As with just about every organization in the world, the pandemic continued to have an enormous impact on GDPO’s activities over the past quarter.  While this was the case, however, the team was busy in a variety of areas, although all of them - alas - desk based and as inhabitants of Planet Zoom.

Part of the Observatory’s work towards developing teaching programmes across and beyond the University, October saw Dave rollout a new Masters module, The Global Governance of Drugs: Power, (Geo)Politics and Narco-diplomacy.   Adopting a predominantly International Relations perspective, the module not only aims to critique international drug policy, but also help students better recognise and understand the role of, and interactions between, different transnational actors and institutional bodies in creating, shaping, and implementing drug policy at various levels of governance.  It covers a range of topics including: Theories, Approaches and Contemporary Challenges to Global Governance and International Organisation; The ‘Global Drug Prohibition Regime’: Evolution and Operation;  Contemporary challenges to and tensions within the GDPR; The United States: The Driving Force?; Multilateralism, Regional Organisations and Group politics; The EU and Multilevel Governance; Russia and the BRICS; Regime Apparatus, Knowledge, and the Frankenstein Problem, Transnational Civil Society and Regime Complexes: Drug Policy, Human Rights and Development.  With module feedback overwhelming positive and the students producing some excellent work, it will certainly be run again next academic year.

Speaking of excellent scholarship, in November Dave had the privilege, along with Julia Buxton and Alfred McCoy among others, to be on the full Doctoral Committee for Eric Gutierrez.  Eric received the award of doctorate Cum Laude distinction from the University of Rotterdam for his thesis Criminals Without Borders: Resilience and Interdependency in Opium and Coca Commodity Chains. As everyone on the Committee agreed, the study is worthy of publication as a monograph and we look forward to seeing it in bookshops soon. To be sure, do keep an eye open for all of Eric’s work.

In terms of publication, November saw  - as part of a Global Challenges Research Fund project - Rick publish a co-authored article in Harm Reduction Journal,  ‘New psychoactive substances in Eurasia: a qualitative study of people who use drugs and harm reduction services in six countries’ and take part in an online seminar to discuss the study. The same month Ross published the GDPO’s 15^th Policy Brief ‘Drug Policy and the Development Fallacy’ as well as a supporting blog Notes on Criminal Economics.  And, of particular note, Julia’s co-edited The Impact of Global Drug Policy on Women: Shifting the Needle was released. Published by Emerald books in both paperback AND as an Open Access ebook, this amazing collection is really worth a look, including as it does an incredibly wide ranging and rich set of 30 chapters examining various aspects of the impact of drug criminalization on a ‘previously overlooked demographic.’  In December Dave published the latest in the IDPC-GDPO series of responses to the INCB Annual Report: The International Narcotics Control Board on Human Rights: A critique of the Report for 2019.

In relation to activities, it was also encouraging to see the GDPO’s Jamaican partners, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Cannabis Research (ICCR), support the ground-breaking eight part webinar series,  ‘A World with Drugs: Legal Regulation through a Development Lens'.  Finally, congratulations must go to Axel on swapping Covid infested Kent for sunny Abuja as he takes up his new in-country post with West Africa Integrated Maritime Security.  From what we gather, among a range of other notable activities, he is even able to go to bars and restaurants…

With the pandemic still affecting all aspects of life, the GDPO’s activities over the past quarter continued in a somewhat restructured and exclusively online manner. That said, and despite the usual quieter summer period, there remains much to report, including changes within the composition of the Observatory team.

After four incredibly productive years, Khalid’s term as an Honorary Research Fellow at Swansea University came to end. We would like to express our great thanks to Khalid for all his valued contributions and wish him well in future endeavours. To be sure, we look forward to continuing working with him on a range of projects, including with the Global Studies Institute at the University of Geneva where he remains a Visiting and Teaching Fellow. Nearer to home, Julia left CEU and moved to the Department of Criminology at the University of Manchester after success in a British Academy Global Professorship grant application. The grant funds four years of research that will variously examine the impact of Brexit on illicit drug markets in the UK, and the extent to which drug policy reform in other countries has enabled a wider diversity of stakeholders to engage with drug policy processes. A huge congratulations go to Julia on this significant award. Discussion is already underway regarding continuing research synergies with her at Manchester where, among others, she will be working with friends of the GDPO, Professor Judith Aldridge and Patrick Shortis. The quarter also saw Axel, who is currently working on maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea as the Project Coordinator for the Support to West Africa Integrated Maritime Security (SWAIMS) project, become a member of the Global Initiative on Transnational Organised Crime network of experts.

