Kristen Gwynne, The Influence
Waking Times
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Influence, and is reprinted here with permission.
In 2012, the presidents of Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico called for a United Nations General Assembly Special Session on drugs, scheduled for 2019, to be reassigned an earlier date, given the crisis of drug trafficking and related violence in Latin America. As the session’s April 2016 date approaches, drug policy reform groups across the globe are organizing to educate and influence world leaders on the advantages of ending the criminalization of people who use drugs. Most recently, civil society groups condemned the UN for failing to acknowledge and work to resolve “the devastating consequences of punitive and repressive drug policies.”
