The WHO’s own expert review had detailed in September how millions of people across the Andes consume the coca leaf daily as part of a longstanding cultural practice without any significant negative effects—and that, conversely, coca control strategies are associated with substantial public health harms.

And yet on December 2, the WHO’s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) recommended that the plant be kept in Schedule I of United Nations drug treaties—the most restrictive category of control—because coca leaves can relatively easily be converted into cocaine.

“The simplicity of extracting cocaine from coca leaf and its high yield and profitability are well known,” the ECDD wrote. “The Committee also reviewed evidence of a marked increase in coca leaf cultivation and in the production of cocaine-related substances, in the context of significant, increasing public health concern about cocaine use. In that context, the Committee considered that reducing or removing existing international controls on coca leaf could pose an especially serious risk to public health.”

“It’s unacceptable for humanity to demonize a sacred medicinal plant. It was more of a political decision than a scientific one.”

The committee noted that a 34 percent year-on-year increase in cocaine production was reported in 2023, with some countries reporting historically high levels. But reform advocates emphasize that coca is not cocaine. They insist that the WHO’s review acknowledged both the plant’s medical potential and the lack of evidence of problematic coca leaf use anywhere in the world—two key criteria a drug must satisfy to be placed in a less restrictive schedule.

“It’s unacceptable for humanity to demonize a sacred medicinal plant,” Jaison Perez Villafaña, a wisdom keeper or mamo from Colombia’s Arhuaco community, told Filter. “It was more of a political decision than a scientific one. The coca leaf (el ayu) is not itself to blame for being converted into cocaine by humans with economic interests.”

The ECDD said it recognized that “coca leaf has an important cultural and therapeutic significance for Indigenous peoples and other communities and that there are exemptions for traditional use of coca leaf in certain national frameworks.” A coalition of Indigenous coca leaf producers and consumers wrote to the WHO in October urging the UN body to “clearly differentiate” between traditional coca use and issues associated with cocaine.

Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, called the WHO’s suggestion that keeping coca in Schedule 1 would restrict cocaine production “ridiculous,” saying the decision exposed “the moral and scientific bankruptcy pervading the entire system” of global drug control.

“Whilst we may expect decisions like this to emerge from political bodies subsumed within entrenched ‘war on drugs’ narratives, there was a hope that the more objective, scientific, and nominally independent corners of the UN would maintain a degree of pragmatism and principle—even if their recommendations were later rejected by UN political entities,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

“The risks of cocaine powder or smoked crack cocaine, creations of the global North, which is also by far the biggest market for both, are demonstrably of a different order to traditional coca use, chewed or in tea, which occurs exclusively in the global South,” Rolles added. “It is the global South where the burden of both the failed war on cocaine, and the criminalization of entire cultures is most acutely felt.”

The WHO review had affirmed that traditional coca chewing has caused no documented fatalities, is not associated with significant dependence potential and has possible therapeutic applications.

In 2020, following a WHO recommendation, the UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted narrowly to relax international controls on cannabis, acknowledging its medical value after decades of “reefer madness.” For reform advocates, that decision appeared to signal a slow and overdue shift toward evidence-based scheduling. Therefore there were hopes that the UN system could also distinguish between the coca leaf—containing less than 1 percent cocaine alkaloid—and the refined powder that fuels global demand.

Yet coca will continue to be treated as though it has the same risk profile as cocaine—even after the WHO review affirmed that traditional coca chewing has caused no documented fatalities, is not associated with significant dependence or “abuse” potential, and has possible therapeutic applications ranging from anti-inflammatory effects to modest improvements in post-meal glucose.

“The WHO’s decision is deeply disappointing and profoundly troubling,” Ann Fordham, executive director of the International Drug Policy Council, said in a press release. “This was not a routine review—it was a critical test of the UN drug control system. The Committee has shown it cannot objectively assess evidence or consider the human rights consequences of prohibition. Instead, it has chosen to reinforce the racist and colonial foundations of international drug control. This decision makes clear that the system is broken and resistant to meaningful reform.”

Experts have long argued that the logic behind the coca ban is selective and ignores existing treaty precedents. Plants such as ephedra, which is used to manufacture methamphetamine, psilocybin-containing mushrooms and mescaline-producing cacti all remain unscheduled at the plant level, despite being used to produce controlled substances.

Villafaña and other Indigenous leaders have warned that these pressures amount to a form of cultural violence.

While open persecution of coca-chewers in the Andes has waned, prohibition still shapes daily life in parts of the region—from farmers who lose crops to stop-start aerial fumigation campaigns, to communities caught between eradication forces and the networks that dominate the illegal cocaine trade. In the September review, the independent group of experts contracted by the WHO noted research that showed exposure to harmful glyphosate-based pesticides like Roundup, found to be a probable carcinogen, from authorities’ aerial spraying of coca crops “increased the number of miscarriages and the number of medical consultations related to dermatological and respiratory illnesses in targeted communities.”

The review added that another study showed that forced coca eradication incentivized coca farmers to intensify production through increased use of toxic agro-chemicals “in remaining or subsequent coca plots, increasing their exposure to those chemicals.”

Villafaña and other Indigenous leaders have warned that these pressures amount to a form of cultural violence. Coca is central to Andean communities’ spiritual practice, conflict resolution, work, ceremony and community health—yet its use outside narrow “traditional” exemptions places people at risk of criminal sanctions.

“It would be a relief for us as a culture,” Villafaña said, “if the world recognized it as a sacred plant and didn’t demonize it.” But, he added, the decision would not otherwise affect his community, whose members will continue chewing coca as they always have done.

Photograph by Crista Castellanos via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 4.0

The post “Moral Bankruptcy” as WHO Opts to Maintain Global Coca Prohibition appeared first on Filter.

Coca, the mildly stimulating and medicinal leaf that is the base ingredient of cocaine, was banned globally by the UN in 1964 after its investigators claimed coca leaf chewing is “definitely harmful” and “the cause of racial degeneration of many population groups.” A WHO paper also described the use of the calcium-rich plant as “a social evil.”

But despite US-backed militarized efforts to eradicate coca leaf production in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador throughout the decades-long drug war, the consumption of the plant—which for many Indigenous communities holds profound spiritual value—has remained stubbornly prevalent, with production in Colombia at all-time highs.

“Research did not reveal evidence of clinically meaningful public health harms associated with use … [it] does, however, robustly document the substantial public health harms associated with coca control strategies.”

“Research reviewed for this report did not reveal evidence of clinically meaningful public health harms associated with coca leaf use,” states the comprehensive scientific review commissioned by the ECDD. “The research record does, however, robustly document the substantial public health harms associated with coca control strategies at all scales.”

The review is currently in draft form and subject to copyediting. It was commissioned amid growing international calls to end the blanket prohibition of coca, as Filter previously reported.

In October, the ECDD will discuss the report, which was prepared by an international group of independent contracted experts, and consider whether to recommend a change to coca’s current Schedule I status—the most restricted category, meaning researchers often find it impossible to source the understudied leaves.

Any recommendations would be presented in December to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which has a rotating membership of 53 United Nations member states. In March 2026, the CND would vote on any recommendations. It could reschedule or even deschedule the coca leaf—which would have huge ramifications, ending the criminalization of its use and potentially providing a major economic boon for Latin American producer countries.

“Based on this, it would be hard to see how the committee could possibly recommend coca stay in Schedule I.”

“We don’t yet have a recommendation from the committee but based on this, it would be hard to see how they could possibly recommend coca stay in Schedule I,” Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a charity campaigning for the legal regulation of drugs, told Filter. 

“It’s quite likely that [the ECDD] might actually recommend descheduling, which is what Colombia, Bolivia and many people in civil society are hoping for,” he continued. “Leaving coca in any schedule does implicitly criminalize millions of people who use it traditionally.”

However, should the WHO make a descheduling recommendation, Rolles expects the CND—which currently counts the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and China among its members—to vote it down. “The prohibitionist countries would rally around and overturn any descheduling to keep it banned just because they’re so paranoid about cocaine,” he said.

In February, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro made widely reported remarks calling for the legalization of cocaine, which he described as “no worse than whiskey.” Bolivia’s outgoing left-wing and Indigenous-led government has called for an end to “decades of the colonization of the coca leaf,” but it is unlikely that the incoming right-wing government will pursue reform.

