Tackling drugs to reduce poverty, id21 insights health 10
---------------------------------------------------------
The United Nations Office of Drug Control claimed in 2006 that 'Drug control is working and the world drug problem is being contained'. Yet the scale and diversity of the illicit global drug trade has increased in the last decade, as have rates of drug use in most countries.
The latest issue of 'id21 insights health' is guest edited by Tim Rhodes, Director of the Centre for Research on Drugs and Health Behaviour at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK), with contributions including:
* David Mansfield reminds us that development initiatives are often blind to the economic plight of illicit drug producers.
* Kelley Lee highlights how tobacco farmers too are often exploited in their attempts for economic survival.
* Susan Beckerleg argues that the khat industry in East Africa is at 'full capacity', with eradication attempts potentially causing greater overall harm than a well regulated industry.
* Axel Klein describes how, using the example of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, law enforcement interventions can bring unintended negative consequences for health and development.
* Chris Lyttleton and Patrick Griffiths highlight how mainstream development sometimes worsens existing drug problems.
* Sheryl McCurdy and colleagues report how in sub-Saharan Africa rapid social and economic change in the 1980s and 1990s have increased alcohol consumption.
* David Macdonald and Mohammad Zafar illustrate how 25 years of conflict in Afghanistan has sustained drug use and production and has required strategies that integrate both demand and harm reduction.
Read the whole issue