Last November, Colorado and Washington voters approved ballot initiatives to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana—decisions that put them at odds with federal law, which continues to ban marijuana. The states are moving ahead with implementation of their unprecedented laws in the face of uncertainty regarding the response of the federal government.

What exactly have the states voted to do? What authority does the federal government have with respect to the new laws? What are the trends in U.S. public opinion on marijuana policy?

In this paper, John Walsh and leading experts from the field respond to the most pressing questions in this debate, discussing the implementation of the new laws and exploring the key challenges in creating regulatory regimes for recreational marijuana—even as the federal ban remains in place.

This paper, edited by Washington Office on Latin America Senior Associate John Walsh, is the third in a WOLA-Brookings series on marijuana policy in the United States and abroad.

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Q&A: Legal marijuana in Colorado and Washington

The report documents the failing role that current federal drug policies play in supporting safety and health and draws attention to the acute need for an improved system of supports for people who use drugs including harm reduction. The report’s authors found that Canada’s current federal government is openly hostile to evidence-based measures like harm reduction services and has clearly taken a punitive approach to addressing drug use problems. And failure by all levels of government to fully meet the needs of people with drug problems, means that some groups are still outright denied these lifesaving services and many community-based organizations struggle to meet the basic needs of their clients.

This report also highlights recent changes to Canadian law that implement mandatory minimum sentences and Canada’s escalating military role in the war of drugs. Despite these ominous developments the report also documents the innovations in harm reduction pioneered by Canadians in a North American context including supervised injection services and heroin-assisted treatment.

Getting to tomorrow: A report on Canadian drug policy

About 700 agencies provide treatment for alcohol and other drug issues in Australia, and three-quarters of these agencies are in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Most of the closed episodes provided in 2010-11 were for clients receiving treatment for their own drug use, and alcohol was the most common principal drug of concern in most states and territories. Counselling was the most common main treatment type in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania, and was the second most common main treatment in the remaining state and territories.

Alcohol and other drug treatment services in Australia 2010-11: State and territory findings

In 2010-11, health expenditure for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was estimated at $4.6 billion, or 3.7% of Australia¿s total recurrent health expenditure. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population comprised 2.5% of the Australian population at this time. Expenditure equated to $7,995 per Indigenous person, which was 1.47 times greater than the $5,437 spent per non-Indigenous Australian in the same year. Governments funded 91.4% of health expenditure for Indigenous people, compared with 68.1% for non-Indigenous people.

Expenditure on health for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 2010-11

The Australian Crime Commission (ACC) Illicit Drug Data Report 2011–12 provides a snapshot of the Australian illicit drug market. The report combines illicit drug data from a variety of sources including law enforcement, health and academia. The Illicit Drug Data Report is the only report of its type in Australia and provides an important evidence base to assist decision-makers in the development of strategies to combat the threat posed by illicit drugs.

Over the last decade, cannabis has remained the dominant illicit drug in the Australian market in terms of use, seizures and arrests. Other prominent drug types in the Australian market are amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) and ‘other and unknown’ drugs. The number of illicit drugs seized nationally continues to increase, with 76 083 seizures in 2011–12, the highest reported in the last decade. Illicit drug related arrests are also the highest reported in the last decade, with 93. 148 arrests in 2011–12.

Illicit drug data report 2011-2012 in Australia

Cannabis has accounted for the highest volume of drug arrests since 1996–97; in 2010–11, there were 58,760 drug arrests involving cannabis. In comparison in the same period there were 2551 heroin-related arrests. Drug arrests are more commonly consumers than providers, particularly for cannabis.

The report of the Australian Institute of Criminology shows that there were an estimated 287,000 cases of physical assault in 2011-2012 where AOD was a contributory factor.

Australian crime: facts and figures 2012 

New research undertaken on the streets of Richmond and Abbotsford has revealed increasing health risks for people who inject drugs and significant community concern over the impact of injecting in public areas.

The Burnet Institute report, ”North Richmond Public Injecting Impact Study” by Dr Robyn Dwyer, Professor Robert Power and Professor Paul Dietze was released on Monday 20 May.

The researchers identified increasing high rates of heroin-related overdose attendances by Ambulance Victoria (The City of Yarra had the highest number of attendances of any local government in Melbourne); a four-fold increase in the past two years in the collection of needles and syringes from street-sweeps; and a lack of access to sterile injecting equipment after hours and on weekends leading to a medium to high risk of blood-borne virus infection amongst people who re-used syringes.

