National Users' Network
Steve, United Kingdom, admin@nationalusernetwork.org
International
http://www.nationalusernetwork.org
02:35 09-Sep-2010
A long Standing Dream Fulfilled: Strategy For Successful International Drug User Activism Organizing
Report on the 2008 INPUD Annual General Meeting and International Drug User Day (IDUD2008) Gathering, “Moving Forward II”, Copenhagen, hosted by the Danish Drug Users’ Union – BrugerForeningen.
Read this personnel report of the event below
http://www.brugerforeningen.dk/bf.nsf/pagesUK/UK.html
Copenhagen – Denmark.
Written by Eliot Albert. Copenhagen, 21st July 2009
Flowers placed at the Memorial Stone, under the Remembrance Tree
Six years ago the Danish Drug Users’ Union (BrugerForeningen)established a memorial site at which to mark International Drug Users’ Remembrance Day: An inscribed stone and a tree on the corner of a small, triangular piece of grass, on a street parallel to Copenhagen’s main open drug scene.
I’ve attended all but one of these ceremonies and every year a new visual device is used to indicate the number of officially recorded ‘overdoses’ in Denmark in the preceding year. This year the grass was covered with rows of small white crosses, 275 of them. Each marking a sad, utterly gratuitous loss of life.
Sitting amidst the crosses before the ceremony trying to think of what to say I was struck by the sheer obscenity of the spectacle and what it represented. 275 victims of the utterly immoral, pointless, war on drugs. Each of these crosses didn’t represent a drug related death but a prohibition caused death – collateral damage.
I imagined the day sometime in the future when the International Court of
The white crosses, one for each drug related death.
Justice in The Hague will convene a session to try war criminals from the war on drugs which celebrates its grisly centenary this year (marking one hundred years since the 1909 Opium Convention in Shanghai). Antonio Maria da Costa will be denounced as a war criminal, Thaksin Shinawatra will be denounced as a war criminal, as will Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush I and II, and so many other nameless bureaucrats ‘just following orders’ whilst they destabilize states, drive peasants from their lands, pump countless billions into the hands of organized crime, all the time driving an epidemic of blood borne viruses.
Billions that could be used to provide clean needles to all those who need them, treatment to those who want it, and cheap, clean heroin, cocaine, and stimulants to those of us who want them. I tried to speak of these things but words failed me.
Vito Georgievski the Macedonian General Secretary of INPUD and Mikael Johanesson from the Swedish Drug Users’ Union each spoke of the plight of drug users in countries with particularly harsh drug control regimes and Jørgen, President of BrugerForeningen spoke of the imbecilic politicking surrounding the upcoming heroin trial in Denmark.
The people who came to remember in Copenhagen this year.
Johnny Cash’s great onslaught on prisons, ‘San Quentin’ was given a rousing rendition, and the day was wound up by a communal, and sometimes less than tuneful, singing of a song popular amongst the Danish Resistance (to the Nazis); its final verse is especially poignant and appropriate as we, out, proud, drug users continue our resistance to the war that is being waged upon us. The lyrics are:
Fight for all that you hold dear,
Fight to the death if necessary
Then neither life nor death will seem too hard.
AUSTRALIAN INJECTING & ILLICIT DRUG USERS LEAGUE: MEDIA RELEASE
DRUG USERS SAY: “WE ARE PART OF THE COMMUNITY AND DESERVE TO BE TREATED WITH RESPECT AND DIGNITY”
The national peak organisation representing people who use illicit drugs, the Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL), is joining with communities of people who use illicit drugs from around the world to celebrate International Drug Users Day on 1 November 2009.
In celebrating this day we are speaking as people who use illicit drugs to tell the world that we are valuable members of the community, who come from all walks of life and are people who care about the world we live in. We are proud of our survival in a climate that criminalises, demonises and stigmatises all people who use illicit drugs as worthless, selfish, criminals.
Annie Madden, AIVL Executive Officer stated “We are not a small and insignificant group of people; we are your family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, in short, we are part of your community. We deserve equitable access to health services, civil and human rights and same respect and opportunities afforded all members of Australian society.”
We live with the constant grief of losing loved ones due to overdose and diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. Love ones whose lives could have been saved had we removed the criminalisation of drug use and provided access to an expanded range of drug treatments now available in many countries around the world. As a community we have fought hard for our right to access drug treatments that are accessible, affordable and meet our needs.
