CHECK Ba-Wü #1

SOCIETY
their doctors beforehand? Hardly likely. Are
both taking a risk that could seriously endanger
their health? Certainly. As the chance that
so-called drug checking will be offered on site
in the club is pretty slim. With drug checking,
illegally acquired substances can be checked
for their ingredients before consumption. The
first offer for this was set up in the Netherlands
more than 25 years ago. It is now officially offered
in Austria, Switzerland, Spain, France and
other countries. The psychiatrist Dr. med. Felix
Betzler, Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
at the Charité in Berlin, told the Deutsches
Ärzteblatt: “From a medical point of view, drug
checking makes perfect sense because we
know that consumption is taking place anyway.
Our interest in the sense of harm reduction is
of course that the consumers know as much as
possible about the risks.”
SAFETY FIRST!
At the global level, a movement has made itself
heard in recent years that makes very specific
demands. The Global Commission on Drug Policy
was founded in January 2011 by a group of personalities
from America and Europe. The organization
calls for a new global drug policy that is based
on scientific knowledge and takes compassion,
health and human rights into account.
FIVE PRACTICAL APPROACHES TO
SCIENCE-BASED DRUG POLICY
RECOMMENDED BY THE GLOBAL
COMMISSION ON DRUG POLICY:
1. People‘s HEALTH AND SAFETY must be a
top priority.
2. CONTROLLED ACCESS TO ESSENTIAL
MEDICINE must be guaranteed, especially
painkillers in palliative medicine.
3. The CRIMINALIZATION AND IMPRISONMENT
of people who use drugs should end. It
does not change the prisoner‘s drug problem
and destroys lives all over the world.
4. A RETHINK IN DEALING WITH THE PROSE-
CUTION of drug smugglers and organized
crime must take place. The energy put into
prosecuting and punishing consumers
should be used to bring down powerful and
well-connected criminal organizations.
5. The DRUG MARKETS should be REGU-
LATED and control should be given to
governments. Governments should take
responsibility for ensuring that potentially
dangerous drugs are distributed to users
in a controlled manner instead of leaving
drug trafficking to organized criminal
groups.
CULTURAL PHENOMENON
In addition, the Global Commission on Drug
Policy suggests that psychoactive substances
should be classified based on their addiction
potential and other effects on the body. To this
day, this has not been the case: some substances
are legally available because they are
considered useful (medication) or culturally
important (alcohol), while others are considered
destructive and are strictly prohibited.
This rather arbitrary distinction is more radically
as well as humourously put by activist and
founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, Dr. phil.
Ethan Nadelmann:
“IF OLD WHITE MEN EXPERIMENTED WITH
COCAINE AND TEENAGERS REGULARLY
WITH VIAGRA, THEN COKE WOULD ALREADY
BE AVAILABLE ON PRESCRIPTION.”
PORTUGAL AS A GOOD EXAMPLE?
In July 2001 Portugal passed a law
decriminalizing the possession of drugs,
whether cannabis, ecstasy or heroin. Since
then, possession is no longer a criminal
offense, but rather just an administrative
offense such as wrong parking. In 2015, the
drug-induced death rate in Portugal was five
times lower than the E.U. average. In the same
year it was confirmed that social spending on
substance abuse per capita has decreased by
18% since 1999. The number of HIV infections
from injecting drugs has been reduced to 18
cases per year. (ts,mb)
CHECK BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG #1
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