Category Archives: international drug policy

My Harm Reduction Journey from the University to an NGO

By Temitope Salami

I arrived in Swansea University from Nigeria in October 2020, a week after my Masters programme in Applied Criminal Justice and Criminology had commenced. This was a difficult time considering the pandemic had morphed into phase two and there was talk in the media about a possible second nationwide lockdown amid a Welsh ‘firebreak’ to control the spread of coronavirus.

There was wide uncertainty about studying and teaching through a pandemic. For a moment, it appeared higher education institutions were ‘winging it’ as much as students were. Personally, being new to the United Kingdom, and having to adjust to a different culture and education system made it much more challenging.

Despite having a background in political science, being an ardent viewer of crime documentaries, and having served in a national security committee within the Nigerian Senate, I was new to the discipline of criminology. In fact, a huge part of the motivation to understand the nature of crime and how criminal justice systems operated stemmed from these experiences. At Swansea, I quickly developed an interest in one of the first semester modules – Advanced Topics in Drugs, Alcohol, and the Criminal Law (ASCM26) convened by Rick Lines, Associate Professor of Criminology and Human Rights. Why was I so taken by this course? Two things: Here I was being familiarised with the histories and politics of drug control and how ‘illicit drugs’ came to be so determined by global institutions, the role of state and non-state actors in the creation and evolution of the drug problem/war on drugs, the impact on vulnerable communities and global responses to this challenge. Secondly, my lay knowledge of criminal justice responses to the proliferation of drug use, which has taken many lives and resources and yielded very little positive outcomes. In addition, the knowledge-driven expert teaching provided by academics and guest practitioners on the course increased the appeal, further fuelling my interest in the negative unintended consequences of the global response to drugs which failed to safeguard the health and human rights of people who use drugs.

This cemented my desire to explore what the alternatives were to an approach that has consistently generated significantly poor outcomes whether that be over-incarceration, stigma and discrimination, over-representation of racial minorities in the criminal justice system, gender-based violence, high mortality rates etc. associated with the ‘war on drugs’ mentality.

After concluding my research on an essay focused on Harm Reduction in Prisons for Women Who Use Drugs over the Christmas break, I emailed my professor expressing my interest in volunteering with organisations within the drug policy reform space. Graciously, I was introduced to Harm Reduction International (HRI) where I got recruited at the end of January 2021 as an intern in the Human Rights and Justice team.

At HRI I supported the team with research on statements, recommendations, and other relevant statistics, documents made by UN and regional human rights mechanisms on the use of the death penalty for drug offences for the ‘Global Overview: Death Penalty for Drug Offences 2020’ report. I conducted research on standards developed by UN and regional human rights mechanisms on selected topics related to drug policy and harm reduction and supported the development of briefings on such human rights standards. Subsequently, I was engaged as a consultant to conduct a desk-based review and rapid scan of Global Fund’s Breaking Down Barriers initiative to identify and boost synergies on the implementation of the

seven key programmes and its intersections with human rights programming for people who use drugs. Examining whether programmes addressed legal, social, and structural barriers associated with punitive drug policy. Most recently, I supported HRI’s work on Resist Emergency Powers, mapping available resources on the impact of COVID-19 and of COVID-19 securitized responses on people who use drugs around the world, including other marginalized groups, such as people living with HIV, sex workers, and migrants.

My work with HRI was very rewarding in that it exposed me to current trends in harm reduction and drug policy reform through evidenced-based research, conferences, and publications on the success and benefits of health-centred, rights-based approaches to drugs. This experience helped me build valuable connections in the field which facilitated my Masters dissertation research – Proposing a Harm Reduction Framework to Youth Drug Use in Nigeria – for which I received a distinction. A summary of my research was later published as a blog for the Global Drug Policy Observatory.

I maintained the relationship with my new connections including HRI and a few months after my graduation, a position opened in the Public Health and Social Policy team which I applied for and got shortlisted for an interview. Fortunately, out of 79 applications I was the successful candidate and received an offer of employment as Project Coordinator and Researcher, ‘Global State of Harm Reduction 2022’ – a flagship publication of the charity and important resource for practitioners within the field.

I start my new post at HRI this week.

Key learnings:

A university education is much more than earning a degree. It is making the right connections and building productive relationships. Students should be cognizant of this and take full advantage of the ‘soft power and access’ they possess within the ivory tower.

University faculties and staff are available and willing to signpost/provide guidance. Students need to be highly motivated and committed to connect the dots and achieve success.

Harm reduction is the ‘Trojan Horse’ in the ‘War on Drugs’. Therefore, there is a need for passionate and talented young people to build on the labour of the past.

In your journey to finding a career path, prioritise knowledge and relationships over the urge to make money. Volunteering and internships are a great way to get there!

Discover an area of interest and find a mentor!

Thank you for your time and I hope this inspires you to action.

Aerial Fumigation in Colombia: A Success for Someone

Ross Eventon*

In 2011, when the multi-billion-dollar Plan Colombia had officially come to an end, the UNDP described the “rural development model” in Colombia as “highly inequitable and exclusionary.” The model “causes innumerable rural conflicts, does not recognize the differences between social actors, and leads to the inappropriate use and destruction of natural resources.”  Any attempt to improve the situation, the UNDP argued, must be based on changes to “structural factors”, among which were “the concentration of rural property, poverty and misery, and an unjust and exclusive social and political order.”  A year later a Free Trade Agreement with the United States came into effect, and the incomes of hundreds of thousands of farmers fell as subsidised foreign goods entered the local market. This coincided with an economic slowdown, and GDP growth fell steadily from 6.9% in 2011 to 1.4% in 2017, the year coca cultivation reached record levels. Over roughly the same period, global drug use is considered to have risen by 30%. Today around half of Colombians work in the informal sector. In the countryside, where one in three people are classified as poor, this figure may reach 85 %.  The economy revolves around extractive industries, mono-crop agriculture and financial services, a combination that concentrates wealth and cannot provide stable employment for a large segment of the population. In a country rich in natural resources the level of inequality is comparable to resource-starved Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere. Land concentration, the historic grievance of the insurgent movements, is today the most unequal in Latin America.

These are the structural factors to be kept in mind when we discuss the country’s many problems. To claim in this context that a rise or fall in the amount of coca being cultivated is a ‘success’ or a ‘failure’ is a false economy. For hundreds of thousands of people coca is an important cash crop, and a reduction in cultivation levels means a reduction in their income. It could also imply a technological improvement and better productivity. In an environment where demand is fixed, reductions in cultivation may ultimately lead to a rise in prices and an even greater incentive to cultivate.  It would be difficult to classify any of these outcomes as a ‘success’. A genuine success would be led, first and foremost, by the movement of large numbers of people into the formal sector, either through job creation or subsidised agriculture. The reduction in cultivation would then be a consequence of this structural change.

For American and Colombian policy makers, who are both committed to the economic status quo, the question is how to reduce cultivation without changing the structural factors. This is a difficult problem and no one has yet found an answer.  In December, President Ivan Duque announced the government would in 2021 resume aerial fumigation of coca crops with glyphosate. This policy, of which Colombia was one of the world’s few practitioners, ended in 2015 when the WHO stated the popular weed killer could be carcinogenic in humans.

Source: https://colombiapeace.org/coca-cultivation-and-eradication/

The damaging environmental and health effects of aerial fumigation are well documented. In the past it has led to protests and violent repression. It also doesn’t work: through the 1990s cultivation rose along with fumigation; in the early 2000s cultivation levels decreased slightly as fumigation continued, although exports of cocaine increased; and between 2007 and 2012, while aerial fumigation decreased sharply, the hectares under cultivation was reduced by half.  If we search for alternatives, Bolivia provides an example of what could be achieved with investment, decriminalisation and a recognition of the farmers’ plight.

Yet all of this is considered irrelevant. The decision to use aerial fumigation must, therefore, be based on other considerations. Cost is clearly not one of them: it has reached such a point that analysts in Colombia claim it would now be cheaper to purchase the entire coca crop than to undertake a year of counter-narcotics operations. The human suffering and the environmental damage are also not considered relevant, neither is the woeful efficacy of the policy, which is today rejected everywhere else in the world for good reason. 

Image by Wilbue from Pixabay

Colombian President Ivan Duque, announcing the return of fumigation, said less coca was cultivated in 2014 than in 2000, and for this reason aerial spraying was necessary. It is unlikely Duque himself could be convinced by this. (It could just as easily be argued that, because cultivation and fumigation both increased in the 1990s, fumigation caused coca cultivation).  Duque described aerial fumigation as part of a “tool kit” of policies. Among them was Alternative Development, which tries to help farmers to switch to cultivating legal crops. Such initiatives generally meet the same fate in Colombia: they are under-funded and branded failures. Every journalist who makes the journey to coca growing regions reports hearing from farmers the same tired lament: the government promises much and delivers very little. Meanwhile, aerial fumigation, which is expensive and requires the participation of the military, does receive the necessary funds. This gives some sense of whether reducing cultivation in a sustainable way is a genuine aim of government policy.

If fumigation fails by the standard measures, what does it do well?  At the very least, it creates the impression, primarily in the United States, that a major strategic ally is ‘doing something’ to try and reduce coca cultivation. For a long time it also ensured cooperation between the US and Colombian military and granted the US, via private contractors, a covert entry-point into the civil war. Today, we do not know whether the United States is, behind the scenes, predicating further aid on the re-adoption of spraying.

