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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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

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.

Follow us on twitter @ICHRDP

‘Harm Reduction and Human Rights’, D. Barrett and P. Gallahue, Interights Bulletin, Winter 2011.

Human Rights and Abuses to Health Care, Interights Bulletin, Winter 2011, Volume 16, Number 4.

Harm Reduction and Human Rights

Abstract

‘Harm reduction’ is a phrase that may be unfamiliar to many in the human rights field despite the fact that its ethos and way of working is very close to it. Based on pragmatism, evidence, and compassion, harm reduction has been often misunderstood, side-lined, and isolated from human rights discourse. This paper shows how harm reduction has made important strides in human rights bodies of the United Nations. However, its application is critically absent anti-narcotics policy despite evidence of grave human rights violations done in the name of the “war on drugs” . The paper concludes that jurisprudence and scholarship around the human rights dimensions of harm reduction will be critical in understanding what works in protecting people from drug-related harms, but what is appropriate and necessary in a democratic society to achieve this legitimate aim

Download the full version of the publication.

Vancouver safe injection facility, Insite, wins historic Supreme Court case

In its third successive court win against Government efforts to shut it down, Insite, North America’s only safe injection facility, has been allowed to remain open.

In a 9-0 unanimous verdict the Supreme Court ordered Canada’s Minister of Health to grant Insite the necessary exemption to the country’s drug laws to allow it to remain open.

The Court also set out criteria which should be considered in future such decisions, and stated that when a facility brings the kinds of benefits that Insite has displayed while not generating harms to public security, such exemptions should generally be given.

A case commentary from the lower courts appeared in the first volume of the International Journal on Human Rights and Drug Policy. A case commentary on this decision will appear in volume II.

The full decision may be read online at http://scc.lexum.org/en/2011/2011scc44/2011scc44.html

CBC News in Canada also has detailed coverage http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/09/29/bc-insite-supreme-court-ruling-advancer.html

‘HIV/AIDS at the UN: Battleground of the war on drugs’, Damon Barrett in openDemocracy

‘Zero new infections, zero discrimination, and zero AIDS related deaths’.

As objectives go this one is difficult to find fault with. Unless your concern is the protection of punitive drug policies.

Today world leaders arrive in New York for a UN summit on AIDS where a new Political Declaration will be adopted, an international agreement intended to guide the response to HIV/AIDS until 2020. The negotiations are, in fact, already over for the Political Declaration that will emerge from this meeting. These have been taking place in the last few days with lengthy, heated debates on many issues from men who have sex with men to intellectual property and access to anti-retroviral drugs to human rights. Last night the final round of negotiations ended. All that remains is tidying up the document. Unfortunately, one message of the document is clear – many states are willing and ready sacrifice lives and HIV responses in order to protect punitive drug control systems.

As the post-negotiation dust settles in New York (swirling invisibly around the world leaders in attendance) we are left with the following in relation to injecting drug use and HIV:

An HIV/AIDS declaration with strong ‘war on drugs’ language inserted for the first time ever. According to the document ‘the drug problem continues to constitute a serious threat to, among others, public health and safety and the well-being of humanity, in particular children and young people and their families’. This is the very basis of the justification for so many human rights abuses in the war on drugs around the world – and for the denial of HIV prevention measures for people who inject drugs. Two of the most severe costs of the war on drugs. It goes on to say that ‘much more needs to be done to effectively combat the world drug problem’. It is a paragraph about cracking down on drugs, rather than effective responses to HIV.

A document that backtracks on earlier commitments on HIV prevention for injecting drug users. Sure there were victories for those States committed to tackling HIV, such as the listing of at risk groups, and the commitment to ‘work towards’ reducing HIV among people who inject by 80% by 2020, and the newly included mention of UN guidelines on HIV prevention for injecting drug users. But they are pyrrhic victories. Mentioning injecting drug users means little unless backed up with commitments, and the language is such that all States have to do is ‘consider’ the programmes alluded to – just have a think about them. And only if their national laws allow it. An 80% reduction simply will not be reached with these limitations. In the previous landmark political declarations on AIDS from 2001 and 2006 UN member states agreed together to ‘intensify efforts’. Not this time.

