The third briefing paper from IDPC is a response to the call of the European Commission for civil society organisations to express their views on the Commission's Green Paper on the Role of Civil Society in Drugs Policy in the European Union.
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.
This study investigated whether three measures of legal repressiveness in large US metropolitan areas were associated with the population prevalence of injection drug use and with HIV prevalence among IDUs.
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.
Providing alternatives to drug crops is believed to be crucial to achieve effective eradication. The U.S. approach to alternative development is to link it to eradication.
This report does not offer predictions, but it does raise issues and possibilities that policy makers and others might wish to consider. Some are more speculative than others. As this report looks out to 2025 and future possibilities, it inevitably challenges current thinking.
This document focus on mechanisms through which police activities, occurring in drug markets, intersect with the health and practices of illicit drug users, the delivery of health care, and dynamics within neighbouring communities. The authors conclude with a discussion of the benefits and costs associated drug market with policing and alternatives to this particular approach.
Finding that U.S. drug control policy has been only marginally successful in achieving national objectives, the Strategy Research Project will propose possible reasons for its ineffectiveness and recommend alternatives to improve policy.
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 proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Drugs and Infections Prevention in Prison, "Unlocking Potential: Making Prisons Safe for Everyone” organised by Cranstoun Drug Services on behalf of the European Network on Drugs and Infections Prevention in Prison, at Corinthia Grand Hotel, Budapest, Hungary, from 7th to 9th July 2005.
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.