Member Activity

Welcome to the 3rd edition of Drug Free Australia's update on Drug Prevention.

Shockingly, Australia remains one of the highest illicit drug using countries (per capita) in the world. Ice and stimulants like ecstasy are the main contributors to the bourgeoning community problems we are all facing. Smoked cannabis/marijuana is also a high contender - adding to our burden of disease and mental health issues.

With new and highly toxic substances now appearing on our streets (such as carfentanyl found in Brisbane in mid-February) we need urgent LONG TERM action to increase prevention education for our children and youth, (as well as for parents, teachers and frontline health workers). Take a look at this article http://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/02/17/12/28/one-touch-death-drug-seized-in-qld

Surely, if we can reduce tobacco use through continuous campaigns such as QUIT, and prevent our kids from getting skin cancer, with the SUN SMART campaign, we can do so much more to combat these highly poisonous drugs!

What’s happening with drug education in schools?
Drug Free Australia is planning to survey schools across the nation to find out the current status of drug and alcohol education including
• what programs schools are providing,
• how effective they are
• what issues are being addressed and how the programs are helping?
DFA is also keen to find out from schools that are NOT providing drug prevention and alcohol awareness programs, and WHY they may not be able to do so.
We will be partnering with other non-government organisations in this survey and will keep you posted. In so doing we will be able to provide a profile of drug education that IS WORKING in schools and communities over the coming months.

One Pill Can Kill - Teens’ hard hitting anti-drugs video goes viral

WFAD Regional Conference held in Nairobi Kenya


By Deborah Nyambu, Nurture Smart Youth Program Kenya

I recently had the privilege of attending a Regional Conference hosted by World Federation Against Drugs, WFAD, in Nairobi Kenya.

The two day conference held on 10th and 11th of February was well organized depicting the amount of work that was put in by the organizers to make it a success.

The conference doors opened with welcome remarks from the Secretary General, Ms Linda Nilsson who was also the day’s moderator. A succession of speakers then followed with a brief discussion on the UNGASS outcome document, starting with the International President of WFAD, Mr. S Carlsson followed by remarks from Mr. Victor Okioma, the CEO NACADA. Mr. George Ochieng, the Executive Director of Slum Child Foundation emphasized on the need for prevention, education, treatment, recovery and integration work being done by the civil society and for the need to move these efforts to the next level.
Creative illustrations were put across by Mr. Fayzal Sulliman, the Program Coordinator, UNODC Regional Office for Eastern Africa while touching on the subject of prevention. Ms. Jenna Philippe then gave us an elaborate illustration on development link to Vienna NGO Market place. A lot of knowledge was imparted here including the fact that the NGO Market place increases visibility of NGO’s work showcasing the successes of an organization. This facilitates achievement of overall organizational goals as well as helps bridge the impact gap!

Having enjoyed a scrumptious meal over the lunch hour, the afternoon began on a high note with Mr. Patrick Okwarah, the Coordinator of community Anti-Drug Coalitions of Kenya taking us through Community prevention in Kenya. We were enlightened on the importance of coalitions and how they combine talent and resources to engage communities in the sub-counties they work with.
Uganda Youth Development Executive Director Mr. Rodgers Kasirye reminded participants of the need to not only share information but also keep records and documentation of projects and programs being undertaken by organizations. In order to comply and Keep up to speed with international standards participants were encouraged to maintain the good practice of documenting activities and also embracing a reading culture to keep up-to-date with the latest developments.

Mr. Boro Goic, the Chair of Recovered Users Network took us through a very elaborate talk on the importance of recovery oriented drug policies and emphasized on the need to support recovery efforts by addressing specific needs of the whole person, their family members and community.

A couple of speakers then briefly touched on different topics these being; Paul Mburu, Real Mentor Soberlife Mentorship Society, Pamela Masese, Assistant Director Probation & Aftercare Services and Antony Kangethe from Asumbi Treatment Center. Emphasis here was supporting and enhancing recovery efforts to ensure strengthened transformed individuals, families and communities.One of the participants, Dr. Jennifer Kimani, thanked WFAD for the work they are doing and especially so for bringing the conference to Nairobi, Kenya.

Your experience is essential in the UNGASS preparatory process. The Survey on Youth is part of the global civil society consultation for UNGASS 2016. We want to voice the opinions of young people, and assess civil society work worldwide, related to youth and drugs. You can reply to the survey either as an individual or an organization.

