The Russian government’s anti-drugs agency has ordered the blocking of the website of a public health organization, the Andrey Rylkov Foundation, for discussing the addiction medicine methadone, human rights groups said today. The move is an assault on freedom of expression in the midst of pro-democracy protests, the groups said.
UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov in New York briefed Ambassadors on the work of the UN Task Force on Transnational Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking.
Supervised injecting facilities (also known as drug consumption rooms) have been with us for 20 years, providing clean and safe places for people to inject. There are more than 75 around the world, mainly in Europe, Scandinavia and North America, but there’s just one in Australia, in Sydney’s Kings Cross.
The objective of the IDPC statement was to highlight the vulnerability of people who inject drugs to HIV transmission, identify the policy and legal barriers to the scaling up and sustainability of HIV prevention measures, and propose to Member States options for addressing those barriers.
In a northern Cambodian province, eight small communes are making Cambodian history as the first to trial a community-based approach to drug treatment.
Drawing from the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the 2009 Constitution intends to grant greater self-determination to indigenous groups across the country.
In response to the ban on the use of federal funds to support needle and syringe exchange programmes, advocates have drafted a Position Statement condemning the ban, while emphasizing the efficacy and effectiveness of these programmes.
Bolivia has signed an agreement with the US and Brazil to help reduce the production of illegal cocaine. The US and Brazil will provide technical assistance, including satellite monitoring of coca crops.
A drug project plans to set up the country’s first consumption room to allow users inject drugs under medical supervision. Such a facility is currently illegal under Irish law, but the Anna Liffey project wants to open one by the end of 2014.
Ricardo Soberon, the reformist head of DEVIDA, the Peruvian drug agency, has been fired and replaced. Soberon made waves last August when he implemented a temporary ban on forced eradication of coca plants, taking the US Embassy by surprise, but that was soon reversed on the orders of his boss, Interior Minister Oscar Valdes.
