The reasons that drugs like heroin, cocaine, marijuana and others are illegal today have far more to do with economics and cultural prejudice than with addiction. […]

n Mexico alone, more people have lost their lives due to cartels’ bloody battle over drug-trafficking routes to Western markets than in Afghanistan and Iraq combined in the last decade. […]

Those who would seek to dismiss reform as ‘going soft on drugs’, ask yourself: if it was your family member, wouldn’t you want a system that supports them to make positive change, instead of one that punishes them and leaves them worse off? Less punitive drug law doesn’t mean increased drug use. […]

“A Drug-Free World—We can do it!” That’s the slogan that was agreed upon and adopted as the United Nations’ mandate when this body last convened in a major summit in 1998 to discuss global drug policy. Today, there is little question that global drug control has been misguided, overly punitive and largely ineffective, and has steered national drug policies in…

Victoria has become the first state in Australia to legalise the use of medicinal cannabis.The legislation enables the manufacture, supply and access to medicinal cannabis products in the state. […]

If drugs alone are treated as “the problem”, then we are lost. No one disagrees that drugs can be addictive and can negatively impact health and well-being. But drugs on their own are not the right starting point. The better way to think about this is how we, as governments and societies, choose to deal with drugs. […]

“Harm reduction is here to stay. Canada’s drug regulation approach is going to grow around the world, as countries start to explore different options.” The government’s support of harm reduction and the legalization of cannabis was made clear last month at the latest Session of the Commission of Narcotic Drugs in Vienna. […]

Crucially, all policy recommendations have to be based on the most robust evidence; this was no place for dogma, unfounded theories or wishful thinking. What the report makes painstakingly clear is that to legalise responsibly, you need to regulate, then reevaluate to see where you’re going wrong and readjust. […]

The drug war is now the subject of a raucous debate within the U.S., they might sound strangely familiar. The reasons why U.S. citizens are rejecting the war on drugs are, it turns out, also the reasons why it is being rejected all over the world, from the Caribbean to Europe to South America. […]

The U.S. has buried its head in the sand for the last couple of decades and ignored health-based strategies to deal with addiction and drug use. Instead we have waged a war on our citizens, filled our prisons with people who have drug problems and watched as hundreds of thousands of people have died from preventable overdose and HIV. […]