The WHO-commissioned paper noted research that showed exposure to harmful glyphosate-based pesticides like Roundup, found to be a probable carcinogen, from the aerial spraying of coca crops by authorities “increased the number of miscarriages and the number of medical consultations related to dermatological and respiratory illnesses in targeted communities.”

It added that another study showed that forced coca eradication incentivized coca farmers to intensify production through increased use of toxic agro-chemicals “in remaining or subsequent coca plots, increasing their exposure to those chemicals.”

“At least it seems that the debate will be driven by science and evidence, rather than prejudice.”

In the 1990s coca farmers had their crops destroyed and were arrested and prosecuted even when they were growing the plant only for traditional uses. “Chronic exposure to agro-chemicals increases any health risks associated with their use, including neurological damage, organ failure, and reproductive health problems,” the paper said. “Pesticides and other agrochemicals commonly used in the cultivation of unregulated crops may influence both the safety profile and health risks associated with plant use.”

Indigenous people in sprayed areas have also complained of “flu-like symptoms including nausea, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, respiratory problems, and skin rashes”, according to a 2001 report by the Transnational Institute, a progressive think tank.

“At least, it seems that the debate will be driven by science and evidence, rather than prejudice,” Ricardo Soberón, a former president of DEVIDA, Peru’s official drug control commission, who now campaigns for coca growers’ rights, told Filter. “I hope Latin American states, as well as the 53 members of the CND, should understand that descheduling the plant will strengthen our fight against criminal gangs.”

Martin Jelsma, a program director at the Transnational Institute, said that the review report “clearly establishes” that there is no evidence of meaningful public health harms or dependence associated with coca leaf use. “With regard to the medicinal uses, the evidence is still preliminary but the potential is considered to be of ‘great interest for future developments to establish efficacy and safety for use in human medicine’,” he told Filter. “Those basic conclusions take away the original justification for its inclusion in Schedule I.”

The only reason left to keep coca leaf there would be the “ease of conversion” into cocaine, Jelsma added, “and it’s important that the report notes that cocaine can be produced from coca leaf by means of ‘solvent extraction’ rather than a process of ‘conversion’ which implies a chemical transformation of the molecule.”

The report refers to the cultural significance of coca, as well as its use as a herbal medicine, but the question of Indigenous rights and human rights violations is “deliberately avoided in the section on the impacts of current controls,” he said.

“There is no evidence … of a fatal coca leaf overdose in humans.”

The review does not comment on the health consequences of militarized enforcement strategies to eradicate coca and disrupt the trafficking supply, which many experts say fuel violence.

Compounding the issues resulting from the prohibition of coca, conservation campaigners have said that eradication efforts often force growers to deforest areas further from law enforcement inspections.

The report comes as use of coca in food, drinks like energy tonics and beer, cosmetic products that claim anti-aging properties and textiles is also increasing.

Despite noting a lack of meaningful public health harms associated with coca leaf use, the report said that “in contrast to the abundant literature on the botanical, historical, and cultural aspects of coca leaves, adequately designed studies evaluating their clinical effects are scarce.” Nonetheless, it said, “there is no evidence … of a fatal coca leaf overdose in humans.”

Photograph by Luis Pérez via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

Correction, September 23: This article originally named Russia as a member of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. The country is no longer a member.

The post WHO Review: Coca Not Harmful, Prohibition Is appeared first on Filter.

German startup Miraculix, the manufacturer of “QTests” to ascertain the potency of the psychedelics MDMA, psilocybin and LSD, recently served a cease-and-desist letter to Emanuel Sferios, the founder of DanceSafe—a nonprofit that pioneered rave harm reduction in the United States—to prevent his company HRDS from distributing similar tests.

For Sferios, Miraculix is attempting to monopolize life-saving testing technology that has been in the public domain for decades. But Miraculix says its kits are novel, and that the dispute stems from a refusal to agree to a deal to make Sferios their exclusive US distributor. 

Miraculix claims that after a relatively short period of selling the tests exclusively on its behalf, and allegedly not reaching the agreed minimum sales levels, Sferios reverse-engineered the company’s tests and started selling them himself.

“Attempting to patent established scientific processes is not only legally questionable but ethically problematic when it involves tools that save lives.”

Sferios, who founded HRDS and is no longer affiliated with DanceSafe, strenuously rejects this ownership claim. “These testing methods have been part of the scientific record for nearly 100 years,” he said in a statement. “Attempting to patent established scientific processes is not only legally questionable but ethically problematic when it involves tools that save lives. We’ve always operated from a place of scientific transparency, giving proper credit to the researchers who developed these reagents decades ago.”

Dr. Felix Blei, Miraculix’s scientific head and managing director, “developed innovative and precise methods for detecting substances such as psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA,” the June 11 letter from Miraculix’s legal team stated. Blei developed these methods as part of his PhD work at Friedrich Schiller University, “laying the foundation for our client’s business activities,” it added.

But Sferios says that he and his associate Matthew Aragón developed their own Purity Test Kits using widely known reagent methods, and that no contract had ever been agreed setting expected sales levels. His lawyer wrote in response to Miraculix that the company’s claims “strain credulity” and rejected the terms of the cease-and-desist declaration,  potentially setting the stage for further legal wranglings.

In 2022, Miraculix lodged a patent application for its tests, including those for opiate derivatives, which was subject to an initial rejection by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on July 2, 2025.

Sferios, who has previously developed other testing kits using known reagents, wrote on July 23 that Miraculix never provided him with any confidential information about how it makes its tests. “Matt and I were perfectly within our rights to create harm reduction tools using publicly available information and our own knowledge and expertise,” wrote Sferios, who also spoke to Filter for this report.

Sferios has described spending months working on creating the tests and conducting some 2,000 experiments to arrive at the current models, which can test samples of LSD down to the microgram and MDMA pills down to milligrams. He based the products on the Hofmann and Marquis reagents, he said—century-old methods that nobody can own.

Sferios said he started working with Miraculix in November 2022 because he “believed quantitative test kits were an important addition to consumer drug checking.”

In May, he published an online article titled  “How to Make a Purity Test Kit,” in which he wrote, “the basic idea is to balance the strength and volume of the reagent with the amount of drug added in order to land on the Beer-Lambert spectrum. This is a narrow linear color spectrum that correlates with the concentration of substance dissolved in a solution—a physical law of analytical chemistry that dates back to the 18th century.”

Sferios said he started working with Miraculix in November 2022 because he “believed quantitative test kits were an important addition to consumer drug checking.”

In an earlier post on the QTests.org site Sferios set up to sell Miraculix’s tests, he wrote: “QTests were developed in 2022 by Dr. Felix Blei in Jenna, Germany. A product of years of research, they are the world’s first quantitative reagent test kits.”

Based on “good faith and trust” Sferios said, he began selling Miraculix kits before contract negotiations were complete, but after six months “Miraculix abandoned the negotiations and opened their own US distribution center in direct competition with me.”

This, he said, was after he had spent around $20,000 on custom boxes for the US market,  edited their English-language material and provided “invaluable” marketing advice. But he continued to sell the kits, partly because he wanted to make back the money he had spent.

“It was also during a tumultuous time for me,” he wrote, referring to major strife at DanceSafe. “I left and helped the chapters start a new nonprofit, Grassroots Harm Reduction.”

Miraculix claims that Sferios was representing DanceSafe when they first met, and within two years their relationship soured. Sferios claims that a non-disclosure agreement he signed with Miraculix was as a representative of HRDS, and that Miraculix knew “within a few days” of their first meeting that he was not representing DanceSafe. DanceSafe did not respond to Filter’s request for comment.

“It was highly concerning to us when Mr. Sferios and/or his company introduced kits for the same substances under a different brand name—kits that bear a strong resemblance to our QTests.”

“After extended discussions and unmet expectations, we made a business decision to open our own webshop for North America to pursue independent marketing and distribution efforts,” a Miraculix spokesperson told Filter. “Emanuel continued as a distributor, maintaining whitelabel use of the QTest name.”

“We communicated that continued use of the QTest branding under a separate sales channel was causing confusion among users and organizations,” the spokesperson continued. “We communicated that the whitelabel and QTests.org website would be phased out over a six-month period. Emanuel was invited to remain a standard Miraculix distributor (without whitelabel) under the same model used by other US partners.”

