Mandatory death penalty for drugs challenged in India (Lawyers Collective)

June 23, Mumbai: The Bombay High Court admitted a petition challenging the constitutionality of Section 31 A of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS Act) that prescribes a mandatory death sentence for certain drug offences upon subsequent conviction. One of the most stringent laws in the country, the NDPS Act incorporated a mandatory death penalty in 1989 amidst heightened paranoia around drugs. Acknowledging the constitutional import of the issue, the Court sent notices to the Union of India and the Attorney General and assigned the matter for arguments.

In 2008, two persons were sentenced to death under Section 31A NDPS Act by Courts in Mumbai and Ahmadabad, respectively. Today, the Bombay High Court stayed the confirmation and appeal of the case before it, pending adjudication of the constitutional challenge.

The Indian Harm Reduction Network (IHRN), a registered consortium of NGOs working for humane drug policies, challenged the vires of Section 31 A NDPS Act calling it – arbitrary, disproportionate and excessive, which exacerbates the stigma and prejudice surrounding drugs as well as demonizes people involved with drugs including persons who use drugs.

Appearing for the IHRN, Anand Grover, Advocate drew the Court’s attention to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Mithu v. State of Punjab, (1983) 2 SCC 277 where a mandatory death sentence imposed upon persons convicted for murder while serving life imprisonment under Section 303 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 was declared unconstitutional.

Conceived and drafted by the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit, the petition contends that a mandatory death sentence is unlawful as it precludes judicial discretion, prevents individualized sentencing and denies the accused the opportunity to be heard on the question of sentence. These procedural requirements cannot be eliminated as they are important safeguards against arbitrariness in the criminal justice system.

Across the world, Courts have held that mandatory death sentences constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. In prescribing death for drug offences, India is joined by Brunei-Darussalam, Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Laos, Malaysia, Oman, Singapore, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The commitment of some of these States to democratic principles and human rights standards is doubtful.

The petition also questions the appropriateness of a death sentence for drug trafficking, which does not constitute the “most serious crime” in international human rights law. In India, life imprisonment is the norm and death the exception for the offence of murder. But for drug crimes, which do not involve the taking of life, death is the norm, without any exception.

The matter is kept peremptorily for arguments on 16th September 2010.  A copy of the petition and the order is available at www.lawyerscollective.org

New UN drugs tsar must be a leader on human rights, Damon Barrett, Guardian Comment is Free, June 24

China’s likely execution of drug dealers this week should inspire UN to choose a drugs tsar who will avoid complicity in abuses

This weekend China will most likely execute dozens of people and, contrary to standard practice, it will make sure everyone knows about it. Why? Because once again it is time to mark the UN’s international day against drugs – 26 June. Last year I predicted that China would carry out executions on 26 June and, sure enough, at least 20 were put to death. It was not difficult to predict. The day has served as a pretext for executions in China for many years with, as many as 50 people being executed to mark the day in some years.

In response to concerns about the death penalty, we often hear that we must respect the laws of foreign states and that this is none of our business. On 26 June 2008, however, two Nigerians were executed by firing squad for drug offences in Indonesia. They had been held in an EU/US-funded supermax prison intended for terrorists, but housing mostly drug offenders – many on death row. This raised serious concerns about where international funding is going in the so-called “war on drugs”.

In 2004, Tan Xiaolin (also known as Tan Minglin) was executed to mark the UN anti-drug day. In 2008, Han Yongwan, another notorious trafficker, was executed to mark the same occasion. Both were Chinese nationals executed in China. What sets these cases apart is that these individuals were arrested with the assistance of the United Nations using international funds – in the latter case, the relevant UN programme received substantial funding from the United Kingdom and the European commission, as well as Australia, Sweden and Canada.

This week, the Guardian reported on links between the death penalty for drugs and international funding and technical assistance for counternarcotics operations through the United Nations office on drugs and crime (UNODC). Such links have been documented between a range of projects and activities in countries including Iran, China and Vietnam. A number of named individuals, such as those above, have either been sentenced to death or executed as a result of international aid and UN support.

