There is a unique opportunity to begin to treat people who use drugs with dignity and respect, to provide people who use drugs with equal access to health and social services, to greatly reduce the harms of drug use and to take a step towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. […]

Many countries are exploring different policy and programme solutions. These include alternatives to arrest and incarceration for minor drug offences, harm reduction programmes, decriminalisation of drug users and small farmers and increased access to pain medication. […]

Plans by the Queensland government to increase penalties for cannabis possession and trafficking to match those for “harder” drugs has been described by drug policy experts as a “retrograde” and “uninformed” step. […]

The vision of a drug-free world has faded. We are instead presented with a nightmare scenario, where a multi-billion dollar black market funds organised crime and terrorist organisations. […]

The recent unofficial disclosure of positive illicit drug tests for some elite football players has thrown up some interesting responses on the use of illicit drugs in sport. However, it has also served to highlight the inherent discrimination and unfairness of our approach to drugs in general, particularly for those that don’t happen to be elite sportspeople — which, of…

The letter below was released today by the Drug Policy Alliance, which orchestrated the project to gather over 1,000 international signatories, including politicians, celebrities and leaders in many fields. Some of the most prominent signatories are listed underneath; the full list is here. […]

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…