It is time for drug professionals, including the harm reduction community, to have a say about the upcoming regulation of the European cannabis market. If not, we miss an important historical opportunity to shape the future.

I have just read the 5th European Cannabis Report from Prohibition Partners, a think tank on the legal cannabis industry. It is an interesting read indeed, and an eye-opening one. There are revolutionary changes occurring in European cannabis policies that are not always visible, even for professionals working in the field of harm reduction. That is partly because Europe, despite all its joint institutions, is still so fragmented in terms of language, culture, and politics. Sometimes it is difficult to connect the dots. And partly because drug professionals traditionally focus on injecting drug use, opiates, and stimulants, where most of the public health harms concentrate. Meanwhile, they can tend to forget that the most popular illicit drug in Europe is still cannabis – and policies regulating it are changing rapidly.

A number of countries have introduced new legal regulation schemes for medical cannabis, established new cannabis agencies, and created legal channels to supply the market in recent years. An initiative running in the UK, for example, could see up to 20,000 patients given medical cannabis over a two-year period, with the aim of building the largest body of evidence on cannabis as a medicine in the region. Ireland has launched a pilot Medical Cannabis Access Program. France granted approval for a two-year trial to help doctors to understand medical cannabis. Germany, the biggest market, imported more than 6,7 tonnes of legal cannabis last year – and this amount is likely to grow multiple times in the following years. Europe is still dependent on imported cannabis but it is likely to change in the next couple of years, with more and more cannabis grown domestically. Medical cannabis reform is not only under way in western Europe but in the eastern part of the region as well: in countries where you would not expect it, like North Macedonia or Poland.

If you think that the reform will stop at medical cannabis, you are wrong. Luxembourg has announced that it will be the first European country to make cannabis legal. Prohibition Partners accurately points out that this will likely have a domino effect: neighbouring countries will relax their own policies. Cannabis reform is gaining speed in other countries too – again, not only in the west. I was surprised to learn that a new bill was introduced to the Croatian parliament recently about regulating the cannabis market. Even though it may be years before the first European countries legalise the recreational market, it is now obvious that it is just a question of time.

Cannabis legalisation has arrived in Europe: Civil society should not be silent

By Ian Hamilton, Alex Stevens, and Niamh Eastwood / The Conversation

The latest data on UK homicide rates shows that 31% of victims and suspects were “under the influence” of alcohol and other drugs at the time of death. Drugs and alcohol continue to be a convenient scapegoat when it comes to finding blame. But there is still very little being done about other contributing factors – including poverty, cuts to youth services, domestic violence and education.

Homicide rates have been falling around the world and have remained low over the past few years. But they have been rising in England and Wales since 2015 toward levels last seen in the early 2000s. Although we can’t be sure exactly why England and Wales buck the global trend the rise in those carrying knives and other sharp instruments is likely to have played a part, but this isn’t the only factor.

The latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows there were 671 homicides for the year ending March 2019, a small decrease of 5%. But this disguises an increase in homicide incidents of 3% – even though there was a fall in the number of victims.

Fatal knife crime has been rising and has received significant government and media attention. An important aspect of recent debates on the rise in murders is the role that drugs play in these fatalities.

Understanding how a drug-related homicide is determined and defined is important in understanding, not only the data, but how this contributes to policy.

The influence of drugs on murder rates in the UK is being overstated

Only a "handful" of inmates enrolled in the prison needle exchange program in its first 10 months, because Correctional Service Canada (CSC) appears to have designed the program around security considerations rather than health, according to the Correctional Investigator of Canada's annual report.

The report from Ivan Zinger, the ombudsman for federally sentenced offenders, on the country's prison system was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, outlining several concerns with the approach prison officials have taken in regards to the needle exchange program.

Zinger noted that the purpose of prison needle exchanges is reduce harm associated with injection drug use, namely the spread of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, but CSC won't be successful in that goal if inmates don't participate in the program.

He urged CSC to increase participation by considering best practices for successful prison needle exchanges detailed by the United Nations, which include:

Leadership support at the highest level.

Steadfast commitment to harm reduction and public health objectives.

