Opening Day in Barcelona
sarosip, May 12, 2008 - 00:55
Paul Hunt addresses the IHRA conference in Barcelona
This year the International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harms is taking place in Barcelona, May 11-15, supported by the Department of Health of Catalonia. On the first day there were satellite events on various issues, including harm reduction in prisons, gender sensitive services, suboxone, alcohol and harm reduction, HIV prevention in Asia and drug users' activism (our report from the INPUD congress is coming soon). Paul Hunt, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health made an excellent keynote speech addressing the multiple violations of the human rights of people who use drugs. For example ambulances refuse to treat overdosed people, investigators force suspects into unmedicated withdrawal to extract confessions, drug users are imprisoned and forced into treatment, governments ban publications on harm reduction, police breaks up peaceful demonstrations against drug laws and so on.
“This widespread, systemic abuse of human rights is especially shocking, because drug users include people who are the most vulnerable, most marginal in society,” said Hunt. “Despite the scale of the abuse, despite the vulnerability, there is no public outrage, no public outcry, no public inquiries, on the contrary: the long litany of abuse scarcely attracts disapproval. Sometimes it even receives some public support.”
According to Mr. Hunt, the promotion and protection of human rights should precede drug control objectives. He encouraged NGOs to use the procedures and possibilites provided by the independent rapporteur system. He alluded to his visit to Sweden, where he found inadequate access to harm reduction services and urged the government to scale up needle exchange and substition treatment (read the report of IHRA and the Swedish Drug User Union).
He called it an “inexcusable situation” that the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) focuses on the three international drug conventions “with scant regard for the international code of human rights that emerges from one of the Article 1 objectives of the United Nation’s charter.” He said the international drug control organizations operate in “parallel universes”, but there are some signs that human rights are slowly infiltrating the drug control system.
Posted by Peter Sarosi
Drug users:discrimination and abuse
Well said Paul Hunt.
The marginalisation and degradation of drug users by society continues. Ironically it also leads to ongoing problematic drug use. This demonisation of illicit drug taking institutionally criminalises, isolates and humiliates recovering users making recovery and social reintegration almost impossible.
The parallel universe in which drug users struggle to gain access to human rights and respect is no oversight or mistake. The war on drugs is a war on drug users, and societies and governments like to have scapegoats and public enemies - drug users are a convenient and easy target.
Unravelling the mess we've created by embracing and globally promoting the sale and distribution of two particularly dangerous drugs while at the same time going to inordinate effort, energy and expense to prevent the sale and distribution of other substances seems too challenging, too contradictory and too complicated for politicians and leaders.
Stigmatisation and Murder of injection drug users
It is great that Paul Hunt said what he said in Barcelona
It is also wonderful that Prof Buchanan verifies his thoughts about the dehumanising violation of drugs users human rights by also reminding us that this continues even when people have stopped using, not to mention the sad need human beings appear to need to scapegoat the weaker member of their species
However, it needs to be noted that, as drug workers, we have also colluded with this by taking grants and funding from the very hands that are part of this oppression. In 1996, following on from the death of my life-partner, an influential AIDS Activist, I established an organisation to give other ex/current users the opportunity to recover through activism in three short words.. Though we never had that much cash in our account partly because we were well-supported administratively by various drug agencies (Drugscope for example), it became abundantly clear that as Prof McGregor put it at the Warwick CJS /Drugs Conference in 2007, we covertly & continuously collude with government in this way.
Is there no other way to fund the reintegration and healing of chemically-dependent people in the UK, societies in general?
The UK government does have this deathly 'special relationship' (Iraq also comes to mind as well as drugwar- related crematoriums) with the USA, but does this mean
that we should all continue to collaborate with the insanity?
The upholders of the treaties in Vienna, around the world will never let go of their policy until those 150 governments unsign themselves from the treaties, which is Not going to happen soon,
It is time for revolt in this field of injustice; it has been for a very long time in fact
Where are Drug Policy reform's Mandelas, Che Guevaras and Ghandhis is what we need to be asking
Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt MSc
Watch out -- the junkies start to bite...
