The legalization of cannabis in Canada just had its third anniversary, which means it's time for the federal government to review and possibly tweak the policy. In some areas, the reviews are positive. Legalization has resulted in the emergence of a multibillion-dollar industry, new jobs and tax revenue. There have also been fewer cannabis-related drug convictions among young people. But some health experts are concerned that the rapid growth of the industry combined with a lack of recent data about potential public health impacts means we could be missing some warning signs. Many of the concerns around legalized cannabis — including potential increased cases of cannabis-induced psychosis and schizophrenia, and driving under the influence of drugs — have not materialized.

There may come a day when Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is brought before the International Criminal Court to answer questions about his “war on drugs.” We might have moved one step closer to that end after UN human rights experts this month called on the United Nations to launch an independent investigation into Duterte’s signature policy. But amid the focus on the headlines of drug wars – not just in the Philippines but in Asia more broadly – it is also worth asking broader questions about their effectiveness.  In a report published in February, “10 years of drug policy in Asia: How far have we come?”, the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) basically concluded that there was not a whole lot to show for these policies.

Proposition 64, California’s 2016 landmark cannabis initiative, sold voters on the promise a legal market would cripple the drug’s outlaw trade, with its associated violence and environmental wreckage. Instead, the law triggered a surge in illegal cannabis on a scale California has never before witnessed. Criminal enterprises operate with near impunity, leasing private land and rapidly building out complexes of as many as 100 greenhouses. Police are overwhelmed, able to raid only a fraction of the farms, and even those are often back in business in days. The raids rip out plants and snare low-wage laborers while those responsible, some operating with money from overseas, remain untouched by the law, hidden behind straw buyers and fake names on leases. Labor exploitation is common, and conditions are sometimes lethal.

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 Observatory describe in detail the history of international control and how cannabis was included in the current UN drug control system. Cannabis was condemned by the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs as a psychoactive drug with “particularly dangerous properties” and hardly any therapeutic value.

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Résumé en français (PDF)
Download the press release (PDF)

In December, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin (TL), a neighborhood which has long been home to some of the most disenfranchised people in the city. At a news conference with police officers lined up behind her, Breed, a Democrat, unleashed a “tough on crime” tirade that was positively Reaganesque. “Without evidence, officials frame unhoused people as dangerous to housed people, particularly their children,” stated the California ACLU in its October 2021 report, The Legal War Against Unhoused People. “They are condemned as a threat to public safety, and a form of blight that needs to be swept up, disappeared, and excluded from places where housed people gather.”

Black people with no history of criminal convictions have been three times more likely to be arrested by Toronto police for possession of small amounts of marijuana than white people with similar backgrounds. They’ve also been more likely to be detained for bail, the data shows. The disparity is largely due to targeting of Black people by Toronto police, according to criminologists and defence lawyers interviewed by the Star, who note that surveys show little difference in marijuana use between Black and white people. Anthony Morgan, a human rights lawyer and community activist, called the statistics “another example of the failed war on drugs.”

Shut down, Mayor John Tory told marijuana shop owners, or face “whatever enforcement mechanisms” the city can muster to extinguish the “wildfire” spread of pot shops across Toronto. Almost a year and many raids, seizures, arrests and court dates later, the federal government is poised to clear the legal haze as early as next week. Police, meanwhile, continue playing whack-a-mole with storefront pot vendors numbering, at the moment, 52. Depending on who you talk to, Toronto’s law-and-order approach has been either a qualified success and victory for safe neighbourhoods, or a hypocritical, costly attack on pot pioneers to enable a corporate takeover of their lucrative industry.

There is no evidence that tough policies deter young people from using cannabis, a study has found. Analysing data about cannabis use among more than 100,000 teenagers in 38 countries, including the UK, USA, Russia, France, Germany and Canada, the University of Kent study found no association between more liberal policies on cannabis use and higher rates of teenage cannabis use. “My new study joins several others which show no evidence of a link between tougher penalties and lower cannabis use,” said Prof Alex Stevens, from the University of Kent’s school for social policy, sociology and social research.

Tough anti-drug enforcement is making innocent citizens and children homeless, according to ombudsmen in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. Each year ‘dozens’ of family members find themselves on the streets because a member of the household has been discovered in possession of drugs or linked with criminality. Local mayors have the power to immediately close down a building if drugs are found there, but according to ombudsmen this can mean completely innocent family members and children losing their rental contracts and being unfairly discredited. Although buildings are typically only closed for a few months, the incident can often mean that people lose their housing contracts for good.

La nécessité d’inscrire les noms des personnes poursuives pour trafic de cannabis dans les zones du Nord sur la liste des bénéficiaires de la grâce royale est une revendication du Parti de l’authenticité et de la modernité (PAM) et de l’Istiqlal (PI). Les groupes parlementaires de ces deux formations politiques ont ainsi réitéré cette demande, à en croire Hespress. Le parti de la Balance a alerté sur le fait que les détenus dans ces affaires «ne bénéficient pas de la grâce comme d’autres prisonniers», notant qu’il existe «des crimes plus abjects et dont les auteurs bénéficient de l’amnistie». (Lire aussi: Le nombre d’affaires liées à la drogue explose)

Luego de una puja entre el Instituto de Regulación y Control del Cannabis (Ircca) y el Ministerio del Interior de Uruguay por la información relativa a la dirección de los clubes cannábicos registrados, el consejo ejecutivo de la Unidad Reguladora y de Control de Datos Personales (Urcdp) se expidió sobre el tema. En la resolución, a la que tuvo accedo El País, la Urcdp concluyó que el Ministerio del Interior, previo consentimiento del titular del dato o si se asegura su debida anonimización, podrá acceder al domicilio de los clubes cannábicos. “La información de la existencia o no de un club cannábico o de un autocultivo en determinado domicilio puede otorgarse, siempre que se brinde debidamente anonimizada”, explica el dictamen.

