It is a unique tool that documents, measures and compares national drug policies.

A Profile of The Global Drugs Policy Index. The Global Drug Policy Index provides each country with a score and ranking that shows how much their drug policies and their implementation align with the UN principles of human rights, health and development. It offers an essential accountability and evaluation mechanism in the field of drug policy. The Index is composed of 75 indicators running across 5 broad dimensions of drug policy: the absence of extreme responses, the proportionality of the criminal justice response, health and harm reduction, access to controlled medicines and development.

The Global Drug Policy Index is composed of 75 policy indicators running across 5 dimensions: the absence of extreme responses, the proportionality of the criminal justice system, health and harm reduction, access to controlled medicines and development. Each country is then given a total score ranging from 0 to 100.

The dimension absence of extreme responses covers the use of the death penalty, extrajudicial killings, militarised policing, life sentencing and non-consensual confinement as a form of ‘treatment’ for people who use drugs.

The proportionality of the criminal justice system focuses on human rights violations in the criminal justice system, the use of mandatory sentencing and pretrial detention, decriminalization and other alternatives to prison and punishment, the extent of imprisonment for non-violent drug offences, and experts’ perceptions on the differentiated impact of criminal justice responses on the basis of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and socio-economic status.

The health and harm reduction assesses the extent to which state policies prioritize a harm reduction approach for people who use drugs, harm reduction funding, availability and coverage of services, as well as experts’ perceptions on equity in access to services for specific groups.

The dimension ‘access to controlled medicines’ evaluates whether access to medicines is prioritized in government policies, whether controlled medicines are actually available and accessible, and perceptions as to whether specific groups have equitable access to controlled medicines.

The development dimension concerns countries where there are alternative development policies in place in illegal crop cultivation areas. It focuses on how crop eradication is managed, and experts’ perception of how effective alternative development policies are for key beneficiaries, including women, young people and Indigenous groups.