At the risk of playing a broken record, I must reiterate the statistics. There are an estimated 15.9 million people who inject drugs worldwide. 30% of new HIV infections outside of sub-Saharan Africa are related top unsafe injecting practices. In Eastern Europe and East Asia this is far higher. Less than three cents per day per injecting drug user is spent on HIV prevention. This is a major component of global HIV epidemics and a major gap in the response.

There is no point at this stage in diplomacy as to the States responsible for this shameful outcome. Italy, Russia, the Vatican, Singapore and Iran (on behalf of the Arab Group) led the charge against HIV prevention related to drug use (I would urge interested readers to ask their MPs to find out what their Government’s position was).

Singapore suggested the language of ‘harm elimination’ at one stage (a scary choice of words from such a prolific executor of drug offenders). Italy sought ‘risk reduction’, a different concept to harm reduction which deflects attention from HIV prevention goals.

The negative contribution of Iran and the Arab Group is saddening following the first ever International Harm Reduction conference in the Middle East having taken place this year in Lebanon. There we saw academics, service providers, activists and people who use drugs from the region speaking openly about the need for harm reduction scale up. At these negotiations, to ensure a tough stance on drugs and to protect State interests in punitive drug control systems, these governments have betrayed their people’s commitment to health and human rights.

But perhaps the most egregious behaviour was that of Russia given the scale of the injecting driven HIV epidemic within its own borders (There are an estimated 1.6 million opiate users in Russia with unsafe injecting accounting for 80% of new infections. HIV prevalence is 37% among people who inject). Nationally, in response, Russia has banned opioid substitution therapy until 2020, one of the core HIV prevention interventions for opiate injectors; it has branded needle and syringe programmes ‘drug propaganda’ and refuses to fund them, and has promised to clamp down on the promotion of harm reduction. At these negotiations Russia has sought to legitimise that neglect, and has succeeded. It can now point to its national laws as justification for allowing its citizens to get sick and die. In October, Russia will host the MDG 6 Forum on halting and reversing the spread of HIV. Based on its behaviour at home and at the UN, it has no legitimacy whatsoever to do so. Russia has shown that it has no desire to reach MDG 6.

Against so many opponents, the many issues under attack and the UN desire for consensus there was little the numerous supportive states and civil society organisations could do except to limit the damage. Their efforts are clear to those who have followed the process and the developing wording of the declaration.

All of this comes after a year of significant events in drug policy and HIV/AIDS campaigns. Let’s go back a year to the 18^th International AIDS Conference in Vienna. There the Vienna Declaration was launched. It was the official conference declaration, calling for reform of the international drug control system in order to meet the challenge posed by HIV/AIDS and endorsed by cities, Nobel laureates, former heads of state, scientists, lawyers, academics, researchers and activists from around the world. There are over 20,000 of them to date.

In April 2011, Harm Reduction International launched the Beirut Declaration on HIV and Injecting Drug Use. Targeted specifically at the UN meeting on AIDS the declaration reminded UN member states of their commitments on HIV prevention and injecting drug use made in the declarations of 2001 and 2006. The Beirut Declaration has been endorsed by hundreds of HIV/AIDS, development, drugs, human rights, children’s and humanitarian organisations.

At the end of May, the online campaign organisation Avaaz launched a petition to call for an end to the war on drugs. It has now amassed over 600,000 signatures. A massive achievement.

The Avaaz campaign coincided with the launch of the report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, by far and away the most prestigious and high level group of people ever to call for global drug policy reform. It included former heads of state, a sitting Prime Minster and the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. The report was launched on 2^nd June.