“It was therefore highly concerning to us when Mr. Sferios and/or his company suddenly introduced kits for the same substances under a different brand name—kits that bear a strong resemblance to our QTests in both packaging and methodology,” the spokesperson continued. “His assertion that these kits were developed entirely independently and ‘have nothing to do with Miraculix’ contradicts both his own previously documented statements and the substantial research effort required to develop such tools.”

Miraculix says it became aware in May of Sferios’ launch of PurityTestkits.com, “despite … the lack of any agreement to replicate or independently develop such products.”

“The NDA had nothing to do with their MDMA, LSD and psilocybin kits,” Sferios told Filter. “Those kits were already publicly available.”

“Our collaboration with Mr. Sferios was built on mutual understanding and formalized through a non-disclosure agreement (NDA),” the spokesperson said. “Over a period of more than two years, we provided him with our quantitative test kits for MDMA, LSD, and psilocybin—kits that were developed through extensive research and validated in real-world harm reduction settings. Prior to our work, kits of this quality, capable of quantifying the actual amount of the target substance, were not available on the market.”

But according to Sferios, the NDA is irrelevant.

“The NDA had nothing to do with their MDMA, LSD and psilocybin kits,” he told Filter. “Those kits were already publicly available. The NDA itself states that those kits are not confidential information. The only confidential information they gave me (that I was not allowed to reverse-engineer) were the fentanyl test kit prototypes they sent me.”

Photograph of MDMA pills (cropped) by tanjila ahmed via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0 

The post Fight Over Claimed Ownership of Drug-Checking Technology appeared first on Filter.

“The available evidence suggests that drug-related law enforcement activities are of limited effectiveness in reducing violence,” states the report, which was prepared by the research organization RAND Europe and published by the UK Home Office on March 27. “Indeed, more studies demonstrated an association between drug-related law enforcement activities and increased violence than decreased violence.”

The findings, which echo earlier evidence on the subject, are less startling than the fact that the UK government published them. The report references a prior review on the impact of drug-related law enforcement activity on serious violence and homicide, which, it notes, “found that increasing drug law enforcement was unlikely to reduce drug market violence alone and risked exacerbating it.”

The report urges British police forces planning drug-related law enforcement actions to “consider the risk of increased violence,” particularly related to the removal of leaders of trafficking groups and drug seizures.

“It is welcome to see the systemic failure confirmed by work commissioned and published by the Home Office itself. It certainly makes it a lot harder for them to ignore.”

“The counterproductive nature of drug law enforcement has been very obvious for a long time,” Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, told Filter. “The war on drugs has fueled an arms race between law enforcement agencies and organized crime groups—ensuring only the most cunning and  violent crime groups prosper.”

Nonetheless, he continued, “It is welcome to see the systemic failure of the enforcement model confirmed by academic work commissioned and published by the Home Office itself. It certainly makes it a lot harder for them to ignore.”

The Home Office, which is responsible for areas including public safety, policing and border security in the UK, did not respond to Filter’s request for comment on whether it would act on the report’s recommendations.

Former police officers are among those who have long warned that the disruption of drug markets increases violence, as trafficking groups fight over resultant power vacuums when established hierarchies are disturbed by seizures and arrests.

“For years I’ve been arguing that no police activity in drug markets reduces the size of the market,” Neil Woods told Filter. A former undercover police officer, he changed his mind about the drug enforcement actions he once participated in. He now chairs the Law Enforcement Action Partnership UK, which campaigns to end the drug war.

“This kind of study should not just be of niche interest, it should inform policy,” he said. “We are talking about the very fabric of security and safety in our society.”

Police disruption of drug markets also increases the risk of overdose among people who use drugs, Woods added, citing a 2023 study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, which illustrated this. In what has been described as “the drug bust paradox,” the arrest of a person’s source of drugs can lead them to experience withdrawal and hastily seek a new source—who might provide drugs that are adulterated or of higher potency.

For another report, published in February by the think tank RUSI Europe, researchers studied examples of law enforcement actions including the shutdown of an encrypted messaging network, interventions against drug trafficking groups, the dissolution of a guerrilla group which sold cocaine, pandemic policing shocks and the collapse of a major trafficking organization.

The point of such enforcement actions is ostensibly to reduce the supply of drugs. But in the long term, this is never the outcome.

“We find clear evidence in case studies … that enforcement often serves to worsen underlying violence and societal disruption dynamics, imposing significant human costs in terms of lives lost and socio-economic upheaval,” the report said, highlighting how the arrest of powerful leaders often removes dispute-resolution mechanisms and sparks anarchic violence and power struggles.

The point of such enforcement actions is ostensibly to reduce the supply of drugs. But in the long term, this is never the outcome.

“In no single case we evaluate have major external shocks or disruptions through enforcement, or lack thereof, been shown to have any demonstrable lasting impact on drug markets either locally or globally,” the RUSI Europe report found.

Sky ECC was an encrypted chat network favored by groups selling drugs, among others. In Europe, there was a concentration of users in Belgium, the Netherlands and especially around the major Belgian port of Antwerp. Following the law enforcement-led shutdown of the network in 2021, Western European trafficking groups in some cases escalated their violence, according to the report, including threats and several high-profile murders.

Four months after the shutdown, journalist Peter de Vries was killed in the Netherlands in one of the best known cases. A year on, the Belgian justice minister was forced to retreat with his family to a safe house on two occasions, due to threats.

“Nor does the operation seem to have reduced violent crime between drug gangs in the medium to long term,” the report added. “Brussels witnessed a record number of shootings in 2024, most of which were believed to be drug-related.”

In other cases, European drug policing involves direct violence against unarmed people. On April 7, an inquest into the death of 31-year-old Sean Fitzgerald, a former soldier, began in the UK.

Fitzgerald, who was not carrying a gun, was shot and killed by police in 2019 as he fled a suspected cannabis farm. “The police climbed up ladders and went through windows, almost like it was World War 3,” a friend of his told reporters at the time. “Obviously any person in their right mind would’ve been scared and ran away.” 

The international drug control regime could be considered a violation of the fundamental human right to life and security, according to a 2023 paper published in the International Journal of Drug Policy. “The relationship between drug criminalization and violent criminality has long been recognized,” wrote the author, academic Petter Grahl Johnstad. “Prohibition makes the illicit drug trade very profitable and therefore attractive to criminal organizations, who will compete with each other for access to the illicit drug market.”

Photograph via RawPixel/Public Domain

The post UK Govt. Publishes Report Indicating Drug Policing Boosts Violence appeared first on Filter.

Saudi Arabia was a major contributor to a big increase in the world’s recorded executions for drugs. The kingdom has intensified a brutal drug war in response to increased substance use.

The United States ally resumed use of the death penalty for drug charges in 2022, after a claimed pause following international condemnation over the 2018 murder of Jamal Khasshogi.

Globally, at least 615 people were executed for drug-related convictions in 2024, approaching 2015’s record high of 763 people, according to a new report by Harm Reduction International (HRI). The latest figure is a 32-percent increase on 2023, when HRI documented 467 confirmed executions.

The report comes after US President Donald Trump in February renewed his backing for the death penalty for people who sell drugs, calling it “very humane” and falsely claiming that countries imposing this punishment have no issues with drug use.

“Rather than holding Saudi Arabia accountable for such extreme violations, the international community remains silent and even rewarded the kingdom with the 2034 World Cup.”

“Despite overwhelming evidence that capital punishment does not deter drug crimes, a handful of countries are escalating their use of this inhumane practice,” said Giada Girelli, senior human rights analyst at HRI.

“Rather than holding Saudi Arabia accountable for such extreme violations,” she told Filter, “the international community remains silent and even rewarded the kingdom with hosting the 2034 World Cup—sending a dangerous message to retentionist countries that executions and other abuses in the name of drug control can continue with impunity.”

In December, the UN’s human rights experts condemned the spate of executions in the oil-rich Middle Eastern state, which were long inflicted through beheading by sword in public squares, but now occur behind closed doors, with the specific means unclear. The de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, claimed in 2022 that the death penalty had been eliminated aside from murder cases, as part of his vision for a more liberal kingdom, but at least 330 people were executed in total in 2024—the highest number in decades.

