Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage, transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic beverages. The word is also used to refer to a period of time during which such bans are enforced.
The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent the recreational use of certain intoxicating substances.
The illegal drug trade or drug trafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws. The think tank Global Financial Integrity's Transnational Crime and the Developing World report estimates the size of the global illicit drug market between US$426 and US$652 billion in 2014 alone. With a world GDP of US$78 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally, and it remains very difficult for local authorities to reduce the rates of drug consumption.
Narcoterrorism, in its original context, is understood to refer to the attempts of narcotics traffickers to influence the policies of a government or a society through violence and intimidation, and to hinder the enforcement of anti-drug laws by the systematic threat or use of such violence. As with most definitions of terrorism, it typically only refers to non-state actors.
Commonly-cited arguments for and against the prohibition of drugs include the following:
The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 is an international treaty that controls activities of specific narcotic drugs and lays down a system of regulations for their medical and scientific uses; it also establishes the International Narcotics Control Board.
The United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 is one of three major drug control treaties currently in force. It provides additional legal mechanisms for enforcing the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. The Convention entered into force on November 11, 1990. As of June 2020, there are 191 Parties to the Convention. These include 186 out of 193 United Nations member states and the Holy See, the European Union, the Cook Islands, Niue, and the State of Palestine.
Demand reduction refers to efforts aimed at reducing the public desire for illegal and illicit drugs. The drug policy is in contrast to the reduction of drug supply, but the two policies are often implemented together. Some discussions of demand reduction make a distinction between policies that address single issues or are short-term interventions(in-school programs), and those that approach drug demand as a complex issue with multiple social risk factors. Some economists such as Milton Friedman argue that due to the law of supply and demand, reducing demand is the only effective way to reduce drug use long-term. It is questionable, however, whether demand reduction programs actually reduce demand.
Legalise Cannabis Australia, formerly the Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) Party, is a single-issue Australian political party. It has a number of policies that centre around the re-legalisation and regulation of cannabis for personal, medicinal and industrial uses in Australia.
David Caldicott is an Irish emergency medicine consultant at the Emergency Department of the Calvary Hospital in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. He was the convenor of the OzTox Collaboration, an independent multidisciplinary, hospital-based research group committed to a harm minimisation approach to illicit drug use.
A drug-related crime is a crime to possess, manufacture, or distribute drugs classified as having a potential for abuse. Drugs are also related to crime as drug trafficking and drug production are often controlled by drug cartels, organised crime and gangs. Some drug-related crime involves crime against the person such as robbery or sexual assaults.
The history of HIV/AIDS in Australia is distinctive, as Australian government bodies recognised and responded to the AIDS pandemic relatively swiftly, with the implementation of effective disease prevention and public health programs, such as needle and syringe programs (NSPs). As a result, despite significant numbers of at-risk group members contracting the virus in the early period following its discovery, Australia achieved and has maintained a low rate of HIV infection in comparison to the rest of the world.
Drug liberalization is a drug policy process of decriminalizing or legalizing the use or sale of prohibited drugs. Variations of drug liberalization include: drug legalization, drug re-legalization and drug decriminalization. Proponents of drug liberalization may favor a regulatory regime for the production, marketing, and distribution of some or all currently illegal drugs in a manner analogous to that for alcohol, caffeine and tobacco.
Illicit drug use in Australia is the recreational use of prohibited drugs in Australia. Illicit drugs include illegal drugs, pharmaceutical drugs when used for non-medical purposes, and other substances used inappropriately. According to government and community organisations, the use and abuse, and the illegality, of illicit drugs is a social, health and legal issue that creates an annual illegal market estimated to be worth A$6.7 billion. Estimates made in 2022 place the figure at A$11.3 billion per year.
Organised Crime and Gangs in Australia refers to the activities of various groups of crime families, organised crime syndicates or underworld activities including drug trafficking, contract killing, racketeering and other crimes in Australia.
Cannabis is a plant used in Australia for recreational, medicinal and industrial purposes. In 2019, 36% of Australians over the age of fourteen years had used cannabis in their lifetime and 11.6% had used cannabis in the last 12 months.
Indigenous Australians are both convicted of crimes and imprisoned at a disproportionately higher rate in Australia, as well as being over-represented as victims of crime. As of September 2019, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners represented 28% of the total adult prisoner population, while accounting for 2% of the general adult population. Various explanations have been given for this over-representation, both historical and more recent. Federal and state governments and Indigenous groups have responded with various analyses, programs and measures.
Drug Law Reform Australia was a political party in Australia. The aims of the party were to create a new regulatory system for illegal drugs in Australia, and influence the political debate around drug use towards decriminalisation and harm minimisation. The party is the outshoot of community groups lobbying elected politicians about the social effects of criminal drug prohibition, such as the community group Family and Friends of Drug Law Reform.
The Australian National Task Force on Cannabis (NTFC) was a specialised unit formed in April 1992 under the aegis of the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy (MCDS) who are responsible for implementing national consistency in policy principles related to Australia's National Drug Strategy.
The North Australia Party (NAP) was a short-lived political party in Australia's Northern Territory, primarily active in Alice Springs and the surrounding areas of Central Australia. It was founded in 1965 under the leadership of Lionel Rose and contested the Northern Territory Legislative Council election later that year, winning a single seat. The party has been cited as a predecessor of the modern Country Liberal Party (CLP).
