Since first coming to public prominence at the end of 2009, legal highs have posed a major challenge to existing legal and legislative structures designed to deal with drugs. This report asks whether the assumptions enshrined in the 40-year-old Misuse of Drugs Act are still valid when applied 21st century drugs market.
The report summarises two years of research findings on HIV risk behaviours and barriers to accessing HIV and harm reduction services among people who inject drugs.
This paper addresses the issues of ethics and effectiveness in coerced treatment for drug users. It is based on the existing evidence on coerced treatment, as well as on considerations of the ethics of such treatment and research on quasi-compulsory treatment in Europe.
With a decade of experience, Portugal provides a valuable case study of how decriminalization coupled with evidence-based strategies can reduce drug consumption, dependence, recidivism, and HIV infection, and create safer communities for all.
HRI calls on the Italian government to take all appropriate measures for the implementation of the recommendations made by the Committee and incorporate civil society members in developing the relevant responses to the HIV/ADS amongst drug user women communities.
More than eight in ten prisoners who use heroin in New South Wales, Australia, will be back in prison within two years of being released. But this rate can be cut by 20 per cent if they leave prison on methadone treatment and stay on it in the community.
In response to the EMCDDA call for input from experts to revise indicators monitoring the supply of illicit drugs in the European Union, IDPC prepared a submission promoting a set of indicators covering the levels of market-related harms to give a better picture of the achievements of drug law enforcement.
A pilot scheme has shown that providing family and friends with training and the drug naloxone seems to reduce deaths from overdose among heroin users and other opioids misusers, says the English National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, a special health authority of the NHS.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the advantages and the shortcomings of the different options, based on the Italian experience, as well as their real effectiveness in dealing with the problem.
Failure to provide effective interventions to reduce HIV transmission among drug users has resulted in unnecessary suffering, and for many, HIV-related death. Continued inaction threatens to undermine successful HIV prevention efforts in the country through ongoing HIV transmission among injection drug users and their sexual partners.