Telling Numbers: A ranking of countries on drug policies and implementation

What is the News?

The inaugural Global Drug Policy Index 2021 has been released.

About Global Drug Policy Index:

Released by: Harm Reduction Consortium

Purpose: It is a unique tool that documents, measures and compares national-level drug policies, providing each country with a score and ranking that shows how much their drug policies and their implementation align with the UN principles of human rights, health and development. 

Parameters: It is composed of 75 indicators running across five broad dimensions of drug policy: criminal justice, extreme responses, health and harm reduction, access to internationally controlled medicines and development.Based on these indicators, each country is then given a total score ranging from 0 to 100 with 100 as the highest score.

What are the rankings of the index?

India: India’s rank is 18 out of 30 countries.It has an overall score of 46/100.

Topped by: Norway has topped the Index with a score of 74/100.It was followed by New Zealand, Portugal, the UK and Australia.

Lowest Ranking Countries: ​​Brazil, Uganda, Indonesia, Kenya, and Mexico. 

What are the observations made by the report?

The median score across all 30 countries and dimensions is just 48/100.(​​48 out of 100 is a drug policy fail in anyone’s book).

Inequality is deeply seated in global drug policies, with the top-ranking 5 countries scoring 3 times as much as the lowest-ranking 5 countries.

Drug policies disproportionately affect people marginalised on the basis of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and socio-economic status.

There are wide disparities between state policies and how they are implemented on the ground.

Source: This post is based on the article “Telling Numbers: A ranking of countries on drug policies and implementation” published in Indian Express on 9th November 2021.