The Australian Capital Territory has become the first Australian jurisdiction to decriminalise illicit drugs in small quantities. Laws passed in the territory’s parliament mean people found with small amounts of nine different types of illicit drugs will not be criminally prosecuted. Instead they will be cautioned, fined or referred to a drug diversion program. The substances decriminalised include heroin, cocaine and speed. The ACT health minister, Rachel Stephen-Smith, said focusing on harm-minimisation rather than punishing drug users was the way forward. “The ACT has led the nation with a progressive approach to reducing the harm caused by illicit drugs with a focus on diversion, access to treatment and rehabilitation and reducing the stigma attached to drug use,” she said

El cultivo de la flor de amapola en México y Colombia forma parte de una economía local destinada de forma casi exclusiva al mercado ilegal en el exterior: la demanda de heroína, principalmente en los Estados Unidos. En la actualidad existe una crisis humanitaria de gran envergadura en América del Norte en relación con este consumo y los opiáceos que circulan en este mercado. Las políticas de control del cultivo ilícito en México y Colombia han consistido exclusivamente en intervenciones con fuerza de erradicación, que provocan el desplazamiento del cultivo hacia otras zonas más remotas, la criminalización de los cultivadores y malestar en las comunidades afectadas.

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Paderu is the main town in the area and the cannabis produced in the entire belt is popularly called Paderu ganja. This region is quickly becoming the cannabis capital of India, say officials. While cannabis is grown in several parts of the country, this region and the neighbouring Malkangiri district of Odisha has seen a spurt in cultivation. In the eight mandals, the area under cannabis cultivation is estimated to be 10,000 acres spread across 1,000 (of the total 3,000) villages, according to data available with the office of deputy commissioner of prohibition and excise (enforcement) of Visakhapatnam district. (See also: Modern technology to end ganja cultivation in Visakhapatnam Agency areas)

Ottawa has approved a pilot project that will allow health officials in B.C. to distribute clean opioids to drug users to use as they please, marking one of the province's most radical efforts to address a fentanyl-saturated drug supply that has killed more than 1,000 people this year. Details are still being finalized, but Mark Tyndall, executive director of the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC), said the idea is that people at high risk of overdose, once registered, will be able to pick up hydromorphone pills at either supportive housing units or supervised consumption facilities, two or three times a day, and self-administer them. Most would likely choose to crush, cook and inject them.

In the past year, 55 million Americans have used marijuana. The other 260 million are pretty divided in how they feel about that. It will probably not shock you to hear that a substance’s potential to cause addiction, health problems, and social harm has little to do with whether or not it’s legal. Instead, as law professor and criminologist Toby Seddon recently found in a wide-ranging study and historical review, there are two primary factors that influence what we consider to be drugs: race and money. These factors have long been deeply ingrained in how we view intoxication, from the origins of the War on Drugs in the 1970s to the responses to today’s opioid epidemic.

European-style drug rooms where users can take illicit substances have been backed by a Teesside panel. Councillors have spent more than a year examining Middlesbrough’s opioid crisis - and what can be done to bring down the town’s high number of drug deaths and reduce dependency. Now a health scrutiny panel has urged the Government to reconsider its policy on “drug consumption rooms” among a raft of recommendations. Middlesbrough has been dogged by drug-related deaths - and has one of the highest mortality rates in the country. According to the most recent statistics, drug related deaths in Middlesbrough tally 16.3 per 100,000 people - compared to a rate 4.7 per 100,000 for the rest of England.

Canada remains in the grips of a deadly toxic drug crisis that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands. It’s a crisis that has been blamed on a war — the war on drugs — fuelled by what policy experts and people who use drugs say is a mix of prohibition, criminalization, lack of supports and stigma. In the face of what is called government foot-dragging on providing the tools needed to stem the tide of death, activists are taking action, recently launching a fulfilment centre and compassion club in Vancouver, which procures, tests, repackages, and distributes drugs to people at high risk of overdose. The group is risking their liberty in the process, as the club is not legal — but they’re fighting the federal government in court so that it can be. They haven’t been shy about publicizing their activities, and have even been visited by the federal minister for addictions.

A recent study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Addiction, found that a trio of policies adopted to combat the opioid overdose epidemic saved, combined, an estimated 3,030 lives in the Canadian province of British Columbia alone, between April 2016 and December 2017. The findings are a ringing endorsement of the policies adopted by the government of the province hit hardest by the epidemic: promoting access to the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, expanding access to supervised consumption or injection sites, and providing access to treatment known as opioid agonist therapy.