As part of the GDPO Metrics project, September saw work begin on an ambitious new proof of concept project to develop a Global Drug Policy Index. This is funded by a grant from the Robert Carr Fund to the Harm Reduction Consortium. Joining the Consortium on the project as the ‘technical partner’ for development of the Index, the GDPO has consequently expanded to include Swansea University colleagues with appropriate quantitative expertise. As such, we’re pleased to welcome on board Dr Matt Wall and Jack Tudor. September also saw GDPO PhD student Heloisa Broggiato present her research at the College of Arts and Humanities annual PGR conference. As part of an excellent panel titled ‘Perspectives on Pain’, she spoke on ‘Untreated Pain: A Side Effected of the International Drug Control System.’

On the publication front, in late August Julia's latest publication was released. An edited collection by International Development Policy, this explores the relationship between international drug policy and development goals, both current and within a historical perspective. Contributions address the drugs and development nexus from a range of critical viewpoints, highlighting gaps and contradictions, as well as exploring strategies and opportunities for enhanced linkages between drug control and development programming. Criminalisation and coercive law enforcement-based responses in international and national level drug control are shown to undermine peace, security, and development objectives. Co-edited with Khalid Tinasti and Mary Chinery-Hesse, the collection includes contributions from leading academic and practitioners in the field of drug policy, including the GDPO’s Director, Dave Bewley-Taylor and Senior Research Associate, Martin Jelsma. It is available as an Open Access download.

The following month saw the publication of another long in the making edited collection, the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on International Drug Policy. Analysing arguably one of the most controversial areas in public policy, this pioneering Research Handbook brings together contributions from expert researchers to provide a global overview of the shifting dynamics of drug policy. Emphasising connections between the domestic and the international, contributors illustrate the intersections between drug policy, human rights obligations and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, offering an insightful analysis of the regional dynamics of drug control and the contemporary and emerging problems it is facing. With a foreword by the Hon. Louise Arbour (former UN High Commissioner on Human Rights) and co-edited by Dave and Khalid - the latter also contributing a chapter - the collection involved several other members of the GDPO team; Christopher Hallam, Julia Buxton, Constanza Sánchez Avilés and Rick Lines.

Reflecting upon a recently completed project and the ongoing work of GDPO partner organisation, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Cannabis Research at the University of West Indies, Branwen Lloyd’s blog ‘Cultivating Change: The Contemporary Challenges of Studying Cannabis Regulation in Jamaica’ was published in mid-September. Representing the activities of another new partnership, late September saw the publication of the first in the Colombian Organized Crime Observatory’s (OCCO), (Insight Crime Foundation-University of Rosario, Faculty of Political Science, Government and International Relations), working paper series. Coca and Its Medical Applications: Prospects, Obstacles and Lessons Learned, was co-authored by GDPO Research Associate and OCCO Research Fellow, Ross Eventon, David Restrepo (University of the Andes) and Dave Bewley-Taylor.

The year started with the delivery of a long-planned event, the OSF supported “Human Security and Drug Policy in Afghanistan” Executive Programme.  Taking place in New Delhi, 27-31 January 2020, this was part of a trilateral initiative involving the GDPO, the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU, Kabul, Afghanistan) and the TERI School of Advanced Studies (TERI-SAS, New Delhi, India).

Delivered at the TERI-SAS campus, the Programme brought together nearly 30 Afghan women and men working in vital areas on drug policy. In addition to Dave, academic director and overall project lead, the Executive Programme faculty team included AREU Deputy Director Dr Nishank Motwani, Dr Chandan Kumar (TERI-SAS), Dr David Mansfield (Private Consultant), Ross Eventon (University of Rosario, Colombia & GDPO research associate), Sai Lone (Myanmar Opium Farmers’ Forum), Tripti Tandon (Lawyers Collective, New Delhi), Dr Ravindra Rao (National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, New Delhi), and Dr Kasia Malinowska (Global Drug Policy Program, Open Society Foundations & The New School, USA). Visit the AREU website for a full account of the week, but in brief we’re pleased to report that the Programme was a great success with all participants leaving India enthused by what they had learned, discussed and shared.  Indeed, framed deliberately a knowledge exchange rather than knowledge transfer initiative – the Programme enabled participants and faculty to learn a great deal beyond their own specialisms with Afghan colleagues keen to apply aspects of the course when they returned to their various roles in Kabul and beyond.   