Recently, the UNODC has begun to take notice of the impact of its counternarcotics work on human rights. Antonio Maria Costa, the current executive director, has set out a series of recommendations for internal reform intended to improve the agency’s human rights performance. This leadership on human rights is very welcome, and much needed, but it may already be under threat. Costa leaves his post at the end of July. Unfortunately, the current frontrunner for the role of UN drug tsar is the candidate being pushed by the Russian government.

The candidate is Yuri Fedotov, current ambassador to the UK. But this is not about the individual except to the extent that he is a career diplomat of over 40 years’ service. It is about Russia’s disastrous drug policies, its appalling human rights record and despite this, a government official nonetheless taking a high-profile position of strategic importance to both issues.

Russia is no supporter of human rights scrutiny in drug control, and works to block any such progress in international political fora such as the UN commission on narcotic drugs. There are nearly 2 million people who inject drugs in Russia, and the government has abandoned them to HIV and abusive “treatments” such as “flogging therapy”. Moreover, the government regularly seeks to block political progress on public health interventions such as opioid substitution therapy and needle and syringe exchange intended to fulfil their human rights. It is now estimated that 37% of people who inject drugs in Russia are HIV positive and as many as 80% of all new HIV infections in the country are due to unsafe injecting practices.

To deflect attention from this, Russia has been seeking to push the blame onto farmers in Afghanistan by calling for Nato intervention and aerial spraying of opium poppy. Experience from Colombia should indicate what terrible ideas military intervention and aerial spraying really are, where this has led to human displacement, food insecurity, health problems and increased poverty amid rising coca production rates and falling cocaine prices. What is needed is a leader on human rights, not an oppressive and abusive government’s first choice.

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, will soon make his decision and with it he will send a strong message, one way or the other. So Ban has a choice to make: a candidate that represents the current problems in the international drug control system, or one that represents leadership on human rights?

I hope, at the very least, that this weekend’s killings in China to again mark a UN celebration will give him some pause for thought.

See also:

Agence France Presse: China marks anti-drug day with executions, state media. At least six people already executed.

Washington Post June 25 2010: Approximately 50,000 drug trafficking cases in china last year, around 17,00 sentenced to severe penalties, from five years to death.

International drug crime measures ‘lead to executions’, Guardian 21 June 2010

Enforcement by Britain, the UN and the EU backs up regimes that ignore human rights, says report

The United Nations, the European commission and individual states including Britain are flouting international human rights law by funding anti-drug crime measures that are inadvertently leading to the executions of offenders, according to a report seen by the Guardian.

The International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), a non-governmental organisation that advocates less punitive approaches todrugs policy globally, says it has gathered evidence revealing “strong links” between executions for drugs offences and the funding of specific drug enforcement operations by international agencies.

It says programmes aimed at shoring up local efforts to combat drug trafficking and other offences are being run “without appropriate safeguards” that could prevent serious human rights violations in countries that retain the death penalty.

The report concludes that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime ( “are all actively involved in funding and/or delivering technical assistance, legislative support and financial aid intended to strengthen domestic drug enforcement activities in states that retain the death penalty for drug offences.

“Such funding, training and capacity-building activities – if successful – result in increased convictions of persons on drug charges, and the potential for increased death sentences and executions”.

The report claims there is evidence of “complicity in acts that violate international human rights law”, undermining the Council of Europe’s commitment to abolish the death penalty, the United Nations Charter and UNODC’s stated opposition to the penalty for drugs offences.

The 33-page report lists a series of case studies it says illustrate how efforts to garner convictions for drugs offences across borders have resulted further down the line in executions. International law does not prohibit the death penalty but does limit its use to the “most serious crimes”. The meaning of “serious” is challenged by some states with the death penalty.

Rick Lines, deputy director of the IHRA and co-author of the report, said: “Many people around the world would be shocked to know that their governments are funding programmes that are leading people indirectly to death by hanging and firing squads.” He said agencies and countries were not intentionally funding programmes that led to people facing the death penalty but that it was “a fact” that executions were happening.

The report comes soon after the execution by firing squad of Ronnie Lee Gardner in Utah, America, that once again highlights human rights concerns about capital punishment. However IHRA’s focus on the persistence of capital punishment in other “retentionist” countries for drugs crimes is likely to resonate this week. Saturday is UN International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, organised to highlight that some states, including China, have always executed drugs offenders to make a public example of them.

