http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/12/01/world-aids-day-punitive-drug-laws-policing-practices-impede-hivaids-response

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

World AIDS Day: Punitive Drug Laws, Policing Practices Impede HIV/AIDS Response
December 1, 2009

    2009_EU_WorldAidsDay.jpg

    A giant banner with an AIDS awareness red ribbon is displayed on the European
Commission headquarters on World Aids Day in Brussels on December 1, 2009.
    © 2009 Reuters
 
          HIV/AIDS patients sit at a counseling facility in Gulu, Uganda.
          © 2007 Reuters

          It's been more than two decades since the HIV/AIDS epidemic began. In
places like Uganda, prevention and treatment are threatened by human rights
abuses. With HRW's Joe Amon and Scott Long.
   
    The ‘war on drugs’ is fueling HIV epidemics among people who use drugs around
the world, and condemning millions of people with terminal cancer and with
HIV/AIDS to needless suffering.
    Professor Gerry Stimson, Executive Director of the International Harm Reduction
Association

(London) - Governments worldwide should take urgent action to reform punitive drug
laws, disproportionate penalties, and harsh and discriminatory law enforcement
practices as part of their efforts to address HIV among people who use drugs,
Human Rights Watch and the International Harm Reduction Association said today,
World AIDS Day. Current policies also cause needless suffering among people living
with HIV/AIDS, the two groups said in a joint briefing note released today.

"The ‘war on drugs' is fueling HIV epidemics among people who use drugs around
the world, and condemning millions of people with terminal cancer and with
HIV/AIDS to needless suffering,"  said Professor Gerry Stimson, Executive Director of
the International Harm Reduction Association.

In many countries, drug control efforts block lifesaving HIV services to people who
use drugs, even where they are legal, Human Rights Watch and the International
Harm Reduction Association said.  Overly strict, complex drug laws and regulations
block access to cheap, effective pain medications, like morphine, relegating
hundreds of thousands of people living with HIV/AIDS, and millions with terminal
cancer, to suffer severe pain.

Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, as many as 30 percent of all new HIV infections occur
among people who inject drugs and within sub-Saharan Africa, injection drug use is
increasing. In some countries, in particular in Central and Eastern Europe and East
Asia, injecting drug use is the primary driver of HIV epidemics.

International health and drug control agencies - including the UN Office on Drugs
and Crime, UNAIDS, UNICEF, the United Nations Development Program, and the
World Health Organization - all endorse comprehensive harm reduction services as
the best ways  to address HIV among people who use drugs, including those  in
detention. These services include needle and syringe exchange, medication-assisted
therapy (for example, with methadone), and peer outreach and education programs.
Notwithstanding broad endorsement and overwhelming scientific evidence that these
approaches work, they are out of reach for the vast majority of people who need
them.

In the joint briefing note, Human Rights Watch and the International Harm
Reduction Association also expressed concern that criminal laws, disproportionate
penalties, and law enforcement practices drive people away from lifesaving HIV
services that do exist, and impede access to pain treatment for tens of millions of
people who need it.  Some laws concerning the possession and use of drugs, and the
possession of drug paraphernalia, can keep many people who use drugs from
carrying sterile syringes or other injecting equipment, even where it is legal to do so,
and cause them to avoid drug treatment or harm reduction services altogether out of
fear of arrest and conviction.

Laws creating criminal penalties for incitement to use drugs or
facilitating/encouraging drug use likewise interfere with peer outreach services. The
pressure on police officers to meet arrest quotas as a measure of success exacerbates
police abuse of drug users by encouraging them to seek out easy targets, like drug
users, for arrest.

In some countries, people who are identified as, or suspected to be, drug users are
detained, sometimes for years, in locked facilities for "drug treatment," regardless of
whether they need treatment and without due process of law. Basic medical services
are often unavailable, and "treatment" often consists of forced, unpaid labor, and in
some cases, physical and psychological abuse. The impact of drug control is often
disproportionately focused on vulnerable groups and marginalized communities, such
as African Americans in the United States.

Human Rights Watch and the International Harm Reduction Association also
expressed concern that laws concerning drugs and syringe possession, together with
associated policing practices targeting people who use drugs, may increase HIV risk.
The organizations called for greater discussion among governments and relevant
United Nations agencies on these issues.

"Of course these are complex and controversial issues," Rebecca Schleifer, advocacy
director of Human Rights Watch's Health and Human Rights Division said. "But we
must have the courage to discuss them openly if we are to fully understand what is
needed to halt and begin to reverse drug-related HIV/AIDS."