So here we are, less than a week later, the first opportunity for progress. Not a dent. Not even on the basics of harm reduction. What this means is that even while a prestigious group of former world leaders (and one active) showed how much the ‘drug war’ of the past has failed, sitting governments cannot collectively agree to progress, even on the most basic of needs.

At the UN meeting on AIDS over the next two days expect lofty speeches and strong words. Some, let’s be fair, will be sincere and many states will act upon these words. But the speeches will be soon forgotten while the Political Declaration will remain and will affect international negotiations on HIV/AIDS for years to come. As usual AIDS has managed to expose prejudice and the ugly face of politics in a way that few issues can. Harm reduction, for its part, has again shown to be a threat to the punitive status quo of drug control such that some states are willing to sacrifice lives and scuttle international negotiations on global health concerns to protect it.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy has said, clearly and insightfully, what needs to be done. The UN High Level Meeting on AIDS will show just how far from that reality we really are. Indeed, the negotiations have shown how far we are from even a reasonable discussion about it.

Published at http://www.opendemocracy.net/damon-barrett/hivaids-at-un-battleground-of-war-on-drugs

UN child rights committee calls for drug law reform and specialised harm reduction for children at risk

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child last week issued strong recommendations calling for “specialised and youth-friendly drug dependence treatment and harm reduction services for children and young people” and amending “laws that criminalise children for possession or use of drugs” which may “impede access to such services”.

The recommendations were made to the Government of Ukraine during the country’s periodic review process at the 56th session of the Committee. The Concluding Observations, reproduced below (and available at the Committee’s website) are an important addition to jurisprudence relating to children and drug use.

UN Doc No CRC/C/UKR/CO/4, paras 59 & 60

Drug, tobacco, alcohol and other substance use

59.       The Committee is deeply concerned at the increasing practice of drug injection among children, affecting in particular children in prison, children left behind by migrating parents, children in street situations, and that drug use constitutes a main reason for HIV infection. It is deeply concerned at the lack of specialized youth-friendly services aimed at treatment and rehabilitation for these at-risk children, and that legal and attitudinal barriers impede access to such services (such as order of the Drug Enforcement Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs no. 40/2/1-106 of 18 January 2011). The Committee is also concerned that the State party’s drug strategy 2010-2015 fails to take these issues sufficiently into account and that new regulations relating to personal possession of drugs may bring more at risk adolescents into contact with the criminal justice system. In addition, the Committee is deeply concerned at the very high proportion of and early initiation age of tobacco and alcohol use among children, related in part to the ineffectiveness and weak enforcement of existing legislation prohibiting the sale of cigarettes and alcohol to children.

60.       The Committee recommends that the State party, in partnership with non-governmental organizations, develop a comprehensive strategy for addressing the

alarming situation of drug abuse among children and youth and undertake a broad range of  evidence-based measures in line with the Convention, and to:

(a) Develop specialised and youth-friendly drug dependence treatment and harm reduction services for children and young people, building on recent legislative progress on HIV/AIDS and the successful pilot programmes for most at risk adolescents initiated by UNICEF;

(b) Ensure that criminal laws do not impede access to such services, including by amending laws that criminalise children for possession or use of drugs;

(c) Ensure that health and law enforcement personnel working with at-risk children are appropriately trained in HIV prevention and that abuses by law enforcement against at risk children are investigated and punished;

(d) Intensify enforcement of the prohibition of the sale of alcohol and tobacco to children and to address root causes to substance use and abuse among children and youth.

The right to heath and international drug control: Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, October 2010

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health

UN Doc No A/65/255

Available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Russian

Summary

The current international system of drug control has focused on creating a drug free world, almost exclusively through use of law enforcement policies and criminal sanctions. Mounting evidence, however, suggests this approach has failed, primarily because it does not acknowledge the realities of drug use and dependence. While drugs may have a pernicious effect on individual lives and society, this excessively punitive regime has not achieved its stated public health goals, and has resulted in countless human rights violations.