Aerial fumigation has also proven an effective means of displacing people. When coca was being grown in areas controlled by the guerrilla, destroying the plant was a thinly concealed attempt to undermine their finances and, in counter-insurgency jargon, to ‘drain the sea’. After its experience in Colombia, Washington had similarly proposed aerial fumigation be used in Afghanistan, as part of a counter-narcotics initiative very openly aimed at the finances of the insurgency, but the policy was rejected by the Afghan government. 

How sincere is the Colombian government’s concern with coca cultivation?  The past record suggests counter-narcotics policies have been a tool used to achieve other objectives, rather than to decrease the needs or incentives that lead people to break the law. The same can be said of Washington, which pushes the onus onto supplier countries, when the real issue is the demand coming from the US for an illicit product. As Colombia turns again to fumigation, we can expect a tirade of analyses that criticise this ineffective and costly policy.  But for the Colombian and American governments, their past experience with fumigation has convinced them it should be used again. The harmful, criminal policy is, in their eyes, achieving something close to success.


*GDPO Research Associate

Trump v Biden. Their stances on Drug Policy: ‘How it started. How it’s going.’

Branwen Lloyd*

The 2020 United States presidential election—with early voting underway and Election Day on November 3—is already like no other in history. In a pivotal year the presidential campaign has been repeatedly shaken by seismic events: a devastating pandemic, George Floyd’s killing by police officers, and subsequent protests, President Donald Trump contracting COVID-19, and Trump himself claiming that the vote will be fraudulent.

Image by Larry White from Pixabay

With the election likely being decided on the merits of each candidate’s “character” an analysis of their positions on drug policy is a fascinating measure. With so many other high-profile issues competing for attention – COVID-19, the economy, Supreme Court nominations – drug policy will not be a deciding factor in the 2020 election. Indeed, it seldom is in any Presidential contest.  However, the influence of the winner on Health Care and Criminal Justice systems will directly affect the nation’s drugs policy and an analysis of the candidates’ evolving positions on the issues reveals some important differences between the candidates.

‘How it started. How it’s going’ is a trend currently sweeping Twitter and sees Twitter users sharing experiences about their lives, careers and relationships. If we look at the stances of Trump and Biden on drug policy in the same context we see fascinating diametrically opposite movements. Joe Biden – often considered to have been one of the main “architects” of the 1980 and 1990 “War on Drugs,” now has a far more liberal attitude towards U.S. drug problems while Donald Trump’s track-record during office offers little hope for radical changes in the status quo.

Background

Before COVID-19, the U.S. was already battling an overdose crisis of unprecedented proportions, caused by prescription analgesics and illicitly manufactured fentanyls, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine (alone or in combination). The Centres for Disease Control reports that from 1999 to 2018, over 750,000 people died from a drug overdose with the number increasing each year. Then in 2018 Trump claimed credit for the first drop in 25 years, a decrease of 5% in 2017-2018. Deaths totalled 68,557 – the dip mainly due to a reduction in deaths from prescription opioid painkillers. But it didn’t mark a true turning point in the trajectory of this crisis; the next year 70,000 people died of drug overdoses and 72,000 in 2019, a record high. Provisional data indicate that drug overdose deaths will increase again in 2020, a situation further complicated by the pandemic.

Other issues that had previously dominated the domestic drug policy landscape, such as cannabis legalization, have been eclipsed by recent developments and more pressing issues. Once a ‘third-rail issue’, views have changed in Washington, mainly due to the wider acceptance of cannabis use across the population. More Americans now support the legalization of marijuana, whether for recreational or medicinal purposes, than oppose it. A 2019 Gallup poll indicated that Democrats and Independents overwhelmingly supported legalization and even the majority of Republican voters were for it – albeit by much close margins. The MORE Act (Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act) was expected to have been passed by the House in late September 2020. It would have removed federal penalties for marijuana related crimes by deleting cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and erase some criminal records. However, the motion was delayed until after the election (so that the House could concentrate on coronavirus relief legislation).

So where do the developments in the United States sit within the global drug policy debate? The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) has also decided to delay until December 2020 a vote on the potential global rescheduling of cannabis for medical purposes, recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). James Walsh, leader of the US delegation to the CND expressed regret at the U.N. delay, but he also noted that the US delegation’s concern is on what it considers more pressing drug control issues such as “continue to combat the global opioid crisis and synthetic drug threat”.

Trump’s record on drugs

Back in 1990 at a luncheon held by the Miami Herald, Trump called the United States’ drug enforcement policy a ‘joke’ and was quoted as saying “We’re losing badly the war on drugs. You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars.” He advocated using tax revenues from legalized drug trade to educate the public on the dangers of drugs. However as a candidate for the White House in 2016 he did a 180-degree flip, saying cannabis regulation was “bad” and that decisions should be left to each state to decide its marijuana policy. One of his first appointments as President was to bring in Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, one of many in Trump’s administration who have openly opposed pro-marijuana legislation. In a leaked recording from 2018, Trump was heard to say marijuana makes people “lose IQ points” and at an opioid summit that same year at the White House, Trump advocated the death penalty for drug dealers, equating the provision of lethal drugs with murder. He was quoted as saying “Some countries have a very, very tough penalty — the ultimate penalty — and by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do”.  

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The Trump administration’s lack of focus and failure to act decisively in response to the nation’s drug crisis have frustrated progress over the last 4 years. In 2019 government auditors reported that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), tasked with leading efforts to tackle illegal drug use, has not delivered on a central mission, which was to produce an annual strategy to guide federal agencies and to allocate billions of federal dollars. The ONDCP failed to produce reports in 2017 or 2018 and the first report produced in 2019 lacked the necessary depth and analysis required to be effective – it was only 23 pages long.  In February 2020 just prior to the widening COVID-19 pandemic the office published its 2020 Drug Control Strategy. Despite claiming that “The President’s top priority remains, as he articulated in his first strategy, to address, head on, the current opioid crisis and reduce the number of Americans dying from these dangerous drugs”, the document lacked useful information and planning and failed to provide detailed metrics and objectives, as it was legally required to do.

The ONDCP claims achievements in expanding availability of the overdose reversal medication, naloxone; increasing anti-opioid misuse education campaigns for young people; and securing historic funding levels for anti-trafficking efforts and addiction recovery. However data from ambulance teams, hospitals and police shows the number of suspected overdoses has jumped nationally during the pandemic (18 percent in March, 29 percent in April and 42 percent in May), and ONDCP has be woefully slow in responding.

In June 2020 the ONDCP launched the Rural Community Tool Box which is aimed at helping patients access treatment remotely. The Trump administration has designated $425 million in emergency funding for mental health and substance use treatment, but critics say it is not nearly enough to keep afloat treatment programs, recovery centres and needle-exchange programmes. Social isolation, economic hardship and new suppliers and substances have compounded the threats to drug users during the pandemic. So far, the Trump administration has made little real progress in addressing these pressing issues and shows little sign of doing so in the future. The Trump 2020 website doesn’t include any campaign promises. There is some mention of the opioid crisis on the ‘Promises Kept’ section but no indication of the direction of any future drugs policy– or any policies for that matter.  We can only deduct from this that his position remains relatively unchanged.

During his first Presidential Campaign much of Trump’s drug policy proposals revolved around the building of “a wall” on the U.S.-Mexican border to stem the flow of drugs and drug dealers. Although he has partially delivered on this campaign promise the pandemic has shown that closing the border with its southern neighbour will not solve the U.S.’s drug problem. During the pandemic the drug flows have been interrupted along with legal commerce but America’s drug problem has not abated and dealers and users have found other, home-produced substances, often with deadly consequences.

In June 2020, following weeks of often violent protests following the death of George Floyd, Trump declared “I am your president of law and order,” emphasising this by tweeting “LAW AND ORDER” in block capitals. This latest mantra doesn’t speak directly to drug policy, since like many of Trumps outburst it doesn’t refer to any particular policy or strategy, but it may include a renewed emphasis on harsher drug related penalties. Evoking fear of “crime” in the electorate has been a feature of American political strategy for years, and was a key feature of Trump’s 2016 campaign, in which Trump vilified immigrants as violent criminals. However, recent polls have indicated “violent crime” is not a top issue for voters, ranking fifth in importance behind the economy, healthcare, supreme court appointments and the coronavirus.

On October 3rd in a proclamation on National Substance Abuse Prevention Month, 2020, the President assured the nation that “we renew our unyielding commitment to breaking the grip of alcohol and drug addiction.” He acknowledged “Addiction to alcohol, illicit drugs, and prescription medications fuels havoc, heartache, and hopelessness in the lives of far too many Americans, as well as their friends and family members.” This seemingly sympathetic concern came only days after the first, disordered, presidential debate in which he mocked Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden’s, history of drug addiction.

Biden’s record on drugs

Joe Biden’s record as a U.S. Senator since the 1970’s, including periods as Chair of Senate Committee on the Judiciary (1987-1995) and Chair of the International Narcotics Control Caucus (2007-2009)—as well as his service as 47th Vice President of the United States (2009-2017)—affords a substantial amount of evidence about his stance on drugs policy. However, as with Trump, it is not straightforward. Like Trump, Biden’s beliefs started a long way from where they appear to be now.

Image by: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America

During his early years in the Senate, Biden was instrumental in some of the most significant crime bills in recent U.S. history. The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 established mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses; the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, introduced much harsher sentences for possession of crack than for powder cocaine; and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, again stiffened prison sentences for drug possession, enhanced penalties for transporting drugs, and established the ONDCP. In 1989, Senator Biden went on national television to criticize President George H.W. Bush’s plan to escalate the War on Drugs, saying it didn’t go far enough; “Quite frankly, the president’s plan is not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough to meet the crisis at hand”. He called for harsher punishments for drug dealers and to “hold every drug user accountable”. In the address he also called for greater spending on drug awareness education, to “do more, and now”.

