On: The Importance and impact of research and evidence base in the drug field. The interview was made at the Correlation European Conference 27 – 29 September, Sofia, Bulgaria

The interview was made at the Correlation European Conference 27 – 29 September, Sofia, Bulgaria

Ethan Nadelmann is the executive director of the largest drug policy reform organization in the U.S., the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org ). Earlier he was a professor at the Princeton University.

Dagmar Hedrich is a leading researcher of the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), a Lisbon based, de-centralized agency of the European Union responsible for data collection and analysis on drug use and drug policies.

Danny Kushlick is director of Transform Drug Policy Foundation.  

Is sex work always a rape? Can women give their consent to do sex work? Can we speak about harm reduction among sex workers like among drug users?

Dr Alex Wodak is the Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent’s Hospital. He was also President of the International Harm Reduction Association for several years, he is the author (with Ron Owen) of “Drug Prohibition: a call for change” published by UNSW Press.

Annette Verster works for the HIV/AIDS Department of the World Health Organization in Geneva, she coordinates all activities related to HIV prevention. She speaks about the conclusions of an investigation on prisons and harm reduction which WHO commissioned recently.

Stijn Goossens, the head of the International Network of People Who Use Drugs (www.inpud.org) is speaking about Trek Uw Plant, an interesting social experiment in the city of Antwerp, Belgium.

Eberhard Schatz is the head of an Amsterdam-based harm reduction NGO, AMOC, which operates a drop-in and consumption room for injecting drug users with foreign nationality. According to the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction, consumption rooms can successfully reduce drug related harms, especially drug overdoses and HIV infections.