• Cannabis debate in Australia

    Tom Blickman
    Wednesday, June 4, 2008

    In Australia a vicious debate on cannabis policy started when Alex Wodak, the head of the Sydney drug and alcohol clinic at St Vincent's Hospital, suggested that marijuana be regulated like alcohol or tobacco. He proposed to sell cannabis legally in post offices in packets that warn against its effects.

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  • INCB out of step with the United Nations

    Tom Blickman
    Tuesday, June 3, 2008

    ghodse-annanThe United Nations should overhaul the operations of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the quasi judicial body that monitors states’ implementation of their obligations under the UN drug conventions. The Board ignores UN policies and conventions which recognize the need to provide humane treatment to people addicted to injection drugs, according to a recent commentary in medical journal The Lancet.

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  • Costa in Amsterdam

    Tom Blickman
    Monday, June 2, 2008

    The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Costa, recently visited Amsterdam on 24 April. Accompanied by some officials of the Netherlands Ministry of Health and of the City of Amsterdam and UNODC staff, he dropped in on the coffeeshop De Dampkring (the Atmosphere) and a user room (for inhalation and injection of heroin and cocaine). He wrote his personal account for his blog Costa’s corner but it was never published. Apparently it proved to be too controversial with his Dutch host. It now has popped up on the Transform drug policy blog and the ENCOD website.

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  • Safe injection site still not safe

    Tom Blickman
    Friday, May 30, 2008

    insite-prepIgnoring all the scientific evidence, Canada Health Minister Tony Clement will move to close Canada's only sanctioned safe-injection site, announcing it will appeal a British Colombia court ruling that Vancouver's Insite should stay open because reducing the risk of drug overdoses is a vital health service.

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  • Canada drug law contributes to the harm it seeks to prevent

    Tom Blickman
    Wednesday, May 28, 2008

    In a surprise ruling yesterday, the British Colombia Supreme Court supported Vancouver's experimental supervised injection clinic Insite - North America's first legal supervised injection site - and halted federal attempts to close the facility. That is very good news, but the ruling went even further.

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  • The Cannabis Debate: Polak vs Costa

    Tom Blickman
    Tuesday, May 27, 2008

    Antonio Costa, the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and Frederick Polak, a Dutch psychiatrist have been engaged in an interesting (and worldwide) debate about Dutch cannabis policy. Polak challenges Costa to answer the question why cannabis use in the Netherlands is lower than in many neighbouring countries despite the free availability of cannabis in coffee shops for adults over 18 years. After a recent visit to Amsterdam, Costa is claiming that cannabis use in that city is three times higher than anywhere else in Europe. Is this true?

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  • The Coca Debate

    Tom Blickman
    Sunday, May 25, 2008

    In March 2008, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) provoked outrage in Bolivia by calling for the elimination of traditional uses of coca, such as chewing coca leaves and drinking coca tea. A new briefing urges to address the current erroneous classification of coca under the UN conventions. It also notes an apparent shift on the issue by the US government and urges the US to formally clarify its position. 

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  • Questions for Mr. Costa

    Questions for Antonio Maria Costa from attendees at IHRA's 19th International Conference in Barcelona, May 2008
    Wednesday, May 21, 2008

    During IHRA's 19th international conference this month the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) recorded a film which poses a series of questions to Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the UNODC, from a range of user representatives, harm reduction experts and drug policy advocates.

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  • Harm Reduction 2008

    Monday, 12 May 2008

    The International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harms is taking place in Barcelona, May 11-15. UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Paul Hunt, made an excellent keynote speech addressing the multiple violations of the human rights of people who use drugs. Our Hungarian friends from the HCLU taped his speech on video.

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  • Latin America needs a new drug policy approach

    Friday, 2 May 2008

    TNI’s Martin Jelsma participated in the inaugural meeting in Rio de Janeiro of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy on April 30, 2008. Prominent members of the Commission are three Latin American former presidents: Fernando Henrique Cardoso from Brazil, César Gaviria from Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo from Mexico.

    "It is time to develop a proper Latin American response that is detached from the ideology from the United States that has been common in the past decade," Martin Jelsma told the meeting. "It is potentially a good time to try because politically there is now more distance to US policies in a growing part of Latin America and to US domination in general."

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