El Informe de la Comisión Global de Política de Drogas no busca cambiar las Convenciones de Naciones Unidas sino abrir un debate sobre la conveniencia de seguir manteniendo los supuestos conceptuales y ciertas políticas que se derivan de sus soportes teóricos. No tiene el Informe una pretensión maximalista y reúne tanto principios como recomendaciones que se mueven en un escenario pragmático de cambios razonables. Es evidente que hay temas no abordados en profundidad, sobre todo los relacionados con la producción de materia prima para su procesamiento, el tráfico, las violencias que se asocian a este y muchos otros elementos que intervienen en el agravamiento de los problemas relacionados con las drogas ilegales.

Candi CdeBaca voted to legalize the free sale of marijuana in Colorado four years ago because she thought it would be good for her Denver neighborhood. She hoped that when Colorado became the first state in the nation to legalize the sale of recreational marijuana in 2014 it would not only keep people out of court, but also open up a legitimate means of earning a living. Today she would vote differently. “We have just swapped one kind of drug dealer for another,” said CdeBaca. All legalization has done is open the door to a takeover by corporate interests.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio supports Governor Andrew Cuomo's pledge to legalize recreational marijuana, but he doesn't want the the market to be overrun by big corporations when cannabis prohibition is repealed. "We have an industry that is just licking its chops, waiting to come in and corporatize marijuana—to do exactly what the tobacco industry did with cigarettes, to do exactly what the pharmaceutical industry did with things like oxycontin. What we need [to do] is legalize marijuana without corporatized marijuana," Mayor De Blasio told Bill Maher. To prevent that from happening, the mayor wants to hand the market over to former victims of cannabis prohibition—people who were arrested and imprisoned for marijuana-related offsenses.

Oakland has become the second city in the US to decriminalize magic mushrooms and other psychedelics, with a policy that activists hope will spark a national legalization movement. The measure comes after voters in Denver approved a similar ballot initiative to decriminalize psilocybin, which supporters say can help treat depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions. The Oakland measuredecriminalizes adult use of psychoactive plants and fungi, including mushrooms, cacti, iboga and ayahuasca. Decriminalization means the city is effectively directing law enforcement not to investigate or prosecute people for the use, sale or distribution of these plants and fungi. The resolution cited research linking psychedelics and natural hallucinogens to a range of mental health benefits.

Coca fumigations started in Colombia in the early 1990s and intensified during “Plan Colombia,” a $10 billion U.S. campaign that ran from 2000 to 2015 and was meant to tackle Colombia’s armed leftist insurgents and the drug trade that funds them. During those 25 years, American-funded and -piloted planes sprayed herbicides over more than 4 million acres of land in coca-growing regions in an effort to stamp out the drug supply. “Plan Colombia” officially ended in 2015, when the Colombian government reached a historic peace agreement with the country’s largest leftist guerrilla organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. But two decades later, the threat of fumigation is back—and could depend on the U.S. election.

Every weekday morning, mental health clinician Carleigh Sailon turns on her police radio in downtown Denver and finds out who she can help next. She, along with a paramedic, jump in a repurposed city van, stripped of its blue lights and official insignia, and respond to 911 calls for people experiencing mental health crises, homelessness or drug addiction. Beginning this month, Denver’s emergency dispatch is sending social workers and health professionals, rather than police officers, to handle nonviolent situations. “If the police aren’t needed, let’s leave them out completely,” said Sailon, program manager for criminal justice services at the Mental Health Center for Denver. (See also: Addiction specialist: What defunding the police could mean for America’s drug epidemic)

Cannabis companies are positioning themselves for the greater likelihood that federal cannabis restrictions will be loosened significantly. Sales are already booming. Cannabis sales hit $20 billion last year — a 50 percent jump over 2019. Legalization continues to spread across the country, with more than one-third of Americans now living in states where marijuana is fully legal. “There's no stopping the industry now,” said Andrew Kline, who recently joined the law firm Perkins Coie after serving as public policy director for the National Cannabis Industry Association. “The bigger players are going to be interested in acquiring smaller companies and becoming multi-state operators or expanding their footprint in different states.”

Fentanyl testing strips as well as the opioid-reversal drug naloxone (commonly known as Narcan) are becoming the sine qua non of the party scene, distributed everywhere cultural denizens hang out: nightclubs, art galleries, downtown streetwear stores, even housewarming parties in Brooklyn. Fentanyl has turned into an indiscriminate spectre in the club scene. The deadly synthetic opioid has been flooding the street market as dealers bulk out recreational drugs like cocaine and heroin with fentanyl. No one can say exactly why it has become so common. Many clubbers now see recreational drug use akin to a game of Russian roulette, and as nightclubs reopened this year, warnings spread through social media about bad batches causing accidental overdoses in these communities.

Pascual Restrepo ha realizado varias investigaciones sobre la economía ilegal y los costos que ha tenido que pagar el país en el marco de la denominada lucha contra las drogas. La idea de fondo es tratar de entender por qué, a pesar de la gran cantidad de recursos invertidos, esta ha sido tan ineficiente. El experto economista explica cuáles pueden ser las razones del “fracaso parcial” del Plan Colombia y cuál debería ser la estrategia para reorientar el apoyo financiero internacional en un escenario de posconflicto. (Véase también: Hacia la segunda fase del Plan Colombia)

El líder de los demócratas en el Senado de EE.UU., Chuck Schumer, se posicionó a favor de “legalizar” el cannabis y argumentó que esa medida ayudará a traer justicia a las minorías afroamericana e hispana, encarceladas de forma desproporcionada por la posesión de esa sustancia. Schumer es uno de los pocos líderes políticos de EE.UU. que se ha pronunciado a favor de despenalizar la marihuana, cuyo consumo recreativo es legal en 18 de los 50 estados del país mientras que otros 37 permiten el uso médico, aunque a nivel federal se mantiene la prohibición. Desde hace meses, Schumer lleva trabajando junto a los senadores Cory Booker y Ron Wyden en una gran reforma de las leyes federales que rigen la marihuana y podrían presentarla formalmente en el Congreso en las próximas semanas.

