On 21 August, the Ukrainian Government published its National Drug Policy Strategy until 2030 and approved its implementation plan for 2025-2027. This latest policy update will allow for the state to resume its strategic vision for drugs that had been suspended since 2020.
The strategy’s publication contributes to Ukraine’s path towards EU integration. Amongst the requirements to join the EU is a reform in drug policies and a shift away from penalising people who use drugs (PWUD) to targeting drug trafficking, in order to improve the stability of a country’s democratic institution.
The document sections the strategy into four distinct strategic goals. Its first goal is to promote a “healthy lifestyle” through drug demand reduction. This will come from increasing education about the effects of drugs, delivered through communication programmes for the whole population, but particularly young people and those who are in difficult life circumstances.
The second goal is to ensure the availability of drugs for those in need, in order to comply with the rights of citizens to receive high quality pain relief and prescriptions for medicines containing narcotic drugs. This goal looks at the need to simplify drug importation processes, which will allow those who began treatment outside of the country to continue once they arrive. There is also a focus on the development of palliative care.
Thirdly, the strategy will ensure the provision of diagnostic, preventive, medical and psychosocial care, as well as harm reduction programmes. There is a strong emphasis on providing support to those who have incurred mental and behavioural disorders resulting from the use of drugs. Additionally, there will be a transition away from the use of criminal law measures regarding offences that relate to the possession of drugs in small quantities.
The final goal focuses on combatting illegal drug trafficking and reducing their supply in Ukraine. This will be done through a number of methods, including increasing investigative measures and creating early warning systems for the appearance of new drugs and their circulation.
Is Ukraine’s drug strategy meeting expectations?
Prior to publishing the strategy, stakeholders involved in its coordination met in Kyiv in May to finalise plans for its implementation. Participants emphasised the need to decriminalise use and possession of psychoactive substances and to address the social stigmatisation of PWUD.
One of the key necessary changes to the strategy was the need to develop effective alternatives to imprisonment: this includes improving access to harm reduction programmes and increasing the availability of treatment, rehabilitation and social reintegration. The strategy appears to meet these expectations, while reflecting the needs of PWUD, which is promising for the future of harm prevention and reduction in Ukraine.
The report fully complies with the recommendations set out in the 2024 European Union Enlargement Package for Ukraine and is consistent with the United Nations sustainable development goals. Even in the midst of a war, Ukraine has demonstrated its commitment to reforming drug policies in line with EU requirements for greater integration.
Continuing Ukraine’s progressive harm reduction approach
Another key requirement from stakeholders in the Kyiv meeting was to ensure that the “Ukrainian state strategy cannot be in line with the ‘anti-drug’ doctrine of the Russian Federation”. In Russia, drug use remains heavily criminalised, with people often being arrested before receiving any form of treatment. Although Russia has a very high prevalence of drug use and overdose-related deaths, there are no notable harm reduction programmes in place. Instead, tougher measures have been introduced in the last 30 years to combat the spread and use of substances. In 2022, it was estimated that over one fourth of the imprisoned population were punished for drug-related crimes.
Ukraine has developed its own approach to dealing with drug harms after the end of the Soviet Union. At first, the country struggled to contain criminal activities, with the drug trafficking and money laundering market tripling in the first five years post-1991, representing nearly 40% of its GDP by 1995. Ukraine also had a “heroin boom”, resulting in an acute HIV epidemic among people injecting drugs. The government responded by developing a progressive approach to drug harm reduction and rolling out a national Opioid Substitution Treatment (OST) programme, which proved effective at putting people in treatment and reducing drug-related harms.
In 2024, Ukraine marked 20 years of their OST programme, which has been revolutionary in supporting many people who use opioids. This was a huge step for Ukraine’s harm reduction policies, a stark contrast to the Soviet Union’s harsh policies, with lengthy prison sentences being handed out for possession of drugs. Since the war began, public funds have prioritised humanitarian aid, compromising the access to OST and other harm reduction supplies. Securing a continued commitment to this strategy is absolutely necessary now.
Great – but refinement needed
TalkingDrugs spoke to Oleg Dymarestkyi, the director of VOLNa (the Ukrainian Network of People Who Use Drugs) to hear his views on the strategy. Dymarestkyi acknowledged the range of issues covered by the strategy and complements elements of it, such the decriminalisation of drug users and the shift away from imprisonment to increased provision of services. He also highlighted that there are 317,000 people in Ukraine using drugs by injection, with 67% of these being opioids, reinforcing the need to maintain and grow the country’s OST services. However, he questioned whether the implementation methods outlined in the strategy plan for 2025-2027 are too ambitious and will just remain “on paper”.
In response to the strategy’s section on public participation, Oleg highlighted that historically there has been active participation and recommendations from civil society members, but their suggestions were lost due to a lack of time for participants to respond or defend their arguments.
Victoriia Tymoshevska, the Executive Director of the Ukrainian NGO Health Solutions, shared with TalkingDrugs the organisation’s legal analysis on the strategy, written by Olexiy Kharytonov. This firstly states that the strategy is a significant step forward from the previous policy, which was “fragmented and largely oppressive”. However, it is also stated that “the Strategy and its Operational Plan contain contradictions and gaps that require prompt refinement”.
Among these gaps, the legal analysis highlighted a similar issue to that pointed out by Oleg, concerning the participation of civil society:
“The Strategy and Operational Plan lack credible, practical mechanisms for civil society participation in implementation and monitoring. For example, the Strategy does not specify the concrete forms of state–civil society interaction, nor how civil society representatives would assess the effectiveness of the Strategy and Operational Plan. This requires urgent revision, as existing formats for public involvement in drug policy have proven ineffective: in 2023–2025, the MOH (Ministry of Health) working group on developing the drug strategy did not convene even once.”
While Ukraine is certainly making steps in the right direction towards a more progressive policy, now it remains entirely up to the government to ensure its proper execution. Kharytonov concluded that unless the state resolves important contradictions and fills gaps in the strategy, “there is a risk of reproducing the old, repressive model instead of moving toward modern European practice based on human rights and harm reduction”.