Europeans spent at least 11.6 billion euros (£9.9 billion) in 2017 on illegal cannabis purchases, confirming marijuana as the largest drugs market in the 28-country European Union, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) said in its 2019 European Drug Markets report. Illegal sales of herbal cannabis and its resin represented 39% of the EU’s drugs market, up from 38% in 2013, with revenues for criminal organisations dwarfing those in legal markets. Cocaine is the second most consumed illegal drug in the EU, with sales generating revenues of at least 9 billion euros in 2017, while the heroin market was worth more than 7 billion euros. (See also: Growing like weeds? Rethinking Albania’s culture of cannabis cultivation)

The City of Vancouver voted unanimously in favour of supporting a peer-led program that would help get a safe supply of drugs to individuals at high risk of overdose. Coun. Jean Swanson called for the approval of North America’s first compassion club that gives access to prescription heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. Swanson said that given the overdose crisis, blamed on tainted street drugs, federal approval is needed for the project run by the Drug User Liberation Front, which has teamed up with Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users to host giveaways of substances purchased from the dark web — “so they won’t be arrested for saving lives.” (See also: Vancouver votes to support application that would create safe drug 'compassion clubs' | Toronto’s bid to decriminalize drugs hangs in the balance)

Drug treatment experts have raised concerns a drop in the supply of illicit drugs to the UK triggered by the lockdown is leading to an increase in the number of users turning to more dangerous alternatives. A reduction in global travel, increased border restrictions and a slowdown in movement within the UK has resulted in a drop in the supply of illicit drugs, including heroin and the designer drug spice. Border guards have noted a recent drop in seizures as traffic into the country subsides, while senior police sources have noted the dip in supply. There is a significant risk of heroin users substituting with fentanyl, a lethal drug 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin.

In Bristol, there were 49 drug related deaths in 2017/18 – the highest ever recorded. There are almost 5,000 heroin and crack users in the city and, despite Bristol’s well-regarded treatment services, there are 2,000 people who aren’t getting any help. In 2018, a feasibility study into whether a safe consumption room (SCR) could benefit Bristol was commissioned by the council, but it wasn’t published. The study found evidence that an SCR could help reduce Bristol’s high levels of the drug-related harms, particularly among heroin and crack users with complex needs who struggle to engage with current treatment. Currently the Home Office remains opposed, but drug policy experts have suggested local authorities would have the power to open them if there was agreement with police and other stakeholders.

A Vancouver based drug policy researcher has been working for decades to get the federal government to regulate illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine. Don MacPherson authored the groundbreaking Four Pillars Approach to Drug Problems in Vancouver in 2001 — calling for this kind of regulation. Now, 16 years later, and in the midst of a year-long public health emergency in B.C. centred around overdose deaths, MacPherson continues to try to convince politicians that this is the only way out of the overdose crisis. "It's clear that every thing we are doing is not working. It's absolutely pathetic that we can not move beyond this paradigm that we have supported for so many years and at the cost of so many lives." (See also: And the band played on: Overdoses, death and a resistance to change)

The severe restrictions on movement and activities during the coronavirus pandemic had little effect on Europeans' appetite for illegal drugs in 2020, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). Cannabis use remained "stable" and at "high levels," said the EU agency in its yearly report. In 2020, it found, 15.4 percent of Europeans aged between 15-34 made use of the drug, mostly unchanged over 2019. The availability of harder drugs like cocaine also continued unchanged, notes the report, citing large seizures in 2020. In the case of heroin, it writes in a supplementary report, data from 10 hospitals shows "no overall change in the number of presentations associated with heroin between January and September 2020" when compared with the previous year.

A new drug-user advocacy group in Vancouver says the safe supply of prescription narcotics must include pharmaceutical-grade heroin and cocaine and — to kickstart the effort — they’ve started giving those drugs away for free themselves. Dozens of people who use drugs marched in the city’s Downtown Eastside and set up an overdose prevention site where they distributed free doses of cocaine that had been tested for fentanyl, carfentanyl, benzodiazepines and other dangerous contaminants. Organizers had planned to distribute up to 200 doses of free heroin as well, but existing supply lines have become so contaminated that they couldn’t find any. Calling itself the Drug User Liberation Front, the group also called on the B.C. government to make broad changes to the current safe supply guidelines.

A government minister vetoed the appointment of an expert to a public body after vetting found she had criticised the Home Office and called for drug policy reform. Documents released under a subject access request also reveal that candidates for public bodies now have their social media profiles scrutinised by ministers. An online search by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) secretariat found that Niamh Eastwood, the director of Release, the UK’s centre on drugs and drug laws, had described a Home Office policy position as “utter BS” and claimed it was “just making s**t up” in a tweet. Eastwood had been deemed appointable to the ACMD, which makes drug policy recommendations to government. (See also: Home Office drugs policy panel decision condemned)

Los datos del Informe Mundial sobre las Drogas de la ONU de este año "completan y complican aún más la imagen global que plantean los desafíos de la droga", según explica el director de la Oficina de Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito (ONUDD), Yuri Fedotov. En el informe se indica que hubo más muertes en 2017 por el consumo de drogas y que los estupefacientes tradicionales de origen vegetal, como la heroína o la cocaína, siguen en máximos, mientras proliferan los estimulantes sintéticos. Estas son las diez claves del Informa Mundial sobre Drogas 2019.

For nearly two decades Estonia battled a fentanyl epidemic so severe its overdose death rate was almost six times the European average. Once fentanyl landed, heroin disappeared. After Estonian police choked off fentanyl supply in 2017, users turned to cocktails of other kinds of synthetic drugs, including amphetamines, alpha-PVP, a dangerous stimulant also known as flakka, and prescription drugs. There are signs that the U.S. is on a similar path, tipping from plant-based drugs like heroin to synthetic ones like fentanyl and methamphetamine. That could herald big changes and cement the role of China -- an important source of illicit synthetic drugs -- as a vital link in the worldwide drug trafficking business. (See also: What we can learn from a tiny Baltic country's two-decade fentanyl crisis)