Tim Bingham, Irish Press Ombudsman upholds complaint from coalition of drug services

CASE SUMMARY

Irish Press Ombudsman upholds complaint from coalition of drug services International Harm Reduction Association and Others and The Irish Independent

Tim Bingham analyses the complaint upheld by the Press Ombudsman of Ireland against the Irish Independent, the country’s largest circulation broadsheet. The complaint was filed by the International Harm Reduction Association, the Irish Needle Exchange Forum and the CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign, with the support of approximately thirty Irish drugs services and professionals.

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Sandra Ka Hon Chu, Supreme Court of Canada orders Minister of Health to exempt supervised injection site from criminal prohibition on drug possession, Human Rights and Drugs, Vol.2, No.I, 2012

CASE SUMMARY

Supreme Court of Canada orders Minister of Health to exempt supervised injection site from criminal prohibition on drug possession Attorney General v. PHS Community Services Society, 2011 SCC 44 (Supreme Court of Canada)

Sandra Ka Hon Chu analyses the decision by the Supreme Court of Canada which ordered the federal Minister of Health to grant Insite, North America’s first supervised injection site, an extended exemption from the criminal prohibition on drug possession in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), thus permitting the health facility to continue to operate. In its September 2011 decision, the Court held that while the CDSA provisions were applicable to Insite as valid exercises of the federal government’s criminal law power, the Minister’s refusal to extend Insite’s CDSA exemption violated the Canadian constitution.

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Khadeija Mahgoub, Article 33 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: The Journey from Drafting History to the Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, Human Rights and Drugs, Vol.2, No.I, 2012

ABSTRACT

Article 33 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is an important international legal instrument that obligates States Parties to protect children and youth from involvement with illicit drugs and the drug trade. This article provides an analysis of the drafting history of article 33 to the evolving interpretations of its terms in the Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. It reveals a clear connection to the right to health as well as a dynamic interpretation of the article by the Committee. To improve the Committee’s Concluding Observations moving forward, a General Comment on the article is recommended.

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Yingxi BI, On the Death Penalty for Drug-Related Crime in China, Human Rights and Drugs. Vol. 2, No. I, 2012

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the death penalty for drug-related crime in China. It considers the basis upon which China applies the death penalty for drug-related offences, and the debates surrounding the imposition of the death penalty for drug-related offences from the perspective of both penology and human rights. Based on the evidence discerned about China’s current situation, the article discusses the possibility of China abolishing the death penalty for drug-related crime in the future.

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Kenneth W. Tupper & Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Plants, Psychoactive Substances and the International Narcotics Control Board: The Control of Nature and the Nature of Control, Human Rights and Drugs, Vol.2, No.I, 2012

ABSTRACT

This article reviews and critiques the International Narcotic Control Board’s (INCB) 2010 Annual Report’s recommendation about plant materials containing psychoactive substances. It first provides an overview of the United Nations drug control system, then contextualises the INCB’s role in the UN system. Through a reading of the text of the INCB’s 2010 Report and references to contemporary practices of ayahuasca drinking based in fieldwork, the article shows how this Report fits into the international paradigm of the war on drugs and its conflicts with human rights. It is argued that the Board’s recommendation demonstrates an unwarranted attempt to extend the scope of its powers, conflates and thus misrepresents widely diverse plant materials and their effects, fails to distinguish between ‘use’ and ‘abuse’ of psychoactive substances and appears to assume that particular elements of culture—specifically, traditions involving psychoactive substance use—are, or should be, static, eternally frozen in time and place.

