Police in New South Wales pursue more than 80% of Indigenous people found with small amounts of cannabis through the courts while letting others off with warnings, forcing young Aboriginal people into a criminal justice system that legal experts say “they will potentially never get out of”. Between 2013 and 2017 the police disproportionately used the justice system to prosecute Indigenous people, despite the existence of a specific cautioning scheme introduced to keep minor drug offences out of the courts. During the five year period, 82.55% of all Indigenous people found with a non-indictable quantity of cannabis were pursued through the courts, compared with only 52.29% for the non-Indigenous population.

La colaboración entre grupos criminales dedicados al tráfico de cannabis está creando “nuevos riesgos de seguridad” en Europa, donde el mercado de esta droga tiene un valor de al menos 11.400 millones de euros al año y mueve productos “cada vez más potentes y diversos”. Un análisis publicado por Europol y el Observatorio Europeo de Drogas y Toxicomanías (OEDT) señala que el del cannabis es el mayor mercado de drogas en Europa, y se estima que unos 22,6 millones de adultos europeos de entre 15 y 64 años han consumido esta sustancia en el último año. Las cantidades incautadas en la Unión Europea (UE) alcanzaron en 2021 sus niveles más altos en una década.

With drug poisoning (overdose) now the leading cause of death in British Columbia, there remains an urgent need to invest in and scale up safe supply programs in addition to supporting existing models, broadening the range of safe supply medications and removing barriers to access. We also need to address the root cause of this crisis: a toxic, unregulated drug supply. What we do not need are more police crackdowns directed at people who are stepping up to save lives and who are forced to do so illegally because of government inaction. As harm reduction nurses, we condemn the recent Vancouver Police Department arrests of Drug User Liberation Front organizers. (See also: Study shows selling tested drugs saves lives)

In response to the increased police presence in and around Christiania, a number of citizens are fighting back online. Fans of Christiania have long been using a Facebook page, 'Politi razzia på Christiania?' (PRPC), to inform one another of police presence in the freetown. The page has well over 9,000 likes and also been developed into an app for smartphones that allows people to check for police presence before heading to Christiania. The page was created in response to Taskforce Pusher Street.

This much we know: Americans like to do drugs. That might explain why a prescient headline in the satirical publication The Onion stands as one of the most enduring comments on American drug enforcement — “Drugs Win Drug War.” While that article was published in 1998, it was only during the past decade that its parody devolved into grim reality. In many ways, this reality has been an aching nadir, with more lives lost annually to overdoses than AIDS, gun violence and car crashes. But this past decade also brought its highs (pun intended): Recreational marijuana prohibitions started to fall in a domestic domino effect as one state after another accepted that it was pointless to criminalize the use of such a widely consumed drug.

Today, more than 500,000 Canadians are encumbered with a criminal record for doing something that is now legal: possessing a small amount (30 grams or fewer) of cannabis. A criminal conviction has real and lasting consequences. It can restrict the bearer's access to employment, housing, travel and the opportunities that accompany them. This impact is grossly disproportionate to the actual harm caused by the simple possession of marijuana. Pardons do not go far enough. If the Liberals are serious about eliminating past convictions as a source of future prejudice, they must expunge convictions for simple possession.

The chief of police in the Philippines has stepped down after facing historical accusations in the Senate that he protected officers who had resold confiscated drugs and received some of the profits. It was a rapid fall from grace for Oscar Albayalde, the head of the Philippine National Police (PNP), who rose to fame as the enforcer of Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs in Manila before Duterte was appointed president. Albayalde has denied the allegations. Thousands of people have been killed as part of Duterte’s campaign against illegal drugs. Amnesty International called it a “large-scale murdering enterprise”.

Tens of thousands of people may have been killed in the war on drugs since mid-2016 in the Philippines, amid “near impunity” for police and incitement to violence by top officials, the UN human rights office says in a report. The drugs crackdown, launched by President Rodrigo Duterte after winning election on a platform of crushing crime, has been marked by police orders and high-level rhetoric that may have been interpreted as “permission to kill”, according to the report. Police, who do not need search or arrest warrants to conduct house raids, systematically force suspects to make self-incriminating statements or risk lethal force. (See also: Children have become collateral damage with the Philippines’ “Drug War” scarring a generation)

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police is calling on federal lawmakers to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of illegal drugs for personal consumption. CACP's president, Adam Palmer, said it's time to rethink how police and governments approach the use and abuse of illegal drugs in order to save lives. "Arresting individuals for simple possession of illicit drugs has proven to be ineffective. It does not save lives," Palmer said. "The CACP recognizes substance use and addiction as a public health issue. Being addicted to a controlled substance is not a crime and should not be treated as such. We recommend that Canada's enforcement-based approach for possession be replaced with a health care approach that diverts people from the criminal justice system."

Public Security Minister Amir Ohana signaled support for easing enforcement of laws against marijuana use. Ohana, whose ministry oversees the police, was responding to a High Court of Justice petition urging the court to annul the criminalizing of recreational marijuana use and possession. “The stance of the incoming public security minister is… to minimize harm as much as possible to [otherwise] law-abiding citizens who have offenses linked to the drug,” the ministry’s response said. It also said Ohana intended to appoint a team to weigh a more lenient policy toward recreational marijuana use.

