Written by Ruby Lawlor
On Friday, 26th 2024, administrators, policymakers, scientists and civil society representatives met in Amsterdam to discuss not if, but how and why, to legalise and regulate currently illicit substances. The Mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema invited administrators and policy makers to come to Amsterdam to facilitate this knowledge exchange with drug policy experts, and rally up motivation and political will to make the necessary reforms, specifically to explore legalising and regulating illicit substances.
Ms. Halsema’s values and motivations are rooted in ensuring the safety of her city and its inhabitants, as she noted that she is hugely concerned with the Netherlands becoming a ‘narcostate’, and rightly blames criminalising policies worldwide for this trend. In a recent Guardian article Femke stated ‘Our current approach in the fight against drugs is like mopping with the tap running.’, a view that we wish more politicians would be willing to publicly share. Femke understands that national drug policy reforms will not achieve their desired outcome without the buy-in of all countries, therefore she invited policy makers from around the world to join her in learning about this topic.
During the conference, titled ‘Dealing With Drugs’ there were panels held with past and current members of municipal governments and drug policy reform champions, and presentations given by experts in drug policy reform, human rights, and health and social policy and services. There were also 10 side sessions which allowed for more in depth and specific knowledge and experience sharing from civil society and scientists. Finally, there were to exhibitions in the foyer, one was the innovative and interactive project ‘The XTC Shop’, by the Poppi Museum, and one was the heart-wrenching photo exposition ‘The Lost War’, showing photos that display the horrors of the War on Drugs in communities in the Global South.
Presentations and panel discussions focused on how regulation can offer a solution to the challenges caused by the War on Drugs. Mayors from Bogota, Bern, Milan, Prague, and Cape Town shared the impact of the War on Drugs in their respective cities and the approaches they have implemented to mitigate this. Neil Woods from Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) spoke on the dynamics of the War on Drugs from the perspective of his past years as an undercover police officer – explaining how and why drug policies have the opposite effect than intended and how ‘criminals’ constantly succeed in being a step ahead of the police.
Steve Rolles gave the standout presentation of the day, from his deep knowledge and expertise on realistic and pragmatic models of regulation and envisioning the world after the war on drugs. Steve focused his presentation around coca leaf and cocaine, presenting evidence and models found in Transform Drugs publication ‘How To Regulate Stimulants’. Bouncing off this presentation from Steve, there was a panel discussion with drug policy experts; Judy Chang (INPUD), Sheila Vakharia (Research and Academic Engagement), Machteld Busz (Mainline), Jindrich Voboril (Drug Policy Department Czech Republic), Pien Metaal (Transnational Institute) discussing how regulating drugs should be executed, putting communities of people who use drugs, and marginalised people engaged in the production and trafficking of drugs at the centre.
A key highlight of the day was a side session titled ‘Regulation, corporate capture and the role of market players: non-profit or for-profit?’ with speakers Adria Cots Fernandez, IDPC; Kojo Koram, Birkbeck University; Mitali Nagrecha, Justice Collective Germany; Julian Quintero, ATS Colombia. This panel gave insights to how legal markets can be captured by for-profit actors, if not properly regulated, and the impact of this on communities most impacted by criminalisation and the war on drugs, including growers in the Global South.
Youth RISE and Students for Sensible Drug Policy International (SSDP Intl) were also invited to coordinate and conduct a side session during this conference, on the topic of young people, legalisation and regulation. This was a significant opportunity for our organisations and our respective missions, as we were provided the opportunity to detail how the war on drugs and punitive policies impact children young people. Given the prevailing rhetoric that the War on Drugs exists to ‘protect’ young people, this side session was a key moment for us to envision and explain how drug policies can truly protect young people, from the ever-worsening health and human rights violations that we face due to criminalising policies and an unregulated market.
Charity Monareng (Executive Director of SSDP Intl) and myself decided to make our side session into the format of a workshop, as we wanted to ensure that we created dialogue with the attendees on this often divisive topic of young people and drugs, where they were required to apply their learning from the day of presentations and discussions so far.
In the first half of the session, we presented a slideshow, detailing the health and human rights violations that young people face due to the current punitive paradigm, and posed the question; ‘Is the desire to ‘protect’ children from drug use and dependence justification for the measures that have been adopted?’. We acknowledged that there can be many possible negative impacts on children and young people using drugs – socially, physically, psychologically, but also emphasised that the current punitive and prohibitionist policies aimed at dealing with these concerns must be interrogated.
We explained the relationship between the illegal drug trade and modern slavery, and how the criminalisation of young and vulnerable people who are trafficked and exploited further marginalises them and steers them away from important support mechanisms. Further we explained the impact of depriving children of parents due to incarceration and criminalisation, and the impact that criminal records have on children and young people.
We detailed other human rights concerns regarding young people in contact with the criminal justice system, and the ineffectiveness of drug testing, sniffer dogs, and strip searching in school settings as prevention and surveillance techniques. On the topic of school and education, we elaborated the negative impact of drug education and prevention tactics that are ever prevalent worldwide, clarifying how stigmatising, often inaccurate and harmful scare-tactic and fear mongering based drug education is. And the harms that such a lack of practical and pragmatic information on drugs, their differences and possible harm reduction measures have on our population.
We also highlighted the impact of the current punitive drug policy regime on children and young people who use drugs’s mental and physical health, as a population at particular risk of overdose (overdose is the 3rd cause of death among young people in the USA), acquiring HIV and other blood borne diseases (young people who inject drugs are at 50% higher average risk of HIV and HCV acquisition), and severe lack of access to health and harm reduction services.
Throughout the presentation we highlighted the exact UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Articles that are being undermined and violated by the War on Drugs and its prevailing policies. We finished our presentation by explaining how to put young people at the centre of legalisation and regulation, through; data collection and research on young people’s drug use, the harms we experience, the challenges we face, the recommendations we have for change, investment in education, health and social services, harm reduction, and non-coerced evidence based treatment, and the consistent meaningful engagement of children and young people in decision making – regarding drug policies, protection efforts, health and treatment services, drug education.
We spent the second half of the workshop getting the attendees to engage in a discussion applying what they had learned from our presentation about centering children and young people in legalisation and regulation, and creating systems that protect rather than violate our health and human rights. To do this, we split the attendees into 3 groups, and assigned a different age grouping to each, one group focused on adolescent ages 16 and under another group focused ages 16-18 and another on ages 18-23. We asked them discuss which elements of the regulation model do we need to be thinking about for children and young people, consider the models we had learned about that day, what are the frameworks, systems needed in your regulated model of choice that will protect children and young people from possible harms from cocaine (regarding health, criminal justice system, overdose). And finally, we asked; What are the steps needed to get these frameworks and systems set up – what are your next steps leaving this session?
With more and more discourse about the urgent need for a paradigm shift in how we deal with drugs in our countries and internationally, and a growing understanding that decriminalisation does not go far enough, we took this opportunity to answer the age-old questions; ‘what about the children!?’. We cannot continue to use ‘protecting’ young people from drugs as the driving justification for continuing to wage this war on drugs. This is a time of change, we must take this moment, as one of great significance, and continue to apply pressure on policy makers to legalise and regulate illicit substances.
The conference culminated in the launching of the Amsterdam Manifesto Dealing with Drugs, signed and approved by a large coalition of policymakers, administrators, scientists, civil society experts, and organisations. This powerful document must be promoted widely, by all who read and agree, and it must be used as a key advocacy tool by everyone to keep the pressure on policymakers and ensure the health, safety and human rights of all humankind.
