• The opium bulbs of Myanmar: drug crop or lifeline for poor farmers?

    Rural development to wean poppy farmers off their illicit crop contend with lack of roads, water and power in remote areas plagued by militias
    The Guardian (UK)
    Wednesday, June 22, 2016

    An estimated 133,000 households in Myanmar, mainly found in impoverished, remote regions, last year grew poppies across 55,500 hectares (about 137,000 acres) of land, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Myanmar is the second largest producer of opium after Afghanistan. The trade in opium and its derivative heroin is controlled by many rebel groups and pro-government militias who use it to fund a long-running civil war. The opiates, along with methamphetamine, end up in China and across south-east Asia. (See also: Poppylands: Understanding Myanmar's addiction to heroin)

  • Drugs in Europe: Not mind-stretching enough

    Liberal drug policies have spread across Europe. But some early adopters are slipping behind
    The Economist (UK)
    Saturday, June 18, 2016

    European countries’ reforms have lost momentum, or even slipped backwards. Most drug-policy experts consider this a shame. The reformist countries’ experiences not only show how well liberal drug policies work; they suggest they need to go further. One of the problems is complacency – meaning that politicians in countries with harm-reduction policies often think the drug problem has been solved. In Europe “everyone is keeping each other in check,” says Tom Blickman. Europe is no longer a place where policymakers can take risks.

  • New agreement brings no end to war on drugs in ASEAN

    A global meeting on drugs failed to deliver a highly anticipated shift from a punitive approach to narcotics, disappointing Myanmar advocacy groups
    The Myanmar Times (Myanmar)
    Tuesday, April 26, 2016

    opium-burmaThe outcome of the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs in New York resulted in an outcome document that brings little new to the table. Nang Pann Ei, a coordinator of the Drug Policy Advocacy Groups, called the UNGASS meeting significant because Myanmar civil society was able to speak up for opium farmers facing the constant threat of crop eradication. But she voiced disappointment about the resulting policy document, saying it has "some serious gaps". "It did not mention harm reduction specifically, and decriminalisation of drug use and abolishing the death penalty for drug-related offenses was not mentioned," she said.

  • To win the war on drugs, stop brutalising farmers who grow them

    Reform of drug policy is essential to protect the rights of cultivating communities, and ensure they make a living from their land
    Pien Metaal
    The Guardian (UK)
    Tuesday, April 19, 2016

    manual-eradication_copyReform of international drug control is urgently needed. The war on drugs has left a trail of suffering and criminality in its wake and has manifestly failed to achieve its objectives. The UN special session of the general assembly (UNGASS) presents an opportunity. Many reformers put drug users at the centre of changes to international drug policies, but the people growing the plants producing the substances they consume are often overlooked. Farmers’ livelihoods and communities are inherently linked to reform of international drug policies. For hundreds of thousands of farmers’ families, existing crop control laws and practices cause conflict and poverty. (See: Contributions of grower representatives at UNGASS)

  • The United Nations is supposed to be negotiating a solution to the ‘world drug problem’, and it’s not going well

    The UNGASS is now perilously close to representing a serious systemic failure of the UN system
    Open Democracy (US)
    Wednesday, March 16, 2016

    ungass2016This April, the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs will convene in New York – seen by many as a possible breaking point for the global drug control system, and the first session to be held on this theme for two decades. The UNGASS is happening two years early, because the governments of Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala have called for it in advance. The UNGASS is expected to be a crucial moment in which dissenting countries could break the UN consensus over the ‘war on drugs’ and the model of prohibition, proposing alternative approaches towards harm reduction and decriminalisation instead. (See also: The UNGASS outcome document: Diplomacy or denialism?)

  • Is kratom the new bath salts?

    Kratom fans say it’s like a ‘safe opiate,’ but law enforcement paints a picture of addiction and psychosis
    The Daily Beast (US)
    Saturday, February 27, 2016

    The botanical substance is both a stimulant and a sedative. It is common and illegal in Thailand, where it grows naturally, but little-known and largely legal in the United States. The federal government is cracking down on kratom. Last month, the FDA asked U.S. Marshals to seize nearly 90,000 bottles of dietary supplements containing kratom, which is derived from tropical trees that grow throughout Southeast Asia. In 2014, the Marshals took over 25,000 pounds of raw kratom from a company in Van Nuys, California, at the FDA’s request.

  • See inside the Himalayan villages that grow cannabis

    Ganja grows wild in the Indian Himalayas, and it’s nearly impossible to curb its illegal cultivation
    National Geographic (US)
    Monday, February 1, 2016

    india-cannabis-himalayaCannabis is illegal in India, but many villagers have turned to charas manufacturing out of financial necessity. “Nearly 400 of the 640 districts in India have cannabis cultivation,” says Romesh Bhattacharji, ex-Narcotics Commissioner of India. "It's time for the Indian Government to stop being a slave of UN-backed policies: since 1985, cannabis use and cultivation has only proliferated." "The obligation to eliminate cannabis in countries with widespread traditional use is a clear example of the colonial background of the [UN] Convention," says Tom Blickman, from the Dutch think-tank Transnational Institute. "It would never pass nowadays."

  • Exploring the land-drugs nexus

    Land is one of the key factors of production in the drug economy

    Opium poppy field in Gostan valley, Nimruz Province, Afghanistan"For many communities in Myanmar who grow opium, for them opium is not the problem, it is the solution to their problems," said local project consultant, Tom Kramer, from the Transnational Institute. And therein lies one of the greatest challenges for policy makers in the fight to eradicate the scourge of drug crops in developing countries. Most drug crop cultivating areas are greatly affected by poverty, physical isolation, landlessness, insecure land rights and conflicts over natural resources. For many poor farmers, the cultivation of drug crops represents a coping mechanism to prevail in difficult environments.

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  • The new drug warriors

    As one side of the world softens its line against illegal drugs, another is getting tougher—and more vocal
    The Economist (UK)
    Saturday, May 2, 2015

    The war on drugs is edging towards a truce. Half of Americans want to lift the ban on cannabis. America’s change of heart has led many to wonder if the UN conventions might be reformed to legalise some drugs and treat the use of others as a problem requiring health measures, not criminal or military ones. But as America has drawn back from prohibition, new drug warriors are stepping up to defend it. Russia is foremost among them. “The Russians have taken over the hard-line role that the US used to play,” says Martin Jelsma of the Transnational Institute.

  • Labour's 'appalling gutter politics' on drugs

    Labour now prioritises crude electioneering over reforming drug policy to save lives
    New Statesman (UK)
    Tuesday, March 31, 2015

    Campaigners for a more evidence-based drug policy are horrified. "It’s a classic and appalling example of gutter politics,” says Martin Jelsma, Director of the drugs policy programme of the Transnational Institute. “Accusing the Lib Dems of being ‘soft on drugs and thugs’ is a cheap populist slogan that tries to hide the Labour Party's own co-responsibility for destroying the future of thousands of people by giving them a criminal record for no good reason at all."

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