A court significantly reduced 30-year jail terms for three Tunisians convicted of smoking cannabis, in a case that sparked debate in the country about repressive drug laws. The appeals court in Kef, in northwestern Tunisia, sentenced two of the men to one year in prison and the third to two years, their lawyers said. The three had been found guilty on January 20 of organised consumption of cannabis in a public space. They had shared a joint in a disused locker room after a football match between friends in a former stadium in the marginalised rural area of Tunisia, their defence team said. In response to the outcry, politicians have called for the law to be relaxed, and several bills are being drafted, one of them aiming to legalise the production and sale of cannabis.

The United States’ anti-drug policy in Latin America needs to change if Washington is to effectively combat a problem worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, a U.S. congressional commission will say in a bipartisan report. The 117-page report of the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission urges “smarter” interagency policies led by the U.S. State Department to reduce the supply of dangerous drugs. It also calls on authorities to combat money laundering by blocking the flow of illicit funds using cryptocurrencies and complex cross-border financial transactions. It is the result of 18 months of research into the “war on drugs” that has cost billions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars without ending high rates of violence and corruption in much of the western hemisphere.

Britain’s drug laws are racist and cause “high levels of mental health harm” among black people, a former No 10 race adviser has said. Simon Woolley said drugs legislation introduced 50 years ago had failed to cut the use, supply and harms associated with illegal drugs, and instead was used “as a tool of systemic racism”. Despite white people reporting higher rates of drug consumption, black people were more likely to be stopped and searched for suspected drug possession and were more likely to be arrested, charged and imprisoned for drug offences, he said. (See BMJ: Our drug laws are racist, and doctors must speak out—an essay by Simon Woolley)

O Brasil não está em guerra, certo? Errado. Muito errado. Uma guerra invisível para a maior parte da sociedade, ignorada pela maioria do povo brasileiro, está em curso. Uma guerra que custou, em um único ano, e apenas para os estados do Rio de Janeiro e de São Paulo, R$ 5,2 bilhões. Esse foi o valor drenado do orçamento dos dois estados para matar, processar e encarcerar sobretudo jovens negros e moradores das favelas e periferias envolvidos no varejo de drogas ilícitas. Em qualquer guerra, como sabemos, há sempre os chamados “danos colaterais”; neste caso, são as vítimas das balas perdidas, que nunca erram o alvo. Atingem sempre moradores de favelas e periferias. (Veja mais: Drogas: quanto custa proibir)

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’, expressing the shared drug policy principles of all UN organisations and committing them to speak with one voice. The CEB is the highest-level coordination forum of the UN system, convening biannual meetings of the heads of all UN agencies, programmes and related institutions, chaired by the UN Secretary General. 

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Una inédita condena a 30 años de cárcel para tres jóvenes tunecinos por posesión y consumo de cannabis ha desatado la fuerte polémica en el país y abierto un insólito canal de entendimiento entre la sociedad civil y la clase política, que por un instante han aparcado la crispación que domina el país para defender la enmienda de la ley de estupefacientes. Una corte de apelación se pronunciará este martes sobre la sentencia, emitida el 20 de enero por un tribunal de la provincia del Kef, 200 kilómetros al oeste de la capital, que condenó a los jóvenes a la pena máxima por haber consumido "zatla" (cannabis en dialecto tunecino) en un establecimiento deportivo, considerado un espacio público y, por tanto, un agravante.

Sentencia relevante en torno al cannabis. El juzgado de lo contencioso administrativo nº5 de Murcia ha dictado una sentencia, solo recurrible ante el Tribunal Constitucional, por la que establece que el Ayuntamiento de Yecla no tiene competencias para tramitar sanciones por esta cuestión. Esto abre la puerta a anular miles de multas por tenencia de droga en la vía pública en los últimos cuatro años impuestas por los ayuntamientos. El caso atañe a una multa concreta –de 10.401 euros por reiteración en posesión de cannabis en la calle– puesta a un residente de esta localidad murciana, pero el abogado que ha llevado el juicio, Francisco Azorín, explica que va mucho más allá.

Una sentencia del Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Cataluña (TSJC) ha anulado la regulación del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona sobre las asociaciones cannábicas y el tribunal prohíbe ahora a estos espacios“promover el consumo, la venta y el cultivo” de cannabis por lo que el futuro de estos clubs ha quedado en el aire. El tribunal ha concluido que el Consistorio no es competente para regular estos clubs ya que considera que son “espacios susceptibles de comisión de delitos” y, por tanto, entran dentro de la materia penal y la actuación policial. Con esta sentencia en la mano y sin posibilidad de recurso, el equipo de gobierno ha preguntado a los servicios jurídicos municipales cuál debe ser la estrategia a seguir.

El movimiento cannábico en España ha salido en tromba en las redes sociales a pedir el indulto para uno de sus referentes, Albert Tió, que en breve deberá entrar en prisión para cumplir una condena de 5 años por una intervención de marihuana que hicieron en 2014 en la asociación de usuarios de la que era secretario en Barcelona. Como presidente de la Federación de Asociaciones Cannábicas Autorreguladas de Catalunya (Fedcac), Tió fue uno de los promotores de la iniciativa popular que dio origen a la ley de clubes de cannabis que aprobó el Parlamento catalán en 2017, declarada posteriormente inconstitucional por invasión de competencias estatales. (Véase también: El activista cannábico condenado a cinco años que pide el indulto)