Following the Christmas vacation, the GPDO, like many organisations working within the field of drug policy, set its sights on the 66th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs. The annual meeting of the central policy-making body of the United Nations system took place in Vienna, 13-17 March. Before attention shifted to Austria and related activities, however, the academic calendar continued with Dave’s MA module, The Global Governance of Drugs, including an excellent guest seminar from Dr Khalid Tinasti, former GDPO-Swansea University Honorary Research Fellow and research associate at the Geneva Graduate Institute . Focusing on "Great Powers’ and the IDCR: The United States and the Russian Federation – Reversing Roles?" Khalid’s on-line session fittingly touched upon many of the debates and issues that were to be seen in at the CND the following month. A few weeks later the GDPO also welcomed, this time in person, John Walsh, Director for Drug Policy and the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America. During his time in Wales, John not only met with the team on future collaborations but also spoke with MA students on the role of civil society within the international drug control regime.
Building to some extent upon our previous work on the intersection between drug policy and the environment, the week before the CND saw the Observatory run a scoping workshop in London. Funded by a Swansea University Natural Environment Research Council ‘Discipline Hopping’ grant, ‘Counter-Narcotic Policy in Colombia: Developing a Biodiversity Risk Assessment Framework,’ was co-hosted with GDPO partner organisation Corporación VisoMutop en Colombia and involved as co-PIs Dave and Professor Luca Borger of the Department of Biosciences, Swansea University. Participants involved a range of experts from drug policy analysis, remote sensing, and ecology, including in terms of the latter from the Natural History Museum, as well as representatives of coca farmers in Colombia. After a productive and stimulating event, it is the intention that follow-on activities will include a number of publications, fieldwork in Colombia and further grant capture activities.
Pedro Arenas, Visomutop, presenting at the London scoping workshop, March 8th 2023.
The following week the GDPO was pleased to be a co-sponsor of a related side-event at the CND. Well attended by a range of diplomats, international civil servants, and members of civil society, ‘Aligning Drug policy with Environmental Protection’ included Dave’s presentation, ‘Regime Complexity: Implications for Drug Policy and Biodiversity’. With opening and closing comments from representatives of the governments of Colombia and Brazil, a recording of the entire event can be found here
Analysis of the UN multilateral system was also the focus of several publications over the course of the quarter. These included in January Dave’s The Spectre of Article 14: The INCB Report for 2021, Regulated Cannabis Markets and the Board’s Potential Enforcement Measures, (a co-branded IDPC-GDPO report) and in March his contributions to a TNI-WOLA Long Read/Commentary. Co-authored with Tom Blickman and Martin Jelsma (TNI) and John Walsh, Wilful Blindness: INCB Can Find Nothing Good to Say on Cannabis Legalisation is a brief response to the INCB’s Annual Report for 2022. On a related issue, we were pleased to see the publication of a GDPO supported piece of work focusing on the dilemmas of cannabis regulation within the European Union. The very timely ‘Cannabis Regulation Through the “Without Right” Clause in Article 2(1) of EU Framework Decision 2004/757/JHA on Illicit Drug Trafficking,’ by Piet Hein van Kempen and Masha Fedorova (Radboud University, The Netherlands), was published in the European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. Another long in gestation output was the GDPO Drugs and Conflict Project Policy Brief, ‘From Bad to Worse? Drug Use and Treatment in Afghanistan.’ With the original idea for the Brief dating back to the GDPO-TERI-AREU Executive Programme in New Delhi in March 2020, this was co-authored by Dave, Ross Eventon (GDPO Research Associate/Drugs and Conflict Project Lead and PhD candidate, University of Rosario, Colombia) and Mat Southwell (Drug user organiser and technical support consultant on harm reduction and community mobilisation with people who use drugs). Research for the Brief drew not only on online interviews with treatment providers within Afghanistan, but also data gleaned from Mat’s work in Kabul in January 2023.
In relation to our Africa Project and within the academic realm, Ediomo-Ubong published ‘Police Extortion and Drug Dealers’ Negotiation Strategies: Exploring the Accounts of Street-Level Dealers in Nigeria’ in International Criminal Justice Review in February. Also of note during the quarter was his important Comment piece in The Lancet Global Health the systematic review of global coverage of interventions to prevent and manage drug-related harms among people who inject drugs.
