István Gábor Takács is a human rights activist, videographer and trainer. He ran the Video Advocacy Program of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union between 2007-2015. He worked as a needle exchange program counselor for 5 years. He is author of several articles on harm reduction and cameraman, editor, director and co-director of more than 700 online videos, among them longer documentaries, such as “Kostya Proletarsky” (2020), “Taking Back What’s Ours: An Oral History of the Movement of People who Use Drugs” (2020) ”A Day in the Life: The World of Humans Who Use Drugs” (2016), “Without Rights” (2009), “Without a Chance” (2014), “Room in the 8th District” (2014) and “The Invisible” (2011). Since 2016 he works at the Rights Reporter Foundation, where besides producing films, he is training activists in video advocacy.
A blend of poverty and lack of education, coupled with public hypocrisy and the absence of any real and efficient policies – it’s a recipe for a lethal Romanian cocktail which could prove to be more dangerous for drug addicts than the drugs themselves. The number of hard drug users in the country is steadily rising, while their average age is falling, with consumption-related diseases spreading faster than ever. It’s a situation that requires an urgent change in public views and national policies.
Alin Rotaru, dubbed by the Romanian media, ”The Kings of Legal Highs”, was the owner of what was probably the first physical “ethnobotanical shop” in Romania, which opened in early 2008 in the eastern city of Galați. Read Drugreporter’s guest author Ștefan Iancu’s interview with him.
Researchers and medical cannabis patients met at the Prague Medical Cannabis Conference to discuss the latest developments in the field. On the sidelines, Drugreporter's guest author Iga Jeziorska interviewed two activists who were involved with the recent founding of the International Medical Cannabis Patients' Coalition.
A joint campaign by Bulgarian NGOs is warning that by the end of 2015, Bulgaria will completely lose its HIV prevention services. Read what needs to be done to keep rates of infection low in this Balkan country.
Drugreporter has for some time now been hearing rumours of the possible decriminalisation of drug use in Slovakia. Unlike the Czech Republic (the country with which it was previously joined, famous for its liberal drug policy) this central-European country has until now remained one of the shrinking number of EU countries which punish simple drug possession with imprisonment.
Even though Macedonia has decriminalised the possession of drugs for personal use, there remain many anomalies in the related regulations. Read our guest author's insights on what has to be done to make the country's laws serve the best interests of public health.
Since laws were passed in Romania in 2010 and 2011, prohibiting the trade in previously legal highs and any other commercial products with psychoactive effects, the sale and use of these substances has gone down significantly. Nevertheless, amphetamine-like stimulants and other previously legal highs are still readily available, via a number of different routes, to users who are in the know.
Portugal not only broke the taboo by decriminalising all illicit substance but also recognised the importance of on-site harm reduction in party settings. Read here how their holistic CHECK!N party service helps young people and others.
All you need to know about harms and harm reduction at party settings in Serbia summed up on the latest episode of Drugreporter's Drugfacts infographic.
