News & Announcements

It is with great sadness that ISSDP reports the passing of our friend and colleague, Tomáš Zábranský MD, PhD. Tomáš was part of ISSDP during its origins, contributing both as a highly-regarded epidemiologist who studied blood-borne diseases and mortality among those who used drugs as well as someone who understood the importance of rigorous research reaching policy makers and the need for objective evaluation of government programs and spending. He was an early ISSDP Board member, serving the organization until 2014, sharing his knowledge and experience of how to build bridges between policy research and policy in practice. In 2014, he became the Advisor on Drug Policy to the Czech Prime Minister and later served as the Envoy of the Czech Minister of Health for the Implementation of Medical Cannabis into the Czech Medical System and for Illegal Drug Issues, thereby playing a key role in the development of the Czech drug policy. He also headed up the Czech National Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (the national focal point). Tomáš never quit his academic scholarship, authoring over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals in addition to several official reports. His smile, quick wit, and razor focused intellect will be sorely missed by all of us.

For more information on his life and contributions, please see the following:

https://www.remembr.com/tomas.zabransky

https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/news/2021/memoriam-tomas-zabransky_en

Date: July 30 2021
Time: 11 am to 12.30pm (Sydney time)

Do you want to: Understand better how journals work? Increase the chances of getting published? Work out better approaches to deal with reviewer comments?

Then this webinar is for you. This webinar is an opportunity to listen to, talk with, and ask questions of highly experienced Editors across a range of drug policy related journals.

Featuring:

• Professor Alison Ritter (Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Drug Policy)
• Professor Keith Humphreys (Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Addiction)
• Professor Alex Stevens (Editorial board member, Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy & British Journal of Criminology)
• Professor Peter Reuter (Senior Editor, International Journal of Drug Policy)

For more details and to register go to: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/issdp-webinar-writing-for-drug-policy-journals-tickets-163322860071

The ISSDP Board and 2021 Host committee have had to make the difficult decision to fully cancel the 2021 conference in Aguascalientes Mexico due to ongoing uncertainties and restrictions caused by COVID-19.

We are very disappointed that we will not be able to meet as a society in Mexico as originally planned, and hope that we will get another opportunity to meet there in coming years. Moreover, we have further decided that, due to the logistical difficulty of managing an engaging conference when dealing with all the world’s time zones, we will not shift the 2021 conference to a virtual setting. Instead, we  encourage you to participate in the ongoing ISSDP virtual seminar series that we have scheduled in an alternating time zones allowing members to join when it is convenient, and catch taped versions later when it is not convenient.

A complete list of our upcoming mentoring and research seminars can be found here: https://www.issdp.org/webinars.

‘How COVID has changed cannabis markets, use and policy’

Chair: Rosalie Liccardo Pacula.

Speakers: David Hammond, Judith Albridge and Bernd Werse.

Date:  June 17, 2021
Time: 17.00-19.00 SAST | 15.00-17.00 GMT | 16.00-18.00 BST/UK time

You will not be able to join the webinar without pre-registering.

Registration link:

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_05_OvzfqQNaJMqnKMxx-Ig

The March 31st ISSDP Research Webinar was recorded and is available to our ISSDP members via the link below.

https://www.issdp.org/webinar-presentations/

ISSDP is launching a new ISSDP research webinar series that will run throughout 2021. Join us for the first webinar on 31 March to hear from Laura Atuesta from CIDE Mexico on “Organized crime-related disappearances in Mexico: Evidence from Durango, Tamaulipas and Coahuila.”

For details of this and future webinars see:
https://www.issdp.org/webinars/

On October 28th, Harm Reduction International will be launching a new report that draws on positive impacts of COVID on opioid substitution therapies from multiple countries. Be on the look out!

https://www.hri.global/

 

Key Findings from a Global Drug Survey survey that ran for 7 weeks from May – June 2020 are now available: 

https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/gds-covid-19-special-edition-key-findings-report/

ISSDP has partnered with MemberClicks to create an administrative and communication system for its membership.

As ISSDP is growing and becoming increasingly global, Memberclicks can help us stay on top of membership, registration for events, communications and help us do a better job at facilitating more communication between our members.

Please be sure to update your portfolio by going here:

https://issdp.memberclicks.net/login#/login

A scientific look at the 2020 World Drug Report

A joint ISSDP-UNODC webinar took place on 2 July 2020.

The webinar featured an overview of the 2020 World Drug Report by Angela Me (Chief Research and Trend Analysis Branch, UNODC) and an ISSDP panel of experts discussing three key topics: 1) socioeconomic circumstances of heavy use, 2) access to controlled medicine and 3) the rise of meth and stimulants.

The Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice is very pleased to announce that our own Peter Reuter has just been named a Distinguished University Professor by the University of Maryland for his influential work on alternative drug policies in the United States and Western Europe. This is the highest honor bestowed on a tenured faculty member in recognition not just of excellence, but of impact and significant contributions to the nominee’s profession. Peter’s appointment follows closely on the appointment of Sally Simpson last year. CCJS has had an incredible track record in receiving DUP awards: Peter is the Department’s fifth faculty member to receive this award.

https://ccjs.umd.edu/feature/peter-reuter-named-umd-distinguished-university-professor

What effect is COVID-19 having on the drug market in the EU? This joint publication from the EMCDDA and Europol analyses the impact of the pandemic on the market for the main drug types (cannabis, heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, NPS), including demand, production, trafficking and availability (EMCDDA)

Dear Friends, Participants and Members,

We hope you and your families are safe and managing the global situation as best as you can.

The changing situation with respect to Coronavirus (COVID-19) coupled with its anticipated resurgence in late 2020 has led the ISSDP board to decide to cancel the 2020 ISSDP annual meeting altogether and instead to push back the currently planned meeting to next year.   Our host organization, CIDE in Mexico, has agreed to host the meeting for us next year, June 2-4 2021.  We have pushed the meeting back into early June in hopes that doing so will reduce the risk of us being impacted again next year.   We will be taking down the official host webpage for 2020 in light of this change, but please look for the launch of the new 2021 webpage shortly.   The host committee will be connecting with our currently accepted speakers and presenters to ascertain willingness to continue participation in the program next year and adjustments will be made.

We appreciate everyone’s patience with us, and advice, as we worked through the various scenarios and assessed the impacts of the various options.  Our hope is that by notifying you all of this change now, it may be possible to change travel arrangements without substantial losses.

Please stay safe and we hope to see many of you in Mexico in June 2021!

Warmest regards,

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, President ISSDP

Caitlin Hughes, Vice-President ISSDP

Dear colleagues,

As you might be aware, several countries are implementing different measures to mitigate the transmission of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Such measures have included the cancellation or the postponement of international travels and events/meetings involving a large number of participants.

Even though in Mexico (update March 11th, 10 AM CST), there are only eight confirmed cases and none of these cases are in or near Aguascalientes, we have decided to postpone the event until further notice. We will communicate the new dates once we have a clearer picture of the evolution of the virus globally. This means that we will respect all payments made so far and we will extend early-bird registration once we have a new date.

We sincerely apologize for all the inconvenience this situation may carry. We will certainly try our best to solve any questions or concerns you may have with respect to the change of dates. If you need support contacting your hotel to change the reservation, you can send your reservation information to ISSDP2020@cide.edu and we will help you with the request.

Our solidarity with everyone affected by this situation.

Best regards,

The ISSDP Organizing Committee.

The call for articles for the special issue on ‘Killing in the name of the war on drugs in Asia’ is now announced at:

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-journal-of-drug-policy/call-for-papers/killing-in-the-name-of-the-war-on-drugs

Professor Alison Ritter, Director of the Drug Policy Modelling Program, UNSW and former ISSDP director  has been awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to education, to drug and alcohol research and social policy, and to professional medical societies. A remarkable achievement.

Congratulations from all of ISSDP.

As many of you already know, our dear friend and colleague passed away this summer.  We will be having a special session at the 2020 ISSDP Annual meeting honouring Mark, his contributions to Drug Policy, and the legacy he has left.  If you are interested in participating, please contact Peter Reuter (preuter@umd.edu).

Information about funding opportunities related to drug policy that may be of interest to our membership.

1. The Justice Programme of the European Commission of the EU opened a call for transnational projects in the area of EU drug policy.
   https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/isfp-2019-ag-drugs
2. The Internal Security Fund-Police of the European Union  opened a call for projects aiming to improve law enforcement in the area of illicit drug trafficking.
   https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/isfp-2019-ag-drugs
3. COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding organisation for research and innovation networks –  connects research initiatives across Europe and beyond and enable researchers and innovators to grow their ideas in any science and technology field by sharing them with their peers. COST Actions are bottom-up networks with a duration of four years that boost research, innovation and careers.
   https://www.cost.eu/

Congratulations to Jack Spicer @jackhspicer for winning the best Early Career Researcher award at the 2019 ISSDP Conference in Paris for his work on “Between gang talk and prohibition: scapegoating and the transfer of responsibility for County Lines”