No. 3, Year 4
Third Quarter 2006

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• Spanish Version
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• Statistics
• National Drug Control Orgs.
• National Observatories
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CICAD Celebrates 20th Anniversary at Meeting in Bolivia

At the fortieth regular session of CICAD in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, the Commission will commemorate the 20th anniversary of its founding as well as a seminal document that served as the cornerstone of hemispheric consensus on the fight against illicit drugs, the Inter-American Program of Action of Rio de Janeiro.  Read full story... A time line of inter-American drug policy shows major events in past 20 years.

Impact of Costs Program Translates into Positives for Participants

The groundbreaking work being done to estimate the economic, social and human costs of drugs in the Americas has yielded unexpected benefits, even during the pilot phase that finished in November 2005.  The Inter-American Observatory on Drugs project coordinator Marya Hynes Dowell writes about the lessons learned by the six participating governments' involvement in the efforts to better understand the impact of drugs on society.  Read full story...

News
 New Study on Drug Use among Secondary School Students in South America

The Inter-American Observatory on Drugs (OID) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC - Peru Office) have just published the study Youth and Drugs in South American Countries: A Challenge for Public Policies (Jóvenes y drogas en países sudamericanos: un desafío para las políticas públicas). It focuses on Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. This study is the first of its kind, using comparable methodologies from the start. It is based on a sampling of 350,000 secondary school students (ages 14-17) in the nine countries. The full document is in electronic format only in Spanish. The executive summary is available in English.

New Dates for Meeting of Drug Observatories
The Inter-American Observatory on Drugs (OID) has rescheduled the third Ibero-American conference of drug observatories to December 11-15, 2006 in Cartagena, Colombia. The event will also launch the activities of the Latin American Epidemiology Work Group (REDLA). This research network is a joint venture among participating national observatories, U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the OID.

OAS and IDB Renew Collaboration on Control of Money Laundering Specialized training for Latin American court systems continues as a central focus of one of CICAD's most active programs. International cooperation remains a linchpin  Read full story...

Staffs of National Drug Commissions Attend Workshops on Project Management CICAD has been strengthening managerial skills in national drug councils through specialized training for project management. Read full story...

New online initiative for the Caribbean The University of the West Indies and CICAD team up for a workshop on online educational technology. Read full story...

Research networks link universities working on drug issues The Educational Development Research section has set up three research networks to coordinate and share experience from incorporating drug-related issues into their course work, extension work in the community and in university-sponsored research. The three networks involve schools of  nursing, public health and education in Latin America.

For additional information about conferences, workshops, and courses, please check our web calendar.

Online Resources:

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University of New York City, also known as CASAColumbia, "brings together under one roof all the professional disciplines needed to study and combat abuse of all substances -- alcohol, nicotine, illegal drugs, prescription drugs, performance enhancing drugs -- in all sectors of society. It does research, publishes reports and holds conferences." Its most recent focus has been on the role of parental involvement with children and the family environment. It has a significant online library and information center... The Boletín En Línea 17 of Colombia's Observatorio de Drogas is in Spanish... 

CICAD: The following CICAD documents are now posted to the website: the list of chairs and vice chairs of CICAD since 1988 and the current representative and alternates of member states. The MEM section has revamped their web pages in line with the new evaluation procedures and requirements of the Fourth Evaluation Round 2005-2006.