Tag: UNODC
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If you care about the climate crisis, fight to legalize drugs
Friday, 07 July 2023On June 26, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its annual report on the illicit drug trade. The headline is that despite millions of people killed, incarcerated and impoverished, a ...
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New regime, same old drug myths in Myanmar
Tuesday, 07 September 2021In the late 1980s as well as in Myanmar today, the military (or Tatmadaw) and the police could hardly be described as anti-drug crusaders. On the contrary, Myanmar’s security forces have a long histo ...
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A Sustainable Future for Cannabis Farmers
Friday, 16 April 2021
Learn how lessening the barriers for small farmers while raising them for large companies can help to steer legal cannabis markets in a more sustainable and equitable direction based on principles of ...
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Statement on the UN Common Position and Task Team
Thursday, 15 April 2021Between 12 - 16 April 2021, the 64th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) took place in Vienna. Here you can find the statement by the Institute for Policy Studies / Transnational Ins ...
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A massive Asian drug bust has stirred a fentanyl mystery
Wednesday, 10 June 2020As the UNODC put it, this was “one of the largest and most successful counternarcotics operations” in Asia’s history. Myanmar’s army and police, which conducted the raids, are naturally pleased. But ...
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Is Southeast Asia's drug trade too big to control?
Tuesday, 19 May 2020Police in Myanmar this week announced the largest synthetic drug seizure on record in Southeast Asia. Between February and April, security forces seized more than 200 million tablets of methamphetami ...
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Human Rights and drug policy
Wednesday, 01 January 2020The Transnational Institute (TNI) has always believed in the need to find global answers to global problems, been a strong defender of multilateralism and an advocate of a well-functioning United Nat ...
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UN Common Position on drug policy
Sunday, 01 December 2019
In November 2018, the UN System CEB adopted the ‘UN system common position supporting the implementation of the international drug control policy through effective inter-agency collaboration’, expres ...
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Nowhere to hide
Wednesday, 30 October 2019Traditionally, 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 ...
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Global marijuana use rose by 60 percent over the past decade
Wednesday, 26 June 2019The global story about cannabis — the most-used recreational drug in the world — is about as fuzzy as your body feels after taking your first hit. While some places, such as states in the US, have le ...
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China nominates Hong Kong occupy-era police chief for UN post
Wednesday, 05 June 2019China nominated a former Hong Kong police chief to lead the UN’s drug crimes division, the first time it has sought a global post since detaining Interpol’s chief last year. The effort to install And ...
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Fair(er) Trade Options for the Cannabis Market
Thursday, 21 March 2019
Policy changes over the past five years or so have dramatically reshaped the global cannabis market. Not only has there been an unprecedented boom in medical markets, but following policy shifts in s ...
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The UN Chief Executives Board unanimously endorses decriminalisation of people who use drugs
Monday, 11 March 2019The Chief Executives Board of the UN, representing 31 UN agencies, has adopted a common position on drug policy that endorses decriminalisation of possession and use. This comes just days before a ke ...
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UN report on Myanmar opium crop criticized
Wednesday, 06 March 2019The recently-released "Myanmar Opium Survey 2018" by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) distorts reality, accuses ethnic rebels who are not involved in the drugs trade for being re ...
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A Distortion of Reality
Tuesday, 05 March 2019After decades of fighting between the central government and various ethnic armed organisations in Myanmar, the links between drugs and conflict have spiraled into a complex chain reaction. The roots ...
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Taking stock of a decade of failed drug policies
Monday, 22 October 2018Ten years ago, UN member states set themselves a target ‘to eliminate or reduce significantly and measurably’ the illicit cultivation, production, trafficking and use of internationally controlled su ...
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Misuse of opioids such as tramadol and fentanyl is 'global epidemic', report finds
Wednesday, 27 June 2018The misuse of pharmaceutical opioids is fast becoming a “global epidemic”, with the largest quantities being seized in African countries for the second year in a row, according to the UN World Drug R ...
