Dispatches from Vienna NGO Committee on Narcotic Drugs

Now this is worth cracking a beer for! /Blair

Dispatch from Vienna, Day Three: A Global Consensus for Drug Policy Reform

The first-ever meeting of ordinary people, representing the entire globe and discussing the state of the world's drug policy, concluded today in Vienna with a unanimous, united call for a new approach to drug control policy. Here are the highlights of our resolution:

• We recognized "the human rights abuses against people who use drugs"
  
• We called for "evidence-based" drug policy focused on "mitigation of short-term and long-term harms" and "full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms"
  
• We called on the U.N. to report on the collateral consequences of the current criminal justice-based approach to drugs and to provide an "analysis of the unintended consequences of the drug control system"
  
• We called for comprehensive "reviews of the application of criminal sanctions as a drug control measure"
  
• We recognized harm reduction as a necessary and worthwhile response to drug abuse (harm reduction is a set of practical strategies that reduce negative consequences of drug use, incorporating a spectrum of strategies from safer use, to managed use to abstinence; harm reduction strategies meet drug users "where they're at," addressing conditions of use along with the use itself)
  
• We called for a shift in primary emphasis from interdiction to treatment and prevention
  
• We called for alternatives to incarceration
  
• We called for the provision of development aid to farmers before eradication of coca or opium crops
  

--
Blair Anderson ‹(•¿•)›

Social Ecologist 'at large'
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