OLONGAPO CITY- Confessed drug users and pushers have been asked to help the city government make caskets as part of their rehabilitation, to prove they were serious on abandoning their lifestyle. "You will help the city government make caskets," which are provided for free to residents who could not afford one for a deceased family member, Mayor Rolen Paulino said when he addressed 400 people who surrendered en masse on Friday. "There were people who died because they didn't have money to buy medicine. So how can their family afford a casket worth at least P20,000?" Paulino said. "This is going to be your source of livelihood." [continues 311 words]
BANGKOK - Somsak Sreesomsong was 18 when he was jailed for selling illegal drugs. Now, turning 30, he is not yet half way through his 33-year sentence at Bangkok's high-security Klong Prem prison. Somsak was "just a kid, not a big-time dealer," his older brother Panit told Reuters after a visit to the jail. "We're also serving time, waiting for him to get out so he can help the family." More than a decade after Thailand declared a "war on drugs," the country is admitting defeat. As the prison population soars, Justice Minister Paiboon Koomchaya told Reuters he was looking at changes to the country's draconian drug laws. [continues 636 words]
Drug users report highest-ever rate of stimulant's use in study's history, which suggests need for change to harm-reduction resources Crystal methamphetamine use has climbed across British Columbia and is now on par with heroin use, according to a new provincewide survey of drug users. The finding suggests a need to reassess the availability of harm-reduction resources and supplies across the province, according to an epidemiologist behind the study. The survey, prepared by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, was distributed across 34 sites offering harm-reduction supplies and completed by 812 drug users. It builds on annual surveys dating to 2012 and paints a picture of substance-use trends among harm-reduction clients across B.C. Before these surveys, most knowledge of local drug trends was based on data from two major cities: Vancouver and Victoria. [continues 570 words]
While Usage Is Legal in Some Cases, It Still Can't Be Grown in the State. The phones at the Georgia Department of Public Health no longer ring off the hook with people calling to find doctors or asking questions about how the state's medical marijuana registry works. Yet Georgia's quiet revolution in the year since it legalized a limited form of medical marijuana has shown little sign of slowing. Even so, obstacles and risks remain in the push for expansion. [continues 1037 words]
Move targets marijuana use amid prison population boom; some drugs may be reclassified for controlled use Marijuana or methamphetamine users in Thailand may get rehabilitation rather than jail under broad changes to the country's narcotics policy. The kingdom is reviewing its zero-tolerance approach, which has caused its prison population to balloon without actually controlling the proliferation of illicit drugs. Draft legal changes, recently approved by the Cabinet and expected to be tabled in Parliament, would emphasise rehabilitation over jail terms for drug users and mandate more proportional sentences. They will be put in place before the term of the current military government expires, Justice Minister Paiboon Kumchaya said this week. [continues 448 words]
Bato Says Syndicates Employing Vigilantes TRECE MARTIRES CITY- Director General Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa on Thursday said convicted drug lords were behind a rash of vigilante killings, directing hit men to target distributors who had run into difficulties remitting earnings following the Duterte administration's intensified campaign against illegal drugs. "For all you know, these drug syndicates, they're now killing each other," the Philippine National Police chief said at the burning of P1.77 billion worth of banned substances confiscated in police operations since February. [continues 621 words]
"We're talking about hundreds of deaths," Justine McIsaac lamented. For the past year, McIsaac has been on the front lines of Canada's opiate crisis, as an outreach worker for the Street Health Centre. The hundreds of lives lost, she explained, go beyond the city's boundaries, extending not just across the province but across the country. Last week, an announcement was made by Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott regarding the opiate crisis. Philpott signed an interim order to temporarily allow naloxone - a critical overdose-reversing drug - to be imported and sold in spray form across Canada. [continues 699 words]
Thai experts have rightly commented on the value of treatment and health-centred approaches. While it may always be best to be prudent when commenting on the domestic affairs of another country, there are times when issues become far too important to stand silently by and politely observe such custom - the current debate on laws governing methamphetamine use in Thailand is one of those occasions. Drug policy is a dynamic and complex arena and for too long countries have overly focused on investments in law enforcement agencies to address drug use. Whilst no one denies the importance and legitimacy of law enforcement agencies, its lead role in the drug area is an approach that does little to help everyday people and families. Instead, it increases the likelihood of families becoming collateral damage in an ever harmful war on drugs. Nearly all countries agree that arresting and imprisoning people who use drugs has terrible consequences yet when discussion turns to evidence based reform there is little progress and movement towards a health based response and leadership on the issue. [continues 690 words]
Sydney needs to operate safe rooms for users, write Matt Noffs and Alex Wodak. It is an indictment of our failed approach to drugs that the injecting centre in Kings Cross is, after 15 years, the only one in the country. Australia's once bold drug policy is now stuck. Our law enforcement leaders tell us that Australia cannot arrest and imprison our way out of our drug problems. Yet as Australia struggles with increasing problems from ice use, we haven't been prepared to try innovative approaches that appear to have worked overseas. [continues 704 words]
More Drug Users, Pushers Give Up on Eve of Duterte's Oath-Taking SAN AGUSTIN, Isabela -This town became witness yesterday to the latest in a string of surrenders of drug suspects that is being linked to a brutal campaign against drug trafficking that the incoming Duterte administration plans to carry out as soon as it assumes office today. Two days before incoming President Rodrigo Duterte takes his oath of office as the country's 16th President, 43 drug peddlers and abusers turned themselves in to the town police force. [continues 628 words]
