Organised by the European Network of People who Use Drugs (EuroNPUD) 

The European Network of People who Use Drugs is pleased to invite you to the webinar launch of the "Community-led approaches to HCV testing, treatment, and care" resource, created within the framework of the BOOST project. This webinar is part of our series of resources on Peer Led Harm Reduction and is related to World Hepatitis Day marked on July 28 globally.

During the webinar, John Melhus, leader of the PLHR team, will provide an overview of the resource and discuss best practices for HCV testing, treatment, and care among people who use drugs in different European countries. Additionally, members from Norway and Portugal will share specific examples of their work in this field. The introduction will be presented by our partners from the Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network.

Looking forward to seeing you on July 31. If you are unable to attend the webinar, the recording will be made available at a later date.

Community-led approaches to HCV testing, treatment and care

Together with European elections, Slovenia voted last weekend on 4 consultative referendums, out of which 2 were related to cannabis. The voters convincingly supported the use of cannabis for medical purposes, while with regard to support for the use of cannabis for personal use, the result was closer.

The referendum questions were: Should Slovenia allow the cultivation and processing of cannabis for medical purposes on its territory? and Should Slovenia allow the cultivation and possession of cannabis for limited personal use on its territory?

According to the partial unofficial results of the consultative referendum (99.95 percent of the votes were counted), voters supported the use of cannabis for medical purposes with a two-thirds majority – 66,65% voted in favour while 33,35% were against.

Slovenia voted on cannabis cultivation and use

 is a voluntary, anonymous survey run by the Agency and its partners. It is one of the Agency’s targeted ‘leading-edge’ monitoring methods and a key ingredient in the EMCDDA’s responsiveness to the ever-shifting drugs problem. Web-based surveys have the benefit of reaching people who use drugs directly. They are quick and relatively inexpensive, provide new data rapidly and can help spot emerging trends. If the same questions are used, along with a rigorous translation process, then these surveys can also allow for cross-national comparisons.

European Web Survey on Drugs: patterns of use

This report is based on information provided to the EMCDDA by the EU Member States, the candidate country Türkiye, and Norway, in an annual reporting process.

The purpose of the current report is to provide an overview and summary of the European drug situation up to the end of 2023. All grouping, aggregates and labels therefore reflect the situation based on the available data in 2023 in respect to the composition of the European Union and the countries participating in EMCDDA reporting exercises. However, not all data will cover the full period. Due to the time needed to compile and submit data, many of the annual national data sets included here are from the reference year January to December 2022. Analysis of trends is based only on those countries providing sufficient data to describe changes over the period specified. The reader should also be aware that monitoring patterns and trends in a hidden and stigmatised behaviour such as drug use is both practically and methodologically challenging. For this reason, multiple sources of data are used for the purposes of analysis in this report. Although considerable improvements can be noted, both nationally and in respect to what is possible to achieve in a European-level analysis, the methodological difficulties in this area must be acknowledged. Caution is therefore required in interpretation, in particular when countries are compared on any single measure. Caveats relating to the data are to be found in the online Statistical Bulletin 2024, which contains detailed information on methodology, qualifications on analysis and comments on the limitations in the information set available. Information is also available there on the methods and data used for European-level estimates, where interpolation may be used.

European Drug Report 2024: Trends and developments

Webinar 4 – Fighting Disinformation and Moral Panics


June 18, 12:00 – 1:30 pm
Drug policies are often influenced by sensational media reporting that fuels moral panics about drugs and leads to the othering of people who use drugs. The spread of disinformation is a major barrier to drug policy reform, undermines basic norms and values like human rights and scapegoats civil society organisations. This webinar addresses strategies to fight disinformation in an age that is often characterised as post-truth. Participants will discuss what methods they use to educate the public about drugs and drug policies and how to defend civil society from politically motivated attacks.

Fighting disinformation and moral panics - Correlation webinar series

Webinar 3 – Meaningful Involvement of Civil Society

The meaningful involvement of civil society is now widely accepted in Europe as a crucial part of policy making. However, there is little or no consensus on what constitutes “meaningful” involvement. This webinar will present a new tool developed by the EU Civil Society Forum on Drugs in 2022, the Quality Standards of Civil Society Involvement, and the findings of a focus group study to assess civil society involvement in four European countries (Hungary, Finland, Greece and Ireland). Participants will discuss the often opposing views on the role of civil society, the challenges and opportunities of civil society involvement in various political contexts at European, national and local levels. The webinar will address the worrying trend of shrinking space for civil society in Europe.

