IDPC

Publications

Results 3445 to 3456 of 3817
20 April 2010

Effect of Drug Law Enforcement on Drug-Related Violence: Evidence from a Scientific Review

Based on the available English language scientific evidence, the results of this systematic review suggest that an increase in drug law enforcement interventions to disrupt drug markets is unlikely to reduce violence attributable to drug gangs. Instead, from an evidence-based public policy perspective and based on several decades of available data, the existing evidence strongly suggests that drug law enforcement contributes to gun violence and high homicide rates and that increasingly sophisticated methods of disrupting Canadian gangs involved in drug distribution could unintentionally increase violence. In this context, and since drug prohibition has not achieved its stated goal of reducing drug supply, alternative models for drug control may need to be considered if drug-related violence is to be meaningfully reduced.
20 April 2010

Remembering people who use drugs on World TB Day

Worldwide, over 1 million people die from TB each year. It is one of the biggest killers of people living with HIV. People who inject drugs and people in prisons are disproportionately affected by this curable disease, and remain less likely than the general population to have access to TB diagnosis and treatment.
17 April 2010

The UK Drug Interventions Programme

The Drug Interventions Programme is a key part of the government's strategy for tackling drugs and reducing crime. And it's working: acquisitive crime - to which drug-related crime makes a substantial contribution - has fallen by almost a third since the programme started and record numbers of people are being helped with their drug misuse.
29 March 2010

Burnet Institute Report - Harm reduction in Asia: Progress towards universal access to harm reduction services among people who inject drugs

In 2009 the UN Regional Task Force (RTF) commissioned an update of the Baseline Assessment of Policies, Resources and Services for Injecting Drug Users which was originally published in 2006 and covered 15 countries in South and South East Asia. The update survey, conducted by the Burnet Institute, consists of a desk review of available data and information about national programme support, including legal and policy context, barriers to scale up and programme implementation, and availability of services.
25 March 2010

TTAG Policy Brief - 'Illuminating a hidden Epidemic: The Public Health Crisis of HIV/HCV Co-infection Among Injecting Drug Users in Thailand'

The Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group (TTAG) developed a policy brief, "Illuminating a Hidden Epidemic: The Public Health Crisis of HIV/HCV Co-infection Among Injecting Drug Users (IDU) in Thailand," which will also be adapted to the regional level in collaboration with Indian, Chinese and Indonesian activists. TTAG's brief, published in Thai and English, will be available on TTAG's website in April.
24 March 2010

Drugs control is leading to human rights abuses, says LSE study

The paper, 'Narcophobia: drugs prohibition and the generation of human rights abuses', appears in the March edition of Trends In Organized Crime. It examines the history of the drug trade - from the 18th Century when opium was traded as a valuable commodity by, among others, the British, Dutch and Portugese governments - to the modern day in which the United Nations has adopted international treaties against drug trafficking.
24 March 2010

IDPC Policy Briefing - Arms trafficking from the United States to Mexico: Divergent responsibilities

Arms trafficking from the USA to Mexico is a central issue in bilateral relations, closely linked to drug trafficking and, in particular, the lethal violence unleashed by Mexican drug trafficking organisations. Drug traffickers are obtaining increasingly sophisticated weapons at reasonably low prices thanks to easy access to guns in the US market. As with drug trafficking, gun smuggling implies a relationship of co-responsibility between supplier and consuming countries.
24 March 2010

Europe and drug policies: Italian propaganda ends up in a fiasco

This article published in Il Manifesto criticizes Italy's position on the concept of harm reduction. Whereas the concept is now well accepted at the European level, Italy has taken the position to adopt the term, but to impose its own definition of it via a list of 'acceptable' and 'non-acceptable' interventions. This was followed by intense propaganda in Italy, wrongly stating that the European Union had accepted the Italian views on harm reduction.
23 March 2010

University of the Andes - 'Illicit Drugs in Colombia'

This book aims to contribute to the public debate about illicit drugs in Colombia by bringing together contributions from different fields to the study of drug policy in Colombia. The first part of the book is devoted to describing the dimension of cocaine production and trafficking and the extent and prevalence of drug consumption in Colombia. The second section addresses the effectiveness and costs of anti-drug policies, focusing mainly on eradication campaigns, the interdiction of drug shipments and alternative development programmes. The third section is devoted to the study of the interaction between international relations and drug policy in Colombia. The fourth section of the book will study the legal aspects behind the so-called 'war on drugs'. The last section of the book has different contributions on the topic of institutions and drugs in Colombia, including impunity, electoral participation, corruption, etc.
23 March 2010

UNODC Report - Responding to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases among drug users

This report was prepared pursuant to Commission on Narcotic Drugs resolution 49/4, entitled "Responding to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases among drug users". It contains an overview of the technical assistance provided by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to Member States in developing comprehensive demand reduction strategies and measures, including HIV/AIDS prevention and care in the context of drug abuse. The report provides an overview of the global situation with regard to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases among drug users and a summary of relevant activities implemented by UNODC in 2008 and 2009. It includes recommendations and indicates gaps and remaining challenges for responding to HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases among drug users".
23 March 2010

Russia's declaration at the 2010 CND: 'There is no evidence that OST works'

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union’s (HCLU) video advocacy team attended a press conference organized by the Russian delegation in Vienna at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), where the representatives of the world's governments discussed the burning questions of international drug control policies. HCLU asked Mr. Viktor Ivanov, the head of the Federal Drug Control Service, the largest anti-drug agency in the world, to explain why his country does not tackle the demand side problems present in Russia with evidence based interventions, such as Opiate Substitution Treatment (OST). Mr. Ivanov declared that there is no evidence that methadone treatment works and in those former Soviet countries where OST was introduced it proved to be a failure. However, he also said that there is a possibility to experiment with methadone in the regional level.