The quarter saw the continuation of a range of Observatory projects and related activities as well as past and ongoing initiatives receive recognition. Indeed, November marked a year since the launch of the Global Drug Policy Index, a period during which the dedicated website was visited 45,000 times from 178 countries and referenced in 100 articles. Among other things, ongoing interest in the project was reflected in its place on a panel at the Lisbon Addictions conference where the Index was presented by the IDPC’s Juan Fernández Ochoa. Moreover, having already won the @Fastcompany Innovation by Design Award earlier in the year, the website and design team at Café was awarded a prestigious ‘Design for a Better World Award in 2022’ in Brazil. You can watch the ceremony here with the GDPI, including specific acknowledgment of the Observatory and Swansea University, at about 42 minutes. In terms of recognition of GDPO research, it was also nice to see our work on drones picked up by both BBC News Mundo and El Tiempo (Colombia) in November. Coverage included input from project collaborator and co-author of the relevant report, Jochen Kleinschmidt. Along with ongoing work on several projects, including increasingly the Regime Reform and Modernisation (R2M) work package within the United Nations project, team members continued engagement with a range of external partners. Among other initiatives, this included Dave’s membership of the Steering Group for the Spike on a Bike initiative offered by Dyfed Drug and Alcohol Service.
On the publications front, November saw the launch of a new GDPO Working Paper by Allan Gillies (University of Glasgow & GDPO Research Associate) and Mo Hume (University of Glasgow). Prime Real Estate: Illicit Economies and State Power in Chocó, Colombia, is based on extensive in-country research as part of the ESRC-Newton Caldas project, Colombia River Stories. GDPO also co-branded (with the Transnational Institute), the IDPC Analysis of the UNODC World Drug Report 2022. Authored by TNI’s Sylvia Kay, the report focuses on a growing area of GDPO research, drug policy and the environment.
And in terms of GDPO related academic outputs, in November Ediomo-Ubong Nelson, (the man who never seems to sleep) published online ‘The socio-economic context of entry and exit from retail drug dealing: Exploring the narratives of Nigerian dealers,’ in the International Journal of Drug Policy.
As the University calendar slowed and the covid restrictions slowly relaxed, July saw the GDPO and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences more broadly welcome as a visiting scholar the amazing Dr Alana Griffith, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Barbados. Lecturer in Sociology and, among other things, former Commissioner on the CARICOM Commission on Marijuana, Alana spent three weeks in Swansea working with the team on the GDPO’s cannabis and the Caribbean workstream. You can read her blog about her time in Wales here: Blog.
Dave, Branwen, and Alana
In the context of ongoing interest in the Global Drug Policy Index (GDPI), and demonstrating the truly international reach of the initiative, in early August Matt made a Zoom presentation on the design and application of the Index to the Iranian National Center of Addiction Studies (INCAS), at Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS). Indeed, while the first version of the GDPI continued to generate discussion, work persisted in the background on the development of a second iteration, including the inevitable search for funding. Further, reflecting the excellence of the team behind the GDPI website, the Brazilian based company Café won a prestigious @Fastcompany Innovation by Design Award for their work on the project. Bearing in mind the quality of the website, we’re sure that this award will be the first of many.
Matt presenting to members of INCAS
Speaking very much to one of the Index’s key dimensions, August saw Heloisa Broggiato take part in a Global Palliative Care and Pain Relief Research Hub webinar on ‘Comparative Models in Palliative Care and Pain Relief from Africa, Asia, and the Americas.’ In addition to her ongoing applied work in the NGO sphere, Heloisa also saw academic success during the quarter. After many years of hard work as a part-time graduate student at Swansea University, in early September she passed her PhD viva, with only minor corrections. The GDPO team sends her a massive congratulations on this impressive achievement. We look forward to seeing spin-off articles and grey literature publications (no pressure...) Supervised primarily by Dave, the thesis, International Drug Control and Access to Controlled Medicines in Brazil: Changes and Tensions in International Regimes (2009-2019), was examined by Professor John Dumbrell (Durham University) and Dr Dawn Bolger (Swansea). A big thanks go to them and Luca Trenta who, as second supervisor, stepped up to help get Heloisa over the line. With one Observatory colleague progressing her academic career, another changed course and moved away from academia. Congratulations go to Rick Lines who in early September joined Public Health Wales as the new Head of Substance Misuse and Vulnerable Populations. Rick will remain as faculty at Swansea University and stay connected with the GDPO, especially in relation to his work on harm reduction.