“Executions of foreign nationals appear to be increasingly taking place without prior notification to death row inmates, their families, or their legal representatives,” the UN’s special rapporteur said in a statement, with three-quarters of those executed foreign nationals, including four Nigerian women. “Under international law, States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose it for the ‘most serious crimes’, involving intentional killing. Drug-related offences do not meet this threshold.”

The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) said in its 2024 report, which was cited by HRI, that it had received information suggesting that some arrests were arbitrary, “with severe violations against those accused of drug use and trafficking, including appalling conditions in detention facilities, denial of basic rights to communicate with the outside world, and denial of the right to adequate self-defense, among other abuses.”

“The victims of these executions are often the most vulnerable—those who are poorest, most in need, and frequently foreign workers.”

Saudi Arabia is experiencing increased drug use—notably of captagon, the Syrian-made amphetamine—as the country’s top-down reforms disrupt society. Private rehab centers have been allowed to open for the first time. But some of the recent executions have been for the alleged smuggling of hashish, a form of cannabis which has been legalized in parts of the world, while there are serious concerns over pre-trial torture and access to fair trials.

The expansion of the scope of executions beyond heroin and cocaine trafficking, to include “individuals convicted merely for selling cannabis within the country, marks a disturbing escalation in the severity of punishment,” Taha Alhajji, the ESOHR’s legal consultant, told Filter. “The victims of these executions are often the most vulnerable—those who are poorest, most in need, and frequently foreign workers who face both torture and execution.”

In 2023, Saudi Arabian authorities executed Hussein Abo al-Kheir, a Jordanian father of eight. He was sentenced to death in 2015 for alleged drug trafficking following a trial decried by campaigners as “grossly unfair,” and which came after extended torture, with al-Kheir suspended from his feet and beaten. “He thought he would lose his life if the torture continued so he signed a document to confess,” his sister Zeinab al-Kheir told The Times.

Zaid Junaid, an Indian migrant who was working as a driver for a Saudi police officer, is currently on death row over alleged drug smuggling charges but continues to protest his innocence. “My brother has been framed,” Suhail Junaid told Indian media. “He was just doing his job as a driver. We hope the Indian government intervenes and saves his life.”

Saudi Arabia’s eye-watering investments into sports led it to be made host nation of the 2034 World Cup after the world soccer governing body FIFA controversially expedited its bidding process, leaving the country as the sole bidder for the year. Many of those executed in Saudi Arabia were from neighbouring countries such as Syria, Yemen and Pakistan. Numbers of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia will continue to swell amid stadium construction and other World Cup preparations.

Four countries—China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Singapore—were confirmed to have executed people for drugs in 2024. Almost four in five of those executions took place in Iran, after the country u-turned on its own reforms. But HRI notes it is likely that more executions were carried out secretly in China, North Korea and Vietnam.

Photograph by Defense Visual Information Distribution Service via NARA/Public Domain

The post Saudi Arabia a Key Driver of 2024 Global Surge in Executions for Drugs appeared first on Filter.

From February 3 to 7, policymakers, activists, scientists and Indigenous leaders gathered for the “Wisdom of the Leaf” event organized by the McKenna Academy, an ethnobotanical education nonprofit. They discussed how best to apply pressure on the UN and the World Health Organization to support reform, with the WHO due to publish its “critical” review of the evidence around the global coca ban in September.

“It is time to decolonize the convention’s current regulations and [end] the six decades of the colonization of the coca leaf,” Bolivian Vice President David Chochquehuanca told the summit.

Global coca prohibition began in 1961, long before concern over the trafficking of cocaine, the main ingredient of which is the coca leaf. Since then, the sovereignty of the principally Indigenous communities that have traditionally consumed coca in its plant form has been repeatedly violated, Chochquehuanca said. Repeal would allow those who have been discriminated against “to industrialize and commercialize the coca leaf in its natural state,” he added.

“Coca belongs to the Indigenous People.”

It would also allow the rest of the world to enjoy the benefits of a plant brimming with calcium and iron, which has analgesic properties, boosts respiration at higher altitudes and performs a similar energizing function to coffee, but with fewer side effects, anthropologist and author Wade Davis, who helped organize the summit, told attendees. “The actions of coca and cocaine are not comparable,” he said during his keynote. “Each gives a sense of wellbeing, but one assaults the senses.”

Despite coca’s apparent benefits, others cautioned against rapid commercialization, citing how corporate interests have wrested control of legal cannabis markets—notably ruining legacy-market farmers in the United States after oversupply crashed the price.

“Coca belongs to the Indigenous people,” said Fabiola Piñacué, the founder of Coca Nasa, a Colombian community-based company that manufactures coca-based products. Coca farmers, known as cocaleros, should be protected under any new, less repressive global regime—perhaps similar to how champagne, feta cheese, Colombian coffee or rooibos tea must come from their specific regions—to ensure they are paid fairly for their coca leaves, and are not undercut by growers elsewhere in the world, Piñacué said.

The fact that Coca-Cola, which derives its unique taste from a “decocainized” extract of the coca leaf, is available “in every last corner of the world,” but coca—with all of its medicinal and nutritional benefits—is globally illegal aside from in the Andean nations, is a testament to the “greed and avarice of the vulgarized West,” she added. “This drink is a poison because it is causing addiction, obesity and blood sugar problems in people.”

At the height of the global drug war in the 1990s, when vast swaths of coca fields in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador were sprayed from helicopters with glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup—since found to be a “probable carcinogen”—coca farmers were arrested, prosecuted and had their crops destroyed even when they were growing it for traditional uses, and not for the production of cocaine. Indigenous people in the sprayed areas complained of flu-like symptoms including nausea, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, respiratory problems, and skin rashes, according to a 2001 report by the Transnational Institute.

“In some way, just as they wanted to exterminate the Indigenous people, they also wanted to exterminate Indigenous culture.”

Within the Quechua-speaking communities, known collectively as Runakuna, that have consumed coca leaves for more than 8,000 years, the US-led campaign was viewed as the continuation of a Western war on Indigenous culture which began when the Spanish conquistadors arrived and denounced coca as a tool of the devil.

“For us, coca is something sacred,” said Jaison Perez Villafaña, a wisdom keeper known as a mamo, from Colombia’s Arhuaco community. “In some way, just as they wanted to exterminate the Indigenous people, they also wanted to exterminate Indigenous culture.”

Rather than as merely a plant with medicinal and pleasurable properties, Villafaña described coca as a portal to a cosmovision that is central to the way of life of his people, and many others.

“When we talk about culture, you feel like you own it because you talk to coca, you live with coca, you travel with coca, you heal with coca, you travel spiritually with coca,” he said. While cocaine is associated with the violence tied to the drug trade under prohibition, he continued, coca is a symbol of peace and brotherhood in Indigenous communities. “The world of the white brother sees that it is a bush that kills, but it is not to blame; the fault is of man. The bush is sacred, the bush is medicinal.”

When people pass each other in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of Colombia, from where Villafaña hails, it is customary to exchange a handful of leaves as a mark of respect and greeting. Therefore, to deny Runakuna the right to consume coca is tantamount to cultural genocide, Davis said, referencing his essay on coca in his 2024 collection Beneath The Surface of Things. Hence the motto of the Peruvian pro-coca movement: coca o muerte (coca or death).

Piñacué said it was paramount to create a movement to increase understanding around the coca leaf, with efforts already underway ahead of the WHO review.

The eradication campaigns across the Andes have mostly quietly ended in recent years, but the 1961 drug control treaty remains in place, requiring the “uprooting of all coca bushes which grow wild” and banning the distribution of any products containing the plant, which can only become cocaine following a chemical process. This leaves farmers vulnerable to price fluctuations in the global cocaine trade; many are nonetheless understood to prefer not to deal with those turning it into cocaine.

That there remains a war on coca is clear. Over the last decade, in Spain, more than a dozen Andean migrants have been taken to trial for possession of coca leaves and four received criminal records. In 2018 the captain of the Peruvian soccer team, Paolo Guerrero, was initially banned from the sport for 12 months after testing positive for a metabolite of cocaine, despite his protestations that he had only drunk a small amount of coca tea. In 2020, border authorities in Philadelphia celebrated the seizure of 12 pounds of “green cocaine”—in fact it was a type of coca powder named mambé, which would be near-impossible to convert into cocaine.

