This progress report is published at the mid-term point of our current 

 and highlights the impact we have made so far against our strategic priorities. In a politically turbulent global climate and amid the ongoing challenges of pandemic recovery, the IDPC network has remained steadfastly focused on drug policy reform efforts and on building solidarity both within and beyond the movement. Opening and holding space for civil society participation in drug policy making, and building our collective capacity, knowledge and imagination to leverage it, is at the heart of what our network is about.

This year we are particularly proud of launching the 

. It is the first ever composite index that scores and ranks countries on their drug policies based on alignment with health, human rights and development principles. For too long the success of drug policies has not been measured against these principles, but instead has tended to prioritise indicators such as the numbers of people arrested or imprisoned for drug offences, the amount of drugs seized, or the number of hectares of drug crops destroyed. These skewed indicators underpin and justify ongoing repressive drug policy approaches and makes it harder to hold governments accountable for the damage their policies inflict on the lives of so many people. Civil society plays a crucial role in holding governments accountable and we hope that this first iteration of the Index will further empower us all in that important exercise.

And as we reflect on a positive and exciting year for drug policy reform, I am truly honoured to share this year’s foreword with the incoming Chair of our Board of Directors, Vicki Hanson and Ganna Dovbakh, who represents the Eastern European region on our Members Advisory Council.

Vicki has long championed IDPC in the Caribbean and always ensures that the voices of traditional farmers are heard in drug policy debates. While Ganna has been at the forefront of supporting civil society and community harm reduction efforts in Eurasia, which in recent months has faced unprecedented challenges following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Both Vicki’s and Ganna’s leadership, tenacity and longstanding involvement with IDPC enriches our collective work immeasurably and embodies the many strong partnerships which have been forged over the years. There is still much work to do towards achieving our vision of drug policies that truly advance social justice and human rights – and this report shows that together we are having real impact.

I hope you will enjoy reading this latest progress report from IDPC!

IDPC progress report 2021-2022

Drug laws and their enforcement are too often focused on people who use drugs, rather than those who are engaged in other harmful criminal activity in the context of commercial drug trafficking. Punitive drug laws and their enforcement practices do not lead to the reduction of drug supply or demand, but do result in the increase of prison populations, massive violations of human rights, and growing epidemics of HIV, viral hepatitis, drug-resistant tuberculosis and, in some settings, overdose from increasingly toxic illegal drug supplies.

There is considerable variance in how countries in four regions – Eastern, Central and Southern Europe, as well as Central Asia and Transcaucasia – are affected by “the world drug problem” and their responses to this public health challenge. However, what they face in common is a high prevalence of injection drug use and serious epidemics of HIV and hepatitis C affecting people who inject drugs.

With the notable exceptions of Russia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, all countries in these four regions have embraced harm reduction in principle and, to varying degrees, in practice. Harm reduction efforts have yielded impressive results even in some countries in which people who inject drugs have been most heavily affected by HIV, such as Ukraine.

However, these achievements would likely have been greater if not for the negative impact of criminalization of drugs and people who use them.

Drug laws and policies in four regions of Eurasia

The war on drugs is an instrument of racism, which incites violence and hinders democratic development in Brazil. Watch our new short documentary to find out how a black civil society organization in Brazil, Iniciativa Negra, takes up the fight against this war on people.

The Black Initiative for a New Drug Policy (INNPD, 

Iniciativa Negra Por Uma Nova Política sobre Drogas

) is a black civil society organisation in Brazil which addresses the importance of drug policies on the lives of black people. The majority of the population of Brazil is black (around 53%), but coming from a racist historical process of enslavement, they were never allowed the same level of political-economic and social equality as the white population. The War on Drugs became the tool used to keep it that way. As 

, co-founder of Iniciativa Negra puts it:

Today, the War on Drugs feeds the racist system that maintains the privileges of the white population, of whiteness, over the black population in Brazil, therefore keeping power concentrated in the hands of this whiteness, preventing the mobility of the black population to access and share these spaces of power.

THE BLACK INITIATIVE: Fighting Brazil’s racist drug war

 Malaysia announced on June 10 that it will abolish the mandatory death sentence for drug offences and murder among others, and leave the sentencing to the judge. 

The response has been immediate. Although a moratorium has been in place for executions since 2018, for the most part, the news has been hailed locally and internationally as a much-needed progressive move to address the disparity in sentencing, especially for drug offences.

It also signifies a major step back from the policies brought about by the United States-inspired War on Drugs. This comes on top of months of chatter on legalising marijuana for medical purposes, another move that shows Malaysia is adopting a more nuanced take on drugs. More importantly, human rights activists hope that the abolishment of the mandatory death sentence will address some of the damage ensuing from the country's harsh zero-tolerance drug trafficking policies from the 1980s.

Samantha Chong, a lawyer who deals with drug cases, told Bernama via Zoom that the death penalty was a "band-aid" in dealing with the drug problem in the country.

