Health and human rights crisis looming for people who use drugs in Crimea

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Health and human rights crisis looming for people who use drugs in Crimea

17 March 2014

The International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) and the Eurasian Network of People who use Drugs (ENPUD) wish to call the attention of civil society, the United Nations, and member states to a largely overlooked aspect of the catastrophic situation currently unfolding in the Crimea.

As has been widely reported, the Crimean peninsula, currently an autonomous region of Ukraine is under military occupation by unidentified armed men who are widely believed to be members of the armed forces of the Russian Federation. Should the Crimea become assimilated to the Russian Federation the latter's highly repressive drug laws and deeply punitive approach to people who use drugs will come into immediate effect.

The aspect of this crisis that most concerns us is the situation that will be faced by the drug using community and the more than eight hundred clients of opiate substitution programmes, currently in receipt of either methadone or buprenorphine.

Click here to read the full statement.

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