drug users

Can restorative justice be the right response to drug offences?

The real link between drug use and sex work

In popular consciousness, sex work is often blamed on drug use. One common view is that the drug dealer who approaches a young and innocent girl, makes her addicted to drugs and pushes her into sex work. Another stereotype is that drugs bear the responsibility for making women vulnerable to the sex-work industry. Most people tend to think that one of the strongest reasons why women start sex-working is because they want to fund their drug habits, once they become addicted.

Of victims and heroes

In a day like this, where scientific advances and social tolerance towards people living with HIV/AIDS have improved their life expectations, improved the solidarity and partly destroyed stigmatisation, it is time to remember the early victims looking back at how the pioneers of the fight against the virus committed their efforts to combat prejudices and help those who faced a new unknown and underserved death full of the most possible negative connotations at the time.

Russian HIV activist has been planted drugs in Kaliningrad airport

It finally happened – the thing I have been afraid the most of all since I got involved in a legal battle against Russia. As you may remember in February, 2011 I sent a request to the Ministry of Health on a possibility to provide me with the opioid substitution treatment (OST). They refused, as the OST with methadone is prohibited by Russian law. Then I sued them in my district court with references to Constitution of the Russian Federation and International Law.

No one's land

Dual diagnosis is the co-existence of mental health problems and substance misuse. It is a very grey area because nobody can tell for sure whether the mental health problem started as a consequence of substance misuse or the mental health problem lead to substance misuse. In a classic example of what came first the chicken or the egg people with this diagnosis suffer from all adversities of mental health and drug services.

UN drugs chief sticks to punitive policy

International efforts to tackle the "global threat" of illicit drugs must be "rejuvenated" in accordance with a 50-year-old convention despite a series of major failings, the head of the UN drugs and crime agency has told The Independent.
This week, Yury Fedotov acknowledged that global opium production increased by almost 80 per cent between 1998 and 2009, and the international market for drugs is now worth as much as $320bn (£199bn) a year – making it the world's 30th-largest industry.

The prison industrial complex

The anti-prison movement is a clear example of anti-globalisation demonstration. The forsaking of Fordist-Keynesian social compact since the seventies and the crumbling of the black ghetto as an instrument of case control inspired the United States government to replace the welfare regulation of poverty and of the urban disorder spawned by mounting insecurity and racial strife by its penal management via the police, courts and correctional system.

Scotland to scale up Naloxone access

Minister for Community Safety Fergus Ewing reiterated that the Scottish Government is doing all it can to tackle problem drug use in Scotland.
The pledge came as figures compiled by the General Register Office for Scotland show that there were 545 drug-related deaths in 2009, compared with 574 deaths in 2008.
Mr Ewing said:
"I extend my sympathies to everyone who has been affected by the loss of a loved one. These figures published today remind us that drug misuse destroys lives, and the impact is felt far beyond the individual user.

Debates over "consumption rooms" in France

Prime Minister François Fillon recently has refused to consider the idea of opening drug consumption rooms in France against the advice of his Health Minister, Roselyne Bachelot.

There are debates in France about so called "supervised injections sites " or " drug consumption rooms " " injection rooms " or even "a clinic for assisted injections". However, the French media refer to them as "shooting rooms". This semantic difference illustrates the gap between the fears of the people and the reality of medical practice.

For Drug Users, Coalition Serves as Voice in Albany

In a borrowed room in Chelsea on a recent Monday night, 13 people sat under fluorescent lights discussing the time-honored art of lobbying and the cold calculus of political persuasion.
And for this unusual organization, the typical difficulty of being heard among the vast jumble of special interests clamoring for attention in Albany is complicated by the fact that it represents drug users, past and present.