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The Damage Reduction Network reacts
Healing centers, not prisons for the drug addicts
Representatives from the Damage Reduction Network expressed their dissatisfaction regarding the proposal law for drugs and psychotropic substances control in the month of July under the motto “Healing centers, not prisons for the drug addicts”, explaining that the civil sector had been left out of the process of making the proposal-law. The DRN representatives pointed out to the serious flaws in the new law and said that it was not made in accordance with the Constitution or the National Strategy for Drugs passed in December 2006.
The Network, which gathers 15 civil society organizations and experts in the field, offered several proposals to the new law, among which is the provision for decriminalizing the use previously determined quantities of drugs and psychotropic substances for personal use: to remove the article 73 from the new law since its implementation is certain to lead to negative consequences (the article states that the people who use drugs are not treated as ones who need health protection and social help, but as criminals); to introduce a new provision for controlling the injection tools exchange so that they are not considered as something that exposes others to the dangers of drugs; and the term “suppress” to be replaced with the expression “reduce the provision of drugs”.
The Damage Reduction Network points out that according to the World Health Organization, criminalizing the use and the possession of drugs complicates the efforts to implement solid public health strategies to a great extent, and it presents an obstacle to certain approaches for the drug abuse damage reduction.
T.D.
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