In November 2015, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that four individuals from the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Personal Use (SMART) would be permitted to grow and consume their own cannabis. The court ruled that prohibiting people from growing the drug for personal consumption, personal use and private consumption was unconstitutional as it violated the human right to the free development of one's personality. The case followed several years of patient work by México Unido Contra Delincuencia (MUCD), involving the development of individual cases which could test the legal status of prohibition (so-called ‘strategic litigation’).

After the 2015 ruling, more similar cases followed. On 31 October 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the law prohibiting recreational use of cannabis in Mexico was unconstitutional for the fifth time. Under Mexican law this fifth ruling set a binding precedent across the country's court system — rather than only applying to the individual litigants. The effect of the ruling was that while the law prohibiting cannabis remained in place, it could no longer be meaningfully enforced, since anyone could cite the ruling and demand that their charges be thrown out. Crucially, the ruling also mandated that the government of Mexico move to formally legalise and regulate cannabis within the next 90 days.

The challenging and contentious process of devising a cannabis regulation Bill has led to the 90 day deadline being extended 3 times by the Court — with April 30th of 2021 now being the final deadline.

Cannabis legalisation in Mexico: An explainer

New Zealand’s drug laws are increasingly leaving us behind the rest of the world.

The new Biden-Harris Administration in the United States has made racial equality a top priority, and within that the delivery of criminal justice reform. Their Office of National Drug Control Policy has now made an unprecedented statement about its new priorities, which, at its heart, represents the end of the failed repressive approach to drugs in favour of a health-based approach.

The New Zealand Government is clearly of the view that the use and possession of drugs should not be a criminal offence, as demonstrated when it passed the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 2019 (MODA). That amendment reminded the police that they have the discretion not to arrest and prosecute for use and supply, and that they should consider in each case whether a health-centred approach might be more beneficial to the public interest.

This amendment isn’t working as well as everyone had hoped, and thousands of New Zealanders continue to be convicted of low-level offences each year. The solution is to overhaul our current law and reformulate it, placing health considerations at the centre of how we deal with drugs.

New Zealand: We're being left behind on drug laws

 announce their call for applications for emergency grants in the framework of the Emergency Support Fund for Key Populations. The activities of the Fund are financed by the Elton John AIDS Foundation and Aidsfonds.

Organisations from 10 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

 (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan) can receive small grants.

The maximum amount per grant is € 8.000,-.

 can be awarded the maximum amount, whereas the costs of the sustainability activities cannot exceed € 3.000,- or account for more than 37.5% of the total amount of the grant.

Please note: The Fund will be operational until December 2021; activities funded with an ESF grant should finish no later than October 1, 2021.

and Aidsfonds will support organisations representing key populations in surviving in difficult situations which they face due to legal barriers, stigma and discrimination, financial challenges and political restrictions. Support will be given to organisations carrying out activities that ensure access to HIV prevention, treatment and/or services for key populations, or projects protecting the human rights of key populations.

You can download the complete call here and apply online here.

An example of the form can be found here (that is only the example, not for filling in).

Emergency support fund for key populations in the EECA region

By the Global Partnership on Drug Policies and Development (GPDPD)

Numerous studies examine how the Covid-19 pandemic affects illicit drug markets. We asked ourselves: how does the Covid-19 crisis affect the lives of families who grow the raw materials to produce heroin or cocaine, or who are in the process of escaping the poverty trap of illicit cultivation? The GPDPD commissioned a study on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The study paints an initial picture of the situation in drug cultivation areas in eight selected countries in Asia, Latin America and the Balkans - and what we can learn from this for the development of a sustainable drug policy.

It became clear that the situation is very different - but has one thing in common: Pre-existing problems have worsened since the pandemic began in early 2020. The Covid-19 crisis provides the ideal breeding ground for the spread of illicit economies. Smallholder farmers in areas of drug crop cultivation are now more at risk than ever of slipping deeper into illegality. Yet there are also those who manage to resist this on their own.

Poverty and a lack of alternatives in structurally weak rural areas, where the state is hardly present, are driving people into illegal cultivation. Their lives are already characterised by insecurity and marginalisation: they have no access to a functioning infrastructure, markets, political participation, basic services or educational institutions. Violence and conflict are often part of everyday life. The economic downturn only makes them more dependent on drug crop cultivation.

Resilience and vulnerability in times of the pandemic

Do you use drugs? How many? How often? These are among the questions posed in the latest European Web Survey on Drugs, launched today by the 

 Targeted at people, aged 18 and over, who have used drugs, the survey aims to improve understanding of patterns of drug use in Europe and help shape future drug policies and interventions (1).

The voluntary, anonymous survey — one of the agency’s targeted ‘leading-edge’ monitoring methods — will run this year in 31 countries and 28 languages (2). As in previous years, it will be promoted nationally by the Reitox focal points and their partners, as well as through targeted social media advertisements.

