.org. For technical issues with this platform, contact support@unteamworks.org

E-discussion: Addressing challenges for meeting the MDGs and sustaining development gains

Serbia is a country at the crossroads of a number of heroin trafficking routes. It has a significant injecting drug user population, many of them belonging to a marginalised ethnic minority, the Roma. Thanks to grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tubercolosis and Malaria, several harm reduction services were introduced into Serbia during the first decade of this century. There are approximately two thousand people enrolled in opiate substitution programs, and four NSPs (needle and syringe programs) provide sterile equipment to injecting drug users.

The prevalence of HIV among drug users has so far remained low, but access to harm reduction services is far from adequate – the best indicator of risk being the high prevalence of Hepatitis C infections. Hopes, on the part of service providers, that programs can be scaled up, seem to be going up in smoke: the country is not eligible for any more money from the Global Fund, and the last grant will end in June. This means that NSPs face an uncertain future: the government has made no commitment to continue their funding, and there are no other donors available to step in. In September, the Drugreporter filming team was invited by ReGeneracija (like them on Facebook!), a local NGO working with young people, to produce a movie about the situation. We hope this video will give you an overview of the situation, and show why it is so important to provide adequate funding for harm reduction programs.

News