This document highlights just a small selection of the strong, progressive and evidence-based language on issues that are overlooked or insufficiently reflected in the Outcome Document.
A Release Drugs acaba de lançar uma nova edição do seu relatório A Quiet Revolution (Uma revolução silenciosa), sobre experiências de países que já experimentam algum tipo de descriminalização dos usuários de drogas.
People who inject drugs will be cut off from life saving treatment after drug programmes are finally closed in areas of the country affected by the war in eastern Ukraine.
The Alliance for Public Health (APH) has announced that the last 64 patients in the occupied area of Donetsk who receive Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST), will be cut off from treatment within days.
It comes as civil society organisations gather in Vienna at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) ahead of the first UN General Assembly Session on drugs (UNGASS) for nearly 20 years.
Since the outbreak of war in 2014 APH has struggled to maintain harm reduction services to people who inject drugs, particularly in areas of the country annexed by Russia, such as Crimea and conflict areas in eastern Ukraine under the control of separatist forces.
Overall around 50,000 people receive HIV prevention services in occupied areas of Ukraine. But since the start of the conflict in 2014, more than 900 patients have lost access OST in the war zone area. The last remaining 64 patients still receiving treatment in Donetsk will run out of supplies (methadone) by the end of March.
When people have their methadone services cut their health rapidly deteriorates as they go into withdrawal. Many drug users, in desperation, will seek out replacement illicit drugs. HIV and overdose risks often rise dramatically as a result. In the Donbas area that includes Donetsk, an extra 495 new cases of HIV were detected in 2015.
Click here to access the statement online.
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This second edition of the Release report on decriminalisation provides updates on the jurisdictions that have adopted a non-criminal justice response to the possession of drugs for personal use.
The second edition of the Alternative World Drug Report demonstrates that the current approach is creating crime, harming health, and fatally undermining all “three pillars” of the UN’s work – peace and security, development, and human rights.
In this report, IDPC offers recommendations based on evidence and examples of good practice to inform a shift in policy responses to drug use in Asia away from criminalisation and punishment, and towards public health and harm reduction.
