In this manifesto, the Scottish Police Federation proposes some changes in the approach to the problem of drug users. Of particular importance, the document suggests authorities should not focus law enforcement efforts on people who use drugs.

Tackling drug and alcohol misuse Scotland has had a long, turbulent relationship with alcohol and drugs. But decades of arresting and prosecuting those with dependency problems has failed to tackle the root cause.

There will always be those who end up in the criminal justice system as a consequence of their actions. Where prosecutions are necessary, the punishment should be swift and decisive.

The SPF is not advocating the legalisation or decriminalising of drugs, but efforts should be better directed in trying to help those with problems overcome addictions.

Courts should be free to impose disposals that mandate participation in health and education programmes, with traditional criminal sanctions preserved for those preying on the vulnerable and peddling misery.

The SPF believes it is time to stop persecuting users and start concentrating on the dealers. Working in collaboration, the SPF believes that health, education and justice services stand a better chance of ending cycles of offending.

While intoxication is not a medical emergency, the consequences can be. Locking up drunk people in cells is no longer an acceptable way to manage that risk.

The SPF believes that safe, secure facilities should be created to manage those who present themselves as intoxicated and avoid the need to shuttle people between police cells and hospitals. Such facilities should be managed by skilled personnel from across the police, health and social care services, charities and other appropriately skilled personnel.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

Scotland: Manifesto - Programme for policing 2016 - 2021

Injecting drug use is a global health and social issue from which various health and social harms often arise. These harms include health problems, such as HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis and fatal overdose, as well as social and legal problems, and others. In recent years, an increase in drug use has been reported in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The number of People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) from the 20 countries covered by the Middle East and North Africa Harm Reduction Association (MENAHRA) is estimated to be around 570,000 (MENAHRA, 2014).

In many countries of the MENA region, unprotected sex and unsafe injecting drug use are the primary drivers of the HIV epidemic. However, the response has not been appropriate to the size of the problem (MENAHRA, 2014).

An estimated 90,000 people who inject drugs are living with HIV/AIDS within the region, which represents an HIV prevalence of over 15 percent in this population. There is also sufficient evidence showing that injecting drug use contributes significantly to the Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) epidemic in this region (MENAHRA, 2014).

MENAHRA communication guide on harm reduction

In recent years, Member States have increasingly recognized the importance of a development-oriented approach to address the world drug problem, including alternative development, to reduce the cultivation of illicit crops, notably opium poppy and coca bush, used for the production of narcotic drugs. There is also growing consensus on how to define and understand alternative development, namely as a long-term holistic approach that is integrated into national development strategies. Alternative development primarily addresses poverty, which in most cases is the root cause of illicit crop cultivation. The adoption of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Alternative Development by the General Assembly in December 2013 contributed to the promotion of alternative development. The Guiding Principles and global acknowledgement of illicit drug cultivation as a development issue were further recognized at the second International Workshop and Conference on Alternative Development hosted by the Royal Thai Government, in collaboration with the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in November 2015.

Taking development seriously: Alternative development in the UNGASS 2016 process

In many countries, very large numbers of people in prison have not been convicted of a criminal offence but are waiting for their guilt or innocence to be established by a court. Some will eventually be acquitted of any crime; all should be presumed innocent.Yet in many cases their period of detention on remand may last months or years. Conditions are often worse than for convicted offenders and in many countries detainees are subject to highly restricted regimes with limitations on visits and on opportunities to take part in education, training or work. Countries with the highest levels of overcrowding also have prison populations with the highest proportions of pre‑trial detainees. In 40 countries more than half of prisoners are held on remand.

Ten-point plan on reducing pre-trial detention

В настоящем докладе рассказывается о применении смертной казни по приговору суда за период с января по декабрь 2015 года. Как и в предыдущие годы, информация собиралась из разных источников, включая официальные данные; сведения от приговорённых к смерти, их родственников и представителей; сообщения других организаций гражданского общества; публикации в СМИ.