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Alex Stevens, The ethics and effectiveness of coerced treatment of people who use drugs, Human Rights and Drugs, Vol.2, No.I, 2012

ABSTRACT

In the context of international debates about ways to reduce the harms related to the use of illicit drugs and their control, this article explores the specific issue of coerced treatment of people who use drugs. It uses established standards of human rights and medical ethics to judge whether it is ethical to apply either of two types of coerced treatment (compulsory treatment and quasi-compulsory treatment,or QCT) to any of three groups of drug users (non-problematic users, dependent drug users and drug dependent offenders). It argues that compulsory treatment is not ethical for any group, as it breaches the standard of informed consent. Quasi-compulsory treatment (i.e. treatment that is offered as an alternative to a punishment that is itself ethically justified) may be ethical (under specified conditions) for drug dependent offenders who are facing a more restrictive penal sanction, but is not ethical for other people who use drugs. The article also briefly reviews evidence which suggests that QCT may be as effective as voluntary treatment.

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Parallel Universes: Human Rights and International Drug Control

This video produced by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union highlights the human rights violations done against people all over the world as a result of the current international drug control system. The activists and researchers interviewed here recount the litany of abuses done in the name of drug control: torture, corporal punishment, overcrowding in prisons, death penalty for drug offences, denial of palliative care and HIV/AIDS treatment, among others.

As explained by the producers, the words of Paul Hunt, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health (2002-2008), at the 2008 Harm Reduction Conference are more valid than ever. The international drug control seems to be operating in a parallel universe from human rights law and it is the most vulnerable people who pay the price for this.

Click here to read Human Rights, Health and Harm Reduction: States’ amnesia and parallel universes, by Prof. Paul Hunt, member of the International Advisory Committee of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy.

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New book on Convention of the Rights of the Child and Narcotic Drugs

A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 33: Protection from Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances

By Damon Barrett and Philip E. Veerman

This volume constitutes a commentary on Article 33 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is part of the series, A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides an article by article analysis of all substantive, organizational and procedural provisions of the CRC and its two Optional Protocols. For every article, a comparison with related human rights provisions is made, followed by an in-depth exploration of the nature and scope of State obligations deriving from that article. The series constitutes an essential tool for actors in the field of children’s rights, including academics, students, judges, grassroots workers, governmental, non- governmental and international officers. The series is sponsored by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office.

Biographical note

Damon Barrett is Senior Human Rights Analyst with London-based Harm Reduction International and cofounder of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy. He is an editor-in-chief of the International Journal on Human Rights and Drug Policy, and editor of Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Policies on Young People (IDEA, iDebate Press, New York and Amsterdam, 2011).

Philip E. Veerman is a psychologist at Bouman mental health services in Rotterdam, where he is responsible for the professional training programme for health psychologists. He is an independent expert of the courts in the Netherlands.

To find out more, go to the website of Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

Narcotics Watchdog Turns Blind Eye to Rights Abuses

Patrick Gallahue’s most recent op-ed presents a strong argument against the reluctance of the International Narcotics Control Board to condemn the human rights violations done in the name of drug control.

The INCB, a quasi-judicial monitoring mechanism known and ‘guardian’ of the international drug control treaties, has remained silent about the imposition of forced labor at compulsory drug detention centres, despite the condemnation of twelve UN agencies this month. It has also refused to comment on the death penalty for drug offenders, arguing that it was beyond the mandate of the INCB and ’such sanctions were the “exclusive prerogative” of States.’

Read here Patrick Gallahue’s full analysis on the arguments by the INCB and how they contradict international human rights law.

Say NO to death for drugs

In this commentary, published in The Hindu, Rick Lines and Anand Grover, present a long list of international and domestic jurisprudence that defy the justifications for handing down death penalties for drug offenders in India.

They argue that, although most experts agree that drug offences do not warrant death penalties, countries like India impose it regardless of whether offenders were “young or old, sick or mentally infirm, socially and economically disadvantaged or acting under duress or pressure”.

Instead, capital punishment is decided on the basis of the quantity of drugs found. Sentencing guidelines based on quantity/purity calculations have been criticised by academic and legal commentators as unreliable and arbitrary.

Read more about the death penalty for drug offences in “The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: A Violation of International Human Rights Law”, by Rick Lines, co-founder of the International Centre for Human Rights and Drug Policy and Executive Director of Harm Reduction International.

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