Piñacué said that it was paramount to create a movement to increase understanding around the coca leaf, with efforts already underway through side events and art installations at the UN ahead of the publication of the WHO review later in 2025.

Depending on the findings of that review, a Commission for Narcotic Drugs vote could follow in March 2026. That might lead to the down-scheduling or descheduling of the plant.

“The coca leaf is alive and has its own spirit,” Piñacué said. Whatever happens next at a global level, she added, many indigenous people in the Andes, not least those from her own Nasa community in Colombia, will continue chewing the leaf. “It is part of the people.”

Photograph of coca leaves by Nils R. Barth via the Museum of Native American History/CCO Public Domain

The post Coca Summit in Peru Focuses Push to End Global Prohibition appeared first on Filter.

For 8,000 years Indigenous communities had chewed coca leaves. But 20th-century elites in Lima—like the Spanish conquistadors when they first arrived on the continent—identified coca chewing as culturally and spiritually integral to a way of life different from their own.

“The consumption of coca, illiteracy, and a negative attitude to the superior culture are closely intertwined,” said a 1947 report by the Peruvian education ministry.

This spurred the United Nations to dispatch a team of supposed experts to investigate the “coca-chewing problem” two years later, leading the international body to demand the “suppression” of coca cultivation to eradicate a “social evil.”

A global ban on chewing it was implemented through the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1964, leaving coca under such a restrictive drug control regime that researchers even today often find it impossible to source the understudied leaves.

Similar paternalistic calls would attempt to justify the later global drug war. But 75 years on from the UN’s first diktats on coca, the organization’s health authority is set to publish its “critical” health review of the evidence underpinning the Schedule I status of the mildly stimulating, medicinal plant—rich in calcium and iron—after requests from Bolivia and Colombia to end its international prohibition. 

Indigenous advocates have been prominent in building momentum for those countries—coca is already legal in Bolivia; in Colombia, consumption is only permitted within Indigenous communities—to make that request. “This is a David and Goliath battle against colonialism,” David Curtidor, director of indigenous-owned coca beer company Coca Nasa, told the Times of London in September. “We’re saying enough is enough.”

Colombian botanist Óscar Pérez, of Kew Gardens, sees coca as the world’s most misunderstood plant. “It is not fair that the coca plant is so demonized,” he told América Futura in November. “In European countries, especially in the Schengen area, all coca species are classified as illegal, even if it is not known whether they are used to produce cocaine. In fact, I couldn’t take a leaf from here to do research. It’s ridiculous.”

But change may be on the horizon. The WHO review could potentially lead the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to recommend a reduction in the classification of coca, from which both cocaine and Coca-Cola derive key ingredients, under drug control treaties—or even decriminalization.

“The views in the past that led to coca’s current classification are indefensible on the basis of today’s scientific, ethical and legal standards.”

“This is the coca leaf,” Bolivia’s representative to the UN, Diego Pary, said in November at the UN in New York, holding one aloft from a pile in front of him, just like former president Evo Morales did in the conference hall in 2013. But unlike Morales, Pary then put the leaf into his mouth.

“We remove the stem, and chew the leaf, and we put it to the side of our cheek,” he said, demonstrating.

“We need to demystify all of the narratives that have been developed over the years about the coca leaf,” Pary added. “The Indigenous communities recognize the coca leaf not just as a plant but as a means of spiritual connection that allows them to be in harmony with nature and their ancestors.”

The World Health Organization has three most likely options: Conclude that the coca leaf should remain in Schedule I, recommend transfer to the less-restricted Schedule II or recommend the removal of coca from the treaty schedules altogether.

“The views in the past that led to coca’s current classification are indefensible on the basis of today’s scientific, ethical and legal standards,” Martin Jelsma, a program director at the Transnational Institute, a progressive think tank, told Filter. “If the WHO fails to call for a change, the agency risks losing credibility with regard to fulfilling its treaty mandate objectively and showing respect for Indigenous rights.”

Governments defending the status quo, he added, fear that changing the status of the coca leaf could become a precedent for questioning the classification of several other drugs, marking the beginning of the end of the global prohibition regime. “There is much at stake and the coca review will be a hot topic in UN corridors this whole year.”  

“We are convinced that coca-leaf chewing is a social evil; the chronic consumption of these leaves constitutes a social poison.”

Back in 1949, after the UN dispatched its team to investigate, the mission leader immediately revealed the agenda at an airport press conference. Howard Fonda, who was also vice president of the American Pharmaceutical Association, claimed that coca chewing was not only “definitely harmful and deleterious” but “the cause of racial degeneration of many population groups.”

“Our studies will confirm the truth of our statements, and we hope to be able to submit a rational plan of action … to secure the total eradication of this pernicious habit,” he said.

The subsequent 1950 UN Commission on the Enquiry of the Coca Leaf report recommended the “suppression” of coca use. Psychiatrist and criminologist Pablo Osvaldo Wolff, who worked on the report, later became head of the WHO’s Expert Committee on Addiction-Producing Drugs. He characterized people who chew coca as “abulic, apathetic, lazy, insensitive [and] befogged.”

A 1952 WHO paper later said: “We are convinced that coca-leaf chewing is a social evil; the chronic consumption of these leaves constitutes a social poison which undermines the physical and mental health of the population and lowers its moral and economic level.”

Coca is not just of spiritual importance to Andean people but integral to their diet, which traditionally lacks a calcium-rich dairy source, Davis added.

Initiatives to control coca cultivation were subsequently attempted, but not on any historically significant scale. Yet the groundwork for the systematic and destructive, US-funded coca eradication campaign that would arrive in the 1980s had been laid, before the anti-drug campaign hugely exacerbated the civil war in Colombia.

Over several decades, more than 260,000 people were killed with 7 million forced from their homes. The US pumped a trillion dollars into the drug war, and plenty of it ended up enriching Colombian, Peruvian and Bolivian elites to the detriment of others.

“Most Colombians have never seen, let alone used, cocaine and there they suffered a real war on drugs,” anthropologist Wade Davis told Filter. Davis told the history of coca in his bestselling 1996 book One River, in part leading him to be made an honorary citizen of Colombia in 2018. “I think what keeps the market going is the money, not the lousy drug.”

Coca, on the other hand, is not just of spiritual importance to Andean people but integral to their diet, which traditionally lacks a calcium-rich dairy source, added Davis, who worked on a 1975 nutritional study of the coca leaf at Harvard’s Botanical Museum.

“What we found absolutely horrified our backers at the US government,” he told the recent UN meeting. “Turns out, coca was chock-full of vitamins, [and] has more calcium than any other plant ever studied by science, which made it perfect for a diet that traditionally lacked a dairy product.”

“Compared with an average of ten cereals, coca was higher in protein, fat, fiber, ash, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin A, riboflavin, and vitamin C,” the 1975 study found.

“There is precedent within the treaties for having the plant versions of drugs unscheduled, whereas the extracted drugs are scheduled.”

All of this will be considered by the WHO, though it is unlikely to assess the potential harm reduction role of coca. Small numbers of people experiencing addiction to powder or crack cocaine have found benefit in using coca as a safer alternative, and many more could be ushered toward it through legalization.

At the Taki Wasi retreat center in Tarapoto, Peru, people with substance use disorders are treated with coca leaves as part of a wider rehabilitation regimen including other Amazonian psychoactive plants. “Coca provides balance, stimulates dream production; it is a toner, it also calms physical and emotional pain, it allows wounds to heal,” wrote founder Dr. Jacques Mabit. “It allows [you] to focus and align on all levels.”

The WHO review will not lead to any reexamination of the laws governing the use of cocaine, though there are growing calls for a legal, regulated market in the face of global demand that fuels violence over control of the trade and incentivizes production of riskier versions of the drug. The gains of any policy liberalization would include economic benefits to Andean communities.

“There is precedent within the treaties for having the plant versions of drugs unscheduled, whereas the extracted drugs are scheduled,” Steve Rolles, a senior policy analyst at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a think tank in the United Kingdom, told Filter.

Rolles has been campaigning for a legal, regulated market for cocaine that could include milder forms of the drug in gum, lozenge and snus-like forms. If the WHO’s coca health-risk evaluation were “meaningful and honest,” he added, “coca would be removed from the schedules altogether.”

