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21. The Negative Impact of Drug Control on Public Health: the global crisis of avoidable pain

Author:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Abstract:
Ninety-two percent of the world’s supply of morphine is consumed by just 17 percent of the global population, with consumption primarily concentrated in the global north and 75 percent of the world’s population does not have access to any pain relieving drugs. The reasons for this have little to do with issues of cost or scarcity of supplies- and everything to do with with the prohibition and repressive stand the world has taken on drugs. This Global Commission report explores the current crisis related to the lack of access to controlled medicines and makes concrete policy recommendations to Member States and UN agencies on ways to improve these conditions. This report is available in English, Spanish, Russian, French and Arabic.
Topic:
Health, War on Drugs, Drugs, Public Health, and Medicine
Political Geography:
Global Focus

22. Taking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies That Work

Author:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Abstract:
The Commission’s 2014 report broke ground by advancing and globalizing the debate over drug control measures and its alternatives. Anticipating the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on drugs (UNGASS), the report provides clear-cut pathways for Member States. The five recommendations for more effective drug policies include: putting health and community safety first; ensuring equitable access to controlled medicines; ending the criminalization of people who use or possess drugs; promoting alternatives to incarceration for low-level participants in illicit drug markets, including cultivators; and encouraging policy innovations such as legally regulated markets, beginning with, but not limited to cannabis, coca leaf and certain other psychoactive substances. Never had so many former world leaders spoken out in support of legal, regulation of currently illicit drugs.
Topic:
Crime, War on Drugs, Regulation, Drugs, Public Health, and Medicine
Political Geography:
Global Focus

23. Drugs, (dis)order and agrarian change: the political economy of drugs and its relevance to international drug policy

Author:
Jonathan Goodhand
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
Abstract:
In May 2014 the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) hosted a workshop, co-funded by NOREF and Christian Aid, designed to facilitate dialogue between scholars working on the political economy of drugs, conflict and development in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The workshop explored how political economy perspectives, derived from long-term empirical research on drugs-affected regions, can enhance understanding of, and policy responses to, drug production and trafficking. This approach, rather than seeing drugs as “exceptional” and “criminal”, seeks to situate the role of illicit economies within broader processes of state formation and agrarian change. Contributions to the workshop revealed the highly differentiated and context-specific dynamics of drug economies, and how different configurations of institutions and security markets can lead to different kinds of relationships between drugs, statebuilding, agrarian change and development. This research does not lend itself to simple policy narratives or prescriptions, but it does suggest that there can be no universal and de-contextualised solutions to “the drug problem”. Dogmatic and irreconcilable positions, adopted by both those advocating harsher prohibition and those arguing for blanket decriminalisation, fail to reflect sufficiently on the impacts such policies will have on drug-producing countries. A more grounded, comparative perspective is urgently needed in an arena where policies are often anything but evidence based and where data are patchy or politicised. Counter-narcotic (CN) strategies, based on a reification of the perceived linkages between drugs, instability and state fragility, often provide only a partial, and in some cases deeply misleading, insight into the economic and political orders that emerge around drug production. Political economy provides a corrective to these deeply entrenched biases and blind spots, by incorporating an analysis of aspects of drug economies and counter narcotics (CN) strategies that are frequently treated as residual or circumvented, including the varying levels and types of violence surrounding drug economies; the complex motives of those involved in drug production and trafficking; the linkages between licit and illicit commodities in processes of agrarian transformation; the potential developmental outcomes of drugs economies; the relationship between illicit economies and differing configurations of authority and rule; and a socially differentiated account of who gains and who loses from counter-narcotics policies. In doing so, political economy approaches provide a powerful analytical lens for developing a more contextually attuned public policy on drugs.
Topic:
Agriculture, Political Economy, and Drugs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

24. The Negative Impact of the War on Drugs on Public Health: The Hidden Hepatitis C Epidemic

Author:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Publication Date:
05-2013
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Abstract:
The hepatitis C epidemic fueled by the “war on drugs” is sweeping amongst injecting drug users around the world, yet continues to be largely ignored. Access to preventive services is far too low and diagnosis and treatment are too expensive and inaccessible for most people in need. The report provides an overview of the hepatitis C virus, while exploring how the ‘war on drugs’ and repressive drug policies are failing to drive transmission down. Hepatitis C is one of the harms caused by repressive drug policies, yet it s both preventable and curable when public health is the focus.
Topic:
Health, War on Drugs, Infectious Diseases, Drugs, and Public Health
Political Geography:
Global Focus

