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.
Young Roma people in Serbia are particularly severely affected by the increase in use of traditional psychoactive substances, such as cannabis, inhalants (glue and solvents), heroin and alcohol. EDPI’s local partner, the NGO 'Re Generation', argues that these young people – a high proportion of whom live and work on the streets – are in need of special care.
HCLU's European Drug Policy Initiative this year took the form of grant-aiding a group of European journalists to cover on location the high-level meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna.
In 2012, the HCLU produced 154 movies, of which 76 are foreign-language, and 78 are in Hungarian. In 2013, we produced 64 movies – 16 in Hungarian and 48 in other languages. During those two years, we won five prizes and held five training courses in video advocacy. Browse these two catalogues and open the videos by clicking on the links.
Whether it was transporting silk, spices, tobacco, or opium, for centuries, the Silk Road from the Far East towards European countries passed through Serbia. Read how heroin permeated the country and made the region a transport hub for illicit substances.
There are an estimated 16 million injecting drug users (IDUs) in the world – three million of them living with HIV/AIDS. Providing IDUs with clean needle and syringe saves lives. Help us to spread this message by sharing our infograph!
Opioid overdose continues to be a top killer of young people all over the world. In some countries, drug overdose deaths now outnumber those attributable to firearms, homicides or HIV/AIDS. Few people realise that most of these deaths are easily preventable with the right information, and an inexpensive antidote, Naloxone, which can reverse overdoses.
At the very end of December, the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice (MJ) published a new Penal Code project. In general, this bill makes no progress towards a more liberal policy for drug users.
