Harm Reduction

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has issued a dire new report warning that the Afghan opium trade is spreading addiction, disease, and insurgency. Too bad it doesn't address the role of global drug prohibition in exacerbating all these problems.

More than a year after the DEA quietly reported that a veterinary anti-parasitic agent was showing up in cocaine, and after at least two US deaths linked to the tainted drug, federal public health officials have finally issued an alert warning doctors, treatment centers, and public health professionals of the menace.

And then there were two: Pennsylvania's Board of Pharmacy has issued new regulations allowing pharmacies to sell syringes without a prescription. That leaves Delaware and New Jersey as the only states that don't.

An Associated Press story at the end of August raised the alarm about levasimole-tainted cocaine, but the problem has been emerging for years. Now, while waiting for the feds to act, harm reductionists and public health workers grapple with how to respond.

The drug policy wheel is turning, and the US and its hard-line repressive drug policies are becoming increasingly isolated in the hemisphere as in the past week alone 150 million Latin Americans came under one form of decriminalization or another.

The Chronicle reviews a journalistic treatment of the Mara Salvatrucha gang and an anthropological treatment of a group of homeless middle-aged heroin addicts. We found one much more satisfying than the other.

As the United Nations issues its annual World Drugs Report, UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa finally notices his anti-prohibitionist critics and fights back. The critics are glad to engage. More importantly, Costa's attack signals that the legalization movement is gaining momentum.

At least 16 Asian nations and an equal number of others, including the US, apply the death penalty to certain drug offenses. It's time for that to stop, said human rights and harm reduction organizations, and they are using UN anti-drug day to pressure both the international community and offending countries to act now.

In a bid to deal with the state's gargantuan budget deficit, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to cut funding for HIV/AIDS programs and Proposition 36 treatment programs. Protests over the former broke out this past week in cities across the state.

Canada's Conservative government is pushing a pair of tough on drugs and crime bills that would institute mandatory minimum sentencing, but the Liberals and the NDP are starting to push back.