Co-author: Helen Clark

Each year, the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking calls on governments to strengthen prevention and reduce harm. Yet one issue remains neglected: global drug policy has a major blind spot when it comes to children and young people.

Despite repeated commitments to protect youth, international frameworks offer little concrete guidance on how to prevent drug use among young people or how to reduce potential harm. Recognizing this gap, the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP) decided to develop a policy brief on children’s rights, drug policy and evidence-based practice. This article previews its essential elements.

A systemic blind spot

The international drug control system has largely failed to integrate children’s rights in a meaningful way. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) obliges States to protect children from drug use, production and trafficking but provides little practical guidance on how to do so. The drug control conventions scarcely mention children, and when they do, it is mostly in the context of criminal exploitation rather than that of prevention, harm reduction, and support services.

The numbers tell the story. Between 2000 and 2025, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs adopted more than 300 resolutions, but only a handful focused specifically on children, and almost none addressed harm reduction, treatment, or the unintended harms of drug policy itself. The result is a fragmented policy landscape in which children can be criminalised for drug use while being denied access to appropriate health services, subjected to punitive enforcement, and excluded from decisions which affect their lives.

Punitive approaches don’t help

Punitive approaches such as criminalisation, detention, and aggressive policing can disrupt education, expose children to violence, and create long-term barriers to employment and social inclusion. As one young person pointed out: ‘Young people are supposed to be the future of our society. But once they have a criminal record, it becomes much harder for them to improve their lives’. Hundreds of thousands of children are deprived of liberty each year for drug-related offences, despite international standards which make it clear that detention should be a last resort.

The indirect harms are equally concerning. Children are separated from families, pushed out of school, and in some contexts drawn into illicit drug economies as a means of survival. The consultations undertaken by the Global Commission on Drug Policy for this policy brief highlight that harms affecting children and young people extend far beyond drug use itself; they are often compounded by the policies designed to control drugs

What works: harm reduction and support

While prevention remains important, an exclusive focus on it has overshadowed other essential responses. Evidence shows that punitive measures do not reduce drug use among young people but instead drive it underground, increase stigma, and discourage them from seeking help.

Simultaneously, youth-specific programmes such as overdose prevention, mental health support, or confidential counselling remain scarce. What is needed is a broader framework which combines prevention with harm reduction, treatment, and social support. For example, in New York City, schools keep naloxone on site for overdose treatment, along with training for school nurses and broader support services in school.

A child rights-based approach

Addressing these gaps requires a shift in perspective. Too often, children and young people are seen solely through the lens of risk and protection, rather than as rights-holders with evolving capacities, experiences, and voices of their own.

A child rights-based approach asks a difficult but necessary question: how can drug policies protect children from harm without exposing them to new harms in their place? and how can children and young people be meaningfully involved in those policies?

A moment for change

One of the most powerful aspects of the Global Commission’s project has been its grounding in consultations with children and young people themselves, undertaken with the support of Youth RISE and the Global Campus for Human Rights. The message is clear: children and young people want honest, evidence-based information. As one young participant observed: ‘Once we are discussing drug use, politicians bring in young people and children as if they genuinely care…[but] the default response is the punitive moral response instead of following the evidence”. Young people consistently emphasised the importance of being listened to and of having policies that reflect their realities and lived experience.

The International Day Against Drug Abuse is an opportunity to do more than mark a date. Placing children and young people at the centre of drug policy is not a secondary concern. It is the precondition for any policy that genuinely advances health, rights, and wellbeing. Children are not the problem drug policy needs to manage. They are the rights-holders it has consistently failed.

Co-author Helen Clark is the Chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and the Former Prime Minister of New Zealand.