Monica Kayombo, Zambia, Lusaka,
THE death of 15-year-old Martha after taking ecstasy has become a painful reminder of the risks children and young people can face in relation to drugs, with her mother, Anne-Marie Cockburn, saying many parents may not know that their children are buying or using drugs.
Ms Cockburn, who lost Martha after the teenager took MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, shared her experience during a recent webinar organised by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
She said that, like many other parents, she believes children can be buying and using drugs without the knowledge of their parents.
Martha was not a drug addict, Ms Cockburn said, but had taken ecstasy four times before she died.
Her account came as the Global Commission launched a new policy brief calling for the rights, needs, experiences and voices of children and young people to be made visible in the development of drug policy.
The Commission argues that children and young people are profoundly affected by drug laws and their enforcement, regardless of whether they use drugs themselves, yet they have largely remained absent from drug policy discussions.
The policy brief dubbed, “Making Children and Young People Visible in Drug Policy: A Child Rights-Based Agenda for Reform,” calls for a shift away from approaches centred primarily on punishment, coercion and exclusion towards policies grounded in evidence, health, human rights, child protection and meaningful participation.
When parents do not know
Ms Cockburn’s experience puts a human face on a problem that can be difficult for families to see until it is too late.
A child experimenting with drugs may not necessarily display signs that immediately alert parents or other adults.
For families, this creates a difficult challenge like how to protect children when parents may not know that drugs are being bought, shared or consumed.
Ms Cockburn’s story also challenges the assumption that drug-related deaths among young people occur only among those with established drug dependence.
Her daughter was 15 when she died, and according to Ms Cockburn, Martha had taken ecstasy four times.
The Global Commission’s policy brief similarly argues that children and young people should not be viewed solely through the lens of drug use or drug dependence.
Children can be affected by drugs and drug policies even when they do not use drugs themselves.
They can experience the consequences of a parent’s arrest or imprisonment, family separation, violence, disruption to education, barriers to healthcare and exploitation in illicit drug markets.
The Commission says these realities need to be recognised when governments develop and implement drug policies.
Children largely invisible in global drug policy
According to the Commission, the limited attention given to children is evident within the international drug-control system itself.
Between the years 2000 and 2026, the United Nations Commission (UNC) on Narcotic Drugs adopted approximately 300 resolutions, but only 19 specifically focused on children and young people.
Of those, only six addressed issues beyond drug-use prevention, while harm reduction for children and young people has never been addressed in a CND resolution, according to the Commission.
The Commission argues that this gap is significant because drug policy reaches far beyond the question of whether someone uses drugs.
It affects children’s access to health services, their education, family relationships, safety, protection and interaction with the justice system.
The policy brief therefore uses the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as the foundation for its recommendations.
The Convention recognises children as rights-holders and establishes principles including non-discrimination, the best interests of the child, the right to life, survival and development, and the right of children to be heard.
Four areas requiring urgent action
The Commission has identified four priority areas where it says reform is urgently needed:
Children should not lose their freedom because of punitive drug policies:
The Commission says children continue to be arrested, detained and prosecuted for drug use, possession or involvement in illicit drug economies. It argues that deprivation of liberty should be used only as a measure of last resort and that governments should instead invest in diversion, restorative justice and community-based responses. The policy brief recommends that children who use drugs should not be criminalised for drug use or possession for personal use, but instead should have access to voluntary, evidence-based health and social services. It also calls for compulsory drug detention and coercive treatment of children to be prohibited. The Commission says rehabilitation and reintegration should support children’s education, family relationships and future employment opportunities.
Children need access to essential medicines:
The Commission also highlights a different side of drug policy: children who need controlled medicines for legitimate medical purposes. It says many children and young people continue to experience unnecessary pain and suffering because medicines required for pain relief, palliative care and other medical conditions remain unavailable or inaccessible. Regulatory barriers, weak health systems and inadequate paediatric formulations can prevent children from obtaining medicines they need. The Commission is therefore calling for governments to remove unnecessary barriers to medical access, improve the availability of paediatric formulations and strengthen health workers’ training on safe prescribing and pain management. This is an important distinction in the global drug-policy debate. The same international systems that seek to prevent misuse of controlled substances must also ensure that legitimate patients, including children, can obtain medicines when medically necessary.
Health services should protect children from avoidable harm:
The Commission’s third priority is access to evidence-based, child- and youth-friendly health services. It says punitive laws, stigma, age restrictions and barriers to confidential care can prevent young people from seeking timely help. The policy brief calls for services covering prevention, harm reduction, treatment, recovery, mental health and social support. It also highlights evidence-based measures such as access to naloxone and other interventions designed to prevent overdose and other avoidable drug-related harms. The Commission’s argument is that providing accurate information or health services does not mean encouraging children to use drugs. Rather, it says young people need age-appropriate information that allows them to understand risks and seek help when they or someone they know is in danger. This is particularly relevant to parents such as Ms Cockburn, who may not know that their children are experimenting with drugs.