Clear policy direction and oversight of the program.

Participation of staff and prisoners in planning and operational process.

The prison needle exchange program (PNEP) was launched in June 2018 at Atlantic Institution in New Brunswick and Grand Valley Institution for Women in Ontario. It was gradually introduced to other CSC facilities afterwards.

Prison needle exchanges in Canada driven by security, not health concerns, federal watchdog says in critical report

By Angus Thompson / The Sunday Morning Herald

Harm reduction advocates say the state government's decision to destroy drugs ditched in amnesty bins at music festivals is a wasted opportunity to test the dangerous substances on the market.

The bins - announced late last year - have so far been used at eight NSW events deemed "high risk" by state authorities between December 31 and February 2, including major festivals such as Field Day and Laneway festival.

A response to Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame's inquest into the deaths of six young people at NSW music festivals, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the bins would allow punters to avoid panicking when they see police and dispose of their drugs "without any questions asked".

Ms Grahame said amnesty bins would also give authorities the chance to test the discarded substances and provide information to health providers. Results can also be used to send out real-time alerts to revellers about dangerous drugs that may be present at a music festival.

But NSW Health, which is managing the rollout of the bins, has since confirmed the substances are being destroyed by a waste management company.

"The bins that are being introduced to festivals are amnesty bins only and there is currently no testing performed on the drugs deposited in the bins," a NSW Health spokesperson told 

Health experts say failure to test drugs discarded in amnesty bins is a wasted opportunity

I slipped out of a stall in the dimly lit basement bathroom of a Brooklyn soul food restaurant, sliding a frosted glass dropper bottle and chubby three-milliliter pink syringe into my friend’s hand as she quickly replaced me. My mouth burned, a sore beginning to develop on the side of my tongue. I had just squirted a dose of “G”—likely a combination of GHB and its more potent precursor, GBL—into my mouth without the usual water or 7-Up chaser.

GHB and GBL are central nervous system depressants, like alcohol, and produce an alcohol-like intoxication. GHB is a chemical that occurs naturally in the human brain, while GBL is an industrial chemical that can be manually or metabolically converted into GHB. In the US, GHB tends to be more common, while GBL is bigger in Europe. G, as both chemicals are colloquially known, is usually dissolved in water, sold as a clear liquid and consumed orally.

I wasn’t able to sip it slowly like I usually do. Neither was my friend. That’s because we were at a popular New York City queer rave in mid-January called Unter, which has a harsh anti-G policy. A sign with a big slashed “GHB” was taped by the coat check, commanding partygoers to “KEEP GHB+GBL OUT!” and claiming that “GHB IS ACTIVELY HARMING THE GREATER DANCE MUSIC COMMUNITIES.”

Data on G-related harms among New Yorkers is scarce. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene was not able to comment by the time of publication. But in London, fatal G overdoses and G-involved sexual assaults have been shown to be widespread. More than a quarter of mostly-British gay men reported that they knew someone who has died from a G overdose, and the same proportion said that they had been subjected to sexual assault while using G, found

Banning GHB at raves is dangerous

By Associated Press Television News, Republic World

Ruling party lawmakers have proposed legalizing marijuana in Nepal, where it has been used for generations and was famed during the counterculture '60s.Forty-six members of the ruling Communist Party of Nepal filed the proposal in Parliament to legalize the production and use of marijuana, party lawmaker Birod Khatiwada said Monday.

He said the Himalayan country's mountainous terrain is suitable for the crop and allowing farmers to grow it would greatly benefit those who are impoverished.

“Legalizing marijuana will help the poor farmers and since most of the Western world, which was reason for making it illegal in the first place, have already ended the prohibition, Nepal should also lift the ban,” Khatiwada said.

Nepal lawmakers seek to legalize growing, using marijuana

President Donald Trump is campaigning on criminal justice reform efforts that reduce sentences for nonviolent offenders, while suggesting he’d like the American justice system to work more like ones in authoritarian countries where drug dealers are executed after “fair but quick” trials.

If those two things sound hard to square with each other, that’s because they are. But the contrast serves as an especially stark illustration of the incoherency at the core of Trumpism.