By the early 1990s, as violent drug related crime continued to rise, in a speech on the Senate floor, Biden wanted to “Lock the S.O.B.s up.” In 1994 Biden boasted, “The truth is every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress, every minor crime bill, has had the name of the Democratic senator from the State of Delaware: Joe Biden [on it]”. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the largest crime bill in U.S. history, was also known as the Biden Crime Law. The laws Biden helped shape in the 1980s and 1990s, and similar legislation in states across the nation, marked a trend towards stricter sentencing laws for drugs and violent offenses, resulting in mass incarceration that overwhelmed America’s black communities.

This is not lost on the Trump 2020 campaign. A video ad reminded (Black) voters “Joe Biden’s policies destroyed millions of black lives” and a tweet by @AmericaFirstPAC claimed “Biden was the chief architect of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs”.

Biden’s positioning has often reflected the politics of the time. Democrats and Republicans have battled to prove that they are the toughest on crime. However as the numbers using illicit drugs keep rising and the collateral consequences of disproportionately incarcerating poor people of colour is still devastating lives, Biden has done a volte-face on his ’80s and ’90s stance. The Obama administration, faced with a growing opioids crisis, worked to reshape how America approached the drug problem by pushing for public health response rather than the “tough on crime” approach taken by previous administrations dealing with drug epidemics; heroin (Nixon, 1960s) and crack cocaine (Reagan, Bush, Clinton, 1980s & 90s). Biden backtracked on tougher prison sentences for crack cocaine that he had shaped and he’s acknowledged his previous ‘mistakes’, saying in 2008 “I am part of the problem that I have been trying to solve since then,…because I think the [crack-powder] disparity is way out of line.” During his 2020 run for office he has admitted “I haven’t always been right,” and speaking to criminal justice issues he acknowledged that, “I know we haven’t always gotten things right, but I’ve always tried.” A point he reiterated in the final presidential debate on 22 Oct 2020, repeating that previous laws had been a “mistake” and stating, “No one should be going to jail because they have a drug problem.” Biden’s 2020 campaign website states if elected he will “Reform the criminal justice system so that no one is incarcerated for drug use alone” and “Decriminalize the use of cannabis and automatically expunge all prior cannabis use convictions”, although he does still appear to fall-short of backing full legalization.  

Biden’s choice of running-mate, Kamala Harris, has had a similar rethink on her position. The former Californian Attorney General who has a history of aggressive prosecution of marijuana cases is now a vocal supporter of reform. In 2018, she co-sponsored Sen. Cory Booker’s Marijuana Justice Act that would remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and expunge existing cannabis-related criminal records, and was the MORE Act’s lead Senate sponsor. In the Vice Presidential debate on October 8, 2020, Harris vowed that marijuana would be decriminalized at a federal level in the United States under a Biden administration, a move that saw the shares of U.S.-listed major cannabis producers surge the following day. Harris’ stance in fact goes even further and she now appears to support full legalization. In her book, The Truths We Tell (2019) she writes “We need to legalize marijuana and regulate it. And we need to expunge nonviolent marijuana-related offenses from the records of the millions of people who have been arrested and incarcerated so they can get on with their lives.”

Biden’s change of heart may also be down to his own personal experiences. In 1999, his daughter Ashley was arrested in New Orleans for possession of marijuana while attending Tulane University but was not prosecuted, while his son Hunter has had a well-documented drug problem. In that first, already infamous presidential debate, he was provoked by Trump on Hunter Biden’s troubled history he responded “My son, like a lot of people, like lot of people you know at home, had a drug problem. He’s fixed it, he’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son.” With so many American lives touched by the devastating consequences of illicit drug use this message of compassion and care, in the face of stigmatization and scorn, and Biden’s about-face turn may play well with American voters on November 3rd.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Conclusion

Already amidst an overdose crisis of historic magnitude Trump’s administration over the past 4 years has failed to make any significant steps to address the issue and shows little appetite to take the lead on cannabis policy reform. The COVID -19 crisis has only served to highlight failures in a fundamentally broken system, on top of which future U.S. drug policy will have to deal with the legacy effects of the pandemic. While both candidates have over the years shown significant reversals on drug issues, the Trump campaign does not signal and appetite for any specific, further change of direction if re-elected. While a future with Joe Biden as President may offer a more progressive approach to drug policy the repercussions of the events of 2020 may make substantial change more challenging and protracted.    


*GDPO Project Officer

Cultivating Change: The Contemporary Challenges of Studying Cannabis Regulation in Jamaica

Branwen Lloyd*


At the end of summer 2019 the GDPO was successful in an application to Swansea University’s Higher Education Funding Council for Wales – Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) scheme. The GCRF is a £1.5 billion fund announced by the UK Government in 2015 to support cutting-edge research that addresses the challenges faced by developing countries. The fund supports research surrounding three challenge areas; Equitable Access to Sustainable Development, Sustainable Economies and Societies and Human Rights, Good Governance and Social Justice. As it happened the project the GDPO proposed touched on addressing issues in all of theses categories.

This was the GDPO’s second successful GCRF award. Earlier in 2019 GCRF funding was secured to begin the project Cultivating Change:  UN treaties, cannabis regulation and options for sustainable development in the Caribbean, in collaboration with partners at the University of the West Indies, Mona (UWI) in Jamaica. The aim of this interdisciplinary project was to facilitate knowledge exchange and to identify in-region expertise pertaining to the complex and increasingly challenging issues of international drugs policy.  The project focused on exploring the potential of enabling the currently illicit cannabis cultivation within the Caribbean to enter the licit market.  This is an issue that is becoming an increasingly important part of sustainable development strategies within many traditional producer states in the Global South.  With a rapid expansion of legally regulated markets for recreational use of cannabis comes the potential for market engagement and associated benefits, relating to social justice and human rights within marginalized communities in the Caribbean. 

Jamaica is just one of many Caribbean islands exploring if the relaxation of certain drugs policies relating to marijuana can not only lead to social reform but to related economic development. The Jamaican ‘brand’ of cannabis culture and production is world-renowned.  Add this to the historic and religious use of ganja for sacramental purposes and one can see why it is such a burning issue.

In 2015, the Jamaican government amended the Dangerous Drugs Act, which effectively decriminalized the possession and use of ganja in small amounts, (up to 2 oz), possession of larger amounts remaining a criminal offense, and which also legalized medical marijuana. This allowed the use of marijuana for medical and religious purposes, but not for recreational use. It also introduced licenses for its cultivation and sale. Other Caribbean nations have looked towards Jamaica as an early mover and many have amended and introduced their own legislation keen not to miss out on potential profits, particularly in the field of medical marijuana production.   However, in the years since the act was passed forward progress has apparently stalled, and it is currently unclear how the legislation would develop to assist the significant numbers  of traditional (illicit) marijuana producers across the country. Many of these growers struggle to survive economically; a fact often underpinning engagement with the currently illicit market.   

The goal of the Cultivating Change project was to generate knowledge exchange and develop in-region expertise pertaining to complex and increasingly challenging legal and policy dilemmas around cannabis, both at the national, regional and international level.  The project focused on the potential transition of currently illicit cannabis cultivation within the Caribbean to the licit market and as such become an important part of sustainable development strategies in traditional so-called producer states within the Global South.  With a rapid expansion of legally regulated markets for both medical and recreational use come the potential for market engagement and associated benefits relating to social justice and human rights within currently marginalized communities within the Caribbean.  While shifts would do much to help states work towards a range of Sustainable Development Goals (particularly those relating to poverty, gender equality, decent work and economic growth and life on land) there are currently complex legal questions concerning not only the practicalities of market transition within Jamaica and other states within the region, but also of the feasibility of international trade in cannabis for recreational purpose.  The GDPO team were therefore keen to speak to legislators, growers and officials to examine the complex legal questions concerning the feasibility of international trade in cannabis and to consider how such a shift would do much to help states work towards a range of SDGs.

So, in June 2019, in the good old pre-COVID days (we thought the risk assessments were bad enough then!) GDPO Senior Research Associate Axel Klein and I boarded a fight to Jamaica to meet colleagues at the University of the West Indies, Mona and begin field work. The team visited traditional growers and discussed the impact the CLA regulations were having on licit and illicit cannabis production. They then met with Minister J.C. Hutchinson from the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries (MICAF) who explained the Cannabis Licensing Authority’s (CLA) new ‘Alternative Development Programme’. The programme is a pilot project aimed at transitioning current illicit cannabis farmers into the legally regulated medical cannabis industry. It hopes to increase the legitimate earning potential of small, marginalised communities that have been disproportionately impacted by drug policy and regulation and therefore still operated within the cannabis black market. The team visited the site of the Maroon community project in Accompong, St. Elizabeth and saw first-hand that the transition from illicit to licit production and trade of cannabis will be a complicated but no less worthy endeavour.  After meeting with CLA officials and numerous academics at Mona working in various fields of study relating to cannabis in the Caribbean we were confident we had had a good overview of the current state of play and were encouraged that there was much support for further collaboration.

When the second Swansea University GCRF grant award was approved in late 2019 the GPDO moved to assist in the set-up of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Cannabis Research (ICCR) at UWI, Mona. Its aim is to serve as a centre of research excellence for pertinent cannabis related study and discussion within the Caribbean.   This includes the fields of political science, law and agriculture, gender studies, as well as criminology and public policy. A second research trip to Jamaica in January 2020 led to the publication of the ICCR first paper ‘Ganja Licensing in Jamaica Learning lessons and setting standards’ by Axel Klein and Vicki J. Hanson. The paper, at the request of Minister J.C. Hutchinson, is an analysis of the roadblocks within the licensing process that prevent small farmers from getting access to a license and problems they have in trying to enter the medical marijuana industry. Things were going well for the ICCR. Staff were appointed to set up the website, arrange workshops and start connecting the academics across the UWI network… then COVID struck.

