The Liberal Democrats have voted to establish a panel to consider decriminalising the use of all drugs in the UK. The panel would also consider a less radical alternative: that possession would remain illegal, but those caught would have to appear before a panel and made to undertake "appropriate education, health or social interventions", replacing the existing fines and jail sentences on the statute book.
On Friday September 23, 2011, the French NGO AIDES, ASUD and Fédération Addiction are organizing a public meeting in Paris dedicated to promoting drug law reform.
Thailand's new Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is mobilising a crackdown on illegal drugs as a United Nations agency reveals a massive increase in the production and use of amphetamines across Asia.
The Count the Costs campaign has now been running for 6 months, after a successful launch at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in March. It is now fully up to speed, with the website complete, the resource library filling up, new briefings ready, and more to follow very soon, including translations, and the range and number of supporters growing.
In 1986, Congress enacted severe mandatory minimum sentences, condemning thousands of mostly low-level, mostly nonviolent drug offenders to years, sometimes decades in prison. Please call on the Congress to reform sentencing for drugs offences.
An international human rights group urged Vietnam to shut down drug rehabilitation centers that it said subject inmates to abuse and forced labor. It also called Wednesday on international donors to check the programs they fund inside the centers for possible ties to human rights violations.
Under a joint United Nations programme in the north-eastern part of the country, UNODC works in the four states of Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya, to establish HIV-prevention services that address the special needs of women.
On August 31st, International Overdose Awareness Day, EHRN, Harm Reduction Coalition, Harm Reduction International and INPUD called for the WHO, UNODC, UNAIDS and the Global Fund to mobilize their efforts and play a leading role in a coordinated global response to drug overdose mortality.
Mexico's president is vowing to fight to the last day of his term against the drug cartels that have spread insecurity and taken over towns and police forces across Mexico.
The seven-member panel including doctors, a researcher, and a lecturer concluded there is insufficient knowledge about the benefits of this type of scheme.
New "legal highs" are being discovered at the rate of one a week, outstripping attempts to control their availability and exposing what some experts claim is the "ridiculous and irrational" government policy of prohibition.