An IHRA report published last month revealed that of the 58 states that retain the death penalty, 32 permit it for drug-related crimes. Some use it more readily than others. The estimated overall number of executions including those for drugs-related offences in 2009 was 714, according to Amnesty International, although this does not account for potentially thousands more executions that are not disclosed by China.

Commenting on the IHRA report, Rebecca Schleifer, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said that while UNODC in particular has recently “taken steps in the right direction” to account for the human rights implications of its programmes, its drug enforcement activities, and those of other organisations and countries, continue to “put them at risk of supporting increased death sentences and executions in some countries”.

Sebastian Saville, director of Release, a British drugs and human rights charity, said there was an urgent need for political leaders in Britain and the US to rethink their “disastrous ‘war on drugs’ policy and tacit support for regimes that continue executing people for relatively minor offences”.

A UNODC spokesman welcomed the report for drawing attention to capital punishment, saying it raised “legitimate concerns” about how actions designed to deal with drugs crimes “may indirectly result in increased convictions and the possible application of the death penalty”. He said UNODC had taken “concrete steps” to implement human rights assessments as part of “all drug enforcement activities”. The IHRA report makes a number of recommendations including that European governments, the European Commission and UNODC urgently leverage their influence with countries that retain the death penalty “to restrict or abolish the death penalty for drug offences.”

Download the full report at http://www.ihrablog.net/2010/06/international-drug-crime-measures-lead.html

International criminal markets have become major centres of power, UNODC report shows

17 June 2010 – A report released today by UNODC shows how organized crime has globalized and turned into one of the world’s foremost economic and armed powers.

The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment, released at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, looks at major trafficking flows of drugs (cocaine and heroin), firearms, counterfeit products, stolen natural resources and people (for sex and forced labour), as well as  smuggled migrants. It also covers maritime piracy and cybercrime.

“Today, the criminal market spans the planet: illicit goods are sourced from one continent, trafficked across another and marketed in a third,” said UNDOC  Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa.  ”Transnational crime has become a threat to peace and development, even to the sovereignty of nations,” warned the head of UNODC. “Criminals use weapons and violence, but also money and bribes to buy elections, politicians and power – even the military,” said Mr. Costa. The threat to governance and stability is analysed in a chapter on regions under stress.

The full report is available via UNODC’s website

Colombia’s war on drugs fails in Cordoba, Guaviare, and Cauca. Colombia Reports, 8 June 2010

Brett Borkan, Colombia Reports, 8 June 2010

The Colombian departments of Cordoba, Guaviare, and Cauca saw significant increases in coca cultivation in 2009, although national production dropped 16%, El Tiempo reported Tuesday.

According to a forthcoming United Nations report, coca production in the northern department of Cordoba rose from 1,710 to 2,700 hectares, a 58% increase, after declining the previous year.

In the southern department of Guaviare, coca production rose from 6,629 to 8,300 hectares during the year, a 25% increase, returning to its 2005 level of production.

Meanwhile, in the south-western department of Cauca, where the FARC have been very active in the last year, coca production rose from 5,400 to 6,100 hectares in 2009, a 13% increase. The province also saw an increase of over 1,000 hectares between 2007 and 2008.

Overall the report, which was compiled using data submitted by Colombian authorities in April, found that Colombia reduced its national coca production from 81,000 hectares in 2008 to 68,025 in 2009, a 16% drop.

The department with the highest production, according to the report, remains Nariño, which despite showing a drop of 3,000 hectares, farmed 16,800 hectares of coca.

According to Colombia’s anti-narcotics police, there are various reasons for the rise in coca production in the three “losing” departments.

In Cordoba, they explain, emerging gangs such as the one led by Juan de Dios Usuga, alias “Giovanni,” an heir to notorious drug kingpin “Don Mario,” and the use of Paramillo Natural Park, where authorities are not allowed to conduct arial fumigation, have led to a rise in the cultivation of coca.

Meanwhile, in the departments of Cauca and Guaviare, the police claim that legal restriction that have prevented them from entering indigenous territories have allowed gangs to exploit these territories to freely cultivate coca.

