Love is the drug - a love letter to the beautiful, courageous drug policy reform movement

After nearly eighteen years, including fifteen years as the Executive Director, I will be leaving IDPC at the end of July 2026. This has been an extraordinary journey, travelled alongside so many remarkable people. The drug policy reform movement has become my family and shaped me in ways I could never have imagined.

Looking back to my first encounter with the global drug policy and harm reduction movement at the 2008 International Harm Reduction Conference in Barcelona, I realise now that it was love at first sight. I was excited to meet people from all over the world who were doing brave and difficult work, from providing peer-to-peer needle and syringe services in Manipur, to driving a mobile safe injection van around Kyiv, to supporting pregnant women who use drugs in Vancouver. They worked at the margins, under challenging conditions, with little funding or government support and usually under the threat of criminalisation. What struck me most was the fierce courage and compassion of this movement. I also found hope - not a naïve optimism that everything will work out, but what Mariame Kaba calls "hope as a discipline" - choosing, every day, to keep working for change even when progress feels painfully slow.

I joined a fledgling IDPC in late 2008 - a small network with an ambitious mission to influence global drug policy debates. In those days, the space for meaningful discussion of drug policy reform at the UN was much narrower than it is today. The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs was not a welcoming place for civil society, and there were moments when we questioned why we kept returning to such a byzantine forum where change seemed glacial. But we also understood that the UN drug control system shapes national policies around the world. If we wanted to change those policies and the immense harm they cause, we had to engage where power resided, while building pressure from the local to the global.

The enduring strength of this movement has always been the belief that we are stronger together - that collective advocacy can shift harmful narratives, create political space and amplify community voices. By connecting advocacy across local, national, regional and global levels, we strengthened civil society and community voices and steadily expanded our influence within the international drug control system.

Over time, we changed not only who was able to participate, but also the terms of the debate. Through credible, persistent advocacy grounded in rigorous evidence and lived experience, we opened doors that had long been closed. People who use drugs, farmers of crops deemed illicit, formerly incarcerated people and others directly affected by punitive drug policies have increasingly addressed policy makers at the UN. More recently, Indigenous Peoples representatives have participated to further expose the racist and colonial foundations on which the global drug control system was built.

For years, it often felt as though nothing was changing. We kept showing up, fiercely advocating for human rights, building relationships and creating space for civil society and community voices. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, the ground began to shift. We finally won the unprecedented political recognition of harm reduction, we ensured that human rights are now firmly central to drug policy debates, we mainstreamed decriminalisation, we prised open fractious question of legal regulation, and most recently we managed to stimulate a long-overdue independent review of the UN drug policy system itself (the last review took place in 1998).

These achievements (and many more) are collective. They are the result of so many peoples’ courage, tenacity and solidarity – from committed community and civil society representatives, brave government officials and colleagues from within the UN system itself. The status quo is untenable, punitive prohibition has resulted not in less drugs, or less harm from drugs, but instead drives an unmitigated human rights disaster. This is the truth which drives our work and pushes us to keep fighting for justice.

Along the way, our movement has also become more intersectional. We are learning from, and building alliances with feminist, racial justice, environmental justice and digital rights movements, recognising that the harms of punitive drug policies are inseparable from broader struggles against inequality, discrimination and authoritarianism. These connections make us stronger, more imaginative and more resilient – this is more critical than ever because the current context remains challenging. We are seeing a renewal of punitive responses, the recycling of the ‘narco-terror’ threat justifying new drug wars, and significant funding pressures affecting many across our movement.

Over the years, people have often asked how I stay optimistic given the deep injustices of drug policies and the slow pace of change. The answer is that this movement has sustained me – the deep bonds, trust and friendship that have been built over the years of doing challenging work, dusting ourselves off and regrouping after another disappointing UN negotiation or policy backslide. Together we built an army of love that has centred kindness, compassion, and care – for each other and for those for whom we fight. Instead of becoming cynical after setbacks, we leaned into hope and worked to find new levers for change, new cracks in the drugs consensus, new allies, and new friends in sister movements. There has also been joy. Joy in reunions with friends from every corner of the world, in impossible victories, in dancing after long meetings, in celebrating each other's successes. I have learned that joy is not a distraction from the work, it is how we sustain one another. Time and again, whenever the politics left me discouraged, this movement reminded me why the struggle is always worth continuing.

As I leave my role at IDPC, I do so with profound gratitude and a heart full of hope, inspired the courage, expertise and persistence that define our movement - the unwavering commitment of IDPC's members, the dedication of an exceptional Secretariat team, and the wisdom and support of our Board and Members’ Advisory Council. I remain indebted to our membership, who have shaped IDPC into the credible, trusted and influential advocacy network it is today. I am equally grateful to our donors - especially the Open Society Foundations, who have stood with us throughout this journey and believed in the power of strongly networked global advocacy.

As IDPC celebrates its twentieth anniversary, I am immensely proud of what we built together: a diverse, principled and influential global network united by solidarity and driven by a shared commitment to human rights and social justice. Whatever contribution I have made has only ever been possible because I have been surrounded by remarkable people who refused to accept that the harms caused by punitive drug policies were inevitable, and who chose instead to work tirelessly for a more just and compassionate world. It is these amazing people who will carry this movement forward, continuing to bring new energy, fresh ideas and unwavering determination to this struggle. They have my complete confidence because they embody the same discipline of hope that first inspired me all those years ago in Barcelona. And I know that, together, they will continue to dismantle the wall of prohibition, brick by brick.

The drug policy reform movement will always have my admiration, my support and, above all, my love. A luta continua.