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SOURCE: https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/women-do-drugs-deal-with-it-drug-policy-as-a-feminist-and-financing-issue/

It’s not every day you find yourself in a room where the words ‘finance’ and ‘marijuana’ are discussed brightly in the same sentence.

And yet, the intersection of these two topics was exactly the focus of a joy-filled session titled ‘Drug Policy is a feminist issue: Divesting from punishment, investing in futures and building community-based models of care’ that took place on the second day of the Financing for Feminist futures conference. The panel brought together a powerhouse of feminist activists from Latin America, all of whom sat comfortably amongst posters and tote bags covered in a bold print: ‘Women do drugs! Deal with it!’.

The panel included:

• Lisa Sánchez, Mexican drug policy expert and Executive Director of Mexico United Against Crime (MUCD),
• Andrea Defrancisco, Founder of Latin Latas and spokesperson for the Zero Waste Movement in Colombia,
• Ana Luiza Uwai, journalist, harm reductionist, and Advocacy Coordinator at Centro de Convivência É de Lei in Brazil, and
• Aura Roig Forteza, founding director of Metzineres, a cooperative supporting women and gender-diverse people who use drugs and survive violence and vulnerability.

Together, they unpacked how the global ‘war on drugs’ continues to criminalise and marginalise women, particularly those in the Global South, while highlighting the importance of funding bold, community-based alternatives grounded in care, not punishment.

Panel members during the session; ‘Drug Policy is a feminist issue: Divesting from punishment, investing in futures and building community-based models of care’. Photo provided by Walking the Talk

How does the ‘war on drugs’ disproportionately impact women?

The stories we tell about drugs, and about the people who use them, are shaped by power, by who gets to define ‘harm’, who is seen as ‘deserving’ of care, and who is criminalised or excluded.

In the 1970’s U.S. President Richard Nixon declared the sale and use of drugs as ‘public enemy number one’. The ‘War on Drugs’ was to follow; a deeply ineffective military and police crackdown on narcotics that left communities torn, families split and a deeply racialised scar of mass incarceration across both the US and Latin America.

The war on drugs, panellists argued, is not a war on narcotics at all, but a war against Black, poor and migrant communities. And, like all wars, drug policy across the region continues to wear a gendered mask – disproportionately impacting women and girls through heightened violence, criminalisation and socio-economic displacement.

‘The War on drugs doesn’t exists’, Andrea Defrancisco argued during the session. ‘Drug policy traverses women’s bodies. It is a war against poor women, mothers and informal workers’.

Across Latin America, women who use drugs are incarcerated at much higher rates than men – often doubly punished for transgressing traditional gender roles of wifedom and motherhood. According to the panel, over 40 per-cent of women in these prisons are incarcerated for drug trafficking, however the majority have no background in crime, many are mothers and, as argued by Ana Luiza Uwai, they represent the ‘weakest part of the drug chain’.

Far from its supposed goal, the prohibition of drugs creates enormous illegal criminal markets, within which women face severe exploitation and abuse. As Aura Roig Forteza explained: ‘Criminal organisations are part of patriarchal structures. They see women and girls as disposable resources who can either be exploited for the benefit of men or used for the benefit of business and profit.’ These criminal structures exploit women’s bodies as a ‘tool of war’, using sexual violence to inflict fear amongst rival organisations and communities.

In Mexico, Lisa Sánchez, added, military personnel and police physically and sexually abuse women in their custody ten times more than they abuse men.

To make matters worse, according to the panel, drug use and policy have been largely absent from mainstream feminist agendas. ‘We are facing the same struggles that any other feminist organisations are facing, and yet we don’t feel welcome in the movement’ explained Defrancisco. ‘We are fighting deeply rooted gender dynamics, we are trying to repair the wrongs and harms that have been done, particularly to poor, global south women’.

What is harm reduction? And how do we fund it?