Universities shut; countries went into lock down. Workshops, meetings and launches were delayed and put on hold, but we adapted, and thanks to the power of Zoom and not a little hard work and creative thinking we were able to proceed with the project and in fact generated  more activities and outputs than first anticipated. Thanks to GCRF funding, research on cannabis policy, social and cultural impact now has a permanent home in the Caribbean that can react to developments first-hand.  This was exemplified by one of the first events hosted by the ICCR, a Covid-19 and Ganja: Medical and Economic Impact Webinar. Working on an international project at this time was not without its challenges.  Nonetheless, the lessons learnt, and connections made (albeit more virtual than face-to-face) will be far reaching and impactful. Further fieldwork in the Caribbean may be on hold for some time yet, however continuing to work together across international borders proved to be, after the first few weeks of uncertainty, a fairly smooth transition.

But the work doesn’t stop! Keep an eye out for some upcoming work by GDPO, TNI and ICCR on the Cannabis Trade in the Caribbean.


*GDPO Project Officer

Nowhere to hide: It’s high time we measured countries’ performance in drug policy

By Marie Nougier IDPC Head of Research and Communications & Dave Bewley-Taylor, GDPO Director

First published here by IPDC, October 2019 

Traditionally, the UN and governments have measured progress in drug policy in terms of flows and scale; principally the numbers of people arrested, hectares of drug crops eradicated and the amounts of drugs seized. For years now, IDPC and many civil society colleagues (in particular the Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO), CELS, the Centre on Drug Policy Evaluation, and the Social Science Research Council among others), have advocated against such an approach, because of its inability to truly assess the real impacts of drug control policy – especially for communities affected by the illicit drug trade on the one hand and by drug policies on the other.

The 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) was instrumental in pushing the boundaries of UN drug policy to consider issues related to health, human rights, social inclusion, criminal justice reform and how all of this might contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, while recent years have seen a welcome increase in focus on the adverse health consequences of drug use and interventions aiming to reduce them, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and many member states have thus far been resistant to incorporate these critical elements into their main data collection tool – the Annual Reports Questionnaire (ARQ). The ongoing review of this tool has so far been a missed opportunity to fully reconsider what success in global drug policy should look like.

In 2018, IDPC published our landmark Shadow Report ‘Taking stock: A decade of drug policy’, in which we assessed the progress made – or rather, the lack thereof – in global drug policy since the adoption of the 2009 Political Declaration and Plan of Action on drugs, to inform the Ministerial Segment of March 2019. Collaborative work by the IDPC network and other civil society experts was instrumental to obtaining a full picture of the global situation relating drug control approaches on demand and supply, but also on the impacts of drug policies on the broader UN priorities of promoting human rights, development, and advancing peace and security. What we found was extremely worrying. While the UN was in many ways side-stepping difficult questions, drug policies in many parts of the world had become responsible for increased HIV and hepatitis C infections among people who inject drugs, half a million drug use-related deaths in 2015 alone, and tens of thousands of people falling victim to extrajudicial killings, as well as arbitrary and compulsory detention. In the meantime, the prevalence of drug use, the hectares of crops cultivated for the illicit drug trade, and the tons of drugs trafficked had reached record highs. But far from being a wake-up call, UN drug policy debates in Vienna have mainly continued to rely on the business-as-usual approach.

Faced with the clear lack of appetite from both governments and the UN to evaluate the impacts of drug control on communities worldwide in any meaningful way, it seems likely that civil society will once again need to take a proactive stance. The critical role played by civil society in holding governments accountable by creating transparent and informative policy evaluation tools is not a new idea. This has been done before in various policy areas. For instance, Transparency International has, for some time now, been tracking progress made by countries across the world in reducing corruption, with the Global Corruption Perception Index. Journalists without Borders has done the same with their World Press Freedom Index. And the list continues. Indeed, it is now widely recognised that the ‘soft power’ of indices is capable of exerting considerable social pressure and can – via a number of interrelated process – be a potent lever for the generation of policy change.

With this in mind, IDPC and GDPO have now embarked on a similar endeavour, faced with the urgent need to develop a tool that would enable us to track drug policy developments worldwide in a systematic and scientific way, as well as to assess how effective these turned out to be on the ground. The results of this analysis would enable us to compare policies adopted between various countries, and track evolution over time, as well as rank countries according to how well their drug policies have been able to foster improved health, human rights protection, gender equality, social inclusion or violence reduction.

Learning from other composite indices, the proposed Global Drug Policy Index (GDPI) would be a collaborative civil society endeavour (as was the case for the Shadow Report), with the aim of increasing transparency in decision making processes around drugs, promoting new indicators to evaluate drug control, facilitating the participation of civil society in data collection, and ultimately supporting more humane policies and reforms.

We are still in the preliminary stages of development and fundraising for this ambitious tool, but we are excited by the advocacy opportunities that a carefully designed Global Drug Policy Index will bring to the global and national debates on drug policy for the years to come. Stay tuned for more information!

Yes, legalizing marijuana breaks treaties. We can deal with that.

By John Walsh, Tom Blickman, Martin Jelsma and Dave Bewley-Taylor

This Op-Ed was originally published in iPolitics on December 11th, 2017

Buzzing in the background of Canada’s debate on cannabis legalization is the issue of the three UN drug control treaties, and what to do with them.

The issue arose during the House of Commons’ consideration of Bill C-45, and may well come up again now that the bill is coming under Senate scrutiny. There is no doubt that legalizing and regulating cannabis markets for non-medical use will mean Canada is no longer in compliance with the obligation under the treaties to restrict cannabis to “medical and scientific” purposes. And Canada will need to address those treaties — in due time.

However, what ‘due time’ should mean has been the subject of some alarmist commentaries. It has been argued that Canada should have initiated the process of withdrawing from the treaties by this past July 1 to avoid a breach of international law when cannabis is legal for recreational use in July, 2018, as the government intends. Some have suggested that, by missing this supposed deadline, Canada has now limited its legal options and might even suffer international sanctions if its reforms continue as scheduled.

This raises two key questions. Did the supposed July 1 deadline really exist? And does Canada really now have fewer options with regard to managing the mismatch between cannabis regulation and UN drug treaties?

The 1961 UN Single Convention specifies that if formal notification of withdrawal from the treaty is submitted before July 1, it takes effect on January 1 of the next year; if notification is submitted after July 1, then withdrawal takes effect a full year later. But at this stage in Canada’s reform effort, the mechanics of the treaty withdrawal process do not dictate hard deadlines. The alarmism about treaty violations, deadlines and delays is misplaced.

Canada certainly has important decisions to make about how to ensure that its impending cannabis reforms will align with its international obligations. As we describe in our report Cannabis Regulation and the UN Drug Treaties: Strategies for Reform, a range of alternatives merit Canada’s careful consideration. Beyond simply withdrawing from the drug treaties, these options include the possibility of withdrawing from and then rejoining the treaties with reservations (a procedure that Bolivia used with regard to coca) or of modifying certain treaty provisions by means of a special agreement among a group of like-minded countries.

In reviewing its options, Ottawa would be wise to be protective of Canada’s positive reputation as a country that upholds international law. But there is no need to postpone the regulation of cannabis, and there is also no reason to rush to withdraw from the drug treaties — certainly not before the relevant legislation has even become law, and not even immediately afterwards.

The experience in Uruguay — the first country in the world to regulate cannabis — demonstrates why immediate withdrawal from the treaties is not necessary. Having justified its policy position via its human rights obligations, Uruguay has suffered no negative consequences beyond mentions in the annual reports of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the watchdog of the UN drug conventions — noting that the country’s law regulating cannabis is contrary to the provisions of the drug conventions and urging a resolution.

The United States — where eight states have legalized adult-use cannabis and where the federal government has adopted a policy of accommodation — has received a similar message from the INCB regarding Washington’s legally dubious interpretation of the drug treaties.

Canada has better and more legally-grounded options, and plenty of time to consider them carefully. A good starting point would be for Canada to publicly acknowledge that moving forward with regulation of adult-use of cannabis will result in a period of respectful non-compliance with certain treaty obligations — a route that, in the absence of a seamless transition, displays the appropriate regard for international law.

Canada could explain the reasoning behind its reforms and why the country’s new regulatory approach is justified by the need to realize other domestic and international legal and policy commitments, particularly with regard to public health, child protection and human rights.

Canada is not alone in reforming its cannabis policy, nor is it the first. In addition to Uruguay and the eight U.S. states, many local authorities in other countries, notably in Europe, are pushing national governments to follow suit. In the Netherlands this has resulted in the October 2017 decision of the new coalition government to allow for experiments with regulated supply of cannabis to coffee shops. This would extend toleration of cannabis sales in these premises to tolerated regulation of the supply.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has initiated a review of the classification of cannabis under the drug conventions. Canada’s cannabis regulation is part of a bigger trend and there is no reason to rush to unilaterally withdraw from the drug conventions. Acting unilaterally may not even be in Canada’s best interests; it could be wiser to act in concert with like-minded states.

The bottom line is that Canada ultimately will need to choose a path forward with regard to cannabis regulation and the drug treaties. But there is no need for hasty decisions and plenty of time for Canada to evaluate its options — and act when the time is ripe.

