Context:

The inaugural Global Drug Policy Index, has been released  by the Harm Reduction Consortium

Finding of the report:

• Norway, New Zealand, Portugal, the UK and Australia as the five leading countries on humane and health-driven drug policies.
• The five lowest-ranking countries are Brazil, Uganda, Indonesia, Kenya, and Mexico.
• India’s rank is 18 out of 30 countries.

About the Index:

• It is a data-driven global analysis of drug policies and their implementation.
• It is composed of 75 indicators running across five broad dimensions of drug policy: criminal justice, extreme responses, health and harm reduction, access to internationally controlled medicines, and development.
• It is a project of the Harm Reduction Consortium.

Indian Score:

• India has an overall score of 46/100.
• On the criteria of use of extreme sentencing and responses, it has a score of 63/100,
• on health and harm reduction, 49/100;
• on proportionality of criminal justice response, 38/100;
• on availability and access of internationally controlled substances for the relief of pain and suffering, 33 /100.

Key Takeaways from the report:

• The global dominance of drug policies based on repression and punishment has led to low scores overall, with a median score of just 48/100, and the top-ranking country (Norway) only reaching 74/100.
• Standards and expectations from civil society experts on drug policy implementation vary from country to country.
• Inequality is deeply seated in global drug policies, with the top-ranking 5 countries scoring 3 times as much as the lowest-ranking 5 countries. This is in part due to the colonial legacy of the ‘war on drugs’ approach.
• Drug policies are inherently complex: a country’s performance in the Index can only be fully understood by looking across and within each of the dimensions.
• Drug policies disproportionately affect people marginalised on the basis of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and socio-economic status.
• There are wide disparities between state policies and how they are implemented on the ground.
• With a few exceptions, the meaningful participation of civil society and affected communities in drug policy processes remains severely limited.