New to this year’s round is the participation of the agency’s partners from the

 area through the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA7) and EU4Monitoring Drugs (EU4MD) projects.

Web-based surveys have the benefit of reaching people who use drugs directly. They are quick and cheap to set up, provide new data rapidly and can help spot emerging trends. If the same questions are used, along with a rigorous translation process, then these surveys can also allow for cross-national comparisons.

The new questionnaire, which will run for six weeks, is structured in modules on: socio-demographics, drug using patterns, access to treatment, access to drugs (amounts usually bought and prices paid) and how COVID-19 has affected patterns of drug use. Its findings will contribute to the emerging knowledge base on drug-using practices in Europe and on the quantities of drugs used. This will help enhance market size estimates at national and European level and contribute to policy development more widely.

While web surveys are not representative of the general population, when carefully conducted and combined with traditional data-collection methods, they can help paint a more detailed, realistic and timely picture of drug use and drug markets in Europe. As such, they are a key ingredient in the EMCDDA’s responsiveness to an ever-shifting drugs problem.

EMCDDA launches 2021 European Web Survey on Drugs to assess patterns of drug use in over 30 countries

MEXICO CITY — Lawmakers in Mexico approved a bill Wednesday night to legalize recreational marijuana, a milestone for the country, which is in the throes of a drug war and could become the world’s largest cannabis market, leaving the United States between two pot-selling neighbors.

The 316-to-129 vote in Mexico’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, came more than two years after the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the country’s ban on recreational marijuana was unconstitutional and more than three years after the country legalized medicinal cannabis.

The chamber approved the bill in general terms Wednesday evening before moving on to a lengthy discussion of possible revisions introduced by individual lawmakers. In its final form, though, the measure is widely expected to sail through the Senate before being sent to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has signaled support for legalization.

The measure, as of Wednesday night, would allow adults to smoke marijuana and, with a permit, grow a small number of cannabis plants at home. It would also grant licenses for producers — from small farmers to commercial growers — to cultivate and sell the crop.

Mexico set to legalise marijuana, becoming world’s largest market

On this International Women’s Day, let’s pause for reflection on the changes of the past 12 months. The COVID19 pandemic has impacted heavily on women worldwide, accentuating pre- existing inequalities. In general, mainstream awareness of these deepening and unacceptable disparities remains very low. One of the barriers to awareness and change has been a tendency towards “otherism” in portrayal and perceptions of women who use drugs.

Intersectionality refers to the ways in which different aspects of a person’s identity can expose them to overlapping forms of discrimination and marginalisation. With its roots in the black feminist movement, awareness of intersectionality is very useful for understanding and addressing inequities experienced by women who use drugs. WHRIN work in this space can help to identify where this is affecting women who use drugs, bringing into focus the interrelation of systems of oppression. We can better identify specific needs and help ensure compassionate and effective policies and health options.

Intersectionality and women who use drugs. WHRIN statement on International Women’s Day 2021

A new global Aids strategy is being developed at the United Nations. This really should be breaking news and the subject of major attention around the world. Unfortunately, it is not.

“Epidemics are like large signposts,” the German doctor and founder of social medicine Rudolf Virchow wrote in 1848, “[and] form an inseparable part of the cultural history of mankind.” However, the international community appears to have lost an understanding of the enduring significance of the global response to the HIV/Aids epidemic. The signposts for this are nevertheless all around if we care to look. One topical example is the question: How come Covid-19 vaccines were developed relatively quickly?

As Professor Glenda Gray, the president of the South African Medical Research Council, explained to 

 on 30 November 2020, it has everything to do with the response to HIV:

“Covid-19, Ebola and Zika [virus] have benefited enormously from all the work that has gone into developing platforms for HIV vaccines, so if we had not invested all this money into HIV, we would not have solutions for Ebola, Zika and SARS-CoV-2. It’s because of those platforms that we’ve been able to nimbly move to the next pathogen.”

In a world where recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic is top of the political agenda and vital for everyone’s future, we would do well to relearn some vital lessons about the nature and transformative potential that the HIV/Aids response has exemplified. This is not only because the Aids crisis will remain serious for the foreseeable future – it is also because the global response to HIV/Aids is one of the only successes the international community has had in the past two decades (even if some may describe this success as relative, given the scale of challenges still before us). We need to learn from and build on success. It is rare these days that we have such an opportunity.

What the global response to HIV/Aids can teach us about Covid-19 recovery – and social justice

By Simona Marinescu / United Nations Samoa

Earlier this month, and in December 2020 the government conducted operations that resulted in the confiscation of a total of 1,400 grams of methamphetamine at the border, smuggled from the US. The law enforcement officials (from the Ministry of Customs and Revenue and the Ministry of Police and Prisons) that intercepted these drugs deserve congratulations for their professionalism and skill. Meth is destructive and harmful - and it is good to see this potential threat removed from the community.