John Walsh is director for drug policy at WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America) in Washington, DC. Tom Blickman is a senior policy analyst and Martin Jelsma is director of the Drugs & Democracy program of the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute (TNI). Dave Bewley-Taylor is director of the Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO), Swansea University, U.K.

Read the Original Publication Here

View from the Ground – Harm reduction, drug policy and the law in the Maghreb: focus on Tunisia and Mauritania

View from the Ground – Harm reduction, drug policy and the law in the Maghreb: focus on Tunisia and Mauritania

Khalid Tinasti
Honorary Research Associate, Swansea University
July 2017

Introduction:

The Maghreb countries – Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia – while seldom discussed, are crucial to global debates on drug control policies. These countries are at the heart of drug trafficking routes for various substances, from Latin America to Europe, from the Middle East to Europe, and from West Africa to North America. The region is also home to the largest producers of cannabis, as well as amphetamine type stimulants (ATS). Illicit drugs are prohibited and drug laws are harsh if not efficient – Mauritania retains death penalty for drug-related offences.

The Maghreb (in green), copyright epidop.com

This blog will focus on two of these countries, Tunisia and Mauritania, who share common religious, ethnic groups, cultural and socio-economic realities, but face clearly different challenges related to illicit drugs.[i] The two countries nevertheless face a drug trafficking framework which is unparalleled. In fact, the Maghreb and its neighbouring Sahel region represent large desert areas, sparsely populated, with porous borders and the existence of terrorist and other separatist groups. These parameters, combined with failed states and inadequate drug control policies, make drug trafficking thrive. This blog attempts – through available data and literature – to analyse the drug situation currently in both countries, review their drug control laws, and evaluate the outcomes of their implementation. The piece also narrates the current efforts to reform the drug law by the Tunisian government.

The current situation:

There are an estimated 140,000 people who use drugs (PWUD) in Tunisia,[1] with around 10,000 people injecting drugs.[2] Other sources report up to 400.000 PWUD in the country.[3] In 2015, 21.44% of new HIV infections were among people who inject drugs.[4] Moreover, HIV prevalence among this same population has increased from 3% in 2011 to 4% in 2014, while it is of 0,1% in the general population.[5] This increase takes place in the absence of a national strategy of harm reduction. There are no opioid substitution programmes, and the distribution of syringes is mainly undertaken by non-governmental organizations. In 2013, the 48.000 syringes distributed in the country were by the ATIOST, the ATUPRET and the ATL-MST.[6] The prevalence of hepatitis C in the same population is 29%.[ii]

Drug control policies are steered through law 52 adopted in February 1992 – referred to as law 92-52. The law, which sentences prison terms even for simple use or consumption, has resulted in an unprecedented prison overcrowding, mainly targeting young males incarcerated on cannabis use charges. Out of the 25.000 inmates in the country prisons, 8.000 are incarcerated for drug offences, of which it is estimated that 9 out of 10 are there for simple possession or personal use,1 the law allowing for urine tests in prisons and in the community to prove the consumption. In 2015, 7.451 people were arrested and prosecuted for drug offences, of which about 70% were related to cannabis possession or consumption.[7] A year later, 8.984 people were arrested on the same charges, with 6.212 of them aged 18 to 30 years old.[8]

In Mauritania, data on the prevalence of drug use is unavailable. Similarly, the prevalence of HIV among the general population reaching 0,6%, the prevalence among people who inject or use drugs is unavailable. More worryingly, the National Committee to fight AIDS does not recognize PWID as a key population most at risk of acquiring HIV.[9], The non-inclusion of PWUD as a key population deters a discussion on evidence-based interventions to respond to AIDS, including prevention, harm reduction services and treatment.

Copyright West Africa Commission on Drugs, 2014

Rather, the debate on drugs focuses heavily on trafficking, with Mauritanian authorities, media and other stakeholders considering that the country is only a transit country. This vision of a country where illicit drugs transit – through the routes of Senegal, Mali, Algeria, Niger, Morocco or the Canary Islands – and where there is no local consumption is emphasized by the geographic position of Mauritania, its limited population (4 million inhabitants), and a large, desert and difficult to control territory. Whether such assertion is true or not – it remains difficult to define in the lack of data on illicit drug use – the country rightly faces challenges related to the smuggling and trafficking of drugs, intertwined with terrorist groups’ financing and their unlawful intrusion in the Mauritanian territory. Drug-related cases often make the headlines in Mauritanian media, due to the large seizures of illicit drugs by customs and law enforcement agents, including cases where relatives of former Presidents or former Presidents themselves are cited.[10][11] The nature of the implication of political authorities in drug trafficking remains anecdotal since it is not proven. Nevertheless, the characteristics of drug trafficking depends on many parameters that are specific to Mauritania and the Sahel region. As stated earlier, the country has a large desert territory that is difficult to control. Moreover, trafficking relies on ethnic groups, their inter-relationships and their control of their territories that transcend the Sahel borders.[12]

Drug seizure in northern Mauritania by the Gendarmerie (military law enforcement). Copyright Sahara Medias

Very limited data shows that there is a small cannabis production in the south of the country near the Senegal River, while cocaine is imported from Latin America and heroin from Asia through Nigeria or other West African countries.[13] Trafficking of illicit drugs includes alcohol, which is a banned substance in Mauritania. Moreover, Mauritania’s authorities address money laundering as the banking system is sensitive to drug profits laundering, mainly due to the important volume of foreign currency circulating from tradespeople and other economic emigrants working mainly in the Gulf countries.

The laws and policies for drug use and trafficking:

Tunisia, country of the Jasmine revolution and youth-driven democratization, has the harshest law in terms of repression of drug use and possession for personal use. Mauritania, on the other hand, is the only Maghreb country sentencing drug traffickers and growers/producers to death penalty.

The Tunisian law – to be explored in more detail below – punishes individuals who consume or possess a narcotic or psychotropic drug with imprisonment of one to five years and with a monetary fine between 400 and 1.200 USD (1.000 to 3.000 Tunisian Dinars). It also punishes the attempt to consume or possess drugs with the same sanction. Therefore, the Tunisian law punishes the possession for the purpose of consumption and for the actual consumption even if there is no possession involved. The court may as well force the convicted offender to undergo detoxification for a period set by a medical doctor at a public hospital. If the detoxification is refused, a permit can be issued by the president of the court forcing the offender to undergo this treatment in a compulsory manner.[14] The most problematic provision of the law, until its partial reform in April 2017 (see following section), was article 12 of the law, providing that judges cannot take into account mitigating factors, and have to pronounce a prison sentence for drug use offences. This was problematic as the law 52 was the only one in the Tunisian criminal code to deprive judges of their free choice and of sentencing proportionally to the offences. Under the terms of the law as well, traffickers and growers of narcotics are sentenced to prison terms from 6 to 10 years, while those importing or exporting drugs face a minimum of ten years of incarceration, up to a life sentence.

“Our kids and friends are not criminals #end law 52”[iii]

In Mauritania, the law responds to drug use and possession for personal use by a prison term of a maximum of two years and a monetary fine between 140 and 280 USD (50.000 to 100.000 Mauritanian Ouguiya). Prosecutors also have the obligation to inform health authorities about the arrest of people who use drugs. The health authorities investigate the health conditions and family conditions of the arrested individual, and prescribe mandatory detoxification. Producers and growers of illicit drugs face 15 to 30 years in prison, the same penalty as drug traffickers. This punishment, in case of recidivists, becomes a sentence to the capital punishment. Finally, laundering illicit drugs’ profits is punished by a prison term between 10 to 40 years.[15]

It is also important to note that both laws have been amended and adopted following the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances in 1988 and right before the adoption of the Arab Convention against Illicit Use of and Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances in 1994. The articles of both countries’ laws and the lack of proportionality vis-à-vis the real severity of the offences represent an example of the interpretation countries make of the international drug conventions, and the impact these conventions have on people’s lives when implemented on the ground, far from the debates of diplomats drafting and negotiating them in multilateral forums.

What reform for the Tunisian drug law?

In Tunisia, the excessive number of young people arrested under the provisions of law 92-52 started a heated debate on the need for its reform. This debate has been deepened through the use of the law provisions to arrest young Jasmine revolutionaries, and by their own capacity to stand for their rights in the post-Revolution era.[16] Movements such as the Sajin52 (prisoner 52) emerged and denounced the law. In his 2014 presidential campaign, the current head of state Béji Caïd Essebsi promised a reform of the law and denounced the use of prison terms for first-time drug use. In December 2015, his government approved a new narcotics bill to amend law 52, and introduce the following provisions: i) the establishment of a national drug observatory to collect data; ii) the establishment of treatment centres, including the introduction of substitution therapy; iii) the diversion of first and second-time offenders, arrested for use, to social services (third-time offenders will serve the same terms as the current law provides, between one and five years); and iv) the possibility of judges to decide on the most appropriate sentences.[17]

Infographic by the movement “Al habes lé” (no incarceration) calling to reform law 52

The latter, targeted at article 12 of law 92-52, has been amended in April 2017 when Parliament gave judges the right to apply Article 53 of the Criminal Code to reduce penalties, not only for consumption, detention and consumer intent (Article 4 of law 52) but also for attending consumption spaces (Article 8 of Law 52).[18]

The process leading to this partial amendment started with the submission to Parliament of bill 79 amending law 52. With the bill not finding a majority necessary for passage into law for more than 12 months, President Essebsi decided in January 2017 to use his executive powers to freeze all the arrests related to Law 92-52, and urged Parliament to find a consensus and vote for the reform. A month later, the President convened a meeting of the National Security Council, which decided to revise the criteria for granting special grace to people charged with drug use or possession, and to have the Grace Committee meet once a month to overturn the judges’ decisions on arrests. The National Security Council also repealed partially law 92-52, and specifically its article 12 leading to the reform of April 2017 by Parliament, giving judges the capacity to take into account mitigating factors.