On International Drug Users Day 2009 AIVL is calling for an expansion to the range of treatment options available including heroin prescription programs and injectable methadone, buprenorphine and morphine. “The international evidence is indisputable in relation to the efficacy of these programs. Numerous evaluations have now shown that providing injectable pharmacotherapy programs has improved people’s health, their social and living conditions, their ability to participate in study and employment and reduced crime.” Ms Madden added.
AIVL believes one of the most important aspects of these programs is that they save lives. Australian and international studies have shown that people who access drug treatment programs are significantly more protected from dying due to a drug-related overdose than those not in pharmacotherapy treatment. One Australian study has shown that; one in 100 people using heroin on the street die from overdose compared with one overdose death for every 485 people for those on a methadone pharmacotherapy program.
“Australian drug users deserve access to programs that protect their lives and should be given the opportunity to choose from the widest possible evidence-based drug treatment options in order to get the best ‘treatment fit’. Furthermore, we want these choices now, not as a last option when we have hit so-called ‘rock bottom’. Being able to engage in a drug treatment option of our choice, that suits our needs, should not have to come at the price of our lives being in devastation before we are offered or become eligible for these programs” stressed Ms Madden.
Too often heroin prescription programs are talked about only as an option of ‘last resort’. AIVL is concerned that we are thinking about heroin prescription in the wrong way. It should be offered alongside other treatment options for anyone seeking to manage an opioid dependency. “We believe we should have access to the full range of treatment options available, anything less is an infringement upon our human rights and potentially exposes many people to discrimination, criminalisation, disease and death simply because we have refused to heed the now overwhelming evidence supporting such programs” Ms Madden concluded.
DRUG USERS SAY: “WE ARE PART OF THE COMMUNITY AND DESERVE TO BE TREATED WITH RESPECT AND DIGNITY”
The national peak organisation representing people who use illicit drugs, the Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL), is joining with communities of people who use illicit drugs from around the world to celebrate International Drug Users Day on 1 November 2009.
In celebrating this day we are speaking as people who use illicit drugs to tell the world that we are valuable members of the community, who come from all walks of life and are people who care about the world we live in. We are proud of our survival in a climate that criminalises, demonises and stigmatises all people who use illicit drugs as worthless, selfish, criminals.
Annie Madden, AIVL Executive Officer stated “We are not a small and insignificant group of people; we are your family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, in short, we are part of your community. We deserve equitable access to health services, civil and human rights and same respect and opportunities afforded all members of Australian society.”
We live with the constant grief of losing loved ones due to overdose and diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. Love ones whose lives could have been saved had we removed the criminalisation of drug use and provided access to an expanded range of drug treatments now available in many countries around the world. As a community we have fought hard for our right to access drug treatments that are accessible, affordable and meet our needs.
On International Drug Users Day 2009 AIVL is calling for an expansion to the range of treatment options available including heroin prescription programs and injectable methadone, buprenorphine and morphine. “The international evidence is indisputable in relation to the efficacy of these programs. Numerous evaluations have now shown that providing injectable pharmacotherapy programs has improved people’s health, their social and living conditions, their ability to participate in study and employment and reduced crime.” Ms Madden added.
AIVL believes one of the most important aspects of these programs is that they save lives. Australian and international studies have shown that people who access drug treatment programs are significantly more protected from dying due to a drug-related overdose than those not in pharmacotherapy treatment. One Australian study has shown that; one in 100 people using heroin on the street die from overdose compared with one overdose death for every 485 people for those on a methadone pharmacotherapy program.
“Australian drug users deserve access to programs that protect their lives and should be given the opportunity to choose from the widest possible evidence-based drug treatment options in order to get the best ‘treatment fit’. Furthermore, we want these choices now, not as a last option when we have hit so-called ‘rock bottom’. Being able to engage in a drug treatment option of our choice, that suits our needs, should not have to come at the price of our lives being in devastation before we are offered or become eligible for these programs” stressed Ms Madden.
Too often heroin prescription programs are talked about only as an option of ‘last resort’. AIVL is concerned that we are thinking about heroin prescription in the wrong way. It should be offered alongside other treatment options for anyone seeking to manage an opioid dependency. “We believe we should have access to the full range of treatment options available, anything less is an infringement upon our human rights and potentially exposes many people to discrimination, criminalisation, disease and death simply because we have refused to heed the now overwhelming evidence supporting such programs” Ms Madden concluded.