This report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy calls on governments to rethink global drug policy, to take some immediate measures to address drug problems, and not to shy away from the transformative potential of responsible regulation as a longer term solution.
The recommendations are as follows:
- Putting health and community safety first requires a fundamental reorientation of policy priorities and resources, from failed punitive enforcement to proven health and social interventions.
- Ensure equitable access to essential medicines, in particular opiate- based medications for pain.
- Stop criminalizing people for drug use and possession – and stop imposing “compulsory treatment” on people whose only offense is drug use or possession.
- Rely on alternatives to incarceration for non-violent, low-level participants in illicit drug markets such as farmers, couriers and others involved in the production, transport and sale of illicit drugs.
- Focus on reducing the power of criminal organizations as well as the violence and insecurity that result from their competition with both one another and the state.
- Allow and encourage diverse experiments in legally regulating markets in currently illicit drugs, beginning with but not limited to cannabis, coca leaf and certain novel psychoactive substances.
- Take advantage of the opportunity presented by the upcoming UNGASS in 2016 to reform the global drug policy regime.