In the current economic, social and security framework in Tunisia, where tensions among society are numerous – from the declining standards of living of the population, the decline of the industrial, tourism and service sectors, as well as the security and fight against terrorism – the calendar of the adoption of bill 79 in Parliament remains unclear.

Conclusion:

The debate on drug policies in the Maghreb, when it occurs, is usually focused on Morocco, the largest producer of cannabis in the world, and one of the main suppliers of the European Union due to its geographic proximity with Spain. With the deterioration of the security situation in the Sahel and the rise of terrorist risks, along with some evidence that terrorist groups are either involved in trafficking, protect traffickers or benefit from trafficking revenues,[19] combined with the disintegration of the state apparatus in the fifth Maghreb country, Libya, is also beginning to attract some interest.

Nevertheless, as discussed here, other states within the region are increasingly worthy of attention with debate around drug policy emerging for a complex range of internal, societal and social peace reasons.
Tunisia is currently being driven to reform its policies due to the population’s pressure, while this debate does not exist in Mauritania. However, while differences exist on this point,, the two countries seem to share a common lack of understanding of drug policies, providing similar legal responses to people who use drugs (PWUD), to small players in the illegal drug market (small dealers, farmers and other couriers), and to large-scale traffickers and terrorist groups suspected of trafficking illicit drugs to fund their terror actions. Such policies, intended to deter drugs’ presence in society, are failing to achieve their objectives and are extremely costly to society, to the criminal justice and health systems.

While it remains unclear when the Tunisian drug policy reform will take place, it provides the brightest prospect of reform in the Maghreb, as bill 79 will bring along the first policies based on evidence, and provide space for scientific monitoring to inform and fill gaps in the future. The adoption of this bill, its successful implementation and flexibility, as well as its tight monitoring is all highly important not only for the Tunisian society but the whole Maghreb.

[I] This is the second and last blog on drug policy in the Maghreb. The first blog was published in October 2016 and titled “View from the Ground – Harm reduction, drug policy and the law in the Maghreb: focus on Morocco and Algeria”.

[ii] In Mauritania, HIV key populations are female sex workers and their clients, women and youth, inmates, people living with STIs, truckers, sailors and fishermen.

[iii]Protest against law 52 in front of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People (Parliament) on 28 December 2015. Copyright Nawaat

[1] Amraoui, A. Drogues : une jeunesse victime de l’échec de la politique de prévention. Nawaat.org; September 2015. Available from: https://nawaat.org/portail/2015/09/05/tunisie-drogues-jeunesse-victime-echec-politique-prevention/ (accessed 10 July 2017) 

[2] Tunisie Numérique. 10 000 toxicomanes usagers de drogue intraveineuse en Tunisie. Turess; April 2012. Available from: http://www.turess.com/fr/numerique/119208 (accessed 10 July 2017) 

[3] Bentamansourt, N. Tunisie-Drogue : 3,9% des consommateurs contaminés par le VIH! African Manager; October 2016. Available from: https://africanmanager.com/mots-cles/association-tunisienne-de-la-prevention-contre-la-toxicomanie/ (accessed 10 July 2017)

[4] Africaine Santé. VIH/SIDA en Tunisie: Où en est-on? December 2015. Available from: http://africaine-sante.com.tn/a-la-une/vihsida-en-tunisie-ou-en-est-on/ (accessed 10 July 2017)

[5] UNAIDS. Key Populations Atlas: Tunisia- People who inject drugs: HIV Prevalence 2014. UNAIDS; 2014. Available from: http://www.aidsinfoonline.org/kpatlas/#/home (accessed 10 July 2017)

[6] National HIV/AIDS Programme of Tunisia. Rapport d’activités sur la riposte au sida 2012-2013. UNAIDS; 2014. 

[7] Human Rights Watch. « Tout ça pour un joint » La loi répressive sur la drogue en Tunisie et comment la réformer. Tunis; December 2015. Available from: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/tunisia0216fr_sumandrecs_.pdf (accessed 11 July 2017)

[8] African Manager. Tunisie-stupéfiants : Le bilan de 2016 en chiffres. March 2017. Available from: https://africanmanager.com/tunisie-stupefiants-le-bilan-de-2016-en-chiffres/ (accessed 10 July 2017)

[9] Comité national de lutte contre le Sida. Rapport d’activité sur la réponse au sida en Mauritanie 2014. Nouakchott; March 2014. Available from: http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/country/documents/MRT_narrative_report_2014.pdf (accessed 10 July 2017)

[10] Berghezan, G. Panorama du trafic de cocaïne en Afrique de l’Ouest. Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security: Brussels; June 2012.

[11] Attar, A. Mauritanie : fin de parcours pour Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz ?. Afrik.com; February 2013. Available from: http://www.afrik.com/mauritanie-fin-de-parcours-pour-mohamed-ould-abdel-aziz (accessed 10 July 2017)

[12] Simon, J. « Le Sahel comme espace de transit des stupéfiants. Acteurs et conséquences politiques ». Hérodote, 142 (3); 2011: pp. 125-142.

[13] Dialogues, propositions, histoires. « La situation des drogues en Mauritanie ». DPH: Paris; citing the Observatoire géopolitique des drogues; November 1994. Available from: http://base.d-p-h.info/fr/fiches/premierdph/fiche-premierdph-2016.html (accessed 11 July 2017)

[14] Official Journal of the Tunisian Republic No. 33 of 1992. Law No. 92-52 of 18 May 1992 on Narcotic drugs. Tunis; 1992.

[15] République Islamique de Mauritanie. Loi No. 93-37 relative à la répression de la production, du trafic et de l’usage illicite des stupéfiants et substances Psychotropes. Nouakchott ; July 1993.

[16] Tinasti, K. Are cannabis laws used for political repression in the Arab Spring countries?.  Addiction, 110 (12); 2015: p. 2037.

[17] Tunisian government. Projet de loi N 79 de l’année 2015 relatif aux stupéfiants. Tunis; 2015.

[18] Huffpost Tunisie. Tunisie-La loi 52 a été amendée: “Une étape considérable franchie” se félicite l’avocat Ghazi Mrabet. Huffpostmaghreb.com; April 2017. Available from: http://www.huffpostmaghreb.com/2017/04/25/tunisie-loi-52-stupefiant_n_16231606.html (accessed 12 July 2017) 

[19] UNODC. World Drug Report 2017, booklet 5. Vienna; June 2017

British System, American Century: A short case study

British System, American Century: A short case study

Chris Hallam

This blog shows the intimate ties between the international and domestic domains of drug control. This is a well-known phenomenon; however, it involves considerable complexity. The lengths to which governments will go to reduce potential tension at the international level are apparent. This is especially so when states – as in the following case – are wary of the US position. At the same time, powerful domestic forces can counteract the influence of international powers, even when the United States is concerned, as in the aftermath of the Second World War.
The blog selects the example of Britain during that period in which the negotiations leading to the Single Convention were taking place. The then-famous ‘British System’ of drug treatment was a key aspect of Britain’s drug policy relationships; stemming from Sir Humphrey Rolleston’s inquiry into addiction that reported in 1926, the ‘British System’ permitted any doctor to supplyheroin, morphine, cocaine and other drugs to those who were dependent upon them. Unlike the present mode of ‘Heroin Assisted Treatment (HAT), the British System imposed few requirements on patients, who could take their prescription to a pharmacy, collect their drugs and consume them more or less at will. This depended on the regulatory context, the liberal views and the largesse of the doctor, but these were generally forthcoming.
Both the international and the domestic domains played a part in the changes that overtook the British regulatory framework in the 1950s and 60s, leading to the demise of the ‘British system’ of prescribing and its replacement with a much more restrictive ‘clinic’ system in 1968. The international dimension was always important, but in the period preceding the agreement of the 1961 Single Convention, it was especially significant as countries sought to shape the draft treaty to suit their national interests, or (less rationalistically) to forge the global order of intoxication according to their mythological image.

