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The WHO (World Health Organization) calls for decriminalisation

neversickanymore

neversickanymore

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The WHO calls for decriminalisation
Jul 17th 2014

JAMAICA, Uruguay, Colorado, Washington—more and more places are rebelling against the UN conventions that established the criminalisation of narcotics half a century ago. But the latest organisation to weigh in against the UN’s line is rather surprising. It is a branch of the UN itself.

A report just published by the World Health Organisation, an agency of the United Nations, makes a discreet but clear call to decriminalise drugs. And not just cannabis—the report goes as far as recommending the decriminalisation of injecting drugs, which implies the harder sort.

The call comes in a new report on how to prevent, diagnose and treat HIV among “key populations”, including drug users. Have a look at page 91 (page 113 of the PDF). Under “Good practice recommendations concerning decriminalization”, the WHO recommends that for people who use or inject drugs:

"- Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalize injection and other use of drugs and, thereby, reduce incarceration.- Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalize the use of clean needles and syringes (and that permit NSPs [needle and syringe programmes]) and that legalize OST [opioid substitution therapy] for people who are opioid-dependent.- Countries should ban compulsory treatment for people who use and/or inject drugs."

This is all rather different from the line taken by the UN’s 1988 convention (see page 3, or page 12 of the PDF), which states that:

"Subject to its constitutional principles and the basic concepts of its legal system, each Party shall adopt such measures as may be necessary to establish as a criminal offence under its domestic law, when committed intentionally, the possession, purchase or cultivation of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances for personal consumption."

So there you have it: the UN’s long-standing policy of criminalising drug use should be overturned—according to the UN. Clear enough?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2014/07/illicit-drugs

.....................................................................................................................................................

Wow.
 
Taking away a non-violent person's freedom because he or she happens to prefer "taking the edge off" by consuming parts of a plant instead of alcohol is irrational, and motivated by "concerns" having absolutely nothing to do with health. Alcohol is also quite habit forming, which is heightened by the fact that going cold turkey off of it (acute withdrawal) is considered a medical emergency which can end in death (as occurred tragically in the case of Amy Winehouse).

There are countless functional recreational consumers of marijuana who are very punctual, skilled, and dedicated to their workforce contribution. They also pay their taxes, abide by every other law in existence, and don't cause trouble or behave belligerently in public - which is more than I can say for the average consumer of alcoholic beverages who can easily go from silent to violent in a matter of minutes, and capable of causing a lot of physical harm to his significant other.

It is examples like the one above which are precisely why the "street drug" using minority sees its prejudicial and prohibitionist counterpart of society as leading a life of double-standards.

It is examples such as the fact that street drugs are available in prisons across the nation - smuggled in by those who swore to uphold the law - which serve to undermine any remaining sound logic in relation to the war on (the people who choose to use street) drugs.

After 43 years of the same never-ending futility of crime and profit disguised as crime and punishment, where private prisons sue their governments if their inmate levels go below a certain percentage in relation to the number of available beds, and in which the prisoners are forced to work unreasonable amounts of hours every day for less than a dollar, or be sent to solitary confinement where they slowly lose their minds, makes it pretty clear why there exists such international organizations such as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or why the US is the world's biggest jailor, with about 5% of the world's population, and 25% of the world's prison population respectively (well ahead of Russia and China).

The police can continue to grasp at the remaining straws all they want in order to fill their monthly drug-bust quotas, which will do a lot more harm to the victim of such incidents than smoking some marijuana, but will help the arresting officer to receive that eagerly-awaited promotion, and the ability to afford that convertible he always wanted.

And meanwhile, his victim, a non-violent marijuana smoker who is otherwise an honest, law-abiding individual, is looking at a shattered life for reasons related more to the fact the he was caught using a street drug, and little else if anything. Capitalism at its worst - blurring the line between it and fascism (at least from the caught marijuana smoker's perspective, and perhaps many others like him).

Hopefully this era of unjust oppression against marijuana consumers, and other plants which have been used for thousands of years, will end soon, and the cops can go back to chasing after actual crimes in which the victim did not consent to being victimized, because a detective deserves a promotion for once, even if (s)he doesn't fill up his/her quota as quickly as the average narc nowadays.
 
^ What Ro said. :)

This is very encouraging.
I am just glad it was the World Health Organization coming out against prohibition, not the rock band the Who.
 
Finally the cracks are appearing in this farce of a war. no better time to sign up or support drug reform efforts in your area, let's use this momentum to liberate ourselves from prohibition.
 
This is the WHO people. Hardly a force shaping policy in "first world" countries, or even any other place for that matter. It's all good and nice, certainly a step in the right direction, but it's a far, far, faaaaaar way off from substantive changes regarding prohibition. It's good, but lets keep things in perspective people.
 
All this comes from a World Health Organization Guideline titled, "Consolidated Guidelines on HIV Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Care for Key Populations", and what I found a bit more interesting was this, from a few lines down, "Countries should ban compulsory treatment for people who use and/or inject drugs".

It is not immediately obvious if they mean for drug use or for HIV; I assumed the former. Apparently, drug use treatment is so ineffective that it is a cause of HIV.

WHO is only as influential as the quality of the evidence that supports its guidelines.
 
That's actually a pretty good insight you have made there. Not necessarily all drug treatment, but certainly the majority of it, for sure. Says a lot about how shitty drug treatment modalities and services that there are out there 8) :\
 
Compulsory treatment is just another kind of prison. If the threat of prison encourages unsafe behaviours among IDUs that lead to a higher incidence of HIV, I think the same would apply to compulsory treatment.
 
I can hardly imagine situations without coercion present. I think of all those addiction recovery shows where the family and friends threaten to leave them unless they get help... and it seems like they have to be on the brink of quitting for themselves for that to work.

Then people can start again, knowing it will end with another horrible withdrawl. It is hard for me to quit anything convenient, even if I know it is wrong. But even the worse experiences eventually turn into something good.
 
pmoseman said:
I can hardly imagine situations without coercion present. I think of all those addiction recovery shows where the family and friends threaten to leave them unless they get help... and it seems like they have to be on the brink of quitting for themselves for that to work.

Then people can start again, knowing it will end with another horrible withdrawl. It is hard for me to quit anything convenient, even if I know it is wrong. But even the worse experiences eventually turn into something good.
Click to expand...

Actually motivational interview based therapies have much higher success rates than confrontational interview based therapies. I've certainly learned from some of my shittiest experiences and benefits greatly (for instance I've gained a lot this month in terms of personal resilience, clarity and learning, despite the fact it's probably been the worst month of my life), but it shouldn't be considered (and, empirically speaking, isn't) a prerequisite for moving forward, treatment or lasting recovery. Nothing wrong with it as an option, perhaps, but there is something wrong when it's the only or even the go-to, most promoted approach.
 
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