According to the panel, harm reduction aims to minimise the negative consequences of drug use, such as overdose, disease transmission, and social harm, without necessarily requiring people to stop using drugs. It’s a public health approach that focuses on practical strategies like needle exchange programs, safe consumption spaces, and access to treatment and education. Instead of relying on police and prisons, harm reduction is grounded in justice, human rights, and according to these feminists, an ‘ethics of care’.

Importantly harm reduction urges us to look beneath the surface and examine the root causes of the drug economy: punctured social safety nets, poverty, intergenerational trauma, inadequate public healthcare systems and a lack of social and affordable housing. ‘80 per-cent of people are in prisons for drug related offences’ said Sánchez, ‘But drugs are a coping mechanism for a broken society. When it’s about survival, the answer is not more police and prisons, the answer is always community’.

In centring the bodily autonomy and agency of women who do drugs, funders must challenge their own assumptions of what constitutes ‘health care’.

According to the panel international governments have invested a whopping 17 billion Euros into one national ‘drug security’ strategy that ultimately uncovered 8,300 hectares of cocaine in Latin America, but left a trail of violence throughout local communities. As outlined by Uwai, ‘Drug policy doesn’t acknowledge these people, it criminalises them, perpetuating cycles of violence and disenfranchisement’.

In addition to funding harm reduction, funders must leverage their power to influence politicians, policy-makers and foreign governments to disinvest from militarism and drug related security policies. Open Society Foundation, for example, have been working on harm reduction advocacy for over thirty years, funding grassroots decriminalisation efforts and advocating directly to policymakers to reform racist drug laws.

Centre community co-created solutions, local leadership and women’s autonomy

The panellists were adamant that funders of harm reduction need to prioritise solutions that are grounded in and co-created with communities affected by drugs.

‘In Colombia, around eight million people have been displaced due to drug policies that continue to inflict harm, but these are the people who maintain solidarity and build networks with each other,’ Said Defrancisco. ‘Women are key actors in building peace. in Colombia, they have been leading harm reduction movements, and pushing for policies and agendas for safer housing’.

In centring the bodily autonomy and agency of women who do drugs, funders must challenge their own assumptions of what constitutes ‘health care’. Many of the panellists urged funders to invest in women who are leading and cultivating health justice through plants – including, for instance, mothers who produce cannabis oil for children with epilepsy or as a medicinal treatment for breast cancer survivors.

Continue to learn, listen and invest in narrative change

Ultimately, the session urged us all (including funders) to commit to an ongoing process of reflection and political education. This means recognising that the stories we tell about drugs, and about the people who use them, are shaped by power, by who gets to define ‘harm’, who is seen as ‘deserving’ of care, and who is criminalised or excluded. Funders must therefore be willing to examine and challenge their own assumptions, and to call out contradictions within the systems and networks they are part of.

The contradictions in how drug-related harm is constructed and managed were discussed in depth by the panel. As was outlined by Forteza, ‘MDMA is celebrated as therapeutic remedy for Israeli soldiers returning from Gaza, yet criminalised for women with PTSD who are survivors of sexual violence’

Similarly, psychedelics and ketamine are being rapidly medicalised and marketed as treatments for anxiety and depression, but only for those who can afford to access them through private clinics. This not only reinforces economic inequality but also polices access to care and erases the deep community-based knowledge that has long existed around the use of these substances.

By continually re-educating themselves and interrogating their own role in shaping the field, funders can help build a more just and politically honest approach to drug use and harm reduction.

Drug policy is feminist issue

Even as a deeply underfunded and under resourced movement, women who do drugs have continued to build vibrant economies of resistance. They have protected Indigenous approaches to healthcare and fostered community solutions to keep each other safe, all in the face of rampant criminalisation and patriarchal expectations.

The feminist movement has a lot to learn from women who use drugs — and so too do any funders interested in building a gender just future. To get there, it is clear that we must unpack the myth that punitive systems protect us and centre community-based models of care and reparation.

‘We are women who dare to do what is not expected of us’ concluded Roig Forteza. Indeed, it is time we finance those who are brave enough to break the rules.

Kit Muirhead is the partnerships manager and gender lead at Alliance magazine.