“Al apoyar las fumigaciones, respalda implícitamente el legado dañino de Trump en Colombia”, dicen 150 expertos en drogas, a través de una carta enviada al presidente de Estados Unidos. Después de que el Ministerio de Justicia presentara el borrador de decreto para retomar las aspersiones aéreas con glifosato con el fin de erradicar cultivos de coca, múltiples organizaciones nacionales e internacionales se han pronunciado para rechazar esta decisión. Esta vez, a través de una carta, 150 académicos y académicas de Colombia y múltiples países le piden al presidente de los Estado Unidos, Joe Biden, que reconsidere el apoyo dado a esta medida tomada por el gobierno de Iván Duque. (Véase también: Siete relatores de la ONU para DD.HH. piden a Duque rechazar fumigación con glifosato)

El juez de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de Brooklyn Gustin Reichbach, enfermo de cáncer de páncreas desde hace tres años, ha tenido la valentía de escribir en un artículo de opinión en el diario de The New York Times que usa la marihuana para paliar los efectos secundarios del tratamiento de quimioterapia que recibe; como son las naúseas, los vómitos y la falta de apetito. Un grito silencioso que tiene como fin que se apruebe el cannabis para uso médico en el Estado de Nueva York, una carta espontánea de un problema de muchos.

San Francisco lost a total of 699 people to overdoses last year, a 59% rise from 2019, according to new data released by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. That number is more than three times the amount of people that died of COVID-19 in the city during the same period. It also represents 699 sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, friends and loved ones felled by an epidemic that the city has been unable to control. “It didn’t have to happen,” sighed Kristen Marshall, director of the Drug Overdose Prevention and Education Project, which manages the city’s overdose response. “The root of these overdose deaths in San Francisco is homelessness, poverty and racism that has been institutionalized throughout our systems of care.”

On 4/20, cannabis consumers across the United States will light one up in celebration of cannabis culture. In 10 states and counting, that celebration is perfectly legal. But as the annual ritual transitions from grassroots activism to commercialized indulgence, advocates want to remind consumers that the social justice work isn’t over just yet. On April 21, a coalition of justice and reform-minded organizations are launching what they’re calling the 421 For All campaign with a fundraiser designed to spotlight the ongoing need for comprehensive cannabis reform, especially in those states that have legalized but have yet to fulfill promises of “righting the wrongs of the drug war.” (See also: How the cannabis industry defeated legalization in New York)

As we approach the 75th anniversary of marijuana prohibition in the United States on October 1, it is important to remember why marijuana was deemed illicit in the first place, and why we as Americans must open our eyes to the insidious strategy behind 75 years of failed policy and ruined lives: "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."- Harry Anslinger, first US Drug Czar.

Thanks to the most lenient policies in California for recreational marijuana, Santa Barbara county is now the state’s undisputed capital of legal cannabis, boasting more acres than each of the the storied Emerald Triangle counties of Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino. Santa Barbara voters overwhelmingly backed California’s legalisation of recreational marijuana in 2016, with hopes that the cannabis boom would bring tax revenue and new jobs to the county. The transformation has been fast and furious. Santa Barbara county is now home to around a third of all cultivation licenses issued in California, despite making up only 1.8% of the state’s land, with some megafarms stretching over dozens of acres.

Data coming out of Washington and Colorado suggest that those states' legalization experiments, which began in earnest in 2014, are not causing any spike in use among teenagers. Teen marijuana use in Colorado decreased during 2014 and 2015, the most recent time period included in federal surveys. A separate survey run by the state showed rates of use among teenagers flat from 2013 to 2015, and down since 2011. A state-run survey of 37,000 middle and high school students in Washington state finds that marijuana legalization there has had no effect on youngsters' propensity to use the drug. The Washington State Healthy Youth Survey found that the 2016 rate of marijuana use was basically unchanged since 2012.

Ten years ago this week, Colorado voters approved Amendment 64, making the state among the first two in the nation (along with Washington) to legalize the use and possession of cannabis, a.k.a. marijuana, for recreational purposes. Today, the once-underground endeavor is a $2 billion per year industry in Colorado, and research on its chemical makeup, health benefits and risks is flourishing at institutions around the country. "Before, research focused almost exclusively on the harms because it was only thought of as an illegal substance," said Angela Bryan, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at CU Boulder whose team studies the health impacts of cannabis. "Now we can focus on the full continuum."

A World Health Organization meeting could determine the future of kratom, a widely available herbal supplement some tout as an alternative to opioid painkillers. Kratom, a plant indigenous to Southeast Asia, produces narcotic-like effects. Advocates say the substance is a promising replacement for opioids that could help wean people addicted to those drugs, which killed nearly 70,000 people in the U.S. in 2020. The WHO's drug dependence committee will conduct a "pre-review" of kratom. Kratom advocates suggest Washington a attempts to end run the federal regulatory process by taking the international route to finish what it could not accomplish domestically. (See also: Kratom: the creation of a threat: A policy commentary on the WHO pre-review of kratom)