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More drugs, more deaths, more damage...
Tuesday, 26 June 2018In 2012, Colombian President, Juan Manuel Santos, referred to current drug control efforts as something akin to riding a stationary bicycle. "One keeps pedalling, pedalling and pedalling, and making ...
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Colombia’s two anti-coca strategies are at war with each other
Tuesday, 20 February 2018The government’s “comprehensive programme for illicit crop substitution” (PNIS) aims to replace the coca with a profitable legal crop. The crop-substitution strategy is set out in a peace accord that ...
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Evaluating global drug control
Thursday, 25 January 2018In March 2017, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) adopted Resolution 60/1 in which it called on the UNODC to ‘strengthen and streamline its existing data-collection and analysis tools’. The key t ...
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If the U.S. legalizes marijuana, what happens to its international drug treaties?
Wednesday, 10 January 2018When Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded a Barack Obama-era federal policy that allowed recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington, he did more than reignite a domestic legal and cultural ...
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Opioid tramadol destabilizes, fuels terror in parts of Africa, UN warns
Friday, 15 December 2017The illegal trade and growing abuse of tramadol, a synthetic opioid, are destabilizing parts of West Africa, especially in the Sahel region, where it is fueling terror groups and providing revenue fo ...
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International cooperation against the world drug problem
Wednesday, 19 July 2017
This report prepared by the UN Secretary-General for the 72nd Session of the General Assembly provides an overview of the global situation on drugs, and crucially highlights cross-UN efforts to imple ...
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Illegal drug market is booming, says UN watchdog
Thursday, 22 June 2017The world’s illicit drug economy is “thriving” owing to large increases in the production of heroin and cocaine and a wider spectrum of synthetic substances on the market, the UN’s drugs watchdog sai ...
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Mexico opens up its heroin fight to U.S., U.N. observers
Friday, 07 April 2017For the first time in at least a decade, Mexico's army is allowing the United States and the United Nations to observe opium poppy eradication, a step toward deeper cooperation to fight heroin traffi ...
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UNGASS 2016: A Broken or B-r-o-a-d Consensus?
Tuesday, 05 July 2016
A special session of the General Assembly took place in April revealing a growing divergence in the global drug policy landscape. Difficult negotiations resulted in a disappointing outcome document, ...
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Iran under pressure to abolish death penalty for drug trafficking
Monday, 27 June 2016Iran is under pressure to end its use of death penalty against drug traffickers after facing a serious shortfall in the international funding of the country’s counter-narcotics campaign. An increasin ...
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Is the global cocaine trade in decline?
Thursday, 23 June 2016The latest United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2016 World Drug Report presents a long-term analysis of cocaine production, seizures and consumption that comes to a startling conclusion: ...
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The UN’s war on drugs is a failure
Saturday, 02 April 2016A policy of prohibition has put the drugs trade in the hands of criminals and led to suffering for millions. 2008 was the year that the world didn’t eliminate the illicit drugs problem. This quixotic ...
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The other opioid crisis – people in poor countries can’t get the pain medication they need
Thursday, 24 March 2016Hospitals in the U.S. and Europe routinely prescribe opioids for chronic cancer pain, end-of-life palliative care and some forms of acute pain, like bone fractures, sickle cell crises and burns. But ...
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Striving for system-wide coherence
Friday, 11 March 2016
In April 2016, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) will convene its 30th Special Session (or ‘UNGASS’) – and the third to focus on the ‘world drug problem’. The General Assembly has calle ...
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Iran executed all adult men in one village for drug offences, official reveals
Thursday, 25 February 2016The entire adult male population of a village in southern Iran has been executed for drug offences, according to Iran’s vice-president for women and family affairs. The matter came to light after Sha ...
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As UNGASS approaches, yet another devastating UN critique of the drug war is published
Tuesday, 08 December 2015
A significant positive outcome has already emerged from next year’s UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs in the form of much more direct engagement in key drug policy issues from a r ...