The areas that showed the greatest improvements were the department of Putumayo, dropping from 9,600 to 5,300 hectares, followed by Valle del Cauca (2,089 to 900), Choco (2,794 to 950), Santander (1,791 to 950), Vaupes (557 to 350), Amazonas (836 to 277) and Magdalena (391 to 150).

‘A worrying front in the war on drugs’ by Patrick Gallahue in the Guardian’s Comment is Free

This article by Patrick Gallahue in the Guardian’s Comment is Free is based on his article published last month in the International Yearbook on Human Rights and Drug Policy.

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Last year, the US embarked on a controversial and ill-advised strategy for dealing with the Afghan drug trade. It placed 50 traffickers with links to the Taliban on a hit list of people who can “be killed or captured” at any time.

In effect, this gave drug traffickers the same legal status as insurgents and blurred the all-important distinction between those who can be legally targeted in an armed conflict and those who cannot.

The American strategy has now come under fire from Professor Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. In a report issued at the end of last month, he wrote that the strategy “is not consistent with the traditionally understood concepts” of international humanitarian law: “Drug trafficking is understood as criminal conduct, not an activity that would subject someone to a targeted killing.”

As the Guardian noted at the time, the American decision was “certain to provoke controversy”. For the better part of the last 40 years, the “war on drugs” has largely been considered as a rhetorical fight against narcotics, not as an actual war. While militaries have been engaged to combat the drug trade, people involved in narcotics trafficking have generally been seen as common criminals (ie civilians) rather than “combatants” or “fighters”.

And when it comes to war, the difference between civilians and combatants is a very big deal. In fact, it can be a matter of life and death.

Naturally, these distinctions are difficult in civil wars like that in Afghanistan where insurgents rarely distinguish themselves from the civilian population. However, that hardly means militaries can declare everyone a target. In fact, while still notoriously vague, understanding of the rules on who can and cannot be targeted in conflicts like Afghanistan has developed substantially.

While the regulations remain tricky, pretty much every respected analysis on the issue discounts financiers of an insurgency as a legitimate target – as long as they do not have some additional combat function or are not participating in hostilities in some other way.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, the most venerable humanitarian organisation on earth, wrote that recruiters, trainers, financiers and propagandists cannot be said to have combat roles.

Similarly, when the Israeli supreme court tackled the issue of targeted killing in 2005, it ruled that certain members of terrorist organisations could be targeted but it explicitly excluded those who provide “logistical, general support, including monetary aid”.

However, in announcing the new US strategy, a Senate foreign relations committee report stated in 2009: “No longer are US commanders arguing that going after the drug lords is not part of their mandate. In a dramatic illustration of the new policy, major drug traffickers who help finance the insurgency are likely to find themselves in the crosshairs of the military.”

The purpose of the principle of distinction is to protect “civilians” as long as they are not participating in hostilities and, as Professor Alston wrote, “generating profits that might be used to fund hostile actions does not constitute [direct participation in hostilities]“.

This logic of protecting those not “participating in hostilities” is intended to spare civilians on all sides from unlawful military action – be they drug traffickers supporting the Taliban or the New York Stock Exchange on the American side.

There is no dispute that trafficking in drugs is illegal, but those involved in the drug trade are subject to arrest, trial and imprisonment – not to be targeted for death – regardless of what they intend to do with the profits. Professor Alston has essentially reminded the US that targeting people for illegal acts, even in war, is not a desirable means of holding them accountable.

“To expand the notion of non-international armed conflict to groups that are essentially drug cartels, criminal gangs or other groups that should be dealt with under the law enforcement framework would be to do deep damage to the [international humanitarian law] and human rights frameworks,” Professor Alston wrote.

For the sake of a principle intended to protect all civilians in armed conflict – both law-abiding and otherwise – let’s hope they the US is listening.

(c) Guardian 2010

Harm reduction and the right to health – recent recommendations of UN human rights mechanisms

In 2009 the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health, Anand Grover, undertook a mission to Poland. the final report of the mission will be presented to the Human Rights Council at its 14th Session which is currently taking place. It includes strong recommendations relating to harm reduction services such as needle and syringe exchange and opioid substitution therapy, as well as criminal laws surrounding drug use and possession.