Оставайтесьвкурсесобытийнаркополитики, подписавшисьна

Cмертные приговоры и казни 2015

This report covers the judicial use of the death penalty for the period January to December 2015. Amnesty International reports only on executions, death sentences and other aspects of the use of the death penalty, such as commutations and exonerations, where there is reasonable confirmation. In many countries governments do not publish information on their use of the death penalty, making confirmation of the use challenging.

Death sentences and executions report 2015

Opium farmers and representatives of their communities came together to discuss the challenges they face in their lives, and to share experiences and find ways to solve their problems. This is their statement.

We, opium farmers and representatives of Kayah, Kayan, Shan, Pa-O, Lahu, Ta- ang (Palaung) and Kachin opium farming communities from Kayah State, Southern, Eastern and Northern Shan State, and Kachin State, came together in Loikaw, in Kayah State in Myanmar, to discuss the challenges we face in our lives, and to share experiences and find ways to solve our problems.

We would like to make the following recommendations to the new government of Myanmar:

We grow opium because we are poor and do not have other livelihood opportunities to feed our families and send our children to school, as well as for medicinal and traditional uses. We are not involved in the drug trade, we are not criminals, and we are not commercial farmers. Some of us also grow it for traditional and medicinal uses. It is important to differentiate between small- holder farmers like us, and those people who grow opium commercially and/or who invest in it.

The government should not carry out any force eradication of our opium fields unless and until they have provided access to sustainable crop substitution programmes and alternative livelihoods to our communities. Eradication should especially not take place during the harvest season. By that time we have already invested a lot and also cannot grow another crop anymore that season.

Statement of the 4th Myanmar opium farmers’ forum

Participants in markets for illegal goods and services are not afforded the usual protections of legal systems that govern fair business conduct. Contracts and agreements within criminal networks are deliberately ambiguous or absent, a result of actors’ attempts to evade prosecution, making dispute resolution even more difficult (Reuter, 2009). Given these conditions, violence (e.g. assault, homicide) may be utilised as a tool for resolving disputes between networks and within networks (Reuter, 2009), as well as for maintaining reputation, recovering losses and to enact vengeance (Topalli, Wright, & Fornango, 2002). This kind of drug-related systemic violence was defined by Goldstein (1985) as the traditionally aggressive patterns of interaction within the system of drug distribution and use. In addition to drug market participants being barred from legal redress, these markets may be characterised by violence because full-time market participants typically come from lower socio-economic backgrounds, where they are more likely to have experienced violence as a normal dispute resolution strategy (Andreas & Wallman, 2009).

It is not always the case that illegal markets involve systemic violence or that violence will be employed uniformly (Friman, 2009). Specific drug markets that have notorious reputations for violence are not experienced as violent by participants, for example, Australia’s Cabramatta heroin market as described by Coomber and Maher (2006). In more recent work, Coomber (2015) compared two heroin/crack markets located in different UK cities, finding that the extent of market violence was contingent on the local cultural circumstances, rather than predicted by systemic conditions. In fact, Pearson and Hobbs (2001) describe violence within drug trading as a sign of market dysfunction. They argue that if everything is working well, everyone is making a profit and no-one needs to resolve disputes with overt violence, which is likely to attract police attention or rival retaliation. As further evidence that violence signals a dysfunctional market, Werb et al. (2011) found that law enforcement efforts to disrupt markets exacerbated the problem of drug market violence by increasing instability within and between criminal networks.

Safer scoring? Cryptomarkets, social supply and drug market violence

The aim of this document is to provide an orderly and systematic approach towards the history of addiction treatment in Portugal over the past five decades (1958-2014). It contains a rigorous and detailed compilation of events relating to the sector's emergence and development based on data from different sources and a substantial amount of scattered information that is not easy to understand even for specialists although laymen are also able to express their critical views, based on published facts.