Even if the WHO does recommend rescheduling, however, Rolles envisages the US and the other prohibitionist countries would rally sufficient support to vote against it at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. “Any change in scheduling of coca leaf would be seen as a threat to sort of drug-war norms around cocaine and crack.”

Meanwhile decocainized energy drinks have been hitting shelves, and one brand is even sponsoring the US National Lacrosse League. “As the first company outside Coca-Cola to legally manufacture and distribute coca extracts globally on a commercial scale, we’re redefining its role in the modern world,” said Pat McCutcheon, CEO of Power Leaves Corp. “By working hand-in-hand with Indigenous communities, we aim to expand global access to coca’s benefits while preserving its cultural heritage.”

“The natural coca leaf is like a dry seal that protects the identity of the Andean-Amazonian ancestral peoples.”

Aside from the WHO review, momentum for reform is growing. Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, spoke at a high-level side event on coca in March 2024, which was also organized by Bolivia and Colombia—with support from Canada, Czechia, Malta, Mexico and Switzerland.

“Indigenous Peoples have been overpoliced on practices such as subsistence cultivation of drug crops—crops which may be used as traditional medicines, which are essential to their lives and livelihoods, and which hold deep cultural and spiritual significance,” Türk said.

In February, the nonprofit McKenna Academy, in collaboration with Davis, will host a multidisciplinary summit on coca just outside Cusco, Peru, called The Wisdom of the Leaf. Bolivian Vice President David Choquehuanca will speak at the event in support of legalization. 

“The natural coca leaf is like a dry seal that protects the identity of the Andean-Amazonian ancestral peoples,” Choquehuanca told the UN in April. “The truth that the coca leaf is not a drug is gradually coming to the surface of the collective consciousness.”

Photograph of coca field in Bolivia by kristin miranda via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Rooted in Colonialism, Coca Prohibition Could Be Nearing Its End appeared first on Filter.

A joint report, “A World of Harm,” released on December 4 by Harm Reduction International and the Drug Policy Alliance reveals the extent of the funding dispensed from various US government departments to militarized anti-drugs efforts in countries like Mexico, Colombia and the Philippines. Some of the money comes from streams which are meant to aid poverty reduction projects, the report shows.

The overall funding since 2015 is far greater than the amount spent by the US on primary education or water supply and sanitation in the Global South, according to the report’s analysis. Campaigners have called for a reorientation of the finances towards evidence-based health responses to reduce drug dependency and thus lessen the demand for drugs.

“Our national budgets are value statements from our governments, they are telling us exactly what they think is important,” Colleen Daniels, deputy director of Harm Reduction International, said at the December 4 launch of the report on Zoom. US investment in drug control in Latin America, where the majority of the funding goes, has fueled outward migration, hindered economic development and created political instability, she added.

The DEA has some 93 offices in 69 countries. “Receiving US aid is tied to following prohibitionist and punitive approaches to drugs,” said Claire Provost.

President-Elect Donald Trump has sent some mixed messages on his proposed drug policy for when he retakes office, but $1 billion has already been requested by the outgoing administration for international counternarcotics activities, led by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, in 2025.

Trump’s abiding argument, however, has been that the blame for US overdose deaths lies with Mexican trafficking groups, foreign governments and the Biden administration’s border policy.

“The real truth is that Americans are dying because American politicians and decision-makers are pushing death-making policies that are making our drug supply more toxic,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

The US has been increasingly classifying drug control spending as official development assistance (ODA), for reasons which remain unclear. Of a total of almost $1 billion in narcotics control development aid money over the past decade, at least $9 million has been allocated to countries which punish some drug-related convictions with the death penalty. Namely, Indonesia, Iraq, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand. In 2021, when Indonesia sentenced at least 89 people to death over drug-related convictions, the country received $1 million in ODA funds, and much more through other streams.

Across the world, the DEA has some 93 offices in 69 countries. “Receiving US aid is tied to following prohibitionist and punitive approaches to drugs,” said Claire Provost, a consultant for Harm Reduction International. “You see aid spending being spent instead on things like stipends for DEA officers, shredders, satellite phones, [and] bulletproof vests.”

Profit-making companies are the largest beneficiary of these funds, but many of the financial records for the spending are subject to redactions that render parts of documents unintelligible, Provost added. Or details are simply not stated—such as the specific US agencies which were involved in training and advising their Mexican counterparts in 2023, using $13 million in foreign aid funding.

Millions in US aid has supported “forced rehabilitation” of people who use drugs in the Philippines, the report said.

Since 1971, the US has spent more than $1 trillion on the War on Drugs, through a law enforcement focused approach that has fuelled mass incarceration domestically and abroad. “This has continued despite growing evidence that such approaches don’t work to achieve their stated aims (ending drug use and sales) while having devastating effects on rights and health, including mass criminalization, disease transmission, repression, and displacement,” the report said.

“There have been critical incidents in Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, and Haiti involving DEA-supported foreign law enforcement units… [and] civilian deaths, corruption and compromised intelligence,” a 2023 report commissioned by the DEA conceded.

The new report comes after human rights groups’ warnings that hundreds of millions worth of US foreign aid to the Philippines, during former president Rodrigo Duturte’s deadly crackdown on people suspected of using or selling drugs, could be tantamount to supporting “mass unlawful violence.” There were reportedly as many as 30,000 extrajudicial killings, with the victims mostly poor men. Duterte, who had urged the public to kill people addicted to drugs, now faces an international criminal court investigation for crimes against humanity.

Millions in US aid has supported “forced rehabilitation” of people who use drugs in the Philippines amid efforts to create “drug-free communities,” the report said. Sterile injecting equipment is illegal in the country and some 29 percent of people who inject drugs have HIV, following the highest increases in the region since 2010.

“The war on drugs persists in the Philippines,” said Myra Mabilin, from drug policy reform non-profit NoBox Philippines, who helped produce the report. The country’s government, she emphasized, is still on a “relentless and damaging pursuit of a drug-free Philippines.”

Consistent US government funding of the drug war in countries that still have the death penalty for drug charges “does not seem to fit into our human rights framework at all,” Daniels said. “This is an egregious and inappropriate use of aid funding and taxpayer money that people should be aware of.”

Graphic showing DEA presence, offices and future offices via “A World of Harm” by the Drug Policy Alliance and Harm Reduction International

The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, previously received a restricted grant from the Drug Policy Alliance. Filter‘s Editorial Independence Policy applies.

The post US Continues to Spend Billions on Drug War in Lower-Income Countries  appeared first on Filter.

Inside, two chemists examine the powder through a microscope and advise me not to take all of the dose at once, since it is entirely pure. Naturally, I take heed.

The scene at the mobile drug checking facility seems futuristic, foreshadowing the common-sense drug approaches of tomorrow. A large screen outside of the prominently placed gazebo warns ravers about high-potency or adulterated drugs which have recently been in local circulation. A chart helpfully advertises which drugs are risky to use in combination with each other. A sign impresses the importance of set, setting and dose, and invites people to ask questions.

It’s soon easy to forget that compared to the norm in many places, this is a radical offering. Few other countries permit such services at festivals. In the United States, testing is only officially available at a few smaller festivals where promoters have decided to take legal risks. Despite a number of recent drug-related deaths, the larger festivals have yet to get on board.

This reluctance is substantially a consequence of the 2002 Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act, a federal law introduced by then-Senator Joe Biden, which makes rave organizers criminally liable for drug use at their events. The law discourages promoters from providing harm reduction services, for fear of then being held liable for any harms related to participants’ use.

“By spending a few minutes getting your drugs tested, we can help you engineer a really great festival.”

Bass Coast, which primarily showcases underground DJs, began testing drugs in 2018 following consultations with local authorities. The move came after BC was rocked by drug-related deaths at Shambhala festival in Nelson, in 2012; at Boonstock festival in Penticton, in 2014; and at the Center of Gravity festival in Kelowna, in 2018.

Shambhala, which in 2024 hosted 20,000 people on its privately-owned land, initially offered unauthorized and unadvertised testing from 2004, delivered by the pioneering harm reduction organization ANKORS. This went public in 2015, and was authorized not long after.

But some other festivals in BC and elsewhere in Canada—despite the successes of groups like GRIP, who test at events in the east—have not been able to secure permissions locally, according to Bass Coast Harm Reduction Manager Stacey Forrester. That’s even though the BC government previously wrote to festival promoters, urging drug checking.