We have a dream. We believe it can come true. That is why those of us drug users who have been struggling for the legalisation of the drugs of our choice since long years are keeping it up.
We are no different from the users of legal drugs...we want peace and dignity, we demand respect, and we are struggling against the image that the drug warriors are labeling us with.
The general disapproval of society towards a drug user is singling each and every one of us, and to live with a constant feeling of being disapproved, only because we consume certain substances, is propelling us out of society from the very moment on we start consuming.
Many, many drug users have developed a constant feeling of worthlessness,of being singled out for no reason at all, a feeling of being crushed against the rim of society.
Many of us are living double lifes. These are the "lucky" ones, the "winners", and maybe the stronger ones in the user sub society. Those who are not strong enough, not clever enough, to lead that double life are the ones who are visible to society, and they are considered loosers, to the others, and, worse, to themselves. Even worse is that most of people - users AND non-users - believe into the myths we are labelled with.
Most users despise themselves for their problematic use. On top of this feeling of worthlessness come the feelings of lonelieness, the feelings of living constantly within a devil's circle of being a criminal to everyone except maybe other drug users, the feeling of being unrooted in life, with no place to call one's own, with no goal but to keep on going from day to endless day, and no security at all.
In such an atmosphere of ill-being, one becomes a single combatant in a war one does not really understand, but one still holds society's norms for true,- even if one feels that something must be wrong with this. So in the process, one looses personality and chacacter....
Users, and specially problematic users, are torn souls. They want so much to be good, to be approved of, to be loved and respected just like every human being, and they need a home, but just the fact that they are feeding some illegalized substance to their bodies is propelling them out of everything they once used to think was a solid world.
The user has to learn the hard way what it means to be at the margins of society all of a sudden, and that in order to survive there, sometimes he has to do things he rather would not do.
But the pressure is there, and it will not go away.
This all adds to the slow, but inevitable process of de-civilisation, a process which will leave nothing but an empty shell after having to exist that way for some time.
This is the worst that can happen to a human being: just for the fact that he needs - and wants- and craves, a certain substance which happens to be illegalized for no real reason except for fear, will slowly but surely decompensate his personaliy, leaving an empty shell.
The loosers in the war against drug users are the ones most violated, they feel they do not belong onto this earth, and there is nothing they can do against it.
This is an eclatant violation of the human right to pursue one's own lifestyle, because in truth, putting aside all drug myths, there is no reason at all why this person should not be within society, where he belongs.
This kind of treatment violates the user's very human right of choosing his own way of living, and it is a crime against the very humanity of this person. Society imposes on him the belief that he is not really worth living in the first place, and this is nothing but solitary confinement within one's own body, which turns to be an enemy.
Solitary confinement is torture. And our oh-so-Christian society lets it happen, even approves of it.
Society needs us drug users, very much so, because today there are "only" enemies far away on the globe. But society needs its scapegoats right where it can see them.
On top of it, the criminalizing of drug users helps to justify many other breaches of human and civilian rights: drug users are the excuse for a huge blown up "justice"-industry with many jobs at stake, beginning from drug-police to the building of prisons and staff them, judges, advocates, security men,--- many members of society are feeding their families from the injustice against drug users.
Just as I read it written on the wall of the New York Ghetto:"We are here because you're there".
Without us drug users, there would be no excuse for the steady violence of the human rights of all the other citizens, too: the snooping into telephone calls, internet search, listening attacks, camera snooping of homes, violation of mail secret, - the steady process of fencing in tightly of all citizens for so-called security reasons, - nearly all of these breaches of the human right of privacy are excused with so called organized crime.
Then there are the tremendous sums of money this so-called security policy sets into motion, beginning with private security companies, policemen, new police buildings, prisons, justice staff, jailers,industry working towards these institutions...kitchens, cleaners, barbwire producters, concrete firms and industrial smiths... just to name a few, - how many working places,--good, secure ones,--would not exist if the drug warriors did not have the excuse of the existence of drug users? We're here because you're there... and society truly needs us, we're a big factor of healthy economy interests.
