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Illegal drugs are used by 270 million people and organized crime profits from a trade with a turnover of more than $320 billion a year, according to figures from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). This makes it the world's largest illegal commodity market. The UNODC now acknowledges that choosing an enforcement-based approach is having a range of negative 'unintended consequences'. These include the creation of a vast criminal market, the spreading of the illegal drugs trade to new areas, the stigmatization of drug users and the diversion of money from health services. Adapted from the source document.

This research project was conducted by Trinity FLAC in association with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. This report argues that Ireland should re-evaluate and reform its current drug policy, advocating for a general policy of decriminalisation by seeking to have the offence of possession removed from Irish legislation. The argument is advanced on two fronts, the first being that the current system of criminalisation is harmful to the public, both in terms of its costs and its ineffectiveness controlling drug abuse; and the second being that an administrative and health led response will more accurately address the issues at hand.?

Belgian civil-society organisations issue a call to the presidency of the Council of the EU.

In the last 10 years the world's leading economic powers have driven important changes in international policy on illicit drug trafficking. They have set up and financed semi-formal or informal transnational groups to proactively implement policy on the ground. This is a reaction to the bureaucratic, formal mechanisms of the United Nations and its agencies, where policy is diluted by the need for consensus among 53 member states, plus various regional groupings of other countries. The new groups take a more integrated approach to the problem by going beyond trafficking into countering money laundering and controlling the sale of precursor chemicals, which criminal gangs use to synthesize drugs earlier in the supply chain to reduce the bulk of trafficked materials. The established link between organized transnational crime, drugs, and the financing of terrorism has added impetus to these efforts, but there is still a need for better cooperation on projects and to harmonize the collection of seizure statistics between key international bodies.