Drug prohibition is engendering new levels of violence in Mexico and Colombia, the Denver city council deals a blow to would-be social consumption business operators, the FDA approves generic naloxone, and more.

The black market in cocaine is fueling violence in Mexico and Colombia. (USCBP)

Denver City Council Rejects Easing Restrictions on Social Consumption. A resolution to make it easier for businesses offering on-premises consumption by halving the 1,000-foot buffer between them and daycare centers, drug treatment centers, and city-owned parks has failed in the city council. The council voted 7-5 to approve the measure, but because it would have amended the city's voter-approved 2016 social consumption, it needed nine votes to pass.

Harm Reduction

FDA Approves First Generic Naloxone. The Food and Drug Administration announced last Friday that it has approved the first generic formulation of naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug. The agency also said it will prioritize its review of other applications for generic variants of products intended to treat opioid overdoses. "In the wake of the opioid crisis, a number of efforts are underway to make this emergency overdose reversal treatment more readily available and more accessible. In addition to this approval of the first generic naloxone nasal spray, moving forward we will prioritize our review of generic drug applications for naloxone," the FDA said.

Sentencing Reform

Bipartisan Drug Defelonization Bill Advances in Colorado Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill 3-2 Monday that would reduce the penalties for drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. The bipartisan legislation, HB19-1263, which was approved by the full House on April 18, will now advance to the Senate Finance Committee.

International

UN Report Finds Massacres on the Increase in Colombia. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has issued a report revealing a large increase in massacres carried out in Colombia, reflecting new criminal dynamics in key areas of the country. OHCHR noted just 11 massacres in 2017, but that number nearly tripled to 29 cases last year. Most of the massacres occurred in the departments of Antioquia, Cauca, Norte de Santander and Caquetá, areas particularly affected by Colombia's ongoing armed conflict. In the wake of the peace agreement between the FARC and the government, old and newly emerging criminal groups are fighting over who will control coca and poppy-growing areas and distribution.

Mexico Murder Rate Keeps Increasing. Data released this week from the National System for Public Security show that the homicide rate in the country has soared in the first two months of this year. Some 8,493 people were killed between January 1 and March 3, a 9.6% jump over the same period in 2018. Most -- but not all -- of the violence is related to fighting between rival cartels and clashes between cartels and members of the state security apparatus. The previous two years had both seen record numbers of killings, with some 33,341 reported last year, but if the rate seen in early numbers this year continues, the toll could reach 50,000 by year's end.

The annual General Social Survey has support for marijuana legalization at an all-time high, a federal marijuana banking bill will get a hearing next week, Mexican opium poppy farmers are getting squeezed hard by fentanyl, and more.

New National Poll Shows Support for Marijuana Legalization Still Rising. A new General Social Survey poll, which has been measuring support for marijuana legalization since the 1970s, has support at 61% this year, up from 57% two years ago and an all-time high for this poll. Support cut across all demographic and political lines, with a majority of Republicans (54%) supporting legalization for the first time. In the first General Social Survey poll in 1973, only 19% of respondents supported legalization.

Federal Marijuana Banking Bill Has Markup Set for Next Week. The House Financial Services Committee will meet next Tuesday for a markup on the Safe Banking Act, HR 1595. The bill aims to remove barriers to access to financial services for the marijuana industry.

Hawaii Decriminalization Bill Nears Final Senate Vote. With favorable votes in two Senate committees Tuesday, HB 1383 now heads for a final Senate floor vote. The bill would decriminalize the possession of up to three grams of marijuana. It has already passed the House.

Rhode Island Senate Committees Hold Joint Hearing on Governor's Marijuana Legalization Proposal. The Senate Finance and Judiciary committees held a joint hearing Tuesday on Article 20 of Gov. Gina Raimondo’s proposed budget, which features a plan to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana for adult use. It also includes amendments to Rhode Island’s existing medical marijuana and hemp laws. The House Finance Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday.

International

Mexican Opium Prices in Freefall in Face of Fentanyl. Farmgate prices for Mexican opium plummeted dramatically last year because of the rise in demand for the synthetic opioid fentanyl about US drug users, according to a study from the Network of Researchers in International Affairs (Noria). They found that the price for opium gum, the raw material for heroin, dropped from just above $1,000 a kilo in 2017 to around $350 a kilo last year. The researchers noted that some farmers had reported rumors of prices going even lower, for a price drop of as much as 80%. The resulting decline in income "is causing a series of various serious secondary economic effects" in poppy-growing communities, Noria said. "Many local peasants are not even making back their investment on the product; many families are losing their sole source of income; the amount of money flowing into the local economy has dried up almost completely; and many are leaving their villages for temporary agricultural work or even to work directly for the cartels," the report said. "The Mexican opium crisis looks like it might ruin the poorest areas of rural Mexico for good."