In early March, several members of the GDPO team attended the 63rd Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna with everyone – to varying degrees – presenting Observatory related research. On Thursday 5^th March Dave was a panellist on a side-event, Next Steps for Data Collection on Drugs: Experiences from United Nations Agencies.  Organized by the Governments of Mexico and Switzerland, Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, the European Union, the GDPO, IDPC, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Health Organization, other speakers included Zaved Mahmood, (OHCHR), Vladimir Poznyak, (WHO), and Angela Me (UNODC).  The session was chaired wonderfully by H.E. Ambassador Alicia Buenrostro Massieu, Permanent Mission of Mexico to the International Organisations in Vienna.  Relating directly to the GDPO Metrics project, the side event highlighted the ways in which the new version of the Annual Report Questionnaire (ARQ), adopted by the CND in March 2020, can be complemented with datasets from other stakeholders, including other UN agencies, UN human rights bodies and civil society.  As with all the side-events mentioned here, for a short account see the UNODC’s new CND side-events report and the CND blog

In the afternoon, attending the CND for both PhD research purposes and as a representative of the Vienna NGO Committee, Swansea University-GDPO doctoral candidate Heloisa Broggiato spoke on work related to her thesis at a side event titled, Accelerating support for increasing access to controlled medicines while preventing diversion and non-medical use.  This comprised a distinguished panel, with other speakers including the Australian and Belgian  Ambassadors to Vienna, a member of the INCB, the Deputy Minister of Health of the Russian Federation, a representative from the WHO as well as speakers from the Union for International Cancer Control and the IAEA.  The event highlighted the importance of a balanced global approach to the issue and appealed to member states to support the UNODC-WHO-UICC Joint Global Programme.

The following morning Martin Horton-Eddison, along with Manchester University colleagues and friends of the Observatory, Prof. Judith Aldridge and Patrick Shortis, spoke at a side event on drug crypto-markets. Joined by Energy Control's inimitable Fernando Caudevilla (aka Silk Road's 'Doctor X'), Drug CryptoMarkets Beyond 2020: Policy, Enforcement, Harm, and Resilience was sponsored and chaired by the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and co-sponsored by Energy Control, together with the IDPC and the GDPO. The presentations and Q&A augmented the knowledge-base of attendees in a fast moving and dynamic area of concern for the international community. Moreover, showcasing ongoing research from the GDPO’s crypto drug markets project, the event went some way to increasing awareness that there are unintended consequences of law enforcement approaches that aim to take all markets offline, and suggested that enforcing against only the most injurious of substances and vendors whilst also acknowledging the potential harm reducing nature of some online markets may be a useful first step toward an (otherwise absent) internationally agreed approach.

And last but not least, Chris spoke at a side event on Friday 6^th March, Heroin and Ibogaine Assisted Treatments in the Era of the Opioids Crisis, which was organized by Nonviolent Radical Party Transnational and Transparty (Transnational Radical Party). Presenting together with Professor Carla Rossi, his analysis was focused on the Heroin Assisted Treatment aspect of the event. Carla, an epidemiologist, argued that governments are under an ethical obligation to provide HAT as a second treatment option directed at those who do not benefit from the conventional substitution therapies using methadone and buprenorphine. Chris’ remarks provided a social and historical context for the treatment, beginning with the so-called ‘British System’ and moving on to the open drug scenes of 1990s Europe, which prompted the Swiss authorities to reconceptualise the prescribing of heroin and to offer a pragmatic, harm-reduction treatment system based at clinics where drug users could inject their prescribed dosage under medical supervision The event was well attended and prompted much interesting discussion.  Part of the GDPO’s UN project, Chris’s presentation was linked to the research underpinning a forthcoming Policy Brief on HAT and its reception on the international policy scene, with a special emphasis on the response to the treatment of the UN drug control agencies.

While not in Vienna this year, Axel was also travelling during the quarter.  This involved completing some fieldwork for the GDPO GCRF funded project, ‘Cultivating Change,’ in Jamaica in January.  Engaging with issues relating to the Observatory’s Africa project, in March he also gave a  presentation to officers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Abuja on the need for research and knowledge generation in the fight against organised crime and illicit trafficking.

