The Philippines is well-known for exporting domestic workers across the world, but as low-income jobs disappear in the global recession, increasing numbers of desperate Filipinos are resorting to something much more dangerous – smuggling drugs as mules.
In the second episode of a two-part series, Josh Rushing and the Fault Lines team find out how campesino communities caught in the narco-economy are resisting repression and dispossession.
This first profile describes the national drug policy of Portugal, including national strategies and action plans, the legal context within which they operate and the public funds spent, or committed, to resource them. It also describes the political bodies and mechanisms set up to coordinate the response to the multi-faceted problem and the systems of evaluation that may help to improve future policy.
This paper provides an insight into Malaysian drug policies and the environment in which the national response to drugs has been developing in terms of harm reduction, prisons, drug treatment, law enforcement responses and civil society participation. An analysis of the situation concludes with recommendations for further drug policy development.
In a declaration, supported by various Latin American groups, IDPC calls for a new focus in drug policies that encompasses social development, education, universal healthcare, and human rights and fundamental freedom.
This poster by Harm Reduction International provides an overview of the growing body of literature which demonstrates the cost-effectiveness of harm reduction programmes such as needle and syringe exchange and opioid substitution therapy.
Tackling substance dependence through treatment instead of punishment is still one of the most critical issues in Lebanon. In 2008, Skoun, Lebanese Addiction Center, launched the project "For a Greater Respect for the Rights of Drug Addicts" to analyse why the 1998 law (which provides for decriminalisation of drug use and treatment for dependent users) is still scarcely applied, working with the police force and judicial system to sensitise them on the nature of drug dependence and effectiveness of treatment versus incarceration.
I 500.000 consumatori più assidui, più o meno 1/6 dei consumatori regolari, generano quasi la metà dei guadagni illeciti nel mercato della droga. Secondo stime correnti la repressione con i sequestri arriva ad eliminare appena il 10% della droga circolante. Una nuova politica dovrebbe puntare decisamente al reinserimento nella società e nel lavoro dei consumatori più assidui.
These briefings address serious human rights abuses that result from drug control efforts, including torture and ill treatment by police, mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, and denial of essential medicines and basic health services. The briefings are now available in English, Spanish, Russian and Chinese.
In the article below, The Lancet calls the Russian Government to create a drug dependence treatment infrastructure and reform its health policy, rather than resorting to imprisonment, to tackle increasingly high rates of HIV infection among drug users.
The WHO Policy Guidelines for Controlled Substances provide guidance on policies and legislation with regards to availability, accessibility, affordability and control of medicines made from substances regulated under the international drug control conventions, herein referred to as “controlled medicines”.