Sir Humphrey Rolleston

Following the war and the continuing rise of the United States as an international military, political and economic superpower, there was friction between it and Britain over aspects of the latter’s drug policies. The 1955 American attempt to impose a global prohibition on heroin was eventually faced down by the British government after internal pressure from the medical profession in support of the drug’s retention in medical therapeutics, including in the treatment of drug dependence. The medical profession was a powerful force in British politics and culture, sufficient to bring the government to resist US pressure.
Britain’s representative at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), the policy-making body for the new UN international drug control system, was J.H. ‘Johnnie’ Walker. Bing Spear, the Home Office civil servant who had written extensively on UK drug policy, identified Walker as providing the initiative that led to the first Brain Committee, which, commencing its meetings in 1958, reviewed the British drug control system for the first time since Rolleston did so in the 1920s. Government documentation from the mid- to late-1950s supports this claim. The context for Walker’s views was largely international, with the British System undergoing criticism from a number of countries, particularly the United States, through the mechanism of the new United Nations drug control regime.
In 1955, Walker sent a lengthy and thoughtful memorandum to the Home Office suggesting that it was time to look again at the British drug control system. Despite the system’s smooth domestic running, said Walker: ‘It so happens that a number of problems have arisen, or are on the horizon, which indicate that this is a suitable moment to review the present system of control.’ These problems or potential problems included the proliferation of new synthetic drugs such as pethidine and methadone; the UK policy on addiction (by which was meant in particular the Rolleston-inspired regulations permitting the long term of maintenance of opiate habits and the belief in the ‘stabilised addict’); addict doctors; and improper prescribing and supplies to addicts (the issues surrounding ‘script doctors’). The memorandum paid the greatest attention to the second and the fourth of these categories, replicating the situation that obtained when the Rolleston Committee reported and showing that the issue of doctors prescribing dangerous drugs to addicts had remained at the heart of governmental anxieties. Walker claimed that the Rolleston Committee never intended the ‘lavish supply of dangerous drugs to addicts merely for the maintenance of addiction’. He then made reference to a ‘small but potentially dangerous group of drug addicts (mainly heroin addicts) in London at the present time’. This group was ‘disturbing’, as it represented ‘the first real sign of a significant increase in heroin addiction for very many years’. The group’s members had become addicted young and were mostly under thirty – often nearer twenty; many shared an involvement in one particular field of entertainment and therefore met socially at regular intervals – a reference to the jazz club scene. The social context of this drug use made it ripe for proselytism, contended Walker, ‘always one of the more dangerous features of drug addiction’.
He continued that many ‘appear to obtain supplies from a small number of doctors who make no attempt whatever at cure or even, so far as can be judged, at reduction of the dose. In other words, their addiction is deliberately fed, almost certainly in some instances for purposes of gain.’ Walker concluded that: ‘The “script doctor” who thus makes drugs freely available to addicts represents a special problem…’
Walker’s memorandum showed that the Home Office was by this time fully aware of the flourishing new London addict subculture, a full ten years before these facts were published in the Second Brain Report. As noted by Spear, the peculiar thing is that the first Brain Committee did not address it in their deliberations nor their report. At the Home Office, it was Tom Green (who succeeded Walker at the Drugs Branch) who led the drafting of the advice and information sent to the Ministry of Health, from which emerged the shape of the review. For ‘some inexplicable reason’, while drawing heavily on Walker, Green did not include evidence of the emergence of London’s expanding heroin subculture.
One possible reason for this startling omission lay in the international relations around the topic of drug control. Walker points out that US medical opinion was firmly against maintenance and the notion of the stable addict. The ‘strongly held’ view in the American medical profession was that it is ethically unacceptable to condemn a patient, especially a young patient, to perpetual addiction by offering this form of treatment. It was also remarked that the CND and World Health Organisation were highly critical of ambulatory treatment of the kind practiced in the UK. Indeed at its 10th session, the CND ‘expressed the view that ambulatory treatment (including the so-called “clinic” method) was not advisable and asked the World Health Organization to prepare a study on the appropriate methods of treatment.’ Furthermore, a clause had recently been inserted into the draft Single Convention which spoke of treatment being given on ‘a planned and compulsory basis, in properly conducted and duly authorised institutions’. However, by virtue of a qualifying clause that was initiated by the UK, such measures would be applicable only in those countries having a large addict population; it was this proviso that permitted the UK government to sign the 1961 treaty despite its differences with respect to drug treatment. Notwithstanding this, Walker expressed concern that the general trend at the CND was toward compulsion, and that there may in due course be concerted pressure for the removal of the UK clause. He added that, ‘it is unlikely that the United Kingdom could ever accept an obligation to require compulsory treatment of drug addicts in a closed institution’. In fact, Walker made it clear that such a measure could prevent the UK from signing the treaty, and would have been in conflict with the overall trend of mental health policies in Britain at this time, as expressed in Lord Percy’s 1957 Report of the Royal Commission on the Law relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency. This optimistic document led the trend away from confinement, toward voluntary and community based mental health treatment, and fed into the 1959 Mental Health Act. In relation to addiction, Walker commented in closing that: ‘There is a limit to what the State should attempt, and the deprivation of personal liberty for medical reasons is far too serious a matter to contemplate unless there is overwhelming evidence of the need for it because of some widespread and particularly virulent social problem. This need does not exist in the United Kingdom’.
This last sentence is the key one. In order to fight its corner at the CND, the UK government needed powerful evidence that the domestic drug problem continued to be so small as to be negligible, a point which some other countries disputed. Consequently, ‘there would be much to be said from the point of view of strengthening our case in international circles for obtaining an authoritative opinion from a body of experts on the necessity for, and the feasibility of, providing special treatment for drug addicts in this country.’77 In other words, a Committee set up to review Britain’s arrangements could prove very useful in providing the government with ammunition which to fight its international drug policy corner, so long as this evidence indicated that the problem was tiny and relatively insignificant.
Although, as Spear claims, Walker’s superiors at the Home Office were initially unreceptive to his argument, the Brain Committee may well have been influenced by it at the meetings which produced the first report. Green led the way in producing the documentation for the Committee; mention of the expansion of the opiate subculture was entirely absent, and the growth in heroin addiction strongly downplayed. Accordingly, its Report was structured on precisely the lines that would support the government in its negotiations at the CND. It stated baldly: ‘After careful examination of all the data put before us we are of the opinion that in Great Britain the incidence of addiction to dangerous drugs… is still very small.’
This argument remains for the present a speculative one; nonetheless, the omission of the West End heroin subculture from the Home Office memorandum of evidence to the first Brain Committee, and the Report’s conclusion, which supports the UK’s requirements at CND in the run up to the 1961 Single Convention, are highly suggestive. Beyond this specific question, however, it is clear that the construction of international drug policy is a matter of both international and domestic (and transnational) domains, and that it is impossible to understand countries’ conduct in international fora without taking into account international politics and culture. And vice versa.

Dr John Petro

[1] Departmental Committee on Morphine and Heroin Addiction: Report (London: HMSO, 1926). (Rolleston Report)

[2] 59 D. R. Bewley Taylor, The United States and International Drug Control, 1909-1997 (London and New York: Continuum, 1999) p.141.

[3] Spear, H. B. & (ed) Mott, J. Heroin Addiction, Care and Control: The British System. London: Drugscope, 2002. Pp.65-89.

[4] Spear, H.B., Heroin Addiction, Care and Control p.90

[5] The National Archives HO 319/1 and MH 58/565.

[6] McAllister, W. B. Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: An international history. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp.185- 211.

[7] TNA HO 319/1 ‘Dangerous Drugs Administration and Policy in the United Kingdom’ 25 October 1955.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Spear, H.B., Heroin Addiction, Care and Control, p.92.

[14] Ibid.

[15] The Tenth Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, 1955. http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1955-01-01_2_page005.html Accessed 3rd September 2016

[16] TNA HO 319/1, ‘Dangerous Drugs Administration and Policy in the United Kingdom’ 25 October 1955. In this passage, Walker was quoting from a 1954 CND draft of the Single Convention.

[17] Ibid.

[18] E. Percy Baron of Newcastle Report of the Royal Commission on the Law relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency (London: HMSO, 1957).

[19] TNA HO 319/1, ‘Dangerous Drugs Administration and Policy in the United Kingdom’ 25 October 1955.

[] Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Drug Addiction 1961 London: HMSO. Paragraph 24.

Trust in the Crypto-Drug Markets

By Juan Fernandez Ochoa
Team Assistant – IDPC

Despite perceived novelty, drugs have been online from the Internet’s very beginnings.  Anecdotal as it may be, it is widely understood that the very first transaction on ARPANET involved a small amount of cannabis. Ever since, cyberspace has provided fertile ground for all sorts of drug-related exchanges.

The appeal of the Internet for people who use drugs is evident. Faced with criminalisation, misinformation and stigma “offline”, the world-wide web can offer people who use drugs a space to interact in [relative] anonymity and safety. Online forums, such as Erowid, have provided a platform for people to share experiences and advice related to their drug use; fostering a sense of community that remains difficult to replicate “in real life”.

Silk Road, however, was a game changer. Launched in February 2011, the site was the first “archetypical” crypto-drug marketi. This “eBay for drugs” combined sophisticated encryption, communications and trust technologies to offer a broad range of [mostly illicit] products and services to users around the world. Cannabis, LSD, MDMA and other controlled substances were now just a click away… plus shipping & handling.

As it is often the case with drug-related developments in a context of prohibition, the initial response from public authorities ranged from cluelessness, to politically expedient outrage, to repression. Less than three years into the Silk Road experiment, and before the site’s impact on the market could be fully understood, the FBI shut it down. Its convicted mastermind, Ross Ulbricht, now serves a life sentence without parole in a federal prison in New York.

Mirroring the reality of “physical” markets, dismantling the Silk Road, and subsequent similar operations, have achieved anything but the intended effects. The original site might no longer exist, but dozens more have been created in its stead, with overall sales and reach continuing to grow at a gradual but unwavering pace.

Despite the available evidence, the role of public authorities in this evolving ecosystem continues to go unchecked. The UNGASS Outcome Document urges Member States to “strengthen law enforcement, criminal justice and legal responses, as well as international cooperation, to prevent and counter drug-related criminal activities using the Internet” (Art. 5 p). As if expecting different results from doing the same thing over and over again.

In stark contrast with a mainstream law enforcement discourse that perceives these online markets essentially as “a safe haven for criminals”, the burgeoning field of research on crypto-drug markets reveals a more nuanced landscape. An interdisciplinary research project on trust in these markets by the Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO)ii, for instance, can shed light on the short-sightedness of fundamentally repressive law enforcement interventions targeting crypto-drug markets.

Borrowing tools from linguistics, ethnography and computer science, the investigators have sifted through thousands of megabytes of messages from the now-defunct Silk Road[s] 1 and 2iii. The careful analysis of “collocates”iv has made it possible to produce a statistically meaningful snapshot of some of the prevailing discourses in these communications.