In terms of publications, the publishing machine that is Ediomo-Ubong had another article in an academic journal. Based on original fieldwork, his excellent ‘Nuancing Drug Harms: Exploring the Context of Substance Abuse Among Street-Involved Women in Uyo, Nigeria’ appeared in Contemporary Drug Problems in September. That month also saw the publication launch of Cannabis Regulation: Lessons from the illicit tobacco trade, written by good friend of the Observatory, Benoit Gomis. As noted in an earlier Quarterly News, the report was produced as a collaboration between the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), the GDPO, Health Poverty Action (HPA), Transform, the Transnational Institute (TNI) and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
As we moved from Spring to Summer, the GDPO team continued to be productive in relation to a range of activities and associated publications. Background work remained ongoing on several of the Observatory’s core projects, particularly the United Nations Regime Reform and Modernization (R2M), Africa, and drug policy metrics workstreams. Relating more to our Drugs and Conflict project, in May GDPO Research Associate Allan Gillies presented a paper at a workshop organised by ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow Euan Raffle at the University of Leeds. ‘Unmaking and remaking the war on drugs’ was hosted by the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and the Centre for Global Security Challenges, with Allan’s paper, ‘Cocaine and the Post-Colonial State: Organised Crime, Political Transition and Hybrid Regimes in Bolivia’ drawing on his ongoing research - including fieldwork - in that country. June saw the publication by the GDPO partner organisation the Transnational Institute of Report on the Caribbean Informal Drug Policy Dialogue on the Future of Cannabis Supported as a final part of the GDPO’s 2019 GCRF grant on cannabis in the Caribbean, the report covers the Chatham House Rules discussions at the December 2021 event in Kingstown, St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Activity related publications spanned a range of projects and outlets. Late April saw Dave contribute to a Transnational Institute Longread, 'A House of Cards: "High Compliance": A legally indefensible and confusing distraction.’ Co-authored with Martin Jelsma (TNI and GDPO Senior Research Associate), Tom Blickman (TNI) and John Walsh (Washington Office on Latin America), the piece critically analyses a proposed approach to allow the non-medical use of cannabis within the extant UN drug control treaty framework. May was another busy month for Research Associate and Africa project lead, Ediomo-Ubong Nelson. With Dave, Ediomo-Ubong co-authored The World Drug Report 2021: A critical assessment of projected increases in African drug use, a co-branded report with a key Observatory partner, the International Drug Policy Consortium. Within the academic realm and focusing on a related topic to that covered by the analysis of the World Drug Report, June saw the online publication of Ediomo-Ubong’s article ‘Consumption, not decriminalization: How Nigerian drug dealers/users account for cannabis harms,’ in the International Journal of Drug Policy. June was also an important month for Observatory publications relating to the Drugs and Conflict project and collaboration with the University of Rosario on research into drones, remote warfare and the ‘war on drugs in Latin America. The second and final report of the work stream, Remote Warfare in the ‘Backyard’; The US Government, Counternarcotics, and Remote Warfare in Latin America’ was again co-branded with with Zilas (The Central Institute for Latin American Studies, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstatdt, Germany) and Observatorio Colombiano De Crimen Organizado, Universidad Del of Rosario, Colombia). Authored by Jochen Kleinschmidt, Luca Trenta and Delina Goxho, it concludes that remote warfare practices have, besides the human rights problems inherent in many of them, led to at least three distinct types of problems, namely (1) unpredictable effects regarding the original policy aims, (2) serious problems of legitimacy for the intervening actor due to the clandestine nature of its operations, and (3) the possible dependence on local actors, who may pursue aims that may beentirely different or from or even incompatible with those of the intervening actor. Plans are currently underway for a joint event with the University of Rosario based around the workstream. In terms of previous events, for those who missed it, the launch event for the Oxford Handbook of Global Drug Histories (to which both Dave and Christopher Hallam contributed) was made available on YouTube during the quarter.
And finally, congratulations go to GDPO Research Associate and Drug Crypto Markets project lead Martin Horton-Eddison. After much covid-19 induced delay, Martin at last officially graduated and was awarded his PhD in April. In his own words, this means that he is ‘now officially, irreversibly, formally: Doc Martin.’ Congratulations Martin!
‘At a critical time when drug laws are fundamentally starting to change from prohibition to regulation in a few countries, this book is timely and appropriate as it brings together a collection of writings of authors who not only cover the historical timespan of drug laws and the diversity of experience in different countries but do so in depth on the key issues in a style easily followed by the reader.’ – Anand Grover, former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health (2008–2014)