Protect children exploited by illicit drug economies:
The fourth priority concerns children who are recruited or exploited within illicit drug economies. The Commission says such children should primarily be recognised as victims of exploitation rather than treated as offenders. Poverty, violence, displacement and social exclusion can create conditions in which organised criminal groups recruit and exploit children, according to the Commission. It therefore calls for child protection, education, social protection and community-based support rather than punishment that could deepen children’s vulnerability. The policy brief recommends safe pathways out of exploitation, trauma-informed support, stronger child-protection systems and better coordination between health, education, justice and social services.
“A policy cannot be called protective…”
Global Commission on Drug Policy Chair and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark is quoted in a statement that children are often invoked to justify punitive drug policies while the harm caused to them by those same policies remains invisible.
Ms Clark adds that a policy cannot be considered protective if it criminalises children, separates families, denies them healthcare or punishes those who have been exploited.
Her comments reflect the central argument of the new policy brief that protecting children should not be narrowly defined as preventing drug use through enforcement and criminalisation.
Instead, the Commission says governments should examine the actual impact of drug policies on children’s rights, health, development and safety.
Young people want a seat at the table
A major feature of the policy brief is that it was informed by children and young people themselves.
The Commission said it conducted 11 consultations across five continents, involving more than 150 participants from approximately 47 countries.
Participants included children and young people, child-rights advocates, health practitioners, civil society organisations, government representatives, United Nations officials and drug-policy experts.
The message from young participants was not simply that their rights should be protected. They also wanted to participate in decisions affecting them.
One young participant from Pakistan told the Commission: “Policies talk about youth, but youth are never part of the discussion. We want to be part of the solution, but no one invites us to the table.”
The Commission consequently recommends permanent mechanisms for meaningful youth participation in drug-policy processes.
It proposes youth advisory mechanisms, support for peer-led organisations and networks, involvement of young people in research and programme evaluation, and accessible information that allows them to participate meaningfully.
From prevention to participation
The call for participation represents an important shift in the way children are considered within drug policy.
Children are commonly discussed as a population that needs to be protected from drugs.
The Commission says protection remains important but argues that children should also be listened to when policies intended to protect them are being designed.
The policy brief recommends that children and young people be involved in the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of drug policies and programmes affecting them, consistent with Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
It also calls for participation to be safe, inclusive and representative of different experiences.
That includes children who use drugs, children affected by parental drug use, children exposed to drug-related violence and children exploited by illicit drug economies.
Families need support too
The Commission’s approach also places families within the drug-policy debate.
It argues that children should not be separated from their families solely because of parental drug use.
Instead, governments should strengthen voluntary family-centred treatment, parenting support, psychosocial services and social protection.
Where a child may need to be separated from a parent, the Commission says decisions should be based on an individual assessment of the child’s best interests and should be reviewed regularly.
This recognises that the effects of drug policy can extend well beyond the person accused of a drug offence.
A parent’s imprisonment, for example, can affect a child’s education, income, emotional well-being, housing and family relationships.
Building protective environments
The Commission also calls for stronger protective environments around children.
These include families, schools, communities and public spaces.
The policy brief recommends evidence-based drug education, safe public spaces, sports, arts, recreation, mentoring and community-based youth services.
Schools, it says, should be strengthened as places for early identification, support and referral rather than relying on exclusionary disciplinary practices that unnecessarily remove children from education.
The underlying principle is that preventing drug-related harm requires addressing the circumstances that make children vulnerable in the first place.
Poverty, violence, school exclusion, adverse childhood experiences, housing instability and limited access to health and social services can all increase vulnerability, according to the Commission.
A policy debate at a critical moment
The Commission’s statement comes as the international drug-control system undergoes a review mandated by the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in March 2025.
The Commission says the review provides an opportunity to ensure that children and young people become more visible in shaping the future of drug policy.
For the Global Commission, the issue is therefore bigger than changing individual drug laws.
It is about changing the framework through which governments understand children and young people in relation to drugs.
The Commission says drug policies should be judged not only by their stated objectives but also by their real-world effects on children and young people.
A message for parents and policymakers
For parents, Ms Cockburn’s experience illustrates the painful reality that children may encounter drugs without their families knowing.
Her story also demonstrates why conversations about drugs cannot be restricted to addiction.
A teenager may experiment, use a substance occasionally or be exposed to drugs through friends or wider social networks without considering themselves a drug user.
For policymakers, the Global Commission is asking a broader question: what happens to children under the policies designed in their name?
Its answer is that children need protection from drug-related harms, but they also need healthcare, accurate information, family support, education and protection from exploitation.
They also need a voice.
The Commission’s policy brief therefore calls for a child-rights-based approach that places the best interests, health, development, protection and participation of children and young people at the centre of drug policy.
Its message is not that drug-related risks should be ignored.
Rather, it is that protecting children requires responses that are informed by evidence and their lived experiences.
For Ms Cockburn, that debate carries the memory of a daughter who died at just 15.
For the young people who participated in the Commission’s consultations, it carries a different but equally direct message: they want to be part of the conversation about policies that affect their lives.
And for governments, the Commission is calling for those voices to be heard before the next generation of drug policies is written.
