Publications

Cannabis and Climate

2022-12-23T20:25:10+00:00

Environmental impacts are rarely taken into account in the cannabis regulation debate. The assumption is that legal regulation would automatically reduce the negative environmental consequences of th ...

Prohibited Plants

2022-08-18T12:40:52+00:00

Across the world, the state of environmental stress is unprecedented. As scholarship and activism on ‘environmental justice’ points out, poorer and marginalised communities face particular exposure t ...

A Sustainable Future for Cannabis Farmers

2021-04-16T14:56:45+00:00

Learn how lessening the barriers for small farmers while raising them for large companies can help to steer legal cannabis markets in a more sustainable and equitable direction based on principles of ...

Cannabis Regulation and Development

2020-09-09T17:26:29+00:00

Significant policy shifts have led to an unprecedented boom in medical cannabis markets, while a growing number of countries are moving towards the legal regulation of adult non-medical use. This tre ...

Cannabis rescheduling

2020-06-25T14:32:19+00:00

In January 2019 the World Health Organization issued a collection of formal recommendations to reschedule cannabis and cannabis-related substances, these present an opportunity for African government ...

Smokable cocaine markets in Latin America and the Caribbean

2020-03-10T11:39:38+00:00

The smokable cocaine market was established decades ago, and is definitely not a new phenomenon. Rather than disappear, it is undergoing a slow expansion: from constituting a rather localized and iso ...

UN Common Position on drug policy

2019-12-06T15:44:28+00:00

In November 2018, the UN System CEB adopted the ‘UN system common position supporting the implementation of the international drug control policy through effective inter-agency collaboration’, expres ...

Regulating Drugs: Resolving Conflicts with the UN Drug Control Treaty System

2019-12-02T15:06:42+00:00

There are good reasons to legally regulate drugs markets, rather than persist with efforts to ban all non-medical uses of psychoactive substances. Regulated cannabis and coca markets are already a re ...

The Challenges of Medicinal Cannabis in Colombia

2019-10-29T12:13:50+00:00

In July 2016, the Colombian government enacted Law 1787, which regulates the use of medicinal cannabis and its trade in the country. With this decision and a series of subsequent resolutions, Colombi ...

Fair(er) Trade Options for the Cannabis Market

2019-03-21T16:28:06+00:00

Policy changes over the past five years or so have dramatically reshaped the global cannabis market. Not only has there been an unprecedented boom in medical markets, but following policy shifts in s ...

Methamphetamine use in Myanmar, Thailand, and Southern China: assessing practices, reducing harms

2019-02-18T11:01:40+00:00

Over the past decade, methamphetamine use has grown more popular in Myanmar, Thailand and Southern China. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with individuals who use methamphetamine, this briefin ...

Connecting the dots...

2018-10-26T10:10:01+00:00

How can we resolve the tensions between current drug control policies and states’ human rights obligations? The international human rights framework clearly establishes that, in the event of conflict ...

Balancing Treaty Stability and Change

2018-03-22T15:13:50+00:00

Legal tensions are growing within the international drug control regime as increasing numbers of member states move towards or seriously consider legal regulation of the cannabis market for non-medic ...

Poppies, opium, and heroin

2018-04-16T16:01:40+00:00

Poppy cultivation in Mexico and Colombia is part of a local economy geared almost exclusively toward the illegal market abroad: it is driven by demand for heroin, primarily in the United States. Nort ...

Edging forward

2017-10-02T08:12:18+00:00

Diplomatic processes at the United Nations are notoriously slow and difficult, perhaps increasingly so in a modern world of multi-polar geopolitics and tensions. This is certainly no different for th ...

Morocco and Cannabis

2017-03-10T15:39:03+00:00

This policy briefing discusses whether or not the aim of reducing cannabis cultivation is realistic or beneficial for Morocco, what it would actually mean for the major production area the Rif – one ...

Ganja di Indonesia

2017-02-24T16:04:10+00:00

Penggunaan ganja tidak pernah menimbulkan masalah besar di Indonesia, namun kebijakan prohibitionist (pelarangan) tetap diberlakukan sampai sekarang. Meskipun prevalensi konsumsi ganja cukup tinggi, ...

The Global Forum of Producers of Prohibited Plants (GFPPP)

2016-11-09T12:42:07+00:00

The voices of affected communities involved in the cultivation of coca leaf, opium poppy and cannabis plants are lacking in the global debate on drug policy reform in general and were at risk of bein ...

Cannabis in Latin America and the Caribbean

2017-03-10T13:11:14+00:00

Cannabis (or marihuana) is one of the most widely consumed psychoactive substances in the world. According to the United Nations World Drug Report, 183 million people, or 3.8% of the world’s populati ...

'Found in the Dark'

2016-10-11T13:59:16+00:00

To address its serious drug use problems, Myanmar should change its drug policy towards a harm reduction approach. Instead of a repressive approach, voluntary and evidence-based treatment and public ...