• From war on drugs to community policing in Rio

    IPS
    Thursday, June 2, 2011

    Four decades after Washington declared its "war on drugs" and began to spread the doctrine south of the U.S. border, the government of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro decided to shift away from that approach towards a strategy focused on community policing. The new focus has already produced results in some of the city’s favelas or shanty towns, which were long off-limits to outsiders, including police. The process began in 2009 with the installation of "Police Pacification Units" (UPPs) in the favelas.

  • High-profile panel urges non-criminal approach to world drug policy

    The report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes former U.N. chief Kofi Annan and past presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, was swiftly dismissed by the U.S. and Mexico
    Ken Ellingwood and Brian Bennett
    Los Angeles Times (US)
    Wednesday, June 1, 2011

    Calling the global war on drugs a costly failure, a group of high-profile world leaders is urging the Obama administration and other governments to end "the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but do no harm to others." A report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and past presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, recommends that governments try new ways of legalizing and regulating drugs, especially marijuana, as a way to deny profits to drug cartels.

  • Cocaine in Europe: a battle against trafficking or consumption?

    Deutsche Welle (Germany)
    Friday, May 27, 2011

    snorting-cocaineThe Group of Eight major industrialized economies want to stop the cocaine industry dead in its tracks. But experts say they may be focusing too much on smuggling and not enough on drug use. Representatives from the G8 leading industrialized nations met recently in the French capital, accompanied by officials from 14 other European, African and Latin American nations, to sign a draft action plan against the transatlantic cocaine trade.

  • Pot Penalties May Be Modernized

    David Downs
    East Bay Express (US)
    Wednesday, May 18, 2011

    Sponsored by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, AB 1017 aims to give prosecutors more discretion in how they charge weed growers and processors, called "trimmers." According to the bill's author, Mendocino County District Attorney C. David Eyster, mom-and-pop trimmers — many of them economically desperate victims of the country's recession — currently face a felony punishable by sixteen months, or two or three years in prison for manicuring buds. That's because existing law "requires that every person who plants, cultivates, harvests, dries, or processes any marijuana, or any part thereof, except as otherwise provided by law, be punished by imprisonment in the state prison."

  • Legal high battle shows need for drugs policy rethink

    There is no evidence to suggest making a drug controlled can reduce its use – but try telling that to our politicians
    The Guardian (UK)
    Monday, May 16, 2011

    legal-highsThe Demos/UKDPC report Taking Drugs Seriously published today sets out clearly how legal highs have exposed the ancient Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (MDA) as totally inadequate legislation. They propose a whole new range of regulatory controls for the 600 or so drugs (and growing) covered by the act. The report was described by Britain's most senior drugs officer, Chief Constable Tim Hollis, as "a timely and helpful contribution".

  • Colorado pot advocates push for legalization in 2012

    Backers hope to gather signatures for ballot initiative this summer
    The Associated Press
    Sunday, May 15, 2011

    Pot legalization backers hope to start gathering signatures as soon as this summer to put the question to voters. Given Colorado`s low signature threshold for ballot initiatives, which currently stands at about 86,000 people, they say they expect an easy path to the polls. Colorado voters defeated a legalization measure in 2006, as did California voters last year. But activists here are regrouping for another push.

  • Drug laws and bans on legal highs 'do more harm than good'

    UK Drug Policy Commission's report Taking Drugs Seriously says current laws 'not fit for purpose'
    The Guardian (UK)
    Saturday, May 14, 2011

    mephedroneThe UK's "outdated" drug laws could be doing more harm than good and are failing to recognise that banning some "legal highs" may have negative consequences for public health, according to the leading independent panel set up to analyse drugs policy. On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Misuse of Drugs Act, the UK Drug Policy Commission warns that the exponential rise in "legal highs" and the availability of substances over the internet is making current laws redundant.

  • Insite’s next battle: supervised inhalation

    Globe and Mail (Canada)
    Saturday, May 14, 2011

    insite-crackInsite’s operators have twice applied for a federal health exemption to allow crack cocaine smokers to use the room – the request was rejected in 2006, ignored in 2009. Proponents say the room would allow health officials to reach a fast-growing segment of drug users, a group prone to viruses because of dirty crack pipes. Critics say scientific evidence for the benefits of supervised inhalation rooms is scant.

  • Delaware governor signs bill making it the 16th state to legalize medical marijuana

    The Associated Press
    Friday, May 13, 2011

    Gov. Jack Markell has signed legislation making Delaware the 16th state to allow the use of medical marijuana. The new law allows people 18 and older with certain serious or debilitating conditions that could be alleviated by marijuana to possess up to six ounces of the drug. Qualifying patients would be referred to state-licensed and regulated “compassion centers,” which would be located in each of Delaware’s three counties. The centers would grow, cultivate and dispense the marijuana.

  • No evidence to contradict studies that supervised drug injections save addicts’ lives

    The Toronto Star (Canada)
    Thursday, May 12, 2011

    trust-evidenceUnder tough judicial grilling, the Harper government conceded it had no evidence to counter scientific research showing supervised drug injections save lives and reduce harm to addicts. Federal lawyers said a final decision had not been made whether to extend or end a legal exemption for Vancouver’s Insite injection clinic before local health authorities launched a lawsuit in 2008 to save it. But they were at a loss to explain the basis for the Conservative government’s stated reluctance to allow it to continue.

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