Pharmacy Daily | Australia funds drug action

TWO United Nations initiatives targeting the human toll caused by the global trade in illicit drugs have attracted $200,000 in funding from the Australian government. Assistant health minister Ken Wyatt announced two separate pledges of $100,000 in New York where he is leading the Australian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem (UNGASS). The first $100,000 will go towards the UN’s Global SMART (Synthetics Monitoring: Analyses, Reporting and Trade) program which aims to help countries lift their capacity to gather, analyse and report information on synthetic drugs. SMART currently operates in 11 countries in Asia and Latin America and since 2011 it has highlighted the emergence of new psychoactive substances including crystal methamphetamine (aka ‘ice’). The second pledge of $100,000 will go to the UN Office on Drugs & Crime to continue its work on increasing access to opiate-based medicines for patients in severe pain and cases of extreme need. “While illicit use of drugs is of great concern to UN member states, it is also a matter of great concern to Australia that so many people around the world still have limited or no access to the pain relief provided by narcotic based medicines,” Wyatt said. He cited funding by Australia to Ghana and Timor-Leste for pilot narcotic medicine regulatory regimes, saying they have “shown that it is possible to overcome the complex set of barriers to accessing controlled drugs”.

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