Just days after his Super Bowl ad and State of the Union speech highlighted his support for legislation that makes a modest effort to reduce prison sentences at the federal level, Trump on Monday said the best way to further reduce the quantity of fentanyl in the US is to follow China’s lead.

“States with a very powerful death penalty on drug dealers don’t have a drug problem,” Trump said during a White House event with governors. “I don’t know that our country is ready for that, but if you look throughout the world, the countries with a powerful death penalty — death penalty — with a fair but quick trial, they have very little if any drug problem. That includes China.”

(Trump made a number of other eyebrow-raising comments during the event, including saying of the coronavirus that “a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat” and claiming the European Union “was really formed so they could treat us badly.”)

It should be noted that Trump’s claim about China and other authoritarian countries having “very little if any drug problem” is false. Records from the Chinese government indicate that there are more than 2.5 million officially registered drug users in the country, and that the total has increased significantly in recent years. (The real numbers are likely much higher since not all drug users have registered with the state.)

Trump is running on criminal justice reform but just praised China’s execution of drug dealers

George Charlton’s T-shirt is emblazoned with the words “nice people take drugs” in vibrant neon orange. George is sitting in the offices of Addaction, one of the UK’s leading drug and alcohol charities, in Redcar, in the north-east of England, looking out over the town’s esplanade and the North Sea beyond.

“I like these T-shirts,” he says. “I like to go into the Co-op on a Monday morning and have someone do a double take and say: ‘Really? Are you mad wearing that?’ It allows us to have a conversation. They’ll say: ‘You’re a decent lad,’ and I’ll say I was a problematic drug user for 15 years. Nice people do take drugs.”

George is a force of nature. He’s hard to contain. He speaks rapidly and enthusiastically about life, love and his work as a drug-user activist. He’s a qualified counsellor and offers mentoring and training to people affected by drugs.

What he defines as his life’s purpose emerged from 15 years of problematic drug use of his own. “My drug of choice was ‘more’,” he says. “It was more of anything I could get my hands on.”

He works tirelessly across the country on a range of projects but his focus at the moment is here in Redcar and Cleveland, where together with Addaction he is rolling out a pioneering project designed to save lives.

Under the project, a team of peers – people with lived experience of drug issues – take an intravenously administered medication called naloxone out on to the streets and train members of the community, including active drug users, in how to use it. The main life-threatening effect of an opioid overdose is to slow down or stop breathing. Naloxone blocks this effect and reverses breathing difficulties.

The majority of people who access naloxone do so through drug treatment or harm reduction services, but studies show people outside of structured drug treatment are most likely to die of a drug-related cause, so taking it out on to the streets is key.

George is joined in the Addaction offices by his team of four peers, or “naloxone champions”, dressed in matching azure hoodies. Jimmy, Chris, Andy and Nicky all pile in, laughing, talking over each other, excited about the day. Over cups of tea and chocolate biscuits, they complete a hectic “check-in”, one by one sharing with the room how they are feeling. They are “buzzing”, “excited”, “nervous” and “ready to save lives”.

'I feel like I have a purpose': People who used drugs working to save lives in the UK

Philippines officials involved in the country’s bloody drug war and a subsequent crackdown on opposition are finally facing official condemnation and repercussions from the United States. The drug war—including extrajudicial killings of people suspected to use or sell drugs by both law enforcement and vigilantes—was estimated by the country’s Human Rights Commission to have caused as many as 27,000 deaths by December 2018. It began in 2016.

On January 8, the US Senate agreed to a resolution that condemns, among other things, the state-sanctioned killings and the detention of Philippines Senator Leila De Lima, a prominent critic of the drug war. The resolution also called on President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on implicated security forces and government officials. A few weeks prior, Trump had signed a spending bill that banned officials “involved in the wrongful imprisonment” of De Lima from entering the US.

Among the Philippines officials who have now been denied US visas is Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, dubbed the “architect” of the violent crackdown led by President Rodrigo Duterte. On January 22, Dela Rosa told reporters that he believes the denial of his visa is because of his involvement in extrajudicial killings, rather than the detainment of De Lima.