As small as this bust is by global standards, 1,400 grams in a couple of months is a record for Samoa (there were only two convictions for methamphetamine possession in Samoa in 2017). Perhaps it is inevitable that we will see an increase in seizures. As COVID-19 ravishes the economy and exacerbates inequality, some may look to less than legal means to supplement their dwindling incomes, and drug use is known to increase in communities facing economic hardship. Governments need to work to reduce drug consumption – especially with respect to more harmful substances like meth and opioids, which have devastated poor communities around the world. For example, there were more than 67,000 overdose deaths in the US alone in 2018. Thankfully, so far, Samoa has avoided this degree of harm.

But while it is sometimes tempting to “crack down” (no pun intended) in the face of an emerging perceived threat, we must resist the urge to increase legal penalties. We should be decriminalizing drug use and possession. Drugs are a serious health and social issue, not a moral one. Reducing consumption requires a health and socially focused response, not moral panic. This must include carefully thought out laws that emphasize prevention, education and harm reduction. We need properly funded community based support services that help and protect vulnerable people, and assist them in escaping degrading and difficult circumstances. Stopping drug use will not be achieved through hastily drafted legislation that further criminalizes addiction. By discouraging the demand for drugs, we can actually be more effective in tackling drug trafficking and putting an end to the human suffering caused by increased consumption.

Drug use is a health issue – we need to decriminalize

The first international conference on the legalization of cannabis and its derivatives in Kyrgyz Republic will be held on March 10, 2021 in Bishkek. The event will be streamed online on the YouTube channel of the 

The world-renowned narcologist professor Zhenishbek Nazaraliev is the main speaker of the event. Professor Nazaraliev is a psychiatrist working on drug dependence.

The conference participants will discuss the benefits for the legalization – starting with the adoption of cannabis in industry and ending with its decriminalization for personal use. Particular attention will be paid to the medical and scientific uses of hemp.

Professor Nazaraliev will deliver his professional point of view on the ongoing discussion in Kyrgyz Republic and answer the following questions:

Why did the talks about the legalization begin in Kyrgyz Republic? What is behind this?

Is it possible to overcome poverty and extreme deprivation in Kyrgyz Republic by starting a new industry which is dynamically being developed in the USA, European Union, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan?

Will this mega-project be able to change the entire nation’s mind and bring the people of Kyrgyz Republic to well-being and prosperity?

March 10, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. Bishkek (15:00 GMT). Address: (Asanbay Center)
Online: https://www.youtube.com/user/DoctorLifeTV For all queries, please contact outofdrug@mail.ru

International conference on cannabis legalisation held in Kyrgyzstan

On the 26th of December 2020, an international seminar marked the launch of a pilot project, the Centre of Excellence for Illicit Drug Supply Reduction, a partnership between the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Brazilian National Office on Drug Policies (SENAD, in the Portuguese acronym), with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The pilot stage is planned to last for 18 months, and the Centre is expected to be incorporated by the Ministry of Justice and Public Security. It goes without saying, of course, that the language adopted by the Centre describes illegal drugs themselves—and not prohibitionism, punitivism, and incarceration—as a social problem to be overcome by reducing supply.

There are many issues with this infelicitous partnership. On the ideological level, it lays bare the will of the Brazilian far-right to confirm its bias and prove that there is an epidemic of drug misuse in Brazil that would legitimise the use of force for combating the supply and use of illicit substances. The recent censorship of Fiocruz’s large-scale study on the use of illicit substances in Brazil tells a lot about this stance.

Another point to consider is that a partnership with a UN agency lends international support to Bolsonaro’s draconian drug policies. The UNODC has been supporting decriminalisation and decarceration in the last decade—a stance that has caused polemic in the recent past—, something very distant from Bolsonaro’s drug policies, but its programmes aimed at the Global South are still strongly oriented towards building capacity for law enforcement instead of focusing on other areas of social care that have been delegated to the field of policing over the years. It is not a coincidence that the seminar that inaugurated the Centre of Excellence for Illicit Drug Supply Reduction gathered many professionals linked to the police forces and the penitentiary system, with few researchers present.

Will the UN revamp its disastrous 'drug-free world' campaign in Brazil?

Civil society has, rightly, long been an integral part of CND proceedings and debates – engaging alongside member states, UN officials, academics and others through interventions, side events, disseminating materials, and holding bilateral meetings. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 64th CND (12-16 April 2021) will take a “hybrid” format – with the vast majority of participants from outside of Vienna participating online.

With the precise modalities of a hybrid Commission still to be announced, the Vienna NGO Committee on Drugs (VNGOC)1 would like to make the following practical and realistic recommendations to ensure strong and meaningful civil society participation – despite the many challenges that exist. We acknowledge the hard work of the CND Secretariat, Bureau and others towards this, but also believe that an online CND should be an opportunity to expand participation, rather than limit it. Furthermore, 2021 could be a good opportunity to implement permanent procedures to facilitate the active, online participation of NGOs from around the world in 2022 and beyond.

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