The International Harm Reduction Association released a study on the death penalty for drug offences today on the opening day of the 19th session of the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, taking place in Vienna. The report, titled ‘The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2010’, finds that hundreds of people are executed for drug offences each year around the world, a figure that very likely exceeds one thousand when taking into account those countries that keep their death penalty statistics secret.

The report is the first detailed country by country overview of the death penalty for drugs, monitoring both national legislation and state practice of enforcement. Of the states worldwide that retain the death penalty, 32 jurisdictions maintain laws that prescribe the death penalty for drug offences. The study also found that in some states, drug offenders make up a significant portion – if not the outright majority – of those sentenced to death and/or executed each year.

Click here to download the report [PDF:2.42MB]

Wegen Drogendelikten werden einem Bericht zufolge weltweit jedes Jahr Hunderte Straftäter hingerichtet. Weil viele Staaten keine Angaben zu verhängten Todesurteilen machten, seien es tatsächlich vermutlich mehr als 1.000, heißt es in einem heute veröffentlichten Bericht der International Harm Reduction Association (Internationale Vereinigung zur Schadenreduzierung).

orf.at

Neue Zähne, alter Biss - nach mehr als zehn Jahren und etlichen Gefängnisaufenthalten kam der Souljazz-Poet und Rap-Übervater Gil Scott-Heron wieder auf Deutschland-Tournee. Ein Abend, an dem noch die launigste Bemerkung zu großer Poesie wurde.

spiegel.de
welt.de

Berlin bleibt für Cannabiskonsumenten attraktiv: Gesundheitssenatorin Katrin Lompscher (Linke) wird in Kürze eine Verwaltungsvorschrift unterzeichnen, wonach in der Hauptstadt das Mitführen von bis zu 15 Gramm Haschisch oder Marihuana in der Regel straffrei bleiben kann.

spiegel.de
Drogerie – Sei high, sei frei, sei Berlin!

There is little about Alderwood Avenue to suggest that a new battle to control Europe's cocaine trade began in this grim corner of the tough Liverpool suburb of Speke. Only the most inquisitive visitor might, among the boarded-up windows and steel-shuttered shops, pause to inspect the unprepossessing gymnasium where the local hard-nuts once met.

It was here that, just after 8pm on 13 November 2007, local father Colin Smith stepped outside and was executed with a pump-action shotgun. Smith, a balding 40-year-old who drove a Ford Galaxy and wore faded Lacoste shirts, was no ordinary resident of Speke. He was known as the "Cocaine King", the second biggest drug dealer Britain has produced, and an ally of Curtis Warren, the only trafficker to appear in the Sunday Times Rich List and currently behind bars in Jersey.

guardian.co.uk

The commanding general in charge of all U.S. Marines in Afghanistan said Friday that U.S. forces have dealt a blow to the Taliban's multimillion-dollar opium business by securing deals that will take half of all poppy-producing land in the country's central area.

Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin.

Maj. Gen. Richard Mills said during a video conference call at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County that farmers who own half of such land in Helmand Province, the center of Afghanistan's poppy production, have pledged to not reseed next year.

napavalleyregister.com

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers (CBP) at the Lukeville port of entry have seized over $5 million worth of marijuana totaling almost 600 pounds since Friday from failed drug smuggling attempts.

borderfirereport.net

Through the afternoon downpour a horse plods along a muddy mountain path. I can smell him almost before he rounds the bend. He's weighed down with more than 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of freshly-picked marijuana.

A peasant farmer gees the animal along, anxious to get his crop into the dry. I stop the farmer and briefly pet the horse.

"He's called Stoner," the farmer tells me in Spanish, before breaking into a broad grin and setting off again. He was, of course, joking.

cnn.com