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UN agency urged to publish leaked paper backing drug legalisation
Wednesday, 21 October 2015Delegates at the 2015 Harm Reduction Conference in Malaysia called on the United Nations drugs agency to officially release a leaked paper detailing an apparent landmark UN recommendation in favour o ...
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The truth behind the UNODC's leaked decriminalisation paper
Tuesday, 20 October 2015The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has responded to the 'leak' of its paper calling for the decriminalisation of drug possession for personal use. The document was to be presented by the UNODC at the I ...
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UN attempt to decriminalise drugs foiled
Monday, 19 October 2015A paper from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has been withdrawn after pressure from at least one country. The document, which was leaked, recommends to consider "decriminalising drug and pos ...
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UN poised to call for decriminalisation of drugs, says Richard Branson
Monday, 19 October 2015The United Nations is on the verge of issuing a call for all governments to decriminalise the possession and use of all drugs, according to businessman and global drugs campaigner Richard Branson. In ...
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The 2015 Commission on Narcotic Drugs
Sunday, 14 June 2015
The international drug control regime is facing the most profound challenge of its existence. Member states have for some time been experimenting with new responses to the ‘world drug problem’; howev ...
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The new drug warriors
Friday, 01 May 2015The 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 so ...
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UNGASS 2016: Prospects for Treaty Reform and UN System-Wide Coherence on Drug Policy
Tuesday, 28 April 2015
This paper explores key lessons from the 1990 Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Drug Abuse (UNGASS 1990) and the 1998 Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on ...
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The Road to UNGASS 2016
Tuesday, 14 April 2015
On 19th to 21st April 2016, there will be a United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) held in New York, dedicated to the issue of drug policy. The General Assembly is the highest polic ...
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Drugs and development: The great disconnect
Wednesday, 31 December 2014
This report argues that ‘drugs’ are a development issue and must be recognised as such by development agencies. The cultivation of opium poppy, coca leaf and cannabis for anything other than medical ...
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The UN really wishes that voters in Alaska and Oregon hadn’t legalized weed
Thursday, 13 November 2014The director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Yury Fedotov, said that state-level marijuana legalization initiatives in the U.S. are violations of longstanding international drug trea ...
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A top UN official is not happy about US states legalizing weed
Thursday, 13 November 2014The UN's top narcotics official said on Wednesday that recent votes by US states to legalize marijuana have put America in deeper violation of the international conventions that guide drug policy aro ...
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U.S. states' pot legalization not in line with international law: U.N. agency
Wednesday, 12 November 2014Moves by some U.S. states to legalize marijuana are not in line with international drugs conventions, the U.N. anti-narcotics chief said, adding he would discuss the issue in Washington next week. Re ...
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Analysis: Rethinking global drug policy
Monday, 15 September 2014What would the world look like if governments - instead of crime syndicates - controlled drug markets and drug use was decriminalized? A new report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, released b ...
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Global drug policy is still deadly and ineffective
Monday, 02 June 2014If you actually read the treaties, while they do set firm limitations on the legal, "non-medical" or "non-scientific" sale of schedule drugs — limits that Uruguay, Colorado and Washington ignored whe ...
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The Rise and Decline of Cannabis Prohibition
Monday, 10 March 2014
The cannabis plant has been used for spiritual, medicinal and recreational purposes since the early days of civilization. In this report the Transnational Institute and the Global Drug Policy Observa ...
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UN High-Level Segment on Drugs, March 2014
Friday, 28 February 2014On March 13-14, 2014, UN member states will gather in Vienna, Austria, for a High Level Segment of the annual UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND). The purpose of this meeting is to review the progr ...
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UNODC’s shifting position on drug policy: Progress and challenges
Friday, 31 January 2014
In March 2014, country delegations will gather at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) to review progress and challenges in international drug control since the agreement of a Politi ...
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