Evolution of the Portuguese addiction treatment system

More than 90 supervised injection services (SIS) operate globally, most within eight European countries, one in Australia, and two in Vancouver, Canada. SIS are legally sanctioned spaces where people can inject illegal drugs, typically heroin or cocaine, under the supervision of trained health staff and without fear of prosecution. These services allow safer injection, are associated with decreased overdoses, facilitate referrals for drug treatment, and benefit public order. In response to the increase in opioid use and associated harms, activists and officials in Canada, the USA, Scotland, and Ireland are exploring supervised injection services, but implementation is controversial.

Click here to read the full article (restricted access).

Making the case for supervised injection services

With opiate use documented in over half of the countries of Africa, injecting drug use reported in most of these, and linked emerging concentrated epidemics of HIV and hepatitis C infection among people who inject drugs (PWID), there is increasing attention on the incorporation of harm reduction interventions as part of national drug policy responses in African countries. The focus of interest in relation to implementing HIV and hepatitis C prevention is contextualised by longer-standing and broader concerns linked to indicators of growing drug markets, especially of heroin in the East African countries of Kenya and Tanzania. There is a growing body of epidemiological research linking the diffusion of injecting drug use with concentrated outbreaks of HIV and hepatitis C in the region. HIV prevalence estimates among PWID in Nairobi, Kenya, for example, have ranged between 14.5% and 50%, and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, between 35% and 50%. While data is limited, estimates of hepatitis C prevalence among PWID in these settings appear higher still. There are few robust prevalence estimates of HIV, hepatitis C or tuberculosis among people who use drugs in West African and other Sub-Saharan African countries.

In a number of East African countries – notably Mauritius, Kenya and Tanzania – drug policies have recently been characterised by a state of adaptation, wherein multiple stakeholders – including global, international as well as local actors – have negotiated the relative merits and evidence in support of harm reduction as a measure of HIV and hepatitis C prevention. In Mauritius, the endorsement of needle and syringe programmes (NSP) and opioid substitution treatment (OST) as cornerstone HIV prevention interventions as part of national policy since 2006 has reportedly enabled these services to be considerably expanded since their introduction, including OST within prisons, to the extent that over 50% of PWID are said to be receiving OST and around 50% NSP (Republic of Mauritius, 2012). In Tanzania, NSP was introduced in 2010 and methadone-assisted drug treatment in 2011, while in Kenya, NSP was introduced in 2013, and methadone treatment in late 2014. The estimated coverage of these interventions, however, is generally below optimum. For instance, assuming the numbers of PWID in Nairobi, Kenya, range between 5031 and 10,937 (0.2–0.5% of the adult population), NSP reaches between 10% and 20% of PWID, while OST in Nairobi was reaching an estimated 400 PWID by September 2015.

Drug harms and drug policies in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implementation science and HIV epidemics

(Inter)national and local policies concerning the transportation, sale, and consumption of illicit drugs encompass a wide range of perspectives along a continuum from broad legalization to stringent prohibition. Many of us citizens assume these and other policies are composed and implemented in a rational, purposeful manner by a select group of government officials after careful consideration of all the available facts. This rational/technical model is the basis for the ‘‘evidence-based’’ turn in drug policy where some actors attempt to eliminate local values and political motives from the decisionmaking process, believing that sufficient knowledge of social problems, backed by sound research, will produce effective policies with predictable outcomes. Yet even in instances where scientific research informs decisions, local values and politics continue to define what constitutes proper ‘‘evidence’’ and how it should be applied, or ignored, in policy (Lancaster, 2014; Monaghan, 2011). Policy – encompassing both formulation and implementation – remains an unpredictable enterprise. The increasing democratization of policy engenders greater uncertainty, with more actors bringing their varied values, goals, and evidence to the process. How can we researchers and stakeholders better understand the complex environment in which policy occurs? How can we apply such knowledge to reduce uncertainty and improve the policy process? What is needed is an approach that accounts for the broad range of policy actors, structures, ideas, and technologies as they interact over time to enact policy within a continuously changing sociopolitical context.

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