People who use drugs may be deterred from accessing services owing to the threat of criminal punishment, or may be denied access to health care altogether. Criminalization and excessive law enforcement practices also undermine health promotion initiatives, perpetuate stigma and increase health risks to which entire populations – not only those who use drugs – may be exposed. Certain countries incarcerate people who use drugs, impose compulsory treatment upon them, or both. The current international drug control regime also unnecessarily limits access to essential medications, which violates the enjoyment of the right to health.

The primary goal of the international drug control regime, as set forth in the preamble of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961), is the “health and  welfare of mankind”, but the current approach to controlling drug use and possession works against that aim. Widespread implementation of interventions that reduce harms associated with drug use — harm-reduction initiatives — and of decriminalization of certain laws governing drug control would improve the health and welfare of people who use drugs and the general population demonstrably. Moreover, the United Nations entities and Member States should adopt a right to health approach to drug control, encourage system-wide coherence and communication, incorporate the use of indicators and guidelines, and consider developing a new legal framework concerning certain illicit drugs, in order to ensure that the rights of people who use drugs are respected, protected and fulfilled.

Recommendations

Member States should:

• Ensure that all harm-reduction measures (as itemized by UNAIDS) and drug-dependence treatment services, particularly opioid substitution therapy, are available to people who use drugs, in particular those among incarcerated populations.

• Decriminalize or de-penalize possession and use of drugs.

• Repeal or substantially reform laws and policies inhibiting the delivery of essential health services to drug users, and review law enforcement initiatives around drug control to ensure compliance with human rights obligations.

• Amend laws, regulations and policies to increase access to controlled essential medicines.

The United Nations drug control bodies should:

• Integrate human rights into the response to drug control in laws, policies and programmes.

• Encourage greater communication and dialogue between United Nations entities with an interest in the impact of drug use and markets, and drug control policies and programmes.

• Consider creation of a permanent mechanism, such as an independent commission, through which international human rights actors can contribute to the creation of international drug policy, and monitor national implementation, with the need to protect the health and human rights of drug users and the communities they live in as its primary objective.

• Formulate guidelines that provide direction to relevant actors on taking a human rights-based approach to drug control, and devise and promulgate rights-based indicators concerning drug control and the right to health.

• Consider creation of an alternative drug regulatory framework in the long term, based on a model such as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Thematic Factsheets on the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

The Press Service of the ECHR has compiled Factsheets by theme on the Court’s case-law and pending cases. These are very useful resources, including links to the cases referred to.

Of particular interest from a drug policy perspective are:

Police arrest

Prisoners’ health rights

Detention and mental health

Prison conditions

Child protection

Death penalty abolition

Mental health

Data protection

For regular updates and commentary on the ECHR, see ECHR Blog.

The Vienna Declaration: A Global Call to Action for Science-based Drug Policy

In Lead Up to XVIII International AIDS Conference, Scientists and Other Leaders Call for Reform of International Drug Policy and Urge Others to Sign-on

28 June 2010 [Vienna, Austria] – Three leading scientific and health policy organizations today launched a global drive for signatories to the Vienna Declaration, a statement seeking to improve community health and safety by calling for the incorporation of scientific evidence into illicit drug policies. Among those supporting the declaration and urging others to sign is 2008 Nobel Laureate and International AIDS Society (IAS) Governing Council member Prof. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, co-discoverer of HIV.

The Vienna Declaration is the official declaration of the XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010), the biennial meeting of more than 20,000 HIV professionals, taking place in Vienna, Austria from 18 to 23 July 2010.

“Many of us in AIDS research and care confront the devastating impacts of misguided drug policies every day,” said AIDS 2010 Chair Dr. Julio Montaner, President of the IAS and Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. “These policies fuel the AIDS epidemic and result in violence, increased crime rates and destabilization of entire states – yet there is no evidence they have reduced rates of drug use or drug supply. As scientists, we are committed to raising our collective voice to promote evidence-based approaches to illicit drug policy that start by recognizing that addiction is a medical condition, not a crime.”

