A Civil Society Shadow Report
Global drug control policies have been based on the general principles of eliminating the production, trade or use of any illegal psychoactive substance from the world. Yet policies which seek to reach that objective have involved harsh law-enforcement and even militarisation. These end up affecting the most vulnerable people who use drugs, subsistence farmers involved in illegal crop cultivation and small-scale traffickers because they are easier to apprehend than are wealthy and well-connected people.
The collateral damages are human rights and lives – those of the most vulnerable and those of the voiceless. To quote the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights (May 2018), in a world that is meant to be more inclusive and where no one should be left behind, ‘people who use drugs are not left behind. They are left outside’.