Your input will provide the Civil Society Task Force with invaluable information to bring to global policy makers at the United Nations, for the UNGASS preparation and beyond. You can access the survey through this link:
https://ungasscstf.typeform.com/to/chdS8x

If you have questions or want to know more about the voice of the young people in the UNGASS process, please contact the youth representative in the Civil Society Task Force, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it from Active - Sobriety, Friendship, Peace.

More information about the UNGASS process can be found here, and here you can find more information about the involvement of the Civil Society in the process.

 

DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF MOST AT RISK CHILDREN TO THE FORTHCOMING  UNITED NATION GENERAL ASSEMBLY SPECIAL SESSION (UNGASS) ON THE WORLD DRUG PROBLEM IN NEW YORK 2016

Definition

Most at risk Child: Any child who stands the risk of being exposed to Narcotics as per UNCRC definition, which states that; “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures, including legislative, administrative, social and educational measures, to protect children from the illicit use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances as defined in the relevant international treaties, and to prevent the use of children in the illicit production and trafficking of such substances”. More so street children and children living in the rural and poor urban settlements

We, the children gathered today for the children convention on illicit drugs on 26^th of September 2015 In Nairobi, Kenya do declare as follows:

1. Taking note of the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989 entry into force 2 September 1990, in accordance with article 49 that children are protected from illicit drug through all means to ensure global Drug- free goal in both prevention and treatment. 
   
   
2. Affirming that most at risk children are equal to all other children and state parties should ensure that they recognize and protect them from all sorts of illicit use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances as stated in article 33 of the United Nation children right convention, and to be respected as such like any other child. This shall mean that the ambition shall be a drug free environment also for children at risk, in line with Article 33.
   
   
3. Guided by the purposes and principles of the United Nation Children right Convention, and UNICEF’s child protection policy from 2008, and commitment by state parties in the fulfillment of the obligations in accordance with the Convention, commit not to allow legalization (occasionally referred to as decriminalization) of possession of drugs for personal use, as the net effect of such sanctions is often harmful to society more so children and especially most at risk, and if allowed by state parties will lead to breaching of the UN drug conventions, by facilitating illicit drug use among first world citizens at the expense of a drug free environment for children there, as well as an increased risk that third world children will be recruited for illicit production and trafficking, described in ILO Convention 182 as among the worst forms of child labour.
   
   
4. Convinced that Article 33 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is the only core UN human rights convention that capture illicit drugs and need not to be changed as there is no mistake in the meaning and intention of CRC Article 33. 
   
   
5. Affirming also that all children more so most at risk if protected from Narcotics will contribute to the wellness, diversity and richness of cultures, which constitute the common bond and growth of many societies globally,
   
   
6. Affirming further that all United Nations state parties should come up with doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating priority attention to children’s rights as per CRC in policy making, including drug policy, as per CRC Article 3, particularly considering that those at risk are protected from illicit use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances
   
   
7. Recognizing the urgent need by state parties to respect and promote the right of children and remain committed to so without allowing political, economic and social structures influence from their cultures, spiritual traditions, histories and philosophies, 
   
   
8. Recognizing also the urgent need by state parties to respect and promote the right of children from drugs by ensuring they have an affirmative and essential right to drug-free childhoods as stated in treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements with other States and international bodies,
   
   
9. Reaffirming that children more so the most at risk, in the exercise of their rights, should be free from discrimination of any kind, thus the need by state parties to take appropriate measures to keep them free through all means from illicit drugs.
   
   
10. Recognizing in particular that there is no any convention that allows nonmedical and recreational use of illicit drugs as a protected lifestyle choice, state parties should commit not to come up with any convention that will allow this
    
    
11. Emphasizing that undefined concepts such as “war on drugs”, “harm reduction”, “de-criminalization” etc shall be left without attention until these have been defined..
    
    
12. Welcoming the fact that international drug policy debates at the moment in the world should change focus more to children than Adult since they have been overshadowed by the moral and legal obligation to protect them from drugs more so those at risk since Drug use most commonly starts in adolescence.
    
    
13. Emphasizing that the United Nations should urge their international partners and donors to avail more funding to Fund practical implications on drug policy, advocacy and lobby to children more so those at risk, and avoid employing celebrities with a record of drug transgressions as Goodwill Ambassadors.
    
    

 



 

The book, ‘Chasing the Scream’ by Johann Hari, is being promoted world-wide by a strong pro-drug lobby. This article is a snapshot of a more detailed critique being published in the ‘Quadrant’ in November. Those who have the health and well-being of our communities (and especially our emerging generations) will do well to read this and the complete article. They will then be better positioned to judge for themselves the best course of future action we need to take to prevent illicit drugs from spreading.