Rhode Island's governor is ready to hop on the pot legalization bandwagon, Vermont solons are moving to legalize pot commerce, Ohio's governor rolls out a response to the opioid crisis, and more.

Opium production is down in Myanmar, the UNODC says. But synthetics are on the rise. (unodc.org)

Rhode Island Governor Proposes Marijuana Legalization. Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) is proposing marijuana legalization as part of her budget plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Her proposal would allow for regulated marijuana commerce but would ban home cultivation and place limits on the potency of products available for sale. The proposal would also limit the amount of THC in edibles to do more than 5 milligrams per serving. Raimondo has been slow to jump on the legalization bandwagon but said the state should now move in that direction because most of its neighbors are.

Vermont Legislators Prepare Bill to Allow Marijuana Sales. The Senate Judiciary Committee is planning to introduce a bill that would legalize marijuana commerce in the state. The state legalized marijuana possession last year but did not include a system of taxed and regulated sales. This bill would tax sales at 10%, with a 1% local option tax. The state's Marijuana Advisory Commission had recommended a 26% tax and funneling much of the tax revenues into the departments of public safety and health to pay for new enforcement and prevention efforts, but Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington) wants the revenues to go into the general fund. He says the bill could pass the Senate within a month, but it faces a rockier path in the House.

Kratom

Utah Bill Would Regulate—Not Ban—Kratom. State Sen. Curt Bramble (R-Provo) has filed SB 58, the “Kratom Consumer Protection Act.” The bill would create regulations about how the substance is sold in the state and would bar the sale and distribution of adulterated kratom.

Heroin and Prescription Opioids

Ohio Governor Confronts Opioid Crisis. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed an executive order Monday to create RecoveryOhio, an initiative aimed at confronting the state's opioid crisis. He appointed Alisha Nelson, who oversaw drug abuse policy in the attorney general's office to work"every day with a single-minded focus of fighting the drug epidemic," according to the executive order.

International

UN Says Opium Cultivation Down in Myanmar, Cites Rise of Synthetics. Opium cultivation in Myanmar declined for the fourth year in a row last year, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said last Friday. UNODC said the 2018 crop was 10% smaller than the previous years. The agency also said the decline was due to a growing regional market in synthetic drugs. 

(See our Top Domestic Drug Stories of 2018 piece here.)

It's been a year we couldn't wait to put behind us, but as 2018 comes to an end, we can look back on some advances on the international drug policy front, as well as continued brutal and regressive responses from some quarters. Here are 10 of the global drug policy stories that shaped the year, for better or worse:

Iranian drug executions have come to a screeching halt in one of the good news stories of 2018. (handsoffcain.info)

Early this year, it became official: Iran had reformed its death penalty statutes to radically reduce the number of people facing execution for drug offenses, and it had done so retroactively, saving the lives of thousands already on death row. By mid-year, it was clear that the move was having an impact, as human rights observers reported a 99% reduction in drug executions, with only one person being executed for drugs as of June, compared to more than a hundred during the same period in 2017.

2. Canada Becomes the First G8 Country to Legalize Marijuana

Justin Trudeau pledged that he was elected prime minister, his government would legalize marijuana. It didn't happen as fast as he would have liked, but the Liberals' legalization bill passed parliament in June and went into effect on October 17. So far, the sky has not fallen.

3. Medical Marijuana Earns Growing Acceptance

The year began with Thailand announcing a plan to allow medical marijuana and ended with Thailand approving it and becoming the first Southeast Asian country to do so. But in the meantime, Israeli pharmacies began selling medical marijuana in April, Zimbabwe legalized it in May, and Portugal and Luxembourg followed suit in June. In November, Great Britain joined the club, and Greece issued its first medical marijuana production licenses. Late in the year, in South Korea, the National Assembly approved an amendment to the country's drug laws that will pave the way for the use of medical marijuana by prescription, and New Zealand also approved it in December Not a bad year for medical marijuana.

