Drug user peace initiative: Stigmatising people who use drugs

This report is one of five documents produced by the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) as part of their “Drug War Peace” initiative – relaunched in January 2015. This report focuses on how the war on drugs fuels stigma and discrimination among people who use drugs. As the report states:

Prohibition Drives Harms; Harms Justify Prohibition

The harms which can be associated with drug use are used to justify prohibition and criminalisation. The argument is that drug use is harmful and must therefore be criminalised. However, the harms associated with drug use are for the most part created and driven by prohibition itself.

Criminalisation is Arbitrary and Discriminatory

Not only does prohibition create and exacerbate many of the harms associated with drug use, but the blanket criminalisation of currently illegal and controlled drugs is informed by scientific errors, bad pharmacology, bad sociology, bad economics, and misinformation.

Criminalisation Informs Stigma

Inaccurate and crude (mis)understandings of drugs have fed through into how people who use drugs are seen: the widely-held, generalising, and unscientific position that illicit drugs are ‘bad’ informs the understanding that people who use drugs are bad too.

Click here to read the full report.

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