In terms of publications, members of the team also had a productive quarter.  Within the academic realm, Khalid published ‘International drug control governance: Is a joint UN programme on drugs relevant?’ in the International Journal of Drug Policy  Chris had a chapter published in a collection edited by Professors Susanne MacGregor and Betsy Thom, Risk and Substance Use: Framing Dangerous People and Dangerous Places, Routledge 2020. This brings together historical and sociological analyses of the risks associated with the spaces and groups involved in psychoactive drug markets and the policies intended to mitigate them. Chris’ chapter entitled ‘Dangerous Drugs, Dangerous Women: Declassé women, drugs and sapphic sexuality in 1930s London’, concentrates on the experience of modernity in interwar London, and ways in which drugs and their consumers became symbolic of the anxieties and alarm deriving from the rapid social change accompanying the emergence of the modern world. It explores this symbolic role in the formation of both domestic and international drug policy. Axel (with Gary Potter) also had a chapter published in the same book, this one titled ‘Coming out of the Closet: Risk Management Strategies of Illegal Cannabis Growers’. Additionally, Axel co-published (with Sudhanshu Patwardhan, Maria Goretti and Ane Loglo) ‘Divergences and commonalities between the US opioid crisis and prescription medicine mis/use in West Africa,’ in the International Journal of Drug Policy, and (with Ann Ukachi Madukwe) "Tramadol as a pain relieving and physical work performance enhancement medication" in Drugs and Alcohol Today.

In relation to press outputs, Khalid published a couple of articles in the international media: L’Orient-Le Jour (Lebanon), ‘Les conséquences de la classification dépassée des drogues’, and L’Economiste (Morocco), ‘Une autre victime du Covid-19: La politique multilatérale en santé.’ 

Members of the GDPO team were busy during the quarter attending meetings and making presentations at various events and foras. October saw Axel at Lisbon Addictions.  Here he was on panellist on ‘Focus on the EU borders,’ gave a key note lecture, ‘Framing the non-medical use of tramadol in Africa: Global opioid crises, medicrime or inadequate healthcare systems?’ and also took part in the ‘Big debate: Industry friend of foe? Can industry contribute to better addiction science, policy, and actions?’ Later in the month Khalid co-organised an authors’ workshop at the Graduate Institute, Geneva,  for a special issue of International Development Policy on drugs and development, co-edited with the GDPO’s Julia Buxton and Mary Chinery Hesse, international civil servant and first woman chancellor of the University of Ghana.  The special issue, featuring articles by Dave and Martin Jelsma, will be published in October 2020. In November, Khalid was also a panelist on ‘Kicking the habit: Rethinking the war on drugs’ at the Paris Peace Forum.  Meanwhile, closer to home, Dave gave a guest lecture to Rick Lines’ MA class, ‘Advanced Issues in Drugs, Alcohol and the Criminal Law’, in the Hilary Rodham Clinton (HRC) School of Law at Swansea University. The following month in Geneva, Khalid gave a briefing on drug policy to the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent.

Axel and his incredible hair in Lisbon

In terms of publications, members of the team were also involved with a range of outputs, including both academic and peer reviewed grey literature.  Khalid co-authored ‘Regulation of Illegal Drugs: State Control and Fragile Institutional Capacity’ in the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, while Axel co-authored ‘Divergences and commonalities between the US opioid crisis and prescription medicine mis/use in West Africa,’ in the International Journal of Drug Policy, and ‘Tramadol as a pain relieving and physical work performance enhancement medication, in Drugs and Alcohol Today.  Regarding in-house publications, Martin Horton-Eddison co-authored with Joe Whittaker, Researcher and PhD candidate, Swansea University, HRC School of Law and Leiden University, a timely GDPO Situation Analysis, UK General Election 2019: Where do the Parties Stand on Drug Policy?  From a more global perspective, Dave authored a co-produced report with the International Drug Policy Consortium, The World Drug Report 2019: Perspectives on Protecting Public Health  

In November the GDPO received news of its successful application to the HEFCW awarded Global Challenges Research Fund to continue work with partners at the University of West Indies, Mona, on the ‘Cultivating Change: Cannabis and Sustainable Development within the Caribbean’ project.  And finally, it’s important to note that in the space of two weeks in September Martin Horton-Eddison not only (finally 😉) submitted his PhD Thesis, Dealing with the 'Darknet': International Drug Control and Crypto Drug Markets, 2010-2019, but also secured a fixed-term post as lecturer of International Relations in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University. Congratulation Martin! We look forward to continuing our work with you and developing research links with Cardiff.

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