Canadian Senate

The bloody drug war of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte continued apace in 2018, with a death toll now put at 12, 000 (20,000 by some estimates), but Duterte has come under increasing pressure both domestically and internationally. In February, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch aimed broadsides at the Philippines even as the International Criminal Court began "preliminary examinations" of whether there is sufficient evidence to bring a case before the court. In March, activists called out drug war human rights abuses at the embassy in Washington, DC. By July, an unbowed Duterte was vowing to continue a "relentless and chilling" drug war even as national human rights groups said he was using it as a cover for assassinating political opponents. In September, he unleashed an attack on a second drug war critic, Senator Antonio Trillanes, after last year imprisoning critic Senator Leila de Lima on trumped up drug charges. She is still imprisoned.

5.. ...and the Rot Spreads in the Region

Following the lead of the Philippines, other countries in the region have also embraced drug war thuggery and human rights abuses. In May, the Bangladeshi opposition warned of a wave of police killings of drug suspects, and within weeks, more than a hundred were killed and 20,000 arrested, even as evidence emerged that the crackdown was being used to hide political assassinations. The situation was fraught enough that the UN human rights head and even the US State Department expressed concern. Drug war killings were also reported in Indonesia, although there were mixed signals about moves toward reforms there, and Sri Lanka vowed to begin hanging drug dealers. Paradoxically though, a Malaysian court's imposition of a death sentence on a man for providing cannabis oil to patients now appears to have resulted in a moratorium on the death sentence and could end the death penalty in its entirety in the county.

6. The US President Aligns Himself With Global Drug War Authoritarians

President Donald Trump was a baleful presence on the global drug policy stage this past year, sympathizing with drug war authoritarians such as Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, as well as drug death penalty countries such as China and Singapore. He said early in the year he wants to execute all drug dealers and admires the Singapore approach (mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking), a statement that moved more than 150 organizations to condemn his call. At year's end, he was singing a similar tune with a ghoulish call for more Chinese drug executions. In between, he went to the United Nations to try to gin up a reinvigorated global drug war.

coca leaves drying by highway

In a case brought by three marijuana users, the country's Constitutional Court ruled that the private possession, cultivation, and consumption of marijuana is legal. "It will not be a criminal offense for an adult person to use or be in possession of cannabis in private for his or her personal consumption," Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo wrote in his ruling. It will, however, remain illegal to use cannabis in public and to sell and supply it. The ruling did not set allowable quantities, with the court saying parliament had two years to come up with a new law that reflected the ruling.

8. Glimmers of Hope in Mexico

then-President Felipe Calderon unleashed the latest chapter of the country's drug wars, bringing violence to levels not seen before in the country, Mexico is showing signs it is ready for change. The death toll from prohibition-related violence is higher than ever, and that is impelling a psh for change, most notably with the election of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is very open to finding exits from the drug war, whether it's legalized opium production in Guerrero, granting amnesty for non-violent drug trafficking offenders, or legalizing marijuana. And speaking of legalizing marijuana, the Mexican Supreme Court in November struck down the ban on marijuana possession, cultivation, and use. Now, Lopez Obrador's governing MORENA Party has filed a bill to legalize marijuana sales. Tackling the violence, may be a bit more difficult.

9. Colombia Sees a Record Coca Crop as US Cocaine Deaths Rise

Efforts to reduce coca cultivation and cocaine production in the country after the peace agreement with the FARC rebels have not gone well, and that's causing rising worry in Washington. In June, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported that 2017 production was at an all-time high, prompting expressions of concern from the drug czar's office and support from President Trump for new rightist Colombian President Ivan Duque's "head-on fight against drug trafficking." That could include a renewed resort to aerial fumigation, even drones, as well as forced eradication of coca crops, leading to renewed conflict in cultivation zones. Meanwhile, cocaine is now the third leading cause of drug overdose deaths, trailing only fentanyl and heroin.

Vienna International Centre, home to the UN drug agencies

In June and again in November, the Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) of the World Health Organization (WHO) met to consider the evidence on cannabis (marijuana) and its placement in the UN drug scheduling system, which determines whether or what level of control the UN drug conventions mandate that countries maintain for the substance. The conventions specify that substances should receive such an evaluation before being scheduled, but that never happened for marijuana. Observers believe the process should lead to marijuana being moved to a less restrictive schedule than it is in currently -- if the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) votes to adopt such a recommendation from ECDD.

That didn't happen when, earlier this month, WHO voted to delay release of ECDD's recommendations until January, for unexplained reasons. That may mean they get taken up at the main annual CND meeting in Vienna in March, rather than December's intersessional. The delay seems unusual, and probably political, but its intent is unclear.

The next few months may tell. In the meanwhile, ECDD says that CBD shouldn't be scheduled at all. But that didn't stop the US FDA from saying that treaties require it be scheduled, even though they also think it shouldn't be.