Global commission urges youth-focused drug policy reform

For too long, the wellbeing of children and young people has been invoked to justify the status quo in countries’ drug policies, without an examination of how those same policies systematically undermine the rights, health and futures of individuals in this group.

This was a central concern raised by stakeholders at the launch of the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s new policy brief, Making Children and Young People Visible in Drug Policy: A Child Rights-based Agenda for Reform, on Wednesday, 9 September.

“Protecting children must be one of the fundamental responsibilities of government, but policies need to be judged by their results, not by the rhetoric used to justify them. For decades, punitive drug policies have been defended partly on the basis that harsh laws and enforcement are necessary to protect our children. But the evidence increasingly shows a much more complicated and troubling picture,” said Juan Manuel Santos, commissioner of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and a former president of Colombia.

The development of the policy brief involved engagements with about 150 people across 47 countries, including South Africa. It highlighted that children (under 18 years old) and young people (between 10 and 24) were profoundly affected by drug laws and their enforcement, regardless of whether they used drugs, yet remained largely absent from drug policy consideration.

The policy brief identified four priority areas where reform was “urgently needed”:

• Ceasing the arrest, detainment and prosecution of children and young people because of punitive drug policies, with governments instead investing in diversion, restorative justice and community-based responses.

• Providing equitable access to essential controlled medicines for children and young people, as many continue to experience unnecessary pain and suffering because medicines required for palliative care, pain relief and other medical conditions are unavailable or inaccessible.

• Providing access to evidence-based, child-and youth-friendly health services that prevent avoidable drug-related harms, as punitive laws, stigma, age restrictions and barriers to confidential care can prevent many from accessing timely support and accurate, age-appropriate information.

• Recognising the children and young people recruited or exploited within illicit drug economies primarily as victims, rather than treating them as offenders.

Through the South African lens

Charity Monareng, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy International, is a South African youth advocate in the drug policy space. The grass-roots organisation she represents seeks to empower young people with knowledge and skills, and work with government departments to improve drug policy development.

South Africa has limited rehabilitative and health support services aimed at adults who use drugs, said Monareng. Those that are “youth-friendly” or specific to young people are virtually non-existent.

This challenge exists on an international scale, according to the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s new policy brief. It notes that drug-related health services, including harm reduction programmes, for people under 18 are limited in many settings due to factors such as age restrictions, stigma, moral judgement and social exclusion.

Monareng pointed out that the Children’s Act ensured access to condoms and other contraceptives to children over 12, even without parental consent, showing a precedent for prioritising and empowering children in health policy.

“We want to address aspects of health issues, but there’s not really an acknowledgement that substance use is a health and social issue. I think that’s where the challenge is, because substance use has continued to be seen as a criminal issue. Government tends to shy away from looking at it and responding to it from a social and health perspective,” she said.

The criminalisation of substance use acted as another barrier to children and young people accessing drug-related health services, she continued.

“[People] are afraid of getting arrested. They don’t only have to worry about the stigma of being identified as a person who uses drugs as a young person, but there’s also the fear of being in contact with police,” she said.

Schools as safe spaces

Monareng highlighted the situation in schools, where some young people become involved in using or selling drugs.

Under the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act, a learner must be suspended immediately by a school governing body if accused of specified acts of serious misconduct on school premises and formally charged by the South African Police Service. This includes any offence under any law relating to the illicit possession of drugs or the supply of drugs at school and to learners.

Having a police response to the issue of children using or selling drugs in schools, rather than a “social community response”, is one of the problems that comes with the criminalisation of substance use, according to Monareng.

“Schools are supposed to be a safe space for children. However, because substance use is criminalised ... schools now become the first place where young people come into contact with police officers, where you would expect this contact to be when they are much older or in their communities. It’s happening in the space where they’re supposed to be protected,” she said.

According to the policy brief, punitive drug policies and their associated harms disproportionately affect children from groups that are already marginalised, including racial and ethnic minority groups, indigenous communities, migrants and low-income households.

Drug-related interventions should seek to understand the underlying causes of substance use, including trauma and social issues in the environments in which people grow up, argued Monareng.

“We really need to start looking at substance use from a holistic perspective: really looking at not only the person but the surroundings; fixing the social issues; ensuring that you journey with a person,” she said.

“If you’re arrested for substance use when you’re young, you automatically have a criminal record, which means you can’t find a job. If you can’t find a job, it’s like this vicious cycle of poverty. We blame the person and not necessarily the situation that... forced them into a life where they have to use substances to cope.”

Among the recommendations in the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s brief was that children and young people should have opportunities to be meaningfully involved in the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of drug policies and programmes affecting them.

Daily Maverick reached out to the Department of Basic Education about drug-related policies in schools but had not received a response by the time of publication.

Passion for reform

Kamogelo Moleane (27), a representative of the Youth Rise International Working Group, told Daily Maverick he started using drugs when he was 13. After a nine-year battle with substances, the turning point came when he joined an opioid substitution therapy (OST) programme at the Anova Health Institute in Johannesburg, where he received counselling, health screening and OST.

Later, he was employed by the Anova Health Institute as a peer educator to spread awareness about the treatment and support options available to people who use drugs, using his own experiences as a way to help others.

“Me being a former user, I did have a passion for working with people who are using drugs, because I wanted to help my fellows ... who are using substances,” he explained.

“At Anova, I got exposed to the extent of drug use and ... the challenges that we are facing each and every day with the lack of services we are subjected to. My passion grew from there.”

Moleane noted that children and young people in some areas were exposed to substance use from a young age, through families and community members who used drugs and alcohol, resulting in a “normalisation” of these behaviours. He also experienced significant peer pressure to get involved in substance use.

“Most of the [drug] policies ... are not working towards benefiting young people at all because they are less public health system [oriented]. Mostly when it comes to kids that are using drugs, there’s not even clinics that are catering to them,” he said.

“Even now we are experiencing a lot of deaths when it comes to ... young people that are using drugs, because most of them are 12 ... to 18 years.”

Many children and young people who use substances are wary of reaching out for help, for fear that they will face criminal charges or be pressured to “snitch” on the people who are supplying drugs, he added.

Moleane emphasised the importance of creating not only more health services for young people using drugs, but also a greater number of recreational spaces for children and youths that could provide alternatives to involvement in gang activities and substance use.

“We can create more funding for young people that have ... lived experiences when it comes to GBV [gender-based violence], drug use and sensitive issues ... to open programmes,” he said, adding that giving young people with these experiences a voice could lead to helping others. DM