Meaningful involvement of civil society - Correlation webinar series

The project findings revealed distinct geographical and temporal patterns of drug use across European cities (see the 

The annual SCORE wastewater sampling presented here, from 88 cities, showed that, overall, the loads of the different stimulant drugs detected in wastewater in 2023 varied considerably across study locations, although all illicit drugs investigated were found in almost every city that participated. For the first time, data from outside Europe is also shown and compared against European cities.

The BE loads observed in wastewater indicate that cocaine use remains highest in western and southern European cities, in particular in cities in Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. Low levels were found in the majority of the eastern European cities, although the most recent data continues to show signs of increase.

The loads of amphetamine detected in wastewater varied considerably across study locations, with the highest levels being reported in cities in the north and east of Europe, as in previous years. Amphetamine was found at much lower levels in cities in the south of Europe, although with the most recent data showing some signs of increase.

The highest loads were found in cities in Sweden, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland.

Methamphetamine use, generally low and historically concentrated in Czechia and Slovakia, was also present in Belgium, the east of Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Türkiye. The observed methamphetamine loads in the other locations were very low, although most recent data show signals of increases in central European cities.

The highest mass loads of MDMA were found in the wastewater in cities in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.

The highest mass loads of the cannabis metabolite THC-COOH were found in wastewater in cities in Czechia, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia.

For the second time, ketamine loads are being published. The highest mass loads were found in the wastewater in cities in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Seventeen countries participating in the 2023 monitoring campaign included two or more study locations (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Türkiye). The study highlighted differences between these cities within the same country, which may be explained in part by the different social and demographic characteristics of the cities (universities, nightlife areas and age distribution of the population). Interestingly, in the majority of countries with multiple study locations, no marked differences were found when comparing large cities to smaller locations for all substances.

In addition to geographical patterns, wastewater analysis can detect fluctuations in weekly patterns of illicit drug use. More than three quarters of cities show higher loads of amphetamine, BE, ketamine and MDMA in wastewater during the weekend (Friday to Monday) than during weekdays. In contrast, cannabis (THC-COOH) and methamphetamine use was found to be distributed more evenly over the whole week.

Seventy-three cities have participated in at least five of the annual wastewater monitoring campaigns since 2011. This allows for time trend analysis of drug consumption based on wastewater testing.

Wastewater analysis and drugs — a European multi-city study

Please join us on Monday 13 May at 12.00 CET for the launch of the 

2024 Manifesto for a Progressive EU Drug Policy

 through a conversation on the future of European drug policy that will feature Members of the European Parliament and keynote European civil society speakers.

Please kindly register for the event through 

More than 260 European drug policy NGOs and 130 drug policy experts from 25 EU Member States have already signed the 2024 Manifesto for a progressive EU drug policy. We are coming together to call for a pragmatic and innovative EU drug policy that makes Europe safer, healthier, and more just.

If you want to support the manifesto, please make sure to:

Encourage your drug policy networks and colleagues to sign the manifesto.

Share the manifesto on social media with the hashtag #FutureDrugPolicyEU24.

If you want to get more involved in the campaign by translating the manifesto to your language or organizing a local launch event, please reach out to arogialli@correlation-net.org and kschiffer@correlation-net.org.

You can find the manifesto in Czech, English, Estonian, French, German, Italian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Romanian, and Spanish, and the list of signatories, 

Thank you very much for your support, and we are looking forward to seeing you on Monday 13 for the launch of the manifesto.

Manifesto for a Progressive EU Drug Policy 2024 - Launch event

The use of the new psychoactive substances (NPS) became widespread in Hungary in the 2010s. Synthetic cannabinoids are the second most tried substance among young people after real cannabis. Still, regular use of these drugs is more prevalent among people of lower social status, who live in rural areas. According to 

, a neuroscientist, the problem with synthetic cannabinoids is not the molecule itself, but rather the dose and frequency of use. These drugs are often mixed so strongly that the typical effect will be overdose; we see this on the streets and in public squares.

The biggest problem with the use of "herbal" and "crystal" is seen in segregated areas in Hungary, where mostly Roma people live. Even in wealthier settlements, such as Halmajugra, the use of "crystal", or synthetic cathinone, is already a serious problem, mainly due to the increase in petty theft. According to 

, the mayor of the settlement, even though not all new psychoactive substance users are Roma, this is more noticeable among poorer people, so the stigma surrounding drug use impacts Roma people. Meanwhile, affected families feel that they cannot count on any external help and that they do not know whom to turn to.

Over the past 14 years, services helping drug users have been cut down and underfunded by the Hungarian state, drug prevention specialists have been banned from schools, and low-threshold services have ceased or are vegetating. According to sociologist 

, coverage of the care system has become so poor that it is simply impossible to know what is happening to these people. There is hardly any contact with people in rural areas who have drug problems. If they do get into treatment, 

 says, services are currently not differentiated enough to meet the new types of needs.