The Special Rapporteur urges Poland to consider the following recommendations in the area of harm reduction policies and practices:

(a) Ensure that needle and syringe programmes, opioid substitution therapy and other harm reduction strategies become widely available throughout the country.

(b) To establish, without further delay, an opioid substitution programme in the Tri-City region of Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia.

(c) Amend the National Law on Counteracting Drug Addiction to avoid penalization of the possession of minute quantities of drugs, in order to foster access to substitution therapy for people using drugs.

(d) Ensure the informed and active participation of people using drugs and other marginalized groups at the national, regional, and local level in the establishment of policies and programmes.

(e) Include the participation of people living with HIV and those groups most at risk of HIV in HIV/AIDS-related educational projects and campaigns.

(f) Ensure the enactment and implementation of a comprehensive anti-discrimination and equality law to help ensure the full enjoyment of the right to health, based on equality and non-discrimination within the State.

In May 2010, Mauritius was before the UN Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights as part of its periodic review process. The Committee raised a series of concerns related to Mauritian drug policies and the ‘alarmingly high’ rate of injecting drug use and related HIV in the country. Concerns were also raised about recent announcements to reintroduce the death penalty for drugs.

27. The Committee is concerned at the alarmingly high number of injecting drug users in the State party. It is further concerned at reports that the National Drug Control Masterplan 2008-2012 was never officially endorsed and is not being used by the various stakeholders concerned. The Committee is also concerned about the sharp increase in cases of HIV/AIDS, particularly concerning intravenous drug users, sex workers and prison inmates. (art. 12)

The Committee recommends that the State party undertake a comprehensive approach to combat its serious drug problem. In order to achieve the progressive realisation of the right to health for people who inject drugs and so that this group may benefit from scientific progress and its applications (article 15.1.b), the State party should implement in full the recommendations made by the WHO in 2009 designed to improve availability, accessibility and quality of harm reduction services – in particular needle and syringe exchange and opioid substitution therapy with methadone. People who use drugs should be a key partner in this initiative. As a matter of urgency, the State party should:

(a)Scale up needle and syringe programmes to all geographical areas. The Government should amend the Dangerous Drugs Act 2000 to remove prohibitions on distributing or carrying drug paraphernalia as these impede HIV prevention services;

(b)Implement pilot prison needle and syringe exchange and opioid substitution therapy programmes based on international best practice standards;

(c)Remove age barriers to accessing opioid substitution therapy and develop youth-friendly harm reduction services tailored to the specific needs of young people who use drugs;

(d)Remove restrictions on access to residential shelters for women who use drugs;

(e)Make hepatitis C treatment freely available to all injecting drug users; and

(f)With regard to addicted persons, consider the decriminalisation and related public health based measures such as prescription of buprenorphine.

28. The Committee is concerned at the high and increasing rate of drug trafficking and related corruption in the State party. (art. 12)

The Committee recommends that the State party take the necessary measures to combat drug trafficking and related corruption. At the same time, the Committee recommends that these measures fully comply with the international human rights standards, including in relation to the abolition of the death penalty.

At the same session, the Committee recommended that Kazakhstan scale up access to opioid substitution therapy with methadone

Why the Vietnamese Don’t Want to Go to Rehab, Joe Amon, Foreign Policy, 28 May 2010

Why the Vietnamese Don’t Want to Go to Rehab: Drug treatment in Southeast Asia is brutal, exploitative, and practically worthless

By Joe Amon, Human Rights Watch (Published in Foreign Policy, 28 May 2010)

This month, nearly 600 drug addicts broke out of a rehabilitation center in the northern Vietnamese city of Haiphong. The addicts overpowered guards at the state-run treatment facility and made a break for it. “We were completely overwhelmed,” a security guard told the Associated Press. “Forty of us were not able to prevent them, many with canes and bricks, from escaping.” Videos on the Internet show crowds of escapees marching through city streets.

