Not all is bad, but it’s not all good either. This is the assessment of ten years of drug policy debate in the UN system, presented in the report “Peoples’ Voice” that was recently co-published by Drug Policy Futures and FORUT. The report has a critical analysis of the ongoing drug policy discourse and also a recommendation for policy areas that national governments should prioritize in the next ten years.

WHO recently launched a new action package – SAFER. It aims at supporting the global target of reducing harmful use of alcohol by 10% by 2025. The initiative has been strongly supported by several global civil society networks.

"Only through rigorous fidelity to facts and evidence will the public health response to the harms of alcohol advance and successfully counter misinformation from the alcohol industry”. This is one of the key messages from the recently launched report “Trouble brewing”.

“We are quite concerned by the lack of progress in addressing the NCDs and their risk factors, including alcohol, in a serious way, comments FORUT after the closing of the United Nations High-Level Meeting on NCDs in New York.

In 2016, the harmful use of alcohol resulted in some 3 million deaths (5.3% of all deaths) worldwide. Mortality resulting from alcohol consumption is higher than that caused by diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and diabetes. These are among the new figures presented by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Global status report on alcohol and health 2018 released today. The report also demonstrates that the age-standardized alcohol-attributable burden of disease and injury was highest in the WHO African Region.

There is no safe level of alcohol use. Nearly three million deaths globally were attributed to alcohol use in 2016. Increasing alcohol use may result in increasing health problems in the future in low and middle income countries.