Two employees of the Laurus association, 

, are doing heroic work in the segregated district of the Miskolc Iron Factory. They maintain a community space and provide therapeutic help to people living with drug problems. Additionally, they support local children, which they consider one of their most important tasks. They want young people to know that they have someone to turn to when they have problems, and by doing so, they aim to reduce the re-emergence of segregation. 

, their peer worker, was able to start a new life with the help of Laurus and stop injecting “crystal”. According to Helga's family, the greatest opportunity to break out of the segregation of the ironworks was the emergence of job opportunities provided by factories and the European Union.

, a social worker and assistant professor at ELTE, without reforming the educational, health care and child protection systems and investing in infrastructural developments, such as transport solutions and repairing roads, they will not be able to deal with problematic new psychoactive drug use in segregated areas.

As long as there is a demand for drugs, there will be dealers. In the hope of making quick money, 

 from Komló became a dealer from being a Cash-in-Transit security guard. He quickly climbed to the top, earning the price of his car in one evening. However, in order to cope with the constant strain of this work, he got hooked on his own drugs. He got so deep that he even became homeless for a while. Yet, he believes that society is holding up a twisted mirror to us and that the media does not present a realistic picture of drug users. According to him, users of synthetic cathinones do not typically end up in the state synthetic cannabinoid users are often portrayed in the media – lying in an underpass, hunched over, and fainting. The drug can give and take, but he thinks that as an adult, one can decide what they want, and he holds himself responsible for his own fate. When he had enough, he stopped using intravenous drugs on his own and went back to work; still, he lost his family. According to Benjámin, this area should not necessarily be seen as a problem, as some synthetic drugs could be regulated. If you can do it with cannabis, you can do it with these as well.

The primary response of the Hungarian state is criminalisation. The use of drugs is a criminal offence, and the use of NPS is a misdemeanour. However, acknowledging the senseless and excessive nature of imprisonment, the state introduced the institution of ‘diversion treatment’, which one can choose instead of punishment. But this can only be chosen once in two years. However, in the case of designer drugs, since possession of these is "only" a misdemeanour, this is not allowed even once.

ABANDONED: Designer Drugs on the Margins of Hungarian Society

There are ongoing concerns among policymakers, law enforcement, and civil society organisations (CSOs) about the emergence of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) in general (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), 2023; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 2023a), about the appearance of NPS in more traditional illicit substances available in global and European markets, and about the emergence of new drug trends in general. International agencies continue to warn about the potential health risks (such as overdose) associated with illicit substances, including synthetic opioids. CSOs, particularly those working closely with people who use drugs, play a pivotal role in notifying signals of change with respect to the use of new substances, changing patterns of drug use, or in changes in local drug markets. This calls for new approaches to rapidly update data on drug trends that include qualitative data provided by people who use drugs and by experts who are in contact with people who use drugs. Data from CSOs are considered complementary to other sources, providing useful intelligence on emerging drug trends. This report aims to explore the latest insights with respect to the emergence of new illicit substances in cities where Focal Points (FPs) of Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network (C-EHRN)1are located, as well as other developments in drug use patterns, including polydrug use, routes of administration, and changes in local drug markets.The focus extends beyond NPS to allow for afull understanding of current local drug market developments.

New drug trends: Insights from focus group discussions

To monitor new drug trends in Europe and complement the information gained through focus group discussions, C-EHRN’s 2023 Civil Society-led Monitoring of Harm Reduction in Europe includes two reports via the Trans European Drug Information Network (TEDI), drawing from data collected from drug checking services.

Drug checking observations and European drug checking trends via TEDI

This blog item is a cross-post with the Rights Reporter Foundation and was originally 

The EU’s drug monitoring agency organised a meeting with civil society in Lisbon to discuss future cooperation outlined in its new mandate. Read this short report about the meeting by 

The transformation of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) into a new agency, the European Drug Agency (EUDA), is a major development in European drug policies in 2024. The EMCDDA, the Lisbon-based agency that is in charge of collecting and analysing data about drugs and feeding them to decision makers, received a 

 from the EU Commission and Parliament in June 2023 and will become the EUDA from July 2024. This is more than just a simple name/brand change: the agency will receive considerably more power and budget to support decision makers in three areas: monitoring, preparedness and competence development.

