The criminalisation of people who use drugs compounds drug-related challenges and worsens health and welfare outcomes. Across the world, there is a growing number of jurisdictions where the possessio ...

As a farmer eking out a living in Peru’s central jungle, Rubén Leiva grew one cash crop that seemed immune from global cycles of booms and busts. But the coronavirus pandemic has accomplished what ne ...

The world’s cocaine industry — which produces close to 2,000 metric tons a year and makes tens of billions of dollars — has adapted better than many other legitimate businesses. The industry has bene ...

Pedro Arenas is afraid that they'll take flight again. "I expect it could be within the next months," he says. Since the end of last year, nine AT-802 firefighting aircraft have been deployed through ...

At the end of 2019 the government of Iván Duque presented a draft decree to resume the spraying of drug crops used for illicit purposes. It argued that spraying is the only instrument to curb the inc ...

The Transnational Institute (TNI) has always believed in the need to find global answers to global problems, been a strong defender of multilateralism and an advocate of a well-functioning United Nat ...

In November 2018, the UN System CEB adopted the ‘UN system common position supporting the implementation of the international drug control policy through effective inter-agency collaboration’, expres ...

With Canada the largest nation to completely legalize marijuana, the world’s most valuable pot company, Canopy Growth Corp., founded in 2013 and now worth about $6.4 billion, is one of the most contr ...

Cannabis company Clever Leaves has only managed to export a few marijuana derivatives because of the tight regulations threatening to choke Colombia’s ganja industry. Colombia was one of the first co ...

Other countries are passing laws to permit the production, import and export of medical marijuana but Colombia has a leg up because it did so three years ago, says Rodrigo Arcila, president of the Co ...

It was eight years ago the last time planes came to spray poison on Noralba Quintero’s coca crop in the jungled foothills here by the mighty Magdalena River. Until recently, she thought those days we ...

The government’s failure to comply with the coca crops substitution program in Colombia has left the future of almost 100,000 families in limbo and sets up a major setback in the country’s drug polic ...

Colombia’s Constitutional Court is debating lifting a judicial ban on the spraying of glyphosate during the aerial fumigation of illicit coca crops, a decision that is unlikely to fix the nation’s co ...

How can we resolve the tensions between current drug control policies and states’ human rights obligations? The international human rights framework clearly establishes that, in the event of conflict ...

Colombian campesinos in Briceño, Antioquia have voluntarily uprooted their coca plants in exchange for government support to grow new crops. But with much aid delayed, the local economy has collapsed ...

Hundreds of Colombian farmers, activists, and community organisers have been killed over the past 18 months, despite the landmark peace deal that supposedly ended 52 years of war. For them, and for l ...

Although cannabis remains a prohibited substance worldwide, in recent decades a series of political, legislative and judicial processes in various parts of the world have given rise to various forms ...

Tens of thousands of Colombians died in the U.S.-backed war on drugs. But after an official about-face on marijuana, Colombia is looking to exchange gun-toting traffickers for corporate backers in a ...

The government’s “comprehensive programme for illicit crop substitution” (PNIS) aims to replace the coca with a profitable legal crop. The crop-substitution strategy is set out in a peace accord that ...

“It's as easy as buying a drink from an off-licence.” That is how Ellen Romans, a recovering drug addict, describes picking up cocaine near where she lives in London. And today top-notch blow is much ...

U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening that he may decertify Colombia as a partner in the war against drugs unless the South American nation reverses a record surge in cocaine production. The sho ...

Getting to the Briceño region in the heart of Antioquia requires an excellent vehicle, and a lot of time and luck. The week before our journey there in mid-July, heavy rains wiped out part of the roa ...

The rules are a bit of a buzzkill. Drug users must register with the government. Machines will scan buyers’ fingerprints at every purchase, and there are quotas to prevent overindulgence. But when Ur ...

Imperial Brands Plc gained the services of a leader in the field of medicinal cannabis as the British tobacco manufacturer seeks to further its push beyond cigarettes. Simon Langelier, a 30-year vete ...

After a 15-year legal battle, a U.S. jury will begin deliberations over whether a U.S. security contractor must pay damages to 2,000 Ecuadoran farmers who say they were poisoned by the U.S. and Colom ...