 I'm speaking on behalf of two organizations actually. I'm the Senior Human Rights Analyst at the International Harm Reduction Association, but I also recently with my colleague Rick Lyons established the International Center on Human Rights and Drug Policy. We've some leaflets over on the table here. The first is an international advocacy organization. The other is an academic project. So this is, okay, as usual, I don't know. No one ever finds out how a slideshow works on PowerPoint. Anyway, we're also, by the way, we're, as Martin mentioned, we're proudly backing the Count and the Cost campaign. I think the bread and butter of our work is HIV prevention. I think drug policies have had a demonstrably negative impact on HIV prevention, treatment and care. Right, so my broad question, I think I've actually framed this a bit clunky. What I actually want to ask is, is the current international regime proportionate? I'm not talking about proportionality of sentencing. I'm not, we've actually have a report over here on the death penalty for drugs. I'm not talking about that. I'm asking a rather basic question of human rights law and I'm applying it to drug control. What it leads me to is the conclusion that we have to look at drug policies and we have to assess their effectiveness and impact on various metrics in order to justify, in order to answer this question. So, we know, and we'll hear, I think, from the other two speakers, there are clear documented human rights abuses in the war on drugs. Everything from the death penalty to torture and detention centers, denial of access to health services and so on. I don't want to go over that. I think it's well known to all of us. But what I want to say is that most of that doesn't have to happen. There's nothing in the international drug conventions that require. That's not going to touch me so you need to change the slide. Oh, sorry. Of course not. There's nothing that is required in the drug convention. No one says you have to go and torture people, right? This is clear. But so we need to look at those aspects of human rights that are inherently infringed by the international drug control system, right? And I wouldn't say there's many, but it's an important question. Which ones that are recognized are unavoidably infringed? And I'm choosing my words, the word infringed carefully there. I'll explain why in a second. So here's some, in my view. Right to privacy I think is inherently infringed. There's no way to criminalize personal possession or personal use of a drug without infringing upon somebody's privacy. I don't see any way that can happen. The freedom to manifest one's religion. I mean, we've got religious uses of some substances. There is no way to impose the current international system without infringing upon that. And the manifestation of cultural traditions and indigenous traditions are inherently again infringed in some ways by the drug control system. That's unavoidable, okay? Totally unavoidable. And this is where my wording became rather careful. These rights aren't absolute, okay? So this is where the question of is this a proportionate system comes into play. It's why, for example, I've said here in manifestation of one's religion, okay? Because your religious beliefs are absolute. Nobody can take those from you. But if exercising that is manifested in, for example, hurting somebody else, then that can be infringed, okay? So next slide, Steve. Sorry, I forgot to warn you again. So this is the crux. When does a legitimate infringement of these rights that are unavoidably infringed become an illegal violation of those human rights? That's the question I'm asking. And the test for this is well known in international law. The test is well set out. And what I want to do is apply that test to the current system. Is it prescribed by law? Is it in pursuit of a legitimate aim? And this is the most important bit. Is it necessary in a democratic society for the achievement of the aim? Broadly called the proportionality test. And the way we look at that is by looking at whether there are less intrusive means available. And whether it's been imposed arbitrarily or in a discriminatory fashion, okay? So let's look at that in the context of drug control. Is it prescribed by law? Yes, of course. We've got an international, nearly universally ratified legal system, okay? So yes. Does it serve a legitimate aim or a series of legitimate aims? I think, sure, of course. You know, the health and welfare of mankind that's a legitimate aim. Security questions, legitimate. The protection of children in fact, a requirement of the conventional rights of the child. But fighting the drug trade itself, which we often hear, you know, that we have to fight the drug trade, therefore we have to infringe upon various rights. That's not a legitimate aim at all. It confuses means and ends. Fighting the drug trade at the moment, the way it's done, is a means to achieve those other aims. So it passes the first two. So we come to, I think, the tricky one. Is the current international drug control regime necessary in a democratic society for the achievement of, I don't know, the attainment of public health for protecting children, you name it? In fact, for any of these, does it help with development? Whatever excuse you wanna put in place for the drug control system. Are there less intrusive means available to achieve your