• The Human Rights Costs of the War on Drugs

    Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU)
    Tuesday, February 28, 2012

    The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU), together with Transform Drug Policy Foundation, were among the NGOs launching the Count the Costs campaign to urge governments to evaluate the impacts of the 50 years old UN drug control system. This campaign movie highlights one of the most compelling issue, the human rights impacts of the global war on drugs (read Transform's report on the human rights costs).

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  • Russia: Government shuts HIV-prevention group’s website

    Press release
    Wednesday, February 8, 2012

    The Russian government’s anti-drugs agency has ordered the blocking of the website of a public health organization, the Andrey Rylkov Foundation, for discussing the addiction medicine methadone, human rights groups said today. The move is an assault on freedom of expression in the midst of pro-democracy protests, the groups said.

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  • Is banning legal highs effective?

    Learning from the Hungarian experience
    Peter Sarosi
    Thursday, January 19, 2012

    New psychoactive substances (commonly known as legal highs) are spreading across Europe with growing speed. Between 1997 and 2010 the early-warning system of the European Monitoring Agency on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) identified more than 150 legal highs, 65 in the past two years (24 in 2009 and 41 in 2010). These drugs pose a significant challenge to service providers, policy makers and law enforcement officials – and to the whole drug control system in general. It seems we need more than supply reduction and law enforcement to stop the flow of cheap research chemicals from China and India - an HCLU report on legal highs in Hungary.

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  • Copenhagen wants controlled cannabis shops

    Regulating the cannabis market after a failed attempt to re-criminalise
    Tom Blickman
    Monday, January 9, 2012

    The Copenhagen City Council is pushing ahead with a proposal to decriminalise cannabis, and has set up a committee to investigate the best way to regulate the supply and distribution. The favoured option is for 30 or 40 cannabis shops controlled by the city in which adults may legally buy cannabis. By a margin of 39 votes to nine, the City Council decided to draw up a detailed outline of how the plan would work. Subsequently, the resulting proposal still has to be ratified by the Danish parliament, which has blocked similar movements in the past. But after the national elections in September 2011 the current parliament could support decriminalisation this time around.

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  • Bolivia, the coca leaf and the right to reserve

    Bolivia re-enters the 1961 Single Convention on January 28
    Pien Metaal
    Monday, January 2, 2011

    INCB prsident Hamid Ghodse and Bolivia's prsident Evo Morales discuss coca chewingJust before ending 2011, Bolivia presented the formal notification to the United Nations secretariat in New York, announcing their re-adherence to the 1961 UN Single Convention, including a reservation on the use of coca leaf in its natural form, such as coca chewing and infusions. This step was expected to happen, after Bolivia withdrew in June 2011 from the Treaty in an attempt to reconcile its international obligations with its 2008 Constitution. From the day the re-adherence was received in New York, according to the procedure and established practice, it will take 30 days for Bolivia to again become a full member of the 1961 Convention. In other words, on January 28, 2012, the re-adherence will be a fact.

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  • To The Next Level: Marijuana Regulation in the US

    Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU)
    Thursday, December 22, 2011

    The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) traveled to California and attended the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in LA to find out what are the latest development of the battle for legal marijuana in the US. We interviewed activists from several organizations, asked questions about the chances of state level ballot initiatives, we even saw how people will use cannabis in the 21st Century. Welcome to the future of US marijuana regulation - please watch and share HCLU's new movie.

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  • Legal cannabis in Basque Country?

    Confusion about the regulation of cannabis social clubs
    Tom Blickman
    Friday, December 16, 2011

    Health officials of the Basque Country, an autonomous region of Spain, announced that they will introduce a bill to regulate the "cultivation, sale and consumption" of hashish and marijuana. The bill, which will be presented to the regional parliament next year, was put forward on December 12, 2011, by regional health officials during the presentation of the regional addictions plan. Several media outlets broke the news as an intent to legalise cannabis use, while in fact the proposed legislation only aims to regulate cannabis user associations that cultivate for personal use.

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  • The global war on drugs has failed

    It is time for a new approach
    The Beckley Foundation
    Monday, November 21, 2011

    beckley-public-letterTo mark the 50th anniversary of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the Beckley Foundation published a public letter calling for a new approach in drug policy. The global war on drugs has failed, and has had many unintended and devastating consequences worldwide. Signed by a group of 60 major thinkers, Nobel Prize winners and celebrities including Sting, Yoko Ono and seven former presidents, this letter calls on members of the public and of Parliament to recognize that "improving our drug policies is one of the key policy challenges of our time."

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  • Extraordinary General Assembly of Cannabis Users Association Pannagh

    General Assembly of Cannabis Users Association Pannagh
    Saturday, November 19, 2011

    pannagh-logoThe General Assembly of Cannabis Users Association Pannagh denounces the disproportionate intervention of the Municipal Police of Bilbao against the association and demands the immediate withdrawal of the charges against the three members who were arrested last Monday, in recognition of the fact that they have not committed any crime, taking into account that Pannagh carries out its activities according to the jurisprudence regarding the ’shared consumption’ such as has been approved by the Provincial Tribunal of Bizkaia in its decision to withdraw the prosecution that was opened by the municipal police in 2005.

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  • Cannabis social club activists in Spain liberated

    Tom Blickman
    Friday, November 18, 2011

    barriuso-spinant2Martin Barriuso, the president of of Pannagh and the Federation of Cannabis Associations (FAC) in Spain and two fellow activists from the Pannagh cannabis social club have been released. They had been erroneously arrested for drug trafficking in Bilbao on Monday, November 14. Cannabis social clubs are registered, non-profit associations that are formed by adult people who consume cannabis.

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