Why were hundreds of patients fleeing treatment? Because in Vietnam, “treatment” looks a lot more like forced labor, complete with beatings and years of involuntary detention. Like neighboring Cambodia, China, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand, the government of Vietnam has adopted a “get-tough” approach to drug treatment rather than evidence-based treatment. In Vietnam, more than 100 government-run facilities detain between 35,000 to 45,000 people for extrajudicial sentences of up to four years.

Vietnamese in these treatment centers are engaged in what the government calls “therapeutic labor”: long hours at menial jobs for below-market wages — whatever’s left, that is, after the centers deduct for the cost of their meager food and Spartan lodging. Those who fail to meet work quotas are beaten. Patients who violate center rules can be locked in solitary confinement. “[T]hey beat people up, kicked the face, kicked the chest,” a former resident of a rehab center near Hanoi told the BBC in 2008. “Later, people were made to work very hard. They said work to forget the addiction, work is therapeutic.”

Opium cultivation and smoking are not new phenomena in Vietnam. But with economic liberalization and increased migration since the 1980s has come greater economic polarization and drug abuse. It is estimated that there are more than 100,000 injecting drug users in the country today, and nearly one in three is HIV infected.

Drug treatment hasn’t kept pace with increasing abuse, and aside from some small-scale programs, allowed by the government but largely funded by other donors, effective treatment is virtually nonexistent. Instead, the government emphasizes compulsory, institutionalized treatment that isn’t just inhumane, but also next to useless. Government reports have said that 70 to 80 percent of those who spend time in a center return to drug use. Other estimates put the rate closer to 90 percent — and when drug users do relapse, they have no place to go, especially not to a compulsory “treatment” center. According to a study published this spring in the Journal of Urban Health, drug users in Vietnam who have been in rehab centers are more likely to be infected with hepatitis C than those who have not. Another study found that detention and fear of police led to greater risk of HIV infection among Vietnamese users.

In fact, Haiphong’s escapees probably stand a better chance on the outside, if they can stay there: The city is one of three in Vietnam that is piloting the use of methadone to manage opiate addiction, the preferred approach in most developed countries. Indeed, trials of methadone maintenance therapy were already successfully conducted in Hanoi in the mid-1990s. So why not increase the number of slots in the Haiphong methadone clinic and offer the escapees voluntary enrollment? The U.S. government could help ensure that those who escaped can access services by redirecting its funding, which currently goes to HIV-treatment programs inside these abusive centers (though not the centers themselves), to programs based in the community.

Indeed, were Haiphong to expand access to the community-based drug treatment services it already offers and add counseling, employment prospects, and housing assistance, the city could become a model of humane and sustainable treatment. Those who were only occasional drug users — and who don’t need drug addiction treatment in the first place — are more likely to find meaningful work and social support networks in the community to avoid becoming addicted. Serious addicts and casual users alike are likely to find better HIV prevention programs and services in the community.

Drug rehabilitation should provide drug users with a chance to regain control of their lives, repair broken relationships, and overcome destructive addictions. Rehab in Vietnam ruptures the lives of drug users, severs social support, and pretty much guarantees a return to drug use after years of abuse. No wonder drug users are escaping.

Children’s voices: Experiences and perceptions of European children on drug and alcohol issues, EMCDDA, June 2010

The European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction has launched a thematic paper on the perspectives of children affected by drugs and alcohol use and policies. The launch coincides with international children’s day, June 1st.

It is an important contribution and one delivered very much in the spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As noted by EMCDDA in the introduction to the report

“In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention because people under 18 years old often require care and protection that adults do not. Article 12 of the legally binding United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children must be able to express their views in dialogues and decisions affecting their lives… Qualitative research among children provides a channel for that expression and can help to reveal and interpret what lies behind child and adolescent statistics. Article 33 of the Convention states that children have the right to protection from the use of narcotic and psychotropic drugs. Research that focuses on the meanings and perceptions of drug and alcohol use from the perspective of children whose lives are in some ways exposed to these substances offers a way to understand their needs and to plan appropriate interventions.”

Insights on drug and alcohol use, laws and policies, parental use, stigma and societal attitudes are provided from children and young people from a diverse range of countries including Ireland, UK, Finland and Latvia.

The full report “Children’s voices. Experiences and perceptions of European children on drug and alcohol issues” may be downloaded via EMCDDA