Some quotes from the Critique article are:

“Hari’s approach is not limited to the underhanded titling all illicit drug policy ‘a war on drugs’, but rather a far more explicit, creative rewriting of drug policy history, manufacturing an illusion that the historic international agreements prohibiting the recreational use of opium, heroin and cocaine in 1912 and of cannabis in 1925 are really all the work of one dishonest US bureaucrat, Harry Anslinger. 

That Anslinger led the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 through to 1962, commencing years after these agreements were established, does not deter Hari from rearranging history to suit his thesis that ‘Anslinger treacherously beguiled and bewitched the entire world into prohibiting the very drugs which Hari believes are largely beneficial with significantly less harm than alcohol or tobacco’.

To make this thesis work Hari has to creatively unhinge his creative assertions from verifiable fact, fact that is eminently verifiable (given every Anslinger file from his 32 years at the Bureau is still archived at Pennsylvania State University). 

Hari’s treatment of Anslinger commences with, “From the moment he took charge of the bureau, Harry was aware of the weakness of his new position.  A war on narcotics alone—cocaine and heroin, outlawed in 1914—wasn’t enough.  They were used only by a tiny minority, and you couldn’t keep an entire department alive on such small crumbs.  He needed more.” 

Such a creative rearrangement of history ignores the fact that Anslinger, when commencing his work in 1930 at the Bureau, did everything he could to avoid the public hue and cry led by various newspapers and legislators in the Southwest regarding the use and effects of marijuana.  Anslinger maintained that cannabis was not being imported as was opium or cocaine, but rather domestically grown, and should therefore be controlled by each State rather than the Federal Government’s 1914 Harrison Act.  It was not until 1937 that Anslinger begrudgingly acceded to pressure, a very different reality to Hari’s inversion of facts to suit his emotionally appealing but fanciful polemic which carefully avoids the reality of how and why these prohibitions were initially instituted.

Along with previous legalisation apologists, Hari ridicules Anslinger’s views concerning cannabis harms, particularly his promotion of cannabis as a cause of drug-related violence and madness.  Despite the lampooning of the lobby there is now a copious science indicating a dose-response relationship between cannabis and psychosis with a February 2015 Lancet study finding that daily users of high THC cannabis have a fivefold risk of psychosis.  Previous studies had indicated a doubling of psychosis risk from lower THC cannabis use. 

Studies in 2003 by Niveau & Dang and in 2007 by Howard & Menkes have investigated the effect of cannabis on a particular neural mechanism controlling impulse and found a connection with violence and aggression.  It stands to reason that the lowering of inhibitions via intoxication will create a greater expression of violence in those so predisposed, whether by alcohol or cannabis.  In the Geneva Convention discussions of 1925, the Egyptian delegate M. El Guindy implored the prohibiting of cannabis on the basis of ‘madness’ associated with its use, but also that its intoxication ‘takes a violent form in persons of violent character.’   Contrary to Hari’s assertions, Anslinger was never alone in linking violence and madness with cannabis use and modern science exposes Hari’s scorn. 

There are significant lessons that can be drawn from the elevated use of drugs due to their legality.  Clearly, a society can ill-afford any drug use becoming entrenched since reversing widespread use and acceptance comes at an exorbitant cost.  Also, our experience with tobacco teaches that educating the public about its real harms has inevitably caused an increased disapproval of tobacco users, which has been a factor in reducing use.  Hari appears to recognise this when he states that ‘As a result of this policy where tobacco is legal but increasingly socially disapproved of, cigarette smoking has fallen dramatically.”  He fails to recognise the contradiction, though, between the positive impact of what is effectively a stigmatisation of tobacco users, and his advocacy for the removal of any stigma from illicit drug use.  Little does he seem to recognise as an apologist for illicit drugs that there inevitably will be a stigma on any activity that presents gratuitous harms to any community, and it is a stigmatisation which works to stifle recruitment of new users and the further expansion of drug use.  Hari cannot have it both ways.

There is another lesson to be drawn from tobacco use where the harms have been advertised and are so well known.  Despite the millions put into prevention and education, the uptake by teens and early-twenty year olds of such a senseless habit still continues.  With no more glamorous advertising to sell the product, tobacco companies still continue due to current users recruiting new users.  All this with a legal product as irrational as heroin.  It is therefore not the prohibition of the illicit drugs that chiefly drives their expansion, as Hari alleges, because as with tobacco, users recruit new users for reasons other than supporting their own habit”. 

Jo Baxter 
Vice President World Federation Against Drugs
Executive Director, Drug Free Australia