EditorialIn rehabilitation's name? Ending institutionalised cruelty and degrading treatment of people who use drugs
Section snippets
Torture as “treatment”
Health and criminal justice advocates have encouraged efforts to divert drug users to treatment rather than to penal institutions. These arguments have gained favour in settings as varied as New York, which recently reformed the mandatory minimum sentences known as the Rockefeller Drug laws, and in Indonesia, where the Supreme Court in March 2009 encouraged judges to send drug users to rehabilitation centres rather than to prison (Ketua Mahkamah Agung Republik Indonesia, 2009). However, rather
Conflict of interest statement
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank OSI colleagues Jonathan Cohen and Lydia Guterman, as well as participants on a panel on this topic at the 2009 International Harm Reduction Conference – Sonia Bezziccheri, Srey Mao, Reaksmey Chen, Shaharudin bin Ali Umar, Richard Pearshouse, and Tran Tien Duc. We are also grateful to the two unnamed reviewers whose comments improved the text.
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Presented at: OMI—Salzburg Medical Seminars International [Conference]. July 7
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2021, International Journal of Drug PolicyDetaining people who use drugs in Cambodia: A dual-track system
2021, International Journal of Drug PolicyCitation Excerpt :In 2010, the Open Society Institute (OSI) published a report entitled Detention As Treatment (OSI, 2010) which concentrated primarily on non-injecting methamphetamine users in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos and highlighted the multiple human rights violations and negative individual and public health outcomes related to the compulsory detention of people who use drugs in government rehabilitation centres in those countries. Wolfe and Saucier (2010) narrowed in on the issue of degrading treatment of people who use drugs, exposing how the treatment of people who use drugs in numerous government ‘treatment’ centres throughout Asia blatantly violates international human rights law. They also emphasised what Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on Torture at that time, stated: 'from a human rights perspective, drug dependence should be treated like any other health care condition' (Human Rights Council, 2009).
Biotechnologies and the future of opioid addiction treatments
2021, International Journal of Drug PolicyCitation Excerpt :In East and Southeast Asia, “rehabilitation centres” have for decades imposed forced labor and severe physical discipline on detainees placed there on the basis of a positive urine test rather than on assessment of addiction severity. Privately run evangelical facilities continue to impose prayer and physical punishment as rehabilitation in Latin America (Wolfe & Saucier, 2010). Observers of methadone clinics—advanced as evidence-based “best practice” by the World Health Organization—have noted the ways that operating hours, urine tests, dosing restrictions, and other requirements discipline populations deemed non-compliant, unproductive or morally suspect (Bourgois, 2000; McElrath, 2018).
The rights of drug treatment patients: Experience of addiction treatment in Poland from a human rights perspective
2017, International Journal of Drug PolicyCitation Excerpt :Instances of human rights abuses, such as physical or psychological abuse, many rising to the level of torture, have been documented at drug rehabilitation centres worldwide. Human rights abuses in the delivery of drug treatment are often conducted in the name of law enforcement and as the consequence of criminalization (Bronson, 2013; Harvey-Vera et al., 2016; Wolfe & Saucier, 2010). Despite efforts by health and criminal justice advocates to divert drug users into treatment rather than to penal institutions, the treatment for drug dependence often turns out to be incarceration by another name (Hall et al., 2012; Tanguay et al., 2015; Wolfe & Saucier, 2010).
Compulsory drug detention centers in East and Southeast Asia
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2014, International Journal of Drug Policy