Upcoming (Groundbreaking) Webinar Series We’re Keen To Share In A World (Awash) With Drugs

Posted on September 4, 2020 by TPNS • Posted in 1. Recent Posts, Rethink the War on Drugs

‘A World with Drugs: Legal Regulation through a Development Lens.’

Invitation to webinar series running September~December

We are delighted to be sharing news of an 8-part international webinar series, co-organised by our friends and colleagues at Health Poverty Action. It will explore why drug policy reform is vital for sustainable development.
Drug policy has been undermining progress towards development for decades – it has fuelled violence and conflict, undermined democracy, driven poverty, inequality and poor health, and prevented access to vital medicines worldwide. Furthermore, drug policy reform – especially legal regulation – could significantly contribute to achieving sustainable development if done in the right way

The decades-long ‘War on Drugs’ and its impact on international development has been an issue TPNS has worked on previously, convinced that the evidence points in one direction only: for all the political capital and money thrown at it, it has been an abject failure on just about every count.

This new international webinar series explores the intersection of drug policy reform and development related issues such as trade justice, tax justice, climate justice, sustainable livelihoods and community participation. Between September and December, the webinar series will look at how drug policy reform is vital if we wish to achieve sustainable development worldwide.
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Cannabis: Regulate it. Tax it. Support the NHS. Promote public health.

Posted on June 5, 2018 by TPNS • Posted in Rethink the War on Drugs, What interests us • Tagged Cannabis, War on Drugs

A new report by Health Poverty Action.

The so-called ‘war on drugs’ was always built on shaky foundations. Now countries and jurisdictions around the world are dismantling it piece by piece and building a new, 21^st century approach to drugs that puts public health first.

Read the report

Nowhere are the foundations of this new approach to drugs more obvious than in the global movement towards regulated, legalised cannabis markets. And despite the US being the ostensible leader of the ‘war on drugs’, it has been US states at the forefront of this move. The results from the US so far are generally positive: confounding critics whilst bringing in additional tax income to fund public services.[1] And this is just the start: in the summer of 2018 Canada will become the first G7 country to legalise cannabis.

Regulating and legalising cannabis is an idea whose time has come.

Sign the petition

It is time to accept that prohibition is not only ineffective and expensive, but that regulation could – if it is done well – protect vulnerable groups and support public health. It would also generate both taxes (at least £1 billion annually, but potentially more) and savings, which taken together would mean more resources for health, harm reduction and other public services.

It is time for the UK government to catch up with the global shift and take the responsible approach by bringing in a regulated, legal market for cannabis.

To do this the UK government should

move primary responsibility for cannabis policy and all other domestic (legal and illegal) drug policy to the Departments of Health (DH) and International Development (DFID)[2];
bring together a panel of experts to develop the most effective model for a regulated market; and,
establish a Cannabis Regulatory Authority to implement their recommendations.

It is time to act.

Read the full report here:

[1] Transform, (2015) ‘Cannabis regulation in Colorado: early evidence defies the critics’ Available online: www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/cannabis-regulation-colorado-early-evidence-defies-critics

[2] Health Poverty Action (2018) ‘Building a 21st Century Approach to Drugs’ Available online: https://www.healthpovertyaction.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Building-a-21st-century-approach-to-drugs_briefing2018.pdf

Media Coverage

Prohibition and the war on drugs

Posted on March 16, 2014 by TPNS • Posted in Rethink the War on Drugs, What interests us • Tagged War on Drugs

Sanho Tree, “An Inside Look at the Drug War Vs. Civilization,” 5 February 2014, The Fix

We unfortunately live in a society that likes to talk in simple dichotomies—good or bad, yes or no, black or white. It carries over very often into the way we talk about drug policy. Historically, when I would debate drug warriors, because I would be critical of prohibition and the war on drugs, they would say, “Oh, so you want to sell heroin in candy machines to children.” No. I actually want more control over these substances. The myth of prohibition is that prohibition doesn’t mean you control drugs. It means you give up the right to control drugs.
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Global Drug and Development Policy Roundup

Posted on January 15, 2014 by TPNS • Posted in Rethink the War on Drugs, What interests us • Tagged War on Drugs

“Global Drug and Development Policy Roundup,” Institute of Development Studies, 2013

The initial invite-only event took place early 2013 and used the report “Dependent on Development. The interrelationships between illicit drugs and socioeconomic development” (pdf), released by the Nossal Institute for Global Health in December 2010, as a basis for discussion.
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Let’s put an end to the “war on drugs” that has ruined so many lives

Posted on November 5, 2013 by TPNS • Posted in Rethink the War on Drugs, What interests us • Tagged USA, War on Drugs

Katrina vanden Heuvel, “Why It’s Always Been Time to Legalize Marijuana,” The Nation, 30 October 2013

“Marijuana is indeed a gateway drug,” quips Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies. “It’s a gateway drug to the Oval Office!” Indeed. From Bill Clinton’s “I didn’t inhale it” through George W. Bush’s “I was young and foolish” to Barack Obama’s teen years in the Choom Gang (“I inhaled frequently—that was the point”), the last three presidents have more or less owned up to breaking America’s drug laws.
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There Is No Good Drug War

Posted on August 1, 2013 by TPNS • Posted in Rethink the War on Drugs, What interests us • Tagged USA, War on Drugs

Maya Schenwar, Interview “There Is No Good Drug War,” Truthout, 31 July 2013

Twenty years ago, when acclaimed neuroscientist Carl Hart began studying drugs, he was motivated by a desire to help communities like the one in which he grew up: poor communities of color that had been, he believed, ravaged by the crack “epidemic.” The media craze around crack headlines was swirling to a fever pitch at the time – the late ’80s and early ’90s – and, Hart writes, “I became utterly convinced that crack cocaine was the cause of everything that I now saw as wrong with the neighborhood.”

However, nothing is that straightforward, in the world or in High Price, and Hart’s work in the lab called into question some of his most deeply rooted assumptions.
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Infographic: The Failed War On Drugs

Posted on July 19, 2013 by TPNS • Posted in Rethink the War on Drugs, What interests us • Tagged USA, War on Drugs

Failed War On Drugs by OnlineCriminalJusticeDegree is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.onlinecriminaljusticedegree.com/failed-war-on-drugs/.

After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation

Posted on July 18, 2013 by TPNS • Posted in Rethink the War on Drugs, What interests us • Tagged War on Drugs

“After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation,” Transform Drug Policy Foundation, November 2009

There is a growing recognition around the world that the prohibition of drugs is a counterproductive failure. However, a major barrier to drug law reform has been a widespread fear of the unknown – just what could a post-prohibition regime look like?

For the first time, ‘After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation’ answers that question by proposing specific models of regulation for each main type and preparation of prohibited drug, coupled with the principles and rationale for doing so.
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