News
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Rethinking Drug Prohibition on a Global Scale
The meeting did clearly illustrate one reality: Because the US itself is violating international drug conventions by allowing individual states to legalize marijuana, America has basically resigned as the world’s lead narcotics cops. And that means countries like Canada and Jamaica, which are legalizing or plan to legalize marijuana, will…
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Above All, Do No Harm: Searching for HIV Harm Reduction Strategies at the UN Special Session on Drugs
On the first day of the UNGASS, UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidebé gave a speech that highlighted the organization’s most recent report addressing the ways in which the world can reduce HIV infection due to drug use. Entitled “Do No Harm: Health, Human Rights and People Who Use Drugs,” the…
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There’s something missing from our drug laws: Science
At a minimum, responsibility for determining drug classifications and other health determinations should be completely removed from the DEA and transferred to a health or scientific body. Congress should overhaul the entire scheduling process to ensure that decisions on whether to criminalize a drug or not, and whether and how…
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A year after the Bali Nine executions, Indonesia prepares firing squads again
According to Amnesty International, there were at least 165 people on death row in Indonesia at the end of 2015, and more than 40% of those were sentenced for drug-related crimes. Indonesia has some of the harshest drug laws in the world, and Jokowi has stated that no drug prisoner…
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UN Fails to Solve ‘World Drug Problem’ at UNGASS
While the UN Special Session failed to make significant progress, global partners and activists outside of the event laid groundwork for positive change and offered real hope. […]
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The Deaths of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran One Year on
The bullets may have killed Andrew Chan and Maran Sukumaran, but it was Indonesia’s war on drugs that sent them to their deaths. At the time it happened, few outside the country could understand how Indonesia might shoot apparently reformed men. […]
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On a downer
At the 1998 UNGASS, delegates pledged to deliver “significant and measurable” reductions in demand for drugs by 2008. That meeting even used the slogan: “A drug-free world, we can do it”. The deadline has slipped, but the intention seems to remain the same. Who are they kidding? […]
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What Ever Happened to New Zealand’s Lauded Drug Regulation?
If we have learned nothing else from the drug wars, it is that a non-negotiable principle in any reform, must be that personal possession of any substance must never be an offence. But our ‘world leading’ kiwi drug ‘reform’ has succeeded in outlawing personal possession of all new psychoactive drugs…
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The Guardian view on cannabis and psychosis: how do we protect teenagers?
One of the effects of prohibition has been to drive up the THC content and thus the potency of what’s on sale, because this is maximises the ratio of profit to risk. Whether that is what consumers would choose if they could is another question. It’s not entirely fanciful to…
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Rethinking the Global War on Drugs
The United States will need to play a much stronger role in shaping new policies. It is in the untenable position of violating the existing treaties — now that four states have legalized the sale of recreational marijuana — while arguing that they remain a viable framework. Clearly, those accords…