"If you just have the death penalty — the punish, punish, punish (mentality) for people who use drugs — it actually doesn't solve the problem. It might look like the government has done something, but that is not (true): she said.

Address damage from Malaysia's harsh zero-tolerance drug policies: Advocates

: Oct 27, 10am - 12pm ET / 27 de oct 9am-11am Bogotá

Isabel Pereira, Deputy Director, Dejusticia; @Dejusticia_en @Dejusticia 

Santiago Tobón, Visiting Professor, University of Chicago; Professor, Economics, EAFIT; @SantiagoTobon @EAFIT 

María Alejandra Vélez, Director, Center for the Study of Security and Drugs, Universidad de los Andes; @MajaVelez @CesedUniandes 

Ana Arjona, Associate Professor, Northwestern University; @anamarjona @PoliSciatNU @redesdal 

Ken Frankel, President, Canadian Council for the Americas; @knfrankel @CCACANADA

Colombia drug policy reform: a suggested roadmap

Researchers say ‘substantial evidence’ should encourage governments, in Australia and further afield, to facilitate more medically supervised sites.

A group of researchers and clinicians are pushing for more safe injecting sites to be set up, citing evidence from a long-running facility in Sydney.

The authors of an opinion piece published this week in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) say the supervised injecting site in Kings Cross founded 21 years ago is proof of the approach’s efficacy.

The writers, led by the University of Sydney’s Associate Professor Carolyn Day, who was previously a director of Addiction Medicine Education at the Sydney Medical School, highlight the scale of the work carried out at the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC).

From the time it started until the end of April this year, MSIC had recorded a total of 1,232,951 injections at the facility without any fatalities, the researchers state.

They also write that almost 11,000 overdoses have been managed successfully, while 20,420 referrals to health and social services have been made.

The authors say that the MSIC enables a clear reduction in harm for those attending, with adverse events occurring in fewer than 1% of all injections.

‘Put simply, when a safer place to inject drugs is provided, the associated short-term harms are greatly reduced,’ the opinion piece reads.

‘The longer-term harms are also reduced with increased access to services, including drug treatment, hepatitis C care, and smoking cessation.’

Australia: Push for expansion of safe injecting facilities

By Tom McEnchroe / Radio Prague International


Czechia’s National Anti-Drug Coordinator Jindřich Vobořil is preparing a law on the sale and purchasing of marijuana. The legislation should be prepared by the end of this year, he told the Czech News Agency, adding that he hopes it will be passed by January 2024.

The new measures should establish the level of narcotic substances that legal marijuana products can contain. Marijuana growers would need a licence and the law would clearly specify who they could deliver their product to. Some shop owners could also receive a license, Mr Vobořil said. The amount of marijuana that people could purchase would be limited and buyers could be required to register with the state, he said.

Prague is currently hosting a meeting of EU anti-drug coordinators who are discussing how to regulate the union’s cannabis market.

Czechia could soon legalise sale and growing of marijuana

This report presents, briefly, the cost of drug prohibition for seven institutions of the criminal justice system (Military Police, Civil Police, Public Ministry, Public Defender's Office, Court of Justice, Penitentiary System, Socio-Educational System) during one year, 2017, in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The figures presented were updated to November 2020.

The report "A Shot in the Foot" is the first research report published by the project "Drugs: How much does it cost to prohibit", implemented by the CESeC.

Backfiring: The impacts of drug prohibition on the criminal justice system budgets in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

On the 27th of July 2022, the Supreme Court of Ghana gave a narrow judgement on a case brought before it, challenging the constitutionality of section 43 of the Narcotics Control Commission Act, which would have enabled the provision of licenses for medical cannabis cultivation.

This decision comes as a surprise as the Narcotics Control Commission Act had legalised the cultivation of cannabis for medical purposes just in 2020, repealing the previous Narcotics Drugs Act of 1990.

The plaintiff, Ezuame Mannan, made the case that the procedure that led to the adoption of the amendment for Section 43 that enabled the cultivation of medical cannabis had been wrongly adopted. Section 43 of the Narcotics Control Commission Act of 2020 (Act 1019) states that a Minister “may grant a licence for the cultivation of cannabis which has not more than 0.3% THC content on a dry weight basis for industrial purposes for obtaining fibre or seed or for medicinal purposes”.

However, a closer inspection to the Supreme Court’s decision revealed that something more nuanced had happened. Maria-Goretti Loglo, Africa Consultant for the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) provided more details on the case, explained to TalkingDrugs that the Supreme Court’s decision was grounded on the unconstitutional way that the medical cannabis amendment had been proposed.

Ghana's legal cannabis hits a constitutional roadblock

For generations, people in South Africa's Eastern Cape have made their living growing cannabis. You might expect that as the country moves to legalise the crop, they would be first in line to benefit, but that is not necessarily the case.

The drive from Umthatha to the Dikidikini village in South Africa's Eastern Cape province is a picturesque journey filled with endless vistas, scattered homesteads and winding roads which scythe through undulating green hills that could easily be mistaken for corn fields - yet they are anything but.