One strand of the project, led by Professor Nuria Lorenzo-Dus, revealed that trust among users was largely mediated by the exchange of personal experiences and other forms of knowledge, as well as the provision of advice on how to reduce potential harmful effects of drug use. User-based harm reduction strategies have been previously identified in crypto-drug markets and offline communitiesv. However, by focusing on the issue of trust, the authors centre and highlight the social bonds underpinning this “indigenous harm reduction”. Public authorities should consider the opportuneness of law enforcement responses that might entail weakening these community strategiesvi, favouring interventions that support the life and health of people who use drugs insteadvii.

A second project strand, headed by Martin Horton-Eddison, provides further evidence on the unintended, although not unexpected, consequences of “hard” law enforcement interventions. Using the same methodology and sources, the study suggests the takedown of Silk Road by the FBI acted as a starting gun for technological innovation in crypto-drug markets – resulting in even more difficulties for law enforcement to target the dark net. Specifically, this research captures the emergence of collective concerns about the “escrow” system.

Escrow has been an essential trait of crypto-drug markets, mitigating some of the multiple risks associated to online transactions. A number of these risks are related to the non-abidance by one of the parties to the terms of the sale/purchase. In the absence of formal institutions to act as arbiters, crypto-drug markets stepped in to fill the gap, offering a service that holds the funds until the other parties (in this case the buyer and seller) both agree to release them. When Silk Road 1 was seized, the FBI expropriated $3.6million from the system. Immediately after Silk Road 2 came to exist, users began to discuss ways to offset these potential losses. Intensified by major “exit scams”, these anxieties in the community seem to have led to the development of better alternatives, such as decentralised and multi-signature escrow systems. Law enforcement action, in short, made crypto-drug markets more resilient and possibly sustainable.

The insights from these studies strongly mirror certain realities of offline drug markets. The global drug control regime has a conspicuous track record of futile interventions that are not motivated, and in fact come at the expense of the wellbeing of people who use drugs. Crypto-drug markets, which are often framed as a threat in international policy debates, might actually offer an opportunity to provide remedial action. Public authorities should rethink their engagement with these spaces, capitalising on the self-regulatory and harm reduction practices deployed by these communities to positively influence, support and empower people who use drugs on- and offline.

This blog post draws on material presented at the Roundtable on Cyber-Trust in Crypto-Drug Markets: Implications for Policy and Policing (London, 21 February 2017), organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO), with support from the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) and the Challenging Human Environments and Research Impact for a Sustainable and Healthy Digital Economy (CHERISH-DE) fund.

Notes

i Crypto-drug markets can be defined as “digital platforms that facilitate P2P trade of goods and services with the added features of recommendations systems and a reliance on cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. They utilize anonymizing Internet-routing technologies [….] to conceal the physical-[world] identity and location of users and create and open network for such interactions”.

ii Swansea University.

iii February 2011 – October 2013 and Nov. 2013 – November 2014, respectively.

iv Words that co-occur with statistical significance, denoting “features of the data that are both salient and peculiar”. Di Cristofaro, M. & Horton-Eddison, M. (2017) Corpus Linguistics on the Silk Road(s): The Escrow Example, GDPO Situation Analysis.

v See, for instance: Bancroft, A., & Reid, P. S. (2016). Concepts of illicit drug quality among darknet market users: Purity, embodied experience, craft and chemical knowledge. International Journal of Drug Policy, 35, 42–49; and Friedman, S. R., de Jong, W., Rossi, D., Touzé, G., Rockwell, R., Des Jarlais, D. C., & Elovich, R. (2007). Harm reduction theory: Users’ culture, micro-social indigenous harm reduction, and the self-organization and outside organizing of users’ groups. International Journal of Drug Policy, 18(2), 107–117.

vi For more on law enforcement and harm reduction, see, for instance: Monaghan, G., Bewley-Taylor, D., 2013. Modernising Drug Law Enforcement – Report 1 Police Support for Harm Reduction Policies and Practices Towards People Who Inject Drugs. International Drug Policy Consortium, London

vii See, for instance: Caudevilla, F. The Emergence of Deep Web Marketplaces: A Health Perspective. The Internet and Drugs Market (European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction). Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg; 2016.

Preparing for 2019: Drug Policy Objectives and Indicators, System-wide Coherence and the Sustainable Development Agenda

Preparing for 2019: Drug Policy Objectives and Indicators, System-wide Coherence and the Sustainable Development Agenda

Side event held at the 60th Commission on Narcotic Drugs offers insights into how drug policy indicators could aid in achieving the sustainable development agenda.

Nazlee Maghsoudi, Knowledge Translation Manager at the ICSDP

Click here to visit the CND Blog’s live reporting from this side event.

With the UNGASS on the World Drug Problem now a year behind us, member states are looking towards the next international drug policy milestone, a High Level Ministerial Meeting in 2019. Simultaneously, member states are over a year into efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of global targets to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity by 2030. Given increasing recognition that the impacts of global drug policy are intrinsically linked to a number of SDGs, the Government of Switzerland, Health Poverty Action (HPA), International Drug Policy Consortium, Centro De Estudios Legales Y Sociales (CELS), Social Science Research Council, Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO), and the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) came together at the 60th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) to explore how drug policy indicators could aid member states in more effectively achieving the sustainable development agenda.

Natasha Horsfield, Policy & Advocacy Officer from HPA, outlined crucial ways in which drugs and drug policy interact with several of the SDGs, and suggested that metrics for measuring how drug policies are contributing to the SDGs should be prioritized in preparations for 2019. Speaking about goal 1 on poverty, goal 2 on food security, and goal 5 on gender equality, Ms. Horsfield explained that marginalization and inequality are important elements in the drug trade, with poverty and food insecurity a frequent factor in involvement in illicit drug markets, and women particularly becoming involved as drug couriers because of their gendered social and economic vulnerabilities. Gender inequality is reflected in the disproportionate and alarming increase in the incarceration of women for minor drugs offences. Given these and other intersections between drug policy and the SDGs, the clear, measurable, and internationally agreed framework of targets and indicators contained within the sustainable development agenda could be adapted to measure drug policy outcomes. For example, new indicators could be adopted at national level under goal 5 to measure women and girls involved in the drug trade or incarcerated for drug crimes. Ms. Horsfield also stressed that the High Level Ministerial Meeting in 2019 presents an opportune moment to align the timeline for the next drug policy framework with the 2030 deadline for implementing the SDGs.

Elaborating on Ms. Horsfield’s remarks, Luciana Pol, Senior Fellow in Security Policy & Human Rights from CELS, pointed to improvements that could be made to drug policy indicators to support the achievement of SDG 5 on gender equality. Ms. Pol noted that the Special Rapporteur on violence against women has identified anti-drug policies specifically as a leading cause of the rising rates of incarceration of women globally, and data demonstrates that a portion of women incarcerated for drug offences are coerced into trafficking and others engage as a result of lacking viable economic opportunities. Ms. Pol described concrete ways to improve the quality of data on how drug policies impact women. First, prison data should have a gender perspective by including, for example, information on the amount of pregnant women, of children incarcerated with their mothers, and access to health services for these groups. Second, since laws in many countries don’t distinguish between different types of drug offences, small and large scale trafficking are categorized together. Differentiating between the conduct for which they are incarcerated and the roles women play will improve our understanding of incarcerated populations. Ms. Pol reminded the audience that improving our understanding of how drug policies impact women is not only essential to ensuring the achievement of SDG 5, but is also a central component of last year’s CND resolution 59/5. Ms. Pol therefore called on member states to take these and other concrete steps to mainstream a gender perspective in their collection of data relevant to drugs and drug policy, and urged UN agencies to guide member states in this process of broadening and expanding their drug policy metrics.
As a contributor on law enforcement indicators to the World Drug Report, Christian Schneider, Strategic Analyst at the Federal Office of Police in Bern, Switzerland, shared his firsthand knowledge that the incomplete nature of data on drug markets can prohibit efforts to derive meaningful policy recommendations. In addition to communicating uncertainties, Mr. Schneider proposed that gaps in the data could be addressed by adopting a more comprehensive set of indicators. Sharing technical recommendations for implementing Mr. Schneider’s suggestion, Dave Bewley-Taylor, Director of GDPO, focused on how a review of the Annual Report Questionnaires (ARQs) could support the achievement of the SDGs by aligning drug policy metrics with the sustainable development agenda. According to Prof. Bewley-Taylor, despite the limitations of self-reporting, the ARQs are a useful mechanism through which member states report on their efforts to address the world drug problem. As the nature of the world drug problem has evolved, however, there have been increasing gaps in the data collected by the ARQs. This recently came into sharp focus, as the UNGASS Outcome Document included an operational recommendation to use relevant human development indicators in alignment with the SDGs to increase understanding and improve impact assessments. Within this context, Prof. Bewley-Taylor stressed that there is a clear need to review the structure and questions of the ARQs to bring them into alignment with the SDGs by incorporating indicators related to human rights, public health, and human security. Such a review could be conducted through an interagency expert group established by the Statistical Commission, which has already begun considering these issues.

Discussions on drug policy indicators and their relationship to the sustainable development agenda are undoubtedly of utmost importance at the CND, and in other forums, such as the meeting of the high-level political forum on sustainable development in July 2017. Yet, much more than discussion is needed. As Ms. Horsfield said, advancing past this critical juncture will require political will from member states beyond simply reaffirming their commitment to SDGs, but towards deemphasizing drug control efforts that undermine the SDGs and funding those that contribute positively to their achievement. Aligning drug policy metrics with the SDGs is an important step in this direction.

Click here to visit the CND Blog’s live reporting from this side event.

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