stated aim? Okay, that's the first question. I'm gonna leave the question open. I just think it's a question that needs to be answered, and I think that counting the costs campaign is asking that very question. You have to bear in mind when you're asking that question, the duration of the infringement and its scope. In this case, the infringement is perpetual. It will never go away, and it applies to every single human being on the planet almost at this stage. Now that means that it's not day, jury, or in-law discriminatory, but it might have discriminatory impacts, meaning that on the ground, it actually has discriminatory effects, and I think we can demonstrate that. Is it arbitrarily imposed, and by that, has a decent evidence base been taken into account? Now this is the question, I think, and again, I'll leave it open. I'm not gonna answer the question. I think this is one of the values of the Counting the Costs campaign. If you're not going to evaluate the policy, how do you know if it's arbitrary or not? And it seems like we've heard from so many politicians, particularly in Britain, thanks to Transform, a refusal to evaluate drug policies. And I already dealt with the discriminatory issue. I mean, the law might not be discriminatory itself, but on the ground, it might have discriminatory impacts. I'll deal with that a little bit later on. Actually gonna deal with it right now. So sorry, Steve, next slide again. I keep forgetting to tell you. This is a really, really great case to read if you get the chance, okay? This case involved a guy called Prince who was applying to the bar in South Africa. Now, he's a lawyer. He's also Rastafarian, and he said in his application, I smoke cannabis and I'm not gonna stop. It's a manifestation of my religion, I'm not gonna stop. So he was refused permission to be a lawyer. He was refused access to the bar, so he challenged it. Now, he lost by a very slim minority. But the interesting thing is the way that the minority and the majority argued the case, okay? So for the minority and Kobo, Justice and Kobo, who's now the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, he really looked at the proportionality question as I've just framed it. Looking at the perpetual and blanket ban on the use of cannabis in South Africa and how that impacted upon Rastafarians and whether there was any less intrusive way to deal with your health concerns around cannabis. And when he analyzed that question, he found in favor of Prince when the majority avoided the question of proportionality and based their reasoning on the international drug control system, they found against him. Now, that speaks volumes, and I really do recommend that you find this case, just enter it in Google, you'll find it and read Justice and Kobo's reasoning. It's very, very well thought out. And compare it to the majority, which is actually really bad. It's just badly done. The thing is that, so Prince appealed, he went to the Human Rights Committee at the United Nations, sorry, next slide, Steve. He went to the Human Rights Committee at the United Nations and got there in 2007 and he lost again, and he lost because again, the question of proportionality was avoided. And in this case, it's pretty egregious because that's exactly what the Human Rights Committee is supposed to be doing. I'm not gonna read this all out, but what the underlying bits basically say is that the Human Rights Committee recognized that there was a legitimate aim that it was prescribed by law. And here they said that the aims were public safety, order, health, morals, and the fundamental rights and freedoms of other. That's because that's contained in the treaty they oversee. Which, by the way, contains the rights I was talking about. They recognized that it was an infringement of the freedom to manifest religion, they recognized that. But then they utterly, utterly avoid the question of whether the measures were proportionate. Relying entirely on the state's own assertion, they simply said, based on the harmful effects of cannabis for which they'd never backed up. And then an exemption allowing a system whereby rest ofarians can have access for their religious purposes, may possibly result in some form of diversion, may, but no reason, they've nothing to back that up either. Under these circumstances, the committee cannot conclude that the prohibition of the possession and use of drugs without any exemption for specific religious groups is not proportionate and necessary to achieve this purpose. They have absolutely nothing to back up the assertions made. They just avoid the question, which leads me to what I said in the title, the case for an impact assessment. What they needed to ask was, had the system achieved any of the stated aims, could it even potentially do that in the future? Now, when answering those questions, the first thing to bear in mind, and this is also a standard principle of international law, the burden of proof on that is on the state. You don't have to show that your alternative is less intrusive. They need to justify their system for the infringement they've made on human rights. And I think in answering that question, an impact assessment of the current regime set against alternatives is necessary. It's a basic question of international law and it's not being asked. And that's broadly what I had to say. I think I'm finished. Thank you very much.