Actually this should make us proud to know that the few of us are keeping such a big industry alive and flowering....
-In 1998, the drug warriors issued the resoluton that in 2008 the world should be drug-free.
Hah!
They had to admit in Vienna this year that this goal is far, far away, if it ever existed. If it ever was really ment the way it was written down, if this was not all an excuse for blowing up the paramilitary "security" und "justice" industry.
Weighed against the solid economical interests of society, what is a few civil rights broken here, and some minor human rights trampled down under paramilitary boots there?
Good thing the junkies do not fight back. They are the ideal targets. They are easy to hunt, easy to keep singled out, plus they always keep coming back for more of the same: criminal behaviour like possessing, buying, smuggling, selling drugs on black market conditons, -- oh, and you can put them into a cell for some time, in good storage, so to speak, and then you can start the hunt all over again, beacuse the poor fool always will be back for more.
This is a very solid industry, based on the constant breach of human AND civilian rights.
Plus the icing on the cake: the drug warriors can tell their fellow citizens that it is all for their own security, and therefore the human rights of the normal citizens must be fenced in smaller and smaller each passing year..... and the good and law-abidung citizens nod approval to their own stripping off of rights they do not even know they are supposed to have...or care about.... long as that stinking junkie is kept out of my neighbourhood, everything is fine....this is why we'll just have to begin to fight back.
We're on the way to do so. Slowly but surely resistance is forming, and the unthankful junkies sooner or later will start to bite the hands that feed them (halfways, just enough to keep them moving)
For we have a dream. We believe that we are human beings, and because of this, we are equipped with some rights that can not be denied forever.
We want our dignity back. We demand respect. Ask any "normal" citzen how long he could survive under the circumstances we have been forced to live in for decades?
Hah!
They wouldn't last a month.
And we know that the warriors against drug users will not let go of their fat profits on our backs just because we politely ask them to. They need us, and they need the drug trafficking, because many would be jobless without black market.
We demand -and will get- our place in life. Our home.
The harder they come, the harder they'll fall....we sahll get waht we want, on way or the other, because we are sick and tired of being scapegoats.
The war on drugs
The war on drugs is a war on drug users, and societies and governments like to have scapegoats and public enemies - drug users are a convenient and easy target.
Glad
I'm really glad to find out that there is still something being done to fight with against this situation which is developing each day even though we are aware of it's effects on our lives.
Thanks
For Barcelona, the only good news as they boarded the bus for the six-hour return trip was that foster family Real Madrid - unsettled by Robinho's "you're not my dad" tantrum at Bernd Schuster that morning - couldn't win either, going down 2-1 at Riazor where they've not won in 18 visits. For Numancia, it was a glimmer of hope, where once there was none. Poetic president Francisco Rubio Garcés insisted he'd built a squad made up of "hombres con hambre" - men with hunger (in the will-to-win sense, not the Maniche one).
Unfortunately, I couldn't be
Unfortunately, I couldn't be there because the date and hour was in the same time when I had scheduled my <a rel="follow" href="http://www.marriagemax.com/">marriage therapy</a> and I had to do the most important things, right?! Because family always comes first.
Its never too late. War on
Its never too late. War on drugs can be hard to end but there is always hope.
http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobs/list/c-Pinnacle+Security
In what countries is the
In what countries is the practice of no helping overdosed drug users most prevalent? I have never heard of that problem...what a tragedy. No one should be denied emergency medical help, no matter what the cause. I hope the U.N. presses this issue hard.
--
Frank
<A HREF="http://dui.avvo.com/">DUI lawyer</A>
I am also addicted
I am also addicted to drug after being cheated by my wife. But from my heart I want to stop using drugs and also want to support society groups and communities to do the same. I am also seeking marriage counseling session for my mental health problem, actually my marriage counselor suggested going for opening day. I learned a lot there. Thanks.
http://www.marriage-counselors.net/
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