Richard Branson leaks details of United Nations report calling to decriminalize all drugs

This is corroborated by evidence from Portugal, where decriminalization has reduced drug-related deaths and new HIV or hepatitis infections.

But without naming the nation involved, he said that ‘at least one government is putting an inordinate amount of pressure on the UNODC’. The document, which advocates for United Nations members to decriminalize “drug use and possession for personal consumption”, has been withdrawn.

“UNODC emphatically denies reports that there has been pressure on UNODC to withdraw the document”, Dadge added.

He added that the document had been set for release at the global Harm Reduction conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Sunday.

The UNODC oversees worldwide drugs conventions and offers guidance on compliance.

In 2012 he produced a documentary with his son Sam Branson about the unintended consequences of harsh drug policies. It concludes: “Member States should consider the implementation of measures to promote the right to health and to reduce prison over-crowding, including by decriminalising drug-use and possession for personal consumption”.

Drug possession is a criminal offence in many member states, including the UK. Previous year almost 36,000 individuals were prosecuted for drug possession in Wales and England receiving custodial sentences.

The Home Office has consistently argued that decriminalisation gives insufficient regard to the harms that drugs pose. “It neither addresses the risk factors which lead people to abuse drugs or booze, nor the anguish, price and lost chances that addiction causes people, their loved ones as well as the broader community”.

In it, the UNODC recommends governments do away with laws which punish drug possession in small quantities and for personal use.

“This is a refreshing shift that could go a long way to finally end the needless criminalisation of millions of drug users around the world”, Branson writes.

The UNODC has been under pressure to make a clear statement about its position on drug criminalization and possession, and campaigners have said the UNODC is a critical component in changing government drug policies prior to a meeting on the world drug problem at the United Nations General Assembly scheduled for April.

“My colleagues on the Global Commission on Drug Policy and I could not be more delighted, as I have stated in embargoed interviews for the likes of the BBC”, Branson wrote.

Sir Richard, who sits on the Global Commission on Drug Policy, revealed in a blog that he had seen a copy of an unreleased document from the agency, describing its contents as “refreshing”.

Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a think tank which campaigns for the legal regulation of drugs nationally and internationally, said governments must decriminalise drug use.