The Vienna Declaration describes the known harms of conventional “war on drugs” approaches and states:

“The criminalisation of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. A full policy reorientation is needed…Reorienting drug policies towards evidence-based approaches that respect, protect and fulfill human rights has the potential to reduce harms deriving from current policies and would allow for the redirection of the vast financial resources towards where they are needed most: implementing and evaluating evidence-based prevention, regulatory, treatment and harm reduction interventions.”

Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, injecting drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV. In some areas of rapid HIV spread, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia, injecting drug use is the primary cause of new HIV infections. Legal barriers to scientifically proven prevention services such as needle programmes and opioid substitution therapy (OST) mean hundreds of thousands of people become infected with HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV) every year. The criminalization of people who inject drugs has also resulted in record incarceration rates placing a massive burden on the taxpayer. HIV outbreaks have also been reported in prisons in various settings internationally. This emphasis on criminalization produces a cycle of disease transmission, along with broken homes and livelihoods destroyed. Yet these costs, along with the more direct costs of the ‘war on drugs’, produce no measurable benefits.

“The current approach to drug policy is ineffective because it neglects proven and evidence-based interventions, while pouring a massive amount of public funds and human resources into expensive and futile enforcement measures,” said Dr. Evan Wood, founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. “It’s time to accept the war on drugs has failed and create drug policies that can meaningfully protect community health and safety using evidence, not ideology.”

The Vienna Declaration calls on governments and international organizations, including the United Nations, to take a number of steps, including:

• undertake a transparent review the effectiveness of current drug policies;
• implement and evaluate a science-based public health approach to address the harms stemming from illicit drug use;
• scale up evidence-based drug dependence treatment options;
• abolish ineffective compulsory drug treatment centres that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and
• unequivocally endorse and scale up funding for the drug treatment and harm reduction measures endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations.
• The declaration also calls for the meaningful involvement of people who use drugs in developing, monitoring and implementing services and policies that affect their lives.

“As a scientist, I strongly support drug policies that are based on evidence of what actually works,” said Prof. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit at the Institute Pasteur, IAS Governing Council member and recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine. “I join with my colleagues around the world today to sign the Vienna Declaration in support of science-driven policies and human rights.”

The effectiveness of opioid substitution therapy (OST) and needles and syringe programmes is well-documented, though access to such interventions is often limited where HIV is spreading most rapidly. According to various scientific reviews conducted by WHO, the US Institutes of Medicine and others, these programmes reduce HIV rates without increasing rates of drug use. These cost-effective interventions also produce significant savings in future health care costs, and help people who use drugs access health care and drug treatment. No evidence exists demonstrating negative consequences of use of these programmes.

“Reflecting the AIDS 2010 theme of Rights Here, Right Now, the Vienna Declaration is rooted in the belief that global drug policy must respect the human rights of people who use drugs if it is to be at all effective,” said AIDS 2010 Local Co-Chair Dr. Brigitte Schmied, President of the Austrian AIDS Society. “No one who is familiar with addiction would deny the negative impacts it has on individuals, families and entire communities, but those harms do not justify human rights violations. People addicted to illicit drugs have the right to evidence-based drug treatment, to interventions to prevent infection, and, if they are living with HIV, to antiretroviral treatment.”

The Vienna Declaration was drafted by an international team of scientists and other experts, many of whom will participate in AIDS 2010 next month. It was initiated by the International AIDS Society (IAS), the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP), and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Those wishing to sign on may visit www.viennadeclaration.com, where the full text of the declaration, along with a list of authors, is available. The two-page declaration references 28 reports, describing the scientific evidence documenting the effectiveness of public health approaches to drug policy and the negative consequences of approaches that criminalize drug users.

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.

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