‘Addicted to punishment'
Despite reform, Latin America still criminalises drug use
IRIN News
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Latin American leaders may be patting themselves on the back for engineering next week’s Special Session of the UN General Assembly in New York to review global drug enforcement policy. But the thousands of drug users suffering in prison or punitive drug centres back home won’t have much to celebrate. Despite the rhetoric, and a move towards more constitutional freedoms on personal drug use in many Latin American countries, research shows that drug users continue to be treated as criminals, lumped together in the same category as drug dealers and violent offenders, clogging up courts and prisons.