It seems as though he was anticipating this. Dela Rosa missed a July 2019 boxing match in Las Vegas “because I might just be barred and be embarrassed. I had been hearing rumors even prior to the fight,” he told reporters in December, just a week before Trump signed the bill blocking his colleagues.

US finally condemns and sanctions Philippines drug warriors

MANILA (Reuters) - Colonel Romeo Caramat oversaw the bloodiest day in the blood-soaked war on drugs in the Philippines – 32 people killed in 24 hours in the province north of Manila where he was police chief in 2017.

Now the head of drug enforcement for the Philippine National Police, Caramat said that ultra-violent approach to curbing illicit drugs had not been effective.

“Shock and awe definitely did not work,” he told Reuters in an interview, speaking out for the first time on the issue. “Drug supply is still rampant.”

Caramat said the volume of crime had decreased as a result of the drug war, but users could still buy illegal drugs “any time, anywhere” in the Philippines.

He said he now favored a new strategy. Rather than quickly arresting or killing low-level pushers and couriers, he wants to put them under surveillance in the hope they lead police to “big drug bosses”.

Three and a half years after President Rodrigo Duterte launched a war on drugs in the Philippines with a call to kill addicts and traffickers, his signature policy has failed in many key objectives, according to police officers, health professionals and government officials.

Duterte’s spokesman, Salvador Panelo, did not respond to requests for comment on Caramat’s statements. But in a statement on Jan. 6 responding to a request from Reuters for comment on the anti-drug campaign, Panelo said “we are winning the war on drugs”.

Duterte, however, has repeatedly said in recent speeches and interviews that the anti-drugs campaign has fallen short, blaming endemic corruption for undermining enforcement and the absence of a death penalty for failing to deter crime.

Critics say that problems with the drug war run deeper, pointing to a failure to target high-level drug traffickers, cut the supply of drugs and invest in rehabilitation.

“Heavy suppression efforts marked by extra-judicial killings and street arrests were not going to slow down demand,” said Jeremy Douglas, the Southeast Asia and Pacific representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Bangkok.

“There has to be a focus on prevention and public health, coupled with intelligent policing that takes on transnational crime.”

Exclusive: 'Shock and awe' has failed in Philippines drug war, enforcement chief says

The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) stands in support of the HIV2020 conference in Mexico City, which has been created in solidarity with communities who are unable or unwilling to participate in AIDS2020, which will be taking place in the United States.

HIV2020 is an alternative event led by key population networks – following the decision to hold AIDS2020 in San Francisco and Oakland, meaning that many individuals (including people who use drugs) will be unable to attend due to US laws and the Trump administration’s discriminatory immigration laws, detention and family separation policies, and deteriorating human rights conditions.

HIV2020 is informed by a mutually agreed upon set of values and principles:

: ensuring diverse voices are heard and reflected, including the broadening of GIPA principles to ensure the meaningful involvement of key populations. ‘Nothing about us, without us.'

-led programs and solutions that amplify community voices and show community commitments to global health and human rights responses.

: ensuring communities are equal partners (or leaders) in new research, tools, policies and strategies.

Linking global, regional and local networks through activities that strengthen global, regional and national advocacy for local impact.

IDPC has already formally endorsed the conference and supports the INPUD Statement. More information about the event can be found on the official website – https://www.hiv2020.org/ – as well as on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

IDPC Statement of support for ‘HIV2020: Community reclaiming the response’

The UK government has announced a summit focused on reducing the impact of problem drug use that will bring together a variety of experts from across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The announcement was made by Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service Kit Malthouse at a meeting of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee on the 23rd of October.

The summit will be held in Glasgow, and the intention is for it to take place before Christmas. It will provide an update on Dame Carol Black’s review of drugs, which is due to report later this year.

The meeting will also provide an opportunity to discuss the issues of drug use across the UK, share best practice on common goals and identify areas for closer collaboration.

Speaking after the committee meeting, the minister said:

“The number of drug deaths across the UK is extremely concerning, particularly the figures for Scotland. We should continue to work closely at all levels and across the nations of the UK to tackle the issue of drug misuse.