May 2016 saw important developments for those working in the illicit drugs area. A new programme for government was published and a new Minister for Communities and the National Drugs Strategy appointed.

The Department of Health has published its annual report for 2015 on progress in implementing the actions included in the National Drugs Strategy.The report is a descriptive account of activities over the period – in some cases they are reported at a national level, while in others they are reported at the level of the Community Healthcare Organisations (CHOs).

The work of four international bodies with a particular interest in investigating just what a human-rights based approach to drug policy might look like is outlined below.

According to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), ‘human rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to everyone. International law, including treaties, contain the provisions which give human rights legal effect.’¹ In the decades since World War Two, human rights standards have been adopted at United Nations, Council of Europe and the European Union level. Ireland has committed to upholding many of these standards.

In May 2016 the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) published the European drug report 2016: trends and developments summarising  the latest trends across the 28 EU member states, and Norway and Turkey.¹  The report highlights the increasing use of MDMA following a period of decline in recent years, with greater levels of production helped by new sources of precursors and production techniques.  The drug’s popularity with existing stimulant users has grown and a new generation of users is emerging, presenting greater health risks as more high potency products become available.