This Drugs & Conflict briefing focuses on opium elimination efforts and the controversy about involving military forces in anti-drugs operations in Afghanistan.
This briefing paper looks at the history of the use of psychoactive drugs in India, and particularly the use of Cannabis and Opium derivatives in religious and social rituals.
Based on two studies carried out in the cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo and additional research in Brazil, this report examines the origin, characteristics and impact of the explosive increase in consumption of cocaine base paste and crack in urban areas.
Plan Colombia having run its course, the U.S. government's own data indicate that coca cultivation is expanding in Colombia, cocaine remains readily available in the United States, and cocaine use is steady, if not rising, including among youth.
The Home Office have published a research study called The economic and social costs of Class A drug use in England and Wales which provides a useful analyses of the wider costs of illegal drugs – the most thorough and recent such study available. The study, undertaken by York University, explains its methodology and has analysis which is very clear about it's limitations, giving a wide margin of error on all its estimates due to the unreliability of some source data.
This report aims to give policymakers an accessible summary of the current evidence available on the effectiveness of treatment, and suggestions on how treatment services can be expanded and integrated into a co-ordinated system.
The Thai 'war on drugs', which commenced in February 2003 in response to an explosion in methamphetamine use in this region of East Asia, has resulted in thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of arrests.
This paper looks at changing approaches to the drug problem in Iran where there is growing recognition of the limits of an enforcement driven approach, and the importance of the medical and social dimensions of drug misuse.
This report looks at the approach to drug policy that has dominated the field for much of the past 40 years, and is sometimes characterised - and, to some degree, caricatured - as the 'war on drugs' approach.