"That's cannabis," my local guide and cannabis activist Greek Zueni tells me. "Everyone here grows it, that's how they make a living."

Cannabis, colloquially referred to as "umthunzi wez'nkukhu," or, chicken shade, is an intrinsic part of many rural communities in Eastern Cape's Pondoland and a vital source of income.

At a homestead near the riverbank, we meet a group of men, women and children tending to a fresh harvest. Their hands are stained green from plucking the cannabis heads all day.

The pungent smell of cannabis hangs heavy in the air. They crack jokes while they work - harvesting is a group effort. A massive heap of green heads lies besides them, drying in the midday sun.

For community member Nontobeko, which is not her real name, farming cannabis is all she has ever known: "I learnt how to grow it as an eight-year-old girl," she says proudly.

"Cannabis is very important to us because it's our livelihood and source of income. Everything we get, we get it through selling cannabis. There are no jobs, our children are just sitting here with us."

Pondoland: South Africa's cannabis growers left behind by legalisation plans

The Centre for Research and Information on Substance Abuse (CRISA) hereby announces its 14th Biennial International Conference on Drugs, Alcohol and Society in Africa. The conference will hold in Abuja on 26 and 27 October 2022. In the context of a growing demand for the modernization of the international drug control system, the major theme of the 2022 conference is “Towards the Reform of Drug Law and Policy in Africa: Research, Practice and Advocacy Considerations”.

We invite you to submit abstracts of policy relevant research papers on this theme for presentation at the conference. We will also consider requests to organize panel discussions, debates and workshops on the topic of drug and alcohol policy in one country, region or across the continent. We welcome original contributions from a range of disciplines, including health and social sciences, law, the humanities, and media studies (especially social media).

Papers not directly related to the major theme but address any current issue on psychoactive substance use in Africa will be accepted for presentation at the conference. You will find below a list of suggested sub-themes and topics for your consideration.

Towards the Reform of Drug Law and Policy in Africa: Research, Practice and Advocacy Considerations

Availability of services for people who use drugs; access to treatment; drug markets in Africa; decriminalization of drug use; regulation of drugs; medicinal cannabis; harm reduction; availability of medications for the management of pain; control of prescription opioids; alcohol and tobacco policies; measuring policy effectiveness; assessment of national plans of action, and national practice guidelines; stigma; alternative development; role of the media and civil society; gender perspectives; drugs and the legal system; the current state of drug policy research, vulnerable populations; etc.

Venue: The conference will take place in Abuja at a venue to be determined later.

Please take note of the following important dates:

Abstract submission deadline: 17 June 2022

Full Paper submission deadline: 2 September 2022

Early Bird registration: 9 September 2022

Begin with the paper title followed by author(s), affiliation(s).

The first and last names of authors should be written in full.

Provide full contact information for the lead author.

The main body of the abstract should be in one paragraph with no subheadings for the sections.

Submit as a Word document to crisainfo1@gmail.com or info@crisaafrica.org.

More information on pre-conference workshops, registration, travel, accommodation, etc. will be available on the CRISA website (www.crisaafrica.org) in due course. You can also contact us directly for such information.

Registered participants will be served lunch and tea/coffee for two days and will also receive conference materials, complimentary copies of the 

African Journal of Drug and Alcohol Studies

, other publications, and certificates of participation.

Early registration (by 9 September): N35,000

For further information about the conference please contact:

Ms Gloria Akpabio, CRISA, 10 Okon Essien Close, Uyo, Nigeria

Email: crisainfo1@gmail.com or info@crisaafrica.org

Professor Isidore S. Obot, Executive Director, CRISA

Email: obotis@gmail.com or iobot@crisaafrica.org

Information about registration, travel and accommodation will also be available on the CRISA website — www.crisaafrica.org.

14th Biennial International Conference on Drugs, Alcohol and Society in Africa

The Zimbabwe Civil Liberties and Drug Network (ZCLDN) is calling for the alignment of laws following the move by the government when on April 27, 2018, Zimbabwe became the second African country to legalise growing cannabis for medicinal and scientific purposes.

As such, the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) recently invited licensed cannabis and hemp producers, manufacturers, importers, exporters, and retail pharmacists to apply for approval to sell the products.

Zimbabwe’s laws for possession of cannabis for personal use are very strict while cannabis use remains highly stigmatised.

“As such, we call upon the government of Zimbabwe to reform the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, Chapter 9:23 (57) and the Dangerous Drugs Act Chapter 15 to enable the full implementation of the Zimbabwe National Drug Master Plan in offering harm reduction services for people who use and inject drugs.

“In the same spirit, ZCLDN calls upon the government to speed up the establishment of public rehabilitation centres, one per Province for the treatment of people who use drugs. The current private rehabilitation centres are beyond the reach of the majority,” said Mr. Wilson Box, the ZCLDN Projects Executive Director.

Drug law reform