• Drug Policy and the Courts: A Brazilian experience

    Drug Policy and the Courts: A Brazilian experience
    José Henrique Rodrigues Torres
    Series Legislative Reform of Drug Policies Nr. 2
    August 2009

    This report is a personal response from the author on the issue of Drug Policy and The Courts. A year ago, in the author’s professional practice, he felt duty-bound to make a decision that overturned Brazilian case-law and ran contrary to domestic legislation as regards possession of controlled substances.

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  • Drug Policy Reform in Practice

    Drug Policy Reform in Practice
    Experiences with alternatives in Europe and the US
    Tom Blickman Martin Jelsma
    Nueva Sociedad No 222
    July-August 2009

    The academic journal Nueva Sociedad recently released an issue to promote the debate in Latin America on drug policy reform. TNI contributed with the article Drug policy reform in practice: Experiences with alternatives in Europe and the US. The article aims to give inputs for the Latin American debate providing an overview of European drug policy practices regarding harm reduction, decriminalization of consumption and possession, and more tolerant policies towards cannabis, particularly in The Netherlands and several states in the US.

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  • From Golden Triangle to Rubber Belt?

    From Golden Triangle to Rubber Belt?
    The Future of Opium Bans in the Kokang and Wa Regions
    Tom Kramer
    TNI Drugs Policy Briefing Nr. 29
    July 2009

    In the Kokang and Wa regions in northern Burma opium bans have ended over a century of poppy cultivation. The bans have had dramatic consequences for local communities. They depended on opium as a cash crop, to buy food, clothing, and medicines.

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  • Coca Myths

    Coca Myths
    Anthony Henman Pien Metaal
    TNI Drugs & Conflict Debate Paper 17
    June 2009

    The coca leaf has been used and misused for many ends, each of them suiting different interests and agendas. Even its very name has been appropriated by a soft drinks producer, which still has difficulties in admitting that the plant is used to produce its "black gold". Every day press accounts around the world use the word coca in their headlines, when they refer in fact to cocaine.

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  • Pardon for Mules in Ecuador

    Pardon for Mules in Ecuador
    A Sound Proposal
    Pien Metaal
    Series Legislative Reform of Drug Policies Nr. 1
    February 2009

    At the end of 2008, about 1,500 persons were released who were in Ecuadorian prisons sentenced for drug trafficking. The measure, known as “pardon for mules,” singled out a specific group of prisoners who were victims of indiscriminate and disproportionate legislation that was in effect for many years.

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  • Withdrawal Symptoms in the Golden Triangle

    Withdrawal Symptoms in the Golden Triangle
    A Drugs Market in Disarray
    Transnational Institute (TNI)
    January 2009

    Drug control agencies have called the significant decline in opium production in Southeast Asia over the past decade a 'success story'. The latest report of the Transnational Institute (TNI). based on in-depth research in the region, casts serious doubts on this claim noting that Southeast Asia suffers from a variety of 'withdrawal symptoms' that leave little reason for optimism.

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    application-pdfThe ATS Boom in Southeast Asia (PDF)
    application-pdf Conclusions and recommendations (PDF)
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  • Alternative Developments, Economic Interests and Paramilitaries in Uraba

    Alternative Developments, Economic Interests and Paramilitaries in Uraba
    Moritz Tenthoff
    TNI Drug Policy Briefing Nr. 27
    September 2008

    The following document analyses how the Forest Warden Families Programme and the Productive Projects of the Presidential Programme Against Illegal Crops in Colombia have been used to legalise paramilitary structures and implement mega agro-industrial projects in the Uraba Region.

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  • U.S. Drug Policy: At What Cost?

    U.S. Drug Policy: At What Cost?
    Moving Beyond the Self-Defeating Supply-Control Fixation
    John Walsh
    Statement before the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress
    June 19, 2008

    My point in reviewing the experience with forced eradication is that a stiff dose of historical perspective is in order as policy makers contemplate the scope of the drug trade today, and engage in a critical examination of how to improve U.S. drug policies.

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  • Rewriting history

    Rewriting history
    A response to the 2008 World Drug Report
    TNI Drug Policy Briefing Nr. 26
    June 2008

    The world today is not any closer to achieving the ten-year targets set by the 1998 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs. These goals were “eliminating or significantly reducing the illicit cultivation of coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy by the year 2008.” Instead global production of opiates and cocaine has significantly increased over the last ten years. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) global illicit opium production doubled from 4,346 tons in 1998 to 8,800 tons in 2007. This is mainly due to the massive increase in opium production in Afghanistan. The estimated global cocaine production increased from 825 tons in 1998 to 994 tons in 2007, an increase of 20%.

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  • The current state of drug policy debate

    The current state of drug policy debate
    Trends in the last decade in the European Union and United Nations
    Martin Jelsma
    Article submitted as support material for the First Meeting of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy
    Rio de Janeiro, April 30, 2008

    Martin Jelsma, from the Transnational Institute, prepared an analysis for the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, explaining the drug policy situation in the European Union and the current state of debate in the United Nations agenda. The commission is an initiative born of former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso, from Brazil, César Gaviria, from Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo, from Mexico, to respond to concerns related to the problems of drug consumption and traffic in Latin America. The idea to constitute a commission capable of consolidating a debate concerning this problematic also responds to the necessity of reviewing the world drug policies in the scope of the United Nations, which began in March 2008.

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