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.
Legal highs have entered and reshaped recreational drug markets throughout Europe, confusing policy makers, law enforcers and users alike. In one Eastern-European country, injecting drug users have radically changed their habits.
Real decriminalization efforts are still lagging behind in Europe because of foot-dragging on the part of member states, Drugreporter learned at a Brussels conference dedicated to the EU's next drug strategy.
Prominent Polish politicians and celebrities have expressed their belief in the need for a move away from prohibition-based drug policies and the promotion of a science-based approach, under the umbrella of The Global Commission on Drug Policy.
Rules and laws related to the possession and use of illicit drugs in Serbia give a lot of room for interpretation. Does this pose a threat, or could it be understood as a form of fake “decriminalization”?
NeLP was initiated by the HCLU with funding from East-East Partnership Beyond Borders Program of Open Society Foundations. Watch and share our movie about the story of NeLP so far.
It’s a well-known phenomenon in most western countries, that the media tends to try to conform to expectations implicit in the drug prohibition approach. Read what is HCLUs solution to this issue.