“We want you to have a good time at Bass Coast,” Forrester told Filter. “We don’t want you to have to spend your whole weekend in medical or in the sanctuary spot because you took something that wasn’t what you thought. By spending a few minutes getting your drugs tested and learning more about what it is and perhaps how potent it is, we can help you engineer a really great festival.”

The future of harm reduction, she added, is in “benefit maximization,” as the stigma around having a good time on drugs fades.

“It turned out to have no MDMA, and was just a mixture of fentanyl and caffeine.”

Nine times out of 10, the drugs tested at Bass Coast and Shambhala contained what was expected, according to analysis of the data collected from 2,700 participants last year. But when a bag supposedly containing MDMA is actually something else, or is of unexpectedly high strength, or cut with dangerous contaminants, festivalgoers who haven’t had their drugs checked can be in for heart palpitations, hospitalization or worse.

“Two years ago at a festival we had somebody with a drug they bought online that was supposed to be MDMA,” Antoine Marcheterre, the drug checking lead at BC’s interior health authority, told Filter. “It turned out to have no MDMA, and was just a mixture of fentanyl and caffeine.”

Marcheterre, who has worked with ANKORS to provide this service since 2017, noted that some people choose to bring fentanyl to festivals for their personal use, but that unintentional use by people without experience or opioid tolerance is significantly riskier.

In 2019, at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee, a 26-year-old man died with MDMA and fentanyl in his system—a combination that he likely did not take on purpose. Somewhat eerily, harm reduction activists had staged a protest at the festival earlier that weekend to raise awareness around fentanyl test strips—which were considered illegal drug “paraphernalia” in the state (prior to 2022 reforms), and were thus banned at the event.

One of the greatest benefits of drug checking is that it effectively leads to an improved drug supply, Marcheterre said.

One of the greatest benefits of drug checking is that it effectively leads to an improved drug supply, Marcheterre said. Drugs purchased at Bass Coast and Shambhala are almost 10 percent more likely to test as expected than drugs procured prior to the events, the data showed.

“We are a very drug-illiterate culture,” Chloe Sage, the Shambhala festival drug checking team co-lead, told Filter. She helped set up the program two decades ago with ANKORS. “We’re creating a harm reduction culture where you teach people the tools to take care of each other, and themselves.” 

Festivalgoers have become vested in this culture, with attendees stumping up $20,000 for a 2018 GoFundMe campaign to enable the nonprofit to purchase a high-quality FTIR spectrometer testing device. Shambhala put up another $10,000; but that was exceptional, according to Sage.

“I’ve never [otherwise] heard of a festival actually putting money up for an organization to buy something like this with no strings attached,” she said. She pointed to corporate ownership of festivals as an obstacle to forward-thinking health policies.

“It’s a lot of work for us to convince promoters to let us provide our services,” Rae Elkasabany, the drug checking program coordinator at DanceSafe, a decentralized US harm reduction nonprofit, told Filter. Even when her organization succeeds in that, festivals may fail to properly advertise their services at the event and online. “They don’t want to get in trouble. It’s a high risk for them, because of our backwards laws.”

DanceSafe has conducted drug checking at festivals such as TomorrowWorld, Imagine, Mysteryland and Lightning in a Bottle. In 2015, however, during its fourth year at Electric Forest in Michigan, which was attended by around 40,000 people, event producers suddenly ordered the organization to close its booth, with no reason provided, it said at the time. DanceSafe was allegedly told to stop giving out an informational card about heroin because it was “too promotional.”

“Technically, we’re not allowed to say where we’re providing drug checking services,” Elkasabany said. “We operate in the legal gray area.” Times are changing, though slowly, she added.

In 2017, the Department of Justice clarified that providing drug education and free water is not a violation of the RAVE Act, while some states have permitted drug checking amid a US national toll of 300 drug-related deaths per day.

“There’s so many federal agencies using Burning Man as a training ground for their officers.”

Even in places which would be expected to be able to embrace drug checking, however, there can be challenges.

“There’s so many federal agencies using Burning Man as a training ground for their officers,” Taylor Wood, the drug checking program manager at the Chicago Recovery Alliance, told Filter. “The risk of getting arrested for possession is very high.”

In 2022, Wood and another team had planned to offer testing in a particular camp at the sprawling desert festival—but it got cold feet at the last minute. “We’ve had better success with underground raves and doing drug checking in those spaces,” he said.

Some activists therefore go renegade at festivals, conducting gonzo checking services with rudimentary testing equipment. Others are allowed to hand out fentanyl testing kits and naloxone at harm reduction booths—which are sometimes hidden away and not advertised.

While all of these measures help to reduce the risks of an unregulated supply, there is no panacea. “The complicated thing about drugs is that they’re just chemicals, but they’re chemicals that go inside people,” Macheterre said, “and people are complicated.”

Back at Bass Coast, the supreme high from the 2C-B is wearing off, and the advice not to take the entire dose has been vindicated. It might have been overwhelming.

All photographs by Mattha Busby

The post Festival Drug Checking Services Still Too Often Sidelined appeared first on Filter.

Young’s remarks, aired in the Netflix documentary series (Un)Well in August 2020, came after the death of Brandon Begley at his center in Orlando, Florida.

Begley, a 22-year-old Florida native, keen skateboarder and guitar player, fell ill at Soul Quest on April 1, 2018. He suffered convulsions on the ground, which caused cuts, and a prolonged seizure. His sodium levels had dropped after he drank a large quantity of water following a ceremony with kambo, a frog secretion with detoxifying effects. He had previously undergone three ceremonies over two days with ayahuasca, a vision-inducing psychedelic drink, brewed from Amazonian plants which contain DMT.

“Everyone here knew that there was nothing we did wrong,” Young claimed in the documentary. “We found out, shortly thereafter, he had a history of seizures.”

But Begley’s family wasn’t prepared to accept this, maintaining that Begley was healthy before going to Soul Quest. They filed a wrongful death lawsuit in March 2020.

On May 15, 2024, a jury at the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court in Orange County, Florida, found that negligence from Soul Quest and Young was “a legal cause” of Begley’s death. The organization and Young were ordered to pay a total of $15 million to Begley’s family, in a verdict which assigned 40 percent liability to Soul Quest and 60 percent to Young.

“Young failed to appreciate the obvious and ominous gravity” of Begley’s symptoms, despite his eventual request for an ambulance, William M. Chapman Esq., the Begley family lawyer, said in his initial summary. The court reviewed the autopsy and 911 records, and heard from forensic experts and researchers.

“Justice has spoken. Nobody should trust their lives with these people. Brandon was all about love.”

The damning verdict has rippled through the psychedelic community, heightening focus on implications of the mainstreaming of plant medicines. Ayahuasca and kambo have long histories of use among Indigenous peoples, and a growing list of potential benefits, but are not without their risks.

Begley, who was working as a pizza delivery driver and a golf caddy, was attending his second Soul Quest ayahuasca retreat, for which he’d paid $500. “He thought it was going to be a good thing for him and for it to end up like [this] has been completely devastating,” his father, John Paul Begley, said following his death.

The family argued it should have been clear to staff that Begley’s condition was deteriorating and that he needed medical help—and that Soul Quest’s failure to obtain timely emergency medical care was critical.

“When you see your son in a hospital bed with tubes and wires, and cuts and scrapes all over his body and his face, after going to a church, I had to get down to the facts of what really happened,” John Paul Begley told Filter. “And now, justice has spoken. Nobody should trust their lives with these people. Brandon was all about love.”

He added that he has not received a single condolence from Young. “He still has never apologized to me and been like, ‘All this was so awful. I wish there was something we could have done, but we really tried to help.’ There has been none of that. Every look that was given to me in the courtroom was with disgust.”

Prior to the week-long court case in May, it was established that Begley did not have a history of seizures. He was prescribed the anti-seizure medication levetiracetam for the first time when he was in the hospital after the events at Soul Quest.

“So you were basing your whole conclusion on Brandon lying to you about his medical history on the presence of one medication noted in the autopsy report that was conducted after Brandon died?” Chapman asked Young during depositions in 2022.

