There have been a number of exciting developments at the Centre since the first issue of the journal was released last year. The first is a change in the name of the journal itself to Human Rights and Drugs,1 and an expansion of the publication schedule to two volumes annually. We will be publishing a second edition of the journal in the autumn of 2012, and are accepting submissions now.

The second development is the agreement of an academic partnership between the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy and the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. Established in 1983, Essex is one of the oldest and most internationally- renowned academic human rights centres in the world. The International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy will now be formally housed at Essex, which creates a tremendous opportunity to expand the visibility of drug policy issues within human rights law community, as well as to engage undergraduate and postgraduate students through lectures and seminars. Although moving to Essex, we maintain a strong relationship with our original home at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland Galway, and will continue to be an active contributor to academic life at that institution.

The timing of this new partnership with Essex could not be better, and clearly reflects the growing interest in engaging issues of drugs and drug policy through the lens of international human rights law. This edition of Human Rights and Drugs is a product of that growing interest, and we are pleased to present new research and analysis in a broad range of topic areas. Indeed, the content of this second issue of the journal could not be more timely and relevant, particularly as the contributions reflect on – and offer thoughtful contrasts to – the recent work of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the treaty body established by the UN drug conventions to oversee their implementation. For example, the Board has recently refused to take a position on either the death penalty for drug offences or drug detention centres, putting it at odds with the clear positions on these issues expressed by UN human rights bodies, as explored in two articles in this journal.

Other issues included in the journal are: compulsory detention of people who use (or are suspected of using) drugs for the purpose of ‘drug treatment’; human rights implications of capital punishment for drug offences in China; safe injection facilities and the Canadian courts; the International Narcotic Control Board’s attempts to extend the scope of its powers to regulate plant materials containing psychoactive substances; the evolving interpretation of drug use in Article 33 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child; and finally, the limits of freedom of speech when it is prejudicial against people who use drugs.

Rick Lines and Damon Barrett
Editors-in-Chief

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.

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.