An initiative that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana in California officially took its place on the Nov. 8 ballot Tuesday as its campaign took a commanding lead in fundraising to battle the measure's opponents. The secretary of state's office certified that a random sample showed sufficient signatures among the 600,000 turned in to qualify the measure. The initiative is backed by a coalition that includes former Facebook President Sean Parker and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. "Today marks a fresh start for California as we prepare to replace the costly, harmful and ineffective system of prohibition with a safe, legal and responsible adult-use marijuana system that gets it right and completely pays for itself," said Jason Kinney, a spokesman for California's Adult Use of Marijuana Act. [continues 664 words]
SACRAMENTO - An initiative that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana in California qualified for the Nov. 8 ballot on Tuesday as its campaign took a commanding lead in fundraising to battle the measure's opponents. The Secretary of State's Office certified that a random sample showed sufficient signatures among the 600,000 turned in to qualify the measure. The initiative is backed by a coalition that includes former Facebook President Sean Parker and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. "Today marks a fresh start for California as we prepare to replace the costly, harmful and ineffective system of prohibition with a safe, legal and responsible adult-use marijuana system that gets it right and completely pays for itself," said Jason Kinney, a spokesman for California's Adult Use of Marijuana Act. [continues 645 words]
The Medan District Court on Wednesday decided on capital punishment for four Indonesians convicted of smuggling 270 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine from Malaysia to North Sumatra. The four defendants are businessmen Ayau and Daud, alias Athiam, from Bengkalis, Riau, Lukmansyah, a security guard in Dumai, Riau, and Jimmy Syahputra, a resident of Deli Serdang, North Sumatra. The panel of judges found that they violated the Narcotics Law, which carries a maximum penalty of death for traffickers. "The defendants are proven to have conspired to traffic narcotics. With all the evidence, the judges rejected their defence and ordered the death penalty," said presiding judge Asmar while reading out the verdict on Wednesday night. [continues 368 words]
Paiboon Ready to Transfer Drug Rehab Function to Public Health Ministry JUSTICE Minister Paiboon Koomchaya is ready to transfer drug rehabilitation function completely to the Public Health Ministry. Authorities would proceed with the next step in the decriminalisation of methamphetamine, when the system is strong he said yesterday after a meeting of agencies including the National Command Centre for Drugs and the Public Health Ministry to discuss the findings of the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs. The assembly cited world currents shifting from the war on drugs to thinking of how to live with drugs. [continues 557 words]
Has Thailand's tough policy on narcotic drugs created a monster out of methamphetamines resulting in the poor being punished with the heaviest sentences, and prison overcrowding? An article published on the online outlet Thai Publica in July last year by Mutita Chuachang about the need to rethink the country's policy on ya ba has resurfaced recently. The content is relevant to the Justice Ministry's controversial proposal to remove crystal meth from the illicit dangerous drug list and shift the drug policy away from heavy suppression. [continues 794 words]
The Justice Ministry's proposal to remove methamphetamines, or ya ba, from the illicit dangerous drug list is a bold attempt to tackle chronic drug problems in society. The move, as revealed last week by Justice Minister Paiboon Koomchaya, involves proposing an amended version of the narcotics law which would in effect destigmatise both drug users and small-time sellers to allow them reclaim their lives. It has attracted a mixed response. The bill, however, states punishments remains unchanged for drug dealers and those in possession of 15 methamphetamine pills or more. [continues 877 words]
Roadside Drug Testing Is a Back Door Prohibition on Marijuana, a Nightmare for Medical Users Before breaking for the summer, the Legislature approved an extra-constitutional one-year pilot program that allows police officers to conduct roadside saliva testing on drivers they suspect might be under the influence of a variety of drugs. It's the kind of legislation that sounds beneficial, but threatens privacy and due process rights. Gov. Rick Snyder should veto a bill that is bound to be a litigation machine. [continues 420 words]
The seizure of industrial quantities of methamphetamine near Ahipara this week should spark a bit of stocktaking. The drug bust will be remembered for the sheer quantity of the attempted importation and the comic incompetence of the criminals. (It's interesting the drug runners' ineptitude has been the object of more scathing comment than the importation itself.) The police appear to have been completely unaware of the audacious if bungled operation until locals twigged to something unusual going on. If the police were genuinely taken by surprise, the war on drugs is surely in a parlous state. Not that the authorities have ever looked like winning the war which has been an abject failure around the world. [continues 729 words]
The leader of an advocacy group supporting family members of inmates in federal institutions says something needs to be done to correct the high numbers of false positives for drug residue picked up on ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) devices, or ion scanners. These false positives have resulted in visits by family members being rejected or changed to a higher security setting. "Once your son, daughter or husband is involved in the justice system, you're just thrown for a loop," Anne Cattral of Ottawa of Mothers Offering Mutual Support (MOMS), a group of approximately 35 mothers of federal and provincial inmates offering support for new family members of new inmates, said in a phone interview. "Nobody knows where to turn or how to get advice, information or anything, so that's our No. 1 mandate." [continues 1073 words]
THE OUTGOING chief of the Philippine National Police yesterday shrugged off Presidentelect Rodrigo Duterte's allegations that three "police generals" were involved in corruption or illegal drugs. PNP Director General Ricardo Marquez told reporters that an investigation had been in progress even before Duterte told his supporters at a thanksgiving party on Saturday in Davao City that corruption in the police ranks should stop and that he was asking three "generals" assigned at headquarters to resign. "We have not seen any evidence that will support the information of the involvement of active generals [in illegal drugs]," Marquez said in an interview after the weekly flagraising ceremonies at the PNP headquarters in Camp Crame, Quezon City. [continues 582 words]