“That’s what I base my theory on, yes, because I have nothing else to base it on because I don’t have his true medical report,” Young replied. “When I read in the autopsy report that he had seizure medication, I am led to believe that he had a history of seizures.” (Psychedelics experts recommend that people with epilepsy, among other conditions, should not take ayahuasca.)

“There’s no competent evidence of a prior medical condition or prior medication that [Begley] failed to disclose,” Circuit Judge Eric Netcher wrote in a 2022 partial summary judgment. Soul Quest and Young’s defense failed “to create a genuine dispute of material fact,” he added. Soul Quest and Young did not respond to Filter’s request for comment on this point.

In his deposition, Young acknowledged that he had initially deemed Begley was suffering from a spiritual rather than medical issue.

Central to the negligence ruling was the fact that Young waited three hours after Begley was first found unwell before calling 911.

Young told the court during the deposition he was aware that overconsumption of water following the kambo ritual “could result in lethal complications.” Begley drank too much water after the noon ceremony, Young said. Therefore, he instructed him to stay another night at the center.

By 5 pm, Begley was lying on his side, unresponsive. Staff alerted Young, the only person at Soul Quest with any kind of medical training. Begley was carried out from the retreat center to the backyard, so that the Soul Quest shaman and musician could “ground” him on the grass. Those efforts were unsuccessful, as were attempts to use spiritual tools. The shaman performed reiki, a complementary therapy for stress reduction, the court heard, in an attempt to remove energy from Begley’s head, while praying and singing.

The staff also made him a sugar water tea and administered it from a honey-squeeze bottle, but his condition only worsened. The musician and the shaman both invoked their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination and refused to give evidence in court.

In his deposition, Young acknowledged that he had initially deemed Begley was suffering from a spiritual rather than medical issue, “as many times I’ve seen many, many, many of our members go through very similar situations.”

Since 5 pm, according to Chapman, Begley had been flitting between “lethargy, screaming, yelling and unresponsiveness,” symptoms of severe hyponatremia.

Around 8 pm, Begley suffered a prolonged seizure. Photographs viewed in court showed his convulsions had caused him to tear skin from his arms and face. Begley was given chest compressions by Soul Quest staff.

Young requested emergency medical assistance following the seizure. “We want to take him to the hospital, but currently right now it might just be best for you guys to come here instead of us taking him,” Young told responders in a recorded 911 call. “He’s unresponsive.”

Paramedics soon arrived and Begley was admitted to the hospital comatose, with critically low sodium and potassium levels. He died on April 4, from complications of acute hyponatremia, including anoxic brain injury.

“Soul Quest Church and Christopher Young are deeply disappointed with the outcome … At the end of the day, the Church and Mr. Young believe their interests will be fully vindicated.”

Soul Quest’s defense is understood to have claimed that Begley continued to drink water despite being warned not to overdrink; that he had signed a liability waiver; and that an incident three years prior, in which police attended Begley’s address while he was under the influence of psilocybin mushrooms, suggested he was not fit to take psychedelics.

“You will be advised by me to drink 2-liters of water about 10-20 minutes before I place the kambo on,” says Soul Quest’s kambo manual, which was filed to the court. “It is STRONGLY ADVISED that you do not drink more than 5 liters of water during your treatment, including 2 hours before and after.”

Chapman argued that the three ayahuasca sessions, the absence of breakfast on April 1, and “the recommendation of large water intake prior to the Kambo, and then the Kambo session was, as Mr. Young’s and Soul Quest’s retained nephrology expert, Dr. Steven Bialkin, [said], the ‘perfect storm of disaster’ in terms of severe, acute hyponatremia.” He also questioned the possibility that people could drink as much as 5 liters of water with Soul Quest’s blessing.

“Soul Quest Church and Christopher Young are deeply disappointed with the outcome of the recent trial, as the evidence outlined a clear lack of any fault,” a representative of the center told Filter. “All remaining legal options are being explored, in the hopes of reversing this unjust result. At the end of the day, the Church and Mr. Young believe that their interests will be fully vindicated.”

Some experts see Begley’s death and the subsequent legal battle as symptoms of uncertain boundaries around psychedelic practices. Relatedly, there are differing visions within the psychedelic movement—from a deregulated, decriminalized environment embracing community-led and spiritual use, to a more highly regulated, perhaps medicalized, landscape.

“Amidst the euphoria of the psychedelic renaissance, we will sadly see more inadequate responses to emergencies, more heartbreaking deaths and inevitably more lawsuits in the future,” Daniela Peluso, an anthropologist at the University of Kent, England, who has conducted long-term research on ayahuasca tourism and businesses, told Filter.

“The arena of psychedelics is abundant with well-intended individuals who are not experienced with running a professional organization or practicing foresight thinking,” Dr. Peluso continued. “They tend to be a very limited type of visionary.”

“If the psychedelic community is not able to regulate bottom-up, most likely there will be top-down controls. We need to have a balance.”

“This is incredibly sad for the family and I send them my solidarity,” Bia Labate, founder of the Chacruna Institute, a leading psychedelics organization, told Filter of Begley’s death. “It’s also very sad for those of us who have been advocating for responsible use of sacred plants for a lifetime.”

“There are hundreds of communities engaged in regular ceremonies bringing healing to thousands of people, without a track record of accidents,” she added, noting that kambo is often used in combination with ayahuasca in Indigenous practice.

Kambo has been associated with a small, unspecified number of deaths, while there have been 58 deaths “linked to” ayahuasca, according to a report from the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service; however, “not a single autopsy has attributed the fatalities to acute ayahuasca intoxication,” and “the majority of deaths could have been prevented if the experiences had adhered to the minimum safety standards.”

“If the psychedelic community is not able to regulate bottom-up, most likely there will be top-down controls,” Dr. Labate warned. “We need to have a balance between official regulations and community agreements.”

Pre-trial proceedings had earlier painted a troubling portrait of life at Soul Quest, which formed in 2015. There was conflict among its leaders, and Young was accused of assaulting and threatening board member Dr. Scott Irwin.

According to a police statement given by Irwin to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office on May 20, 2017, and reviewed by Filter: “Chris Young attacked me. Hitting me on the left side of the head with his fist while I had a three-year-old girl on my shoulders at a birthday party. He threatened to kill me. Tried to attack me again and crowd held him back.”

Young admitted to the court that some Soul Quest facilitators had undergone no formal training, though they had to complete a year of volunteer service with existing teams.

Soul Quest has also faced criticism for the large size of ceremonies reportedly conducted in a giant yurt in its suburban yard, and for other adverse events. Kevin Rupchand said that in 2017 he had a seizure and was not given suitable medical care, in a case that was settled out of court. Another woman, featured in the Netflix show, was hospitalized after having a seizure on camera during an ayahuasca ceremony.

In 2023, the Drug Enforcement Administration cited Begley’s death and participants’ hospitalizations when it refused to grant Soul Quest an exemption to the Controlled Substances Act for religious use of ayahuasca.

“A participant in a September 26, 2020 ayahuasca ‘Warrior Quest’ retreat also recently reported to DEA that, after she began experiencing adverse effects from an unknown substance also administered to her during an ayahuasca ceremony, Soul Quest staff members delayed calling 911,” an official wrote to Soul Quest. “She also alleged that hospital emergency room personnel had told her that Soul Quest staff members had repeatedly dropped off customers experiencing adverse reactions.”

Psychedelics advocates may draw differing conclusions from these events, as debates on regulation and self-regulation continue.

In court, people associated with Soul Quest undermined its claim that it is a religious organization which follows “The Ayahuasca Manifesto.”

“It’s scary that they are the easiest USA retreat to find online because that means all the newbies who don’t know any better find them first,” one Reddit user recently wrote. Soul Quest’s popularity has likely sustained itself by funding online visibility. The center has held retreats with up to 100 people, each paying hundreds of dollars, roughly every other week for a number of years.

The center’s wealth is unknown, however, and Chapman believes he will have to fight to secure the awarded funds. Soul Quest and Young have until July 1 to appeal to the Sixth District Court of Appeal.

Psychedelics advocates may draw differing conclusions from these events, as debates on regulation and self-regulation continue. They will agree that a rare example of a psychedelic-involved death, in very specific circumstances, should not be taken out of context. The Begley family’s grief, and their anger that medical help was not sought sooner, should be comprehensible to all.

Photograph of Brandon Begley courtesy of the Begley family

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