Globally nearly 1 in 5 people who inject drugs are living with  HIV and over a third  live with Hepatitis C  Wednesday, November 22, 2023 (Geneva, Switzerland)—Ahead of this year´s World AIDS Day, a new report published by the Global Commission on Drug Policy has sent a timely reminder that talk of ending the HIV (and hepatitis) epidemics is premature unless there are significant reforms to drug policies that continue to discriminate against and criminalise the community of people who use drugs (PWUD) which  results in them being unable to access prevention, diagnostics, tr ..read more

The Global Commission on Drug Policy expresses its deep dismay over Singapore’s decision to continue to execute persons convicted on charges of drug trafficking. This week, in Singapore, two executions for drug-related offences are scheduled to take place. The two victims are: Mohd Aziz bin Hussain, a 56-year-old Singaporean Malay man, convicted in 2018 of trafficking approximately fifty (50) grams of diamorphine (heroin); and Saridewi Djamani, a 45-year-old Singaporean woman convicted for possession of approximately thirty (30) grams of diamorphine (heroin) for the purposes of trafficking. It ..read more

We the Global Commission on Drug Policy are gathered today, 6 July, in Edinburgh, Scotland for our annual plenary meeting. We are aware of the initiative being taken by the United States to launch a Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats. We acknowledge that an unconscionable number of people are dying from the consumption of synthetic drugs available through illegal channels. We would hope, however, that what is proposed by the new Coalition is not based on the traditional prohibitionist approaches to drug control which have caused tremendous harm to people for decades and have pr ..read more

June 26 is a day dedicated to raising awareness about the consequences of repressive drug policies and practices on people across the globe. There is growing recognition around the world that drug prohibition has failed to achieve its goals of promoting the “health and the wellbeing of humanity”. History has repeatedly demonstrated that punitive drug policies systematically lead to human rights violations and abuses: discriminatory police checks targeting already marginalized communities, disproportionate sentencing, arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, torture, and even the death pena ..read more

By Chair Helen Clark (Rt.Hon.) of the Global Commission on Drug Policy The Economist usually publishes excellent, robust articles on drug policy. But in its 1 December issue, which somewhat ironically is World AIDS Day, was an opinion piece titled ‘America’s syringe exchanges might be killing drug users’. The unnamed author of the piece called on public health experts to update their thinking based on the ‘fresh evidence’ from a single piece of literature published in June this year. The single study the author relied on is an outlier amongst decades of international scientific evidence showin ..read more

Por Juan Manuel Santos Leer la entrevista completa en el sitio de El Tiempo El expresidente plantea que se deberían adoptar políticas diferentes al prohibicionismo. El año comienza con la expectativa de varias guerras en diferentes lugares del mundo, pero hay una que parece irremediablemente perdida: la guerra contra la producción y el consumo de drogas. Es evidente que el prohibicionismo ha fracasado y que los países que lo mantienen solo provocan un incremento de la producción, un incalculable enriquecimiento del narcotráfico y una extensión de la corrupción. Y lo que es peor, genera un elev ..read more

By Richard Branson Read the op-ed on Virgin.com In the past, International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (June 26) has often been an opportunity for proponents of the failed war on drugs to celebrate arrests and showcase vast amounts of drugs seized from cartels and their traffickers – as if any of these actions had any meaningful impact on supply and demand in a global illicit trade estimated to turn over more than $300 billion annually. They don’t. More than 50 years after US President Nixon turned his attention to narcotics and declared drug use “public enemy number one”, t ..read more

By Geoff Gallop https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Regional-Drive-Cannabis.mp3 ..read more

By Akiko Uehara Read the article on SwissInfo The World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference ended with an unexpectedly hefty package of six trade agreements. Not everyone is rejoicing, however. Hailed as a success, the WTO agreement to waive partial patents for Covid-19 vaccines is attracting criticism both from NGOs and from industry experts. They argue it goes either too far or not far enough. “The decision is a disservice to the scientists who left no stone unturned and undermines manufacturing partnerships on every continent. The single biggest factor affecting vaccine scarcity ..read more

Por Gabriela Sotomayor Leer el análisis completo en el sitio de Proceso GINEBRA (apro).-La Comisión Global de Políticas de Drogas de la que son miembros 14 expresidentes, entre ellos el mexicano Ernesto Zedillo, primeros ministros y cuatro premios Nobel, instó a regular todas las drogas, a que se reformen las convenciones de las Naciones Unidas de control de drogas y que los aspectos sanitarios clave de la política de drogas dejen de ser responsabilidad de la Oficina de las Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito (UNODC) y sean asignados a la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS). La Comi ..read more