According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) “around 5.5 billion people still have limited or no access to [opioid analgesics], such as…morphine” which leaves “75 percent of the world population without access to proper pain relief treatment.” It called addressing the discrepancy “one of the obligations for governments to comply with the International Drug Control Conventions.

Written by Dr M.R.Rajagopal MD Chairman, Pallium India; Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Training and Policy on Access to Pain Relief.

Brief interventions are psychosocial techniques designed to help recipients recognise harmful patterns of substance use, and to motivate and support them to address that use. This paper considers five systematic reviews and 16 randomised controlled trials and points to the potential benefits of brief interventions, albeit with a need for more research.

In February 2015, an outbreak of recently acquired HIV infections among people who inject drugs (PWID) was identified in Dublin, following similar outbreaks in Greece and Romania in 2011. Prevention and control efforts are underway among PWID in Dublin, but may also be needed elsewhere in Europe.

For the fourth time since 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that ketamine should not be placed under international control after review of the latest evidence by the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence.

Egypt, with more than 88 million residents in 2015 and an estimated 5-year cancer prevalence of more than 215 000 cases in 2012, has effectively no oral morphine. The lack of effective and affordable analgesia is catastrophic for people with end-stage cancer.

An overview of data available on illicit drugs and new psychoactive substances from European monitoring in 2015.

Global Advocacy and Case Studies from India, Kenya, and Ukraine.

A story written by Sebastian Saville, Executive Director of IDHDP. It is a portrayal of events that took place on a day in September 2014, when though cocaine and marijuana, as well as many pharmaceutical drugs were readily available, opioids from both the illicit market and through the medical system were almost impossible to obtain.

This resource, developed by UK healthcare professionals and policymakers, provides the information to support a safe and effective prescribing decision.

In this study, mortality is estimated in a cohort of PWID in Melbourne and predictors examined of mortality including health service use, demographic characteristics, drug use and personal wellbeing.

This paper draws on scientific research to bring much-needed attention to the environmental costs of drug policies. It responds to recent calls by both the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the Global Commission on Drug Policy for drug policy debates to be based on the latest and best empirical evidence.

The misuse of death (and how to prevent it) was presented by Alex Stevens at the HIT Hot Topics conference 2015.

The recent increase in the number of people injecting a range of stimulants, particularly the recently emerged psychoactive drugs such as mephedrone, is a concern. Although the number injecting these drugs remains small when compared to those injecting opiates or image and performance enhancing drugs, the higher level of risk behaviours associated with their use can increase harm.

This publication looks at the co-occurrence of drug use problems and mental health disorders, taking in the theoretical background of psychiatric comorbidity, the tools for clinical diagnosis and the prevalence and clinical relevance of the problem in Europe.

The global war on drugs has been fought for 50 years, without preventing the long-term trend of increasing drug production, supply and use. But beyond this failure to achieve its own stated aims, the drug war has also produced a range of serious, negative costs.

China has made substantial progress in tackling their HIV epidemic. China’s HIV history has been anything but steady, with national negligence a critical factor in the spread of HIV in the early 1990s. However, significant progress in the last decade and increased national response have greatly decreased the epidemic across the country as well increasing the quality of life for people living with HIV.

Global Drug Survey seeks to become the largest most credible source of current drug use data trends in the world.

Although the USA is the greatest national funder of the HIV epidemic globally, it is still facing a major ongoing HIV epidemic itself, with around 50,000 new infections per year. Stigma and discrimination continue to hamper people's access to HIV prevention, testing and treatment services, fuelling the cycle of new infections.

The UN General Assembly will hold a Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs in 2016. This Special Session will be an important milestone in achieving the goals set in the policy document of 2009 "Political Declaration and Plan of Action on International Cooperation towards an Integrated and Balanced Strategy to Counter the World Drug Problem", which defined action to be taken by Member States as well as goals to be achieved by 2019.

The United Nations General Assembly Special Session, or UNGASS, is a meeting of UN member states to assess and debate global issues such as health, gender, or in this case, the world’s drug control priorities.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the most serious HIV and AIDS epidemic in the world. In 2013, an estimated 24.7 million people were living with HIV, accounting for 71% of the global total. In the same year, there were an estimated 1.5 million new HIV infections and 1.1 million AIDS-related deaths.

First Do No Harm addresses the disconnect between law enforcement and public health systems, which has resulted in an ineffective default response of arrest, incarcerate, and repeat for some of our society’s most vulnerable members—people living in poverty, using drugs, or living with mental illness.

Blood transfer, through the sharing of drug taking equipment, carries a high risk of HIV transmission. Around 30% of global HIV infections outside of sub-Saharan Africa are caused by injecting drugs, and it accounts for an ever growing proportion of those living with HIV.

UNODC is a global leader in the fight against illicit drugs and international crime. Established in 1997 through a merger between the United Nations Drug Control Programme and the Centre for International Crime Prevention, UNODC operates in all regions of the world through an extensive network of field offices.

In 2016, a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGASS) will be held on the topic of drugs. This follows the previous Special Sessions held in 1998 and 2009, and comes at a time when the ineffectiveness of current drug policies is being hotly debated in many parts of the world, and a number of countries and territories have adopted new and innovative arrangements for regulating cannabis.

It is a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGASS) to be held in April 19-21st 2016 on the topic of “the world drug problem”. This comes at a time when the ineffectiveness of current drug policies often appears more damaging than the drugs themselves. Many countries have openly expressed a need for change.

Authorities in Russia are aware that sharing contaminated injecting equipment, by people who inject drugs remains the main driver of the epidemic (more than 57% of new cases in 2014). Despite this, Russian officials continue with their dogmatic approach to harm reduction and in particular OST.

High-dose benzodiazepine (BZD) dependence is associated with a wide variety of negative health consequences.

This series intends to provide a primer on why governments must not turn a blind eye to pressing human rights and public health impacts of current drug policies.