Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has declared a war on drug traffickers, announcing that Hungary will amend its constitution to criminalise drug use. However, civil society warns that this approach is bound to fail and a more integrated, health-focused approach is needed instead.
Gergely Gulyás, spokesperson for the Hungarian government, announced at a press conference on Thursday that the government plans to amend the constitution to include a constitutional ban on the use of illicit drugs. This amendment will be introduced alongside other changes, such as the constitutional declaration that humans can only be male or female, and that the protection of children’s physical, spiritual, and moral development takes priority over everything except the protection of life. Hungary was the first country in the world to introduce a constitutional ban on rough sleeping (homelessness), and it will now become the first country to ban drug use in its constitution. As drug use is already criminalised in Hungary, this legal change is expected to have little practical impact. However, the government has also created a new 150-strong Office Against Drugs (KBEH) within the national police force to “fight against drug trafficking.”
This announcement came just days after Prime Minister Orbán declared a war on drugs in his annual “State of the Nation” speech, claiming that traffickers of synthetic drugs deserve no mercy. “Cheap, toxic concoctions, synthetic substances have flooded the country,” he said, referring to so-called new psychoactive substances, such as synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinones. Although these “new” drugs have been present in the Hungarian drug market since the early 2010s, their use has increased in recent years, particularly among marginalised communities, such as those in segregated Roma settlements. According to Orbán, the trafficking of these drugs “must be eliminated.”
According to Drugreporter and most other professional organisations, this latest war on drugs is merely another empty PR campaign aimed at securing cheap popularity among the government’s voter base, which consists largely of less educated and less urbanised people. The announcement has also angered professionals working in the addiction field, who point out that while the government spends billions on alcohol promotion, it allocates no budget for drug prevention and addiction treatment. Just days after Orbán’s declaration, the government announced a plan to spend 1 billion HUF (2.5 million EUR) to support “village pubs” selling alcohol—another move widely seen as an attempt to solidify support among the same voter base.
The current situation is the result of years of government inaction and mismanagement. Without addressing the root causes of drug problems—such as poverty, homelessness, segregation, and lack of access to health and social care—law enforcement measures are bound to fail. For several years, professionals and civil society organisations have been raising alarm over the worsening drug situation. In 2019, civil society organisations organised a conference on synthetic drug use. In 2021, when more than 40 people died from overdosing on improperly dosed synthetic cannabinoids, an online conference was organised to address the crisis. Drugreporter also produced a one-hour feature documentary, Abandoned: Designer Drugs on the Margins of Hungarian Society, focusing on synthetic drug use. Despite multiple recommendations from civil society organisations urging a comprehensive, integrated response, these calls have been ignored by the government.
While the Hungarian government has liberalised the hard liquor market—despite the country being among the global leaders in alcohol-related deaths and diseases—it has adopted an increasingly repressive stance towards illicit drug users. In 2013, a new national anti-drug strategy was introduced with the stated aim of creating a drug-free Hungary within seven years. That same year, the drug-related provisions of the Criminal Code were amended to include harsher sanctions. Traffickers of large quantities of illicit substances can now be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Each year, approximately 6,000–7,000 people—predominantly young male cannabis users—are arrested on suspicion of committing drug offences.
The government has not only declared war on illicit drugs but also on civil society. In 2014, the country’s two largest needle and syringe exchange programmes were shut down for political reasons, and pro-harm reduction organisations have been systematically attacked and scapegoated, while access to services remains extremely limited. The national drug coordination body, including its key institution, the National Drug Prevention Institute, was abolished in 2017, and no drug-related grant funding has been available for civil society organisations since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the government adopted the so-called “child protection” law (widely dubbed the “homophobic law” by critics), which effectively bans civil society organisations from running drug prevention programmes in schools.
