The Alliance for Rights-Oriented Drug Policies
Your Rights Watch
The Alliance for Rights-Oriented Drug Policies (AROD) was created for the purpose of reviewing the relationship between drug prohibition and human rights law.
Half a century after our leaders signed the UN Single Convention and committed to the eradication of illicit drugs, the drug laws are obviously incompatible with basic human rights principles. The purpose of AROD, therefore, is the following:
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We publish information that exposes how drug policies violate human rights law.
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We help drug users understand how prohibition is incompatible with their catalogue of rights and how they, by claiming human rights protections, can effect change.
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We notify public officials about this situation: (1) We demonstrate how current policies violate human rights law; (2) we inform of the duty to have the issue properly resolved; (3) we present questions that must be answered to the satisfaction of an independent, impartial, and competent tribunal on whether prohibition shall be allowed to continue; and (4) we ask that the rights-oriented debate gets the attention it deserves at the UN and elsewhere.
If you want to know more about this and the importance of society approaching the rights-oriented debate seriously, this is the website you were looking for.
APPLICATION TO THE EUROPEAN COURT
Civil disobedience by the alliance for rights-oriented drug policies (AROD) presents an opportunity for the European Court to rule on the validity of the prohibition experiment.
In other cases before the Court, the applicant has accepted that the drug law is necessary to protect society, but AROD claims that the cannabis prohibition mark an unreasonable distinction between legal and illegal substances, that this is a case of arbitrary persecution, and that the prohibition must end for the rule of law to make sense.
Here is ARODs application to the European Court
DOCUMENTARY
ARODs civil disobedience is getting worldwide attention. This documentary presents a history of Norwegian protests for human rights in the drug policy, revealing the extent to which the state has failed to respect the rule of law.
Argument to the European Court
AUDIOBOOK
After 60 years of panic in drug policy, society is waking up to the fact that punishment is incompatible with basic values and principles on which the rule of law is based, and a paradigm shift is happening.
This manuscript explains the connection between public panic, human rights abuses, and the arbitrary persecution of the past. The connection is found in the scapegoat mechanism, which has been known for 40 years in criminology and sociology of law, and in the last 30 years lawyers have recognised the same.
The book not only documents the conflict between politicians and experts but shows that the traditional arguments for prohibition are poor reasons for treating cannabis differently than alcohol. Instead, the questions raised by the rights-oriented debate reveal the parallels to race, homosexuality, and vagrancy laws and that drug prohibition is incompatible with the Western legal tradition.
With civil disobedience, therefore, a battle for rights takes place. A historic settlement in the European Court awaits, and through 100 questions, a confused legal landscape is clarified.
Life Liberty Books is happy to introduce author and human rights activist Roar Mikalsen’s blog which is founded to raise awareness about drug prohibition and human rights. This blog will connect the dots between Norway and the rest of the world with regard to this area of constitutional obligations, and readers are invited to follow Mikalsen on a quest to restore the rule of law.