A former chief inspector has said he believes that over a third of drug stop-and-searches by UK police are used “as an excuse to harass people”, after an analysis showed that officers are using the powers as a pretext to punish or exert control, rather than to find drugs. Despite a 2011 decision to rein in stop-and-search because so many Black and Asian people were being targeted, the tactic is back on the rise after a surge in knife crime. There was a sharp jump in the number of searches between 2017/18 and 2018/19, from 250,000 to 384,000. Despite the coronavirus lockdown, that figure has skyrocketed in London, increasing by 103 percent in the year up to May of 2020. (See also: As a police officer, I know stop and search is really about power)

The Drug Law Enforcement Unit of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service has recently uncovered hundreds of acres of farmland dedicated to the cultivation of plants suspected to be Indian Hemp. The enclave is located behind the Tome Mountain at Peki in the South Dayi District of the Volta Region. With the help of a drone, the location which initially looked like a small enclave was discovered to be so vast and hidden such that it would have been difficult to detect and assess. A visit to the site revealed hundreds of farmlands dedicated to the cultivation of the substance as far as the eyes can see.

El 25 de agosto de 2009 la Corte Suprema de Justicia declaró la inconstitucionalidad del artículo Nº14 de la Ley de Estupefacientes Nº 23.737, que reprime la tenencia de estupefacientes para consumo personal. ¿Qué significa ese fallo once años después? A pesar de haberse cumplido 11 años del histórico fallo y de que mucha agua ha corrido bajo el puente, los especialistas en los temas de políticas de drogas sostienen que nada ha cambiado. Por el contrario, las causas contra consumidores o pequeños expendedores minoristas se multiplican en los Tribunales y el número de personas presas por estas razones creció exponencialmente sin que esto afecte en manera alguna a las verdaderas redes organizadas.

Only a handful of the tens of thousands of annual reports of suspected money laundering end up in court case because watchdog staff lack IT expertise. Some 155,000 cases of possible fraud were brought to the attention of the government’s Financial Intelligence Unit (Fiu) last year by banks, accountants and payroll offices, of which 39,000 were followed up by the prosecution office and the FIOD financial fraud unit. However, only a very small number actually went to court because the reports were not thorough enough to form the basis of a prosecution, money laundering expert professor Brigitte Unger told Trouw.

Poppy cultivation in Mexico and Colombia is part of a local economy geared almost exclusively toward the illegal market abroad: it is driven by demand for heroin, primarily in the United States. North America, including Canada, is currently experiencing a major humanitarian crisis related to this use and the opioids circulating on this market. To understand the dynamics of this market and to evaluate whether political responses to the phenomenon are appropriate and effective, we present this report on opium poppy cultivation in Mexico and Colombia, which, together with Guatemala, are the poppy-producing countries of Latin America.

Download the report (PDF)

At the outset of legalization, people who defied prohibition in high-profile ways appear to be getting shut out of a burgeoning industry just as the former police officers and politicians that they once battled continue to land lucrative gigs working with commercial cannabis producers. Those caught and sentenced for operating large production networks or running illegal dispensary franchises, like Marc and Jodie Emery, have so far been unable to get past the security screening and into the regulated space under the current rules. They also won’t qualify for the amnesty that Ottawa has promised for the tens of thousands of other Canadians saddled with a conviction for the possession of less than 30 grams of cannabis.

There is no evidence that tough enforcement of the drug laws on personal possession leads to lower levels of drug use, according to the UK government’s first evidence-based study. Examining international drug laws, the groundbreaking Home Office document brings to an end 40 years of almost unbroken official political rhetoric that only harsher penalties can tackle the problem caused by the likes of heroin, cocaine or cannabis. It is signed off by the Conservative home secretary, Theresa May, and the Liberal Democrat minister Norman Baker. (See also: Government’s drug laws survey was suppressed, Lib Dem minister says)

Black Britons are increasingly likely to be stopped and searched by police compared with white people, according to shocking new figures that challenge Theresa May’s attempt to reform the controversial power. The most authoritative analysis of the data since the Stephen Lawrenceinquiry nearly 20 years ago found that black Britons are now nine times more likely to be stopped and searched for drugs than white people, despite using illegal substances at a lower rate. In 2014, when home secretary, May announced measures to make stop and search less biased, describing it as “unfair, especially to young black men”. But instead, the study The Colour of Injustice: ‘Race’, drugs and law enforcement in England and Wales found that its use has become more discriminatory.

A “radically innovative” new analysis of global drug policies has laid bare the full impact repressive drug laws and their implementation have on millions of people worldwide, civil society groups behind its creation have said. The Global Drug Policy Index (GDPI), developed by the Harm Reduction Consortium (HRC) ranks countries on their drug policies against a series of indicators related to health, development, and human rights. It is the first tool of its kind to document, measure, and compare countries’ drug policies, and their implementation, across the world. And the results of the first index have underlined how even the best-ranked countries are falling dramatically short in aligning policies and their implementation with UN principles of human rights, health, and development.

El exministro del Interior Jorge Larrañaga tenía el anhelo de acceder a las direcciones de los clubes cannábicos, que son una de las tres vías para adquirir marihuana con fines recreativos que habilitó la ley de control y regulación; las otras dos son la compra en farmacias y el autocultivo. El dirigente del Partido Nacional fallecido en mayo de 2021 tenía la sospecha de que una parte de la producción de los clubes se volcaba al mercado ilegal y que incluso una fracción se comercializaba en Brasil. El titular de la Secretaría Nacional de Drogas (SND), Daniel Radío, siempre fue contrario a la iniciativa, pero no por considerar que las autoridades no deben tener acceso a las direcciones, sino porque antes de entregarlas debía “salvaguardar la identidad de los usuarios”.