25. The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic

Author:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Abstract:
The global “war on drugs” is driving the HIV/AIDS pandemic among people who use drugs, although research has shown that repressive law enforcement forces users away from public health services and into hidden environments where HIV risk becomes markedly elevated. An assessments of the impacts concluded that many nations and international organizations tasked with reducing the drug problem have actually contributed to a worsening of community health and safety. The time for leadership is now.
Topic:
HIV/AIDS, Health, War on Drugs, and Drugs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

26. War on Drugs

Author:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Abstract:
The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the US government's war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed. In this seminal report, the Global Commission on Drug Policy calls on global leaders to join an open discussion on drug policy reform.
Topic:
War on Drugs, Public Policy, and Drugs
Political Geography:
United States and Global Focus

27. Treatment or Torture? Applying International Human Rights Standards to Drug Detention Centers

Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
People identified as drug users in many countries are confined to abusive locked detention centers for months or even years. Such detention centers are supposedly mandated to treat and "rehabilitate" drug users, but the "treatment" they receive in some cases amounts to torture or other cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment. In Treatment or Torture? Applying International Human Rights Standards to Drug Detention Centers, legal experts review common forms of abuse in drug detention centers and show how these practices in many cases are in violation of basic human rights treaties widely ratified by most nations worldwide. International health and drug-control agencies—including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, UNAIDS, and the World Health Organization—all endorse comprehensive, evidence-based drug dependence treatment services. Yet drug detention centers rarely provide treatment that meets these standards. Depending on the country, so-called rehabilitation consists of a regime of military drills, forced labor, psychological and moral re-education, and shackling, caning, and beating. Treatment or Torture? comes in advance of the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking and the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture—both on June 26, 2011. The report was published by the Campaign to Stop Torture in Health Care, a coalition led by the Open Society Foundations, and featured legal analysis by Human Rights Watch, Harm Reduction International, and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.
Topic:
Health, Human Rights, International Law, War on Drugs, Health Care Policy, Criminal Justice, Drugs, and Public Health
Political Geography:
Global Focus

28. At What Cost? HIV and Human Rights Consequences of the Global "War on Drugs"

Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
A decade after governments worldwide pledged to achieve a "drug-free world," there is little evidence that the supply or demand of illicit drugs has been reduced. Instead, aggressive drug control policies have led to increased incarceration for minor offenses, human rights violations, and disease. This book examines the descent of the global war on drugs into a war on people who use drugs. From Puerto Rico to Phnom Penh, Manipur to Moscow, the scars of this war are carried on the bodies and minds of drug users, their families, and the health and service providers who work with them.
Topic:
Health, War on Drugs, and Drugs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

29. Impact of Patents on Access to HIV/AIDS Drugs in Developing Countries

Author:
Joan-Ramon Borrell and Jayashree Watal
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
This paper uses sales data on HIV/AIDS drugs in a sample of 34 low and middle income countries between 1995 and 1999 to assess empirically the impact of patents on unsubsidized access to a new drug therapy. There can be two possible effects of patents on access to new drugs in developing countries. On the one hand, patents may constrain access to new drugs through less competition and higher prices. On the other hand, patents may promote access to new therapy by encouraging innovators to launch new drugs in low and middle-income countries soon after introducing them in high-income countries. The net effect is theoretically ambiguous and, therefore, it is an empirical matter to evaluate. Our main finding is that patent rights do have a negative effect on unsubsidized access to HIV/AIDS drugs. Between 1995 and 1999, switching all HIV/AIDS drugs from a patent regime to a no patent regime would have actually increased access to therapy at least by 30%. However, we also find that the negative impact of patents on access differs strongly over time, and across countries with different income levels. Patents hurt access most in the early period from the date the drug is launched in the US, and in the countries of our sample with the relatively higher per capita income levels.
Topic:
HIV/AIDS, Health, Developing World, Drugs, and Patents
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America