North Richmond public injecting impact study

In many countries around the world, including Argentina, the number of women who aredeprived of their liberty has risen over time and has increased disproportionately in com parison to male prisoners. In Argentina, the number of female prisoners within the federal system increased 193%, while the male population rose 111% from 1990 to 2012. Nonetheless, little research has been done to understand why there has been such a dramatic increase in women’s incarceration. At the same time, international and domestic laws governing prisons and prison policies and practices have traditionally been designed for men. In 2010, however, the United Nations adopted the first international standards relating specifically to women prisoners – the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Female Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women Offenders (Bangkok Rules).

The global “war on drugs” serves to explain, in part, the significant (and disproportionate) increase in rates of femaleimprisonment within Argentina’s SPF, as well as in other South American countries moregenerally. As part of the “war on drugs,” the United States pressured Latin American countries to increasingly prosecute and target drug crimes. Argentina also adopted stricterdrug laws but, like other countries in South America, Argentina’s enforcement of anti-drug-trafficking laws has not successfully addressed the higher levels of organized drug trafficking. Rather, enforcement disproportionately targets lower-level crimes, in which women are usually the main participants.

Women in prison in Argentina: Causes, conditions and consequences

The past two years have seen a much more active and intense hemispheric discussion of drug policies. There appears to be greater openness now to a dialogue on current policies and, in some sectors, a willingness to explore nontraditional approaches to the subject.

Reflecting their concerns over the impact of drug-related violence and the continuous flow of drugs in the region, hemispheric leaders, former Heads of State, academics, and representatives of civil society have supported the adoption of policies geared to downplaying the role of the criminal justice system in drug control. Reports by high-level groups, such as the Global Commission on Drug Policy, emphasize the need to reduce the harms done to the health, security, and well-being of individuals and society, and favor an approach in which drug use is treated as a public health issue and consumption reduced through evidence-based prevention campaigns. Among other recommendations, they also encourage experimenting with legal regulation models for certain drugs.

At the same time, other voices suggest it is premature to assume that current approaches to the subject have failed. While acknowledging shortcomings in the implementation of current approaches, they maintain that, at the domestic level, countries are only now beginning to execute policies that are consistent with the “Hemispheric Drug Strategy” and its “Plan of Action 2011-2015,” adopted in 2011 by the member states of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) of the Organization of American States. This Strategy calls for an integrated and balanced approach to the formulation of drug policies: one that emphasizes supply and demand reduction, paying particular heed to control measures and international cooperation in line with United Nations Conventions on the subject.

There are points of consensus between the two approaches: both recognize that dependence on drugs is a chronic (or recurrent) illness that requires a public health response (treatment) and both agree on the need to promote evidence-based drug control policies and to incorporate gender issues and civil society participation in policy formulation. Both approaches focus on the human dimension of the problem by refraining from characterizing drug users merely as objects of the criminal justice system, and by promoting alternatives to imprisonment for drugdependent individuals who have committed crimes.

Conscious of all these facts on the ground and the challenges they pose, the Heads of State and Government of the Americas decided to forge ahead in the quest for more effective ways to unravel and handle this complex problem. To that end, an explicit mandate was assigned to the Organization of American States.

The purpose of this Report on the Drug Problem in the Americas is to help the Heads of State and Government of the Americas to establish a frame of reference to address this problem in their countries and to guide future multilateral policies and actions.

OAS Analytical Report - The drug problem in the Americas

The Summit of Heads of State and Governments in Cartagena gave the Organisation of American States a mandate to produce two documents: an analytical reports to look at current trends, best practices, and policy challenges; and a set of scenarios about what might happen in the future and the results that could be expected in each scenario. The objective of the reports is to assist the Americas' leaders to find a better way to address the challenges posed by illicit drugs.

These scenarios are stories about what 'could' happen in the future in and around the hemispheric drug system, based on current trends, and including relevant political, economic, social, cultural and international dynamics.

The scenarios were drafted by a team of outstanding individuals from security, business, health, education, indigenous cultures, international organisations, the justice system, civil society, and politics, including former and current government officials from across the Americas.

OAS Report - Scenarios for the drug problem in the Americas 2013-2025

This comprehensive report contains 75 broad and incremental recommendations for federal legislative reforms related to civil rights, deficit reduction, law enforcement, foreign policy, sentencing and reentry, effective drug treatment, public health, and drug prevention education.

An exit strategy for the failed war on drugs: A federal legislative guide

Through qualitative interviews with HCV treatment providers and people who inject drugs (PWID) this research explores the experience of HCV treatment access and delivery from patient, provider and ‘system’ perspectives in order to develop guidance regarding HCV treatment system improvement, including referral and coordination, and the provision of psycho-social interventions targeting patients and providers.

The study concludes with some recommendations on areas where changes to practice or policy could improve HCV treatment uptake and success rates among PWID.

Read here the full publication [restricted access].

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