Part of the new EUDA’s mandate is the commitment to establish a new partnership with civil society. In the past, the relationship between the EMCDDA and civil society has traditionally been close and cordial, but rather informal and ad hoc. For example, during the COVID-19 crisis, the EMCDDA organised several online meetings with civil society – including us, Drugreporter – to collect data on drug trends/access to services during lockdown (

we wrote extensively about this issue on Drugreporter

). Now the new mandate has opened the doors for a new opportunity to create a formal platform and mechanism for the EUDA to work more systematically and formally with civil society and community organisations.

As members of the Core Group of the EU Civil Society Forum on Drugs (CSFD), the expert group of the European Commission on drug affairs, we were invited by the EMCDDA to Lisbon to discuss how this new partnership may take shape between civil society and the EUDA. The meeting was a hybrid event: other EMCDDA researchers and civil society representatives from several European countries joined us online.

Danilo Ballotta, the EMCDDA’s Principal Drug Policy Analyst, presented the framework created by the new mandate. The document requires the EUDA to work with civil society in three forms: first, with civil society organisations, second, with communities affected by drug crime, and third, with communities of people with lived experience/people who use drugs.

Alexis Goosdeel, the Director of the EMCDDA/EUDA, assured civil society representatives that the process of involvement will be fully transparent and open. It will also facilitate the inclusion of civil society in consultations with third countries and international relations.

On behalf of the CSFD, we presented the work of the working groups of the Forum, including the one I chair on civil society involvement. We pointed out that the CSFD produced several guidelines and studies in recent years that will prove to be very helpful for the EUDA as it designs its own mechanism to work with civil society. For example, our 

Quality Standards for Civil Society Involvement

 report includes recommendations on how to ensure that the engagement is meaningful for both parties.

Civil society representatives pointed out that one of the key barriers identified by our studies is the lack of funding: most organisations have very limited resources for advocacy and consultations with decision makers. Unfortunately EU funding has been significantly curtailed by the EU Commission after the EC JUST Drug Policy Program was ended, with available funding since then having almost exclusively been allocated to supply reduction and drug prevention projects (

). Although Mr. Goosdeel emphasised that the EUDA will not be able to solve the funding crisis, many of us argued that even limited funding from EUDA could make a big difference for us.

According to the mandate, the EUAD will work with civil society in three ways: first, it should provide information to civil society, second, it should create a pool of knowledge, gained from civil society, and third, it should consult with civil society. The EUDA will create a dedicated communications platform, where civil society will be able to submit information. A contact person will be appointed by the Agency to coordinate the dialogue with civil society.

A possible area of cooperation is communications: civil society and the EUDA can mutually support each other to improve the dissemination of their findings and messages among the general population. The EUDA will create a new e-learning educational and training platform, PLATO, as well as a platform to provide information on safer festivals (SAFestivals). These two platforms already provide plenty of opportunities for civil society to feed into the work of the EUDA.

Another important avenue for collaboration between the EUDA and civil society relates to international cooperation (with the UN as well as third countries), for which the EUDA will now have dedicated resources. The EUDA has the opportunity to bring a stronger focus on human rights and health to the positions usually adopted by EU institutions, with support from the CSFD (which has a dedicated working group on international policy) and other civil society representatives.

In fact, a key issue highlighted by civil society as fundamental for the EUDA to push for within its new mandate relates to human rights, in particular the need for a systematic assessment of the impacts of drug policies on the lives, well-being and freedoms of affected communities. And in general, most civil society organisations would like to see more impact assessment of drug policies through 

 (including the negative public health and social impacts of drug control), rather than just focusing on the usual process evaluations (such as how much drugs are seized, or how many people are arrested and incarcerated for drug offences).

For example, when a new substance is brought under control after a risk assessment conducted by the EMCDDA/EUAD, there is no follow up: did the measures taken by governments to respond to new substances reduce access to the drugs or did they only replace one drug with another, potentially more risky, substance? Were the health and social risks identified prior to the reforms reduced in any way? How did government measures affect the drug market overall, and the health and well-being of people who use drugs?

These questions lead us to another urgent, but largely ignored issue: how do we measure the success of supply-side interventions? Unlike with demand and harm reduction interventions, where relatively strict indicators are required, and where health and human rights indicators have slowly started being used by governments in various countries, there is no such thing happening for supply reduction interventions. Civil society representatives present at the meeting made it clear that a human rights impact assessment of supply-side policies was urgently needed, and the EUDA can play a fundamental role in pushing this agenda forward in the coming years.

One thing is clear: civil society, including the International Drug Policy Consortium and Rights Reporter Foundation, stand ready to support the EUDA as it is delineating the framework of their new mandate. At a time where the EU is shifting towards a 

, the EUDA will surely play a key role in ensuring that EU drug policy continues to prioritise health, social justice and human rights as its core – and this will only be possible with the strong and meaningful participation of civil society and communities.

South East Europe