Eric Carlin’s Blog

I attended 3 days of the CND meeting at the UN in Vienna, spending most of my time with the NGOs as part of the Vienna NGO Committee on Narcotic Drugs and in preparation for the Beyond 2008 NGO Forum.

Antonio Maria Costa, Director of UNODC, addressed the NGO Forum. He made a lot of useful and constructive points, talking about the need to stop dividing harm reduction from prevention and the need to engage with NGOs. He also talked about the need to develop policy and practice based on evidence of effectiveness. Great - we all agree with that. However,  he then went on to state his support for random drug testing of pupils in schools. Now, whatever you think about that as an approach, there is certainly not sufficient research evidence to argue that this is an evidence-based way of preventing young people getting into trouble with drugs. More than that, I’d argue that such an approach potentially breaks the trust between students and teachers and is likely to drive the most vulnerable young people, the most likely to get into trouble with drugs, out of school, away from the opportunities to receive education, counselling and support and onto the streets where they’ll come into contact with more drugs and get involved in more crime than if they were still at school. Let me repeat - drug testing in schools may seem a good idea to some but the research evidence is at best inconsistent.  UNODC needs to give a lead on this.

Other presentations at the NGO Forum included a US presentation which again talked about evidence based approaches but then argued that we should cease any treatment approaches which do not lead to abstinence. We should also stop needle exchanges and, of course, we should promote random drug testing in schools.

In relation to the first point, of course abstinence is the safest option but it is not always going to be achievable, particularly for long-term users.

In relation to point two, needle exchanges have been extremely successful in reducing spread of HIV and other blood-borne viruses; moreover, a well-run scheme does not just dosh out needles, it also seeks to engage the user in improving their health and well-being, including accessing treatment. As a member of the audience said, of course you will achieve your abstinence outcome if all your drug users have died of AIDS from sharing needles. Is that what you want?

In relation to point three, this is not evidence-based but ideology-based; people should argue their positions honestly, not cite spurious research to support it.

This all sounds like it was depressing; not at all. I believe the NGO community is working more closely with national governments and with UNODC. More than that, the partnerships forged between NGOs who often have very different ideological positions to work on Beyond 2008 are inspiring and offer hope that we can work together on what we agree on - preventing and dealing with drug-related harms, even though we will always disagree in some areas about how to achieve that.

I did this radio interview after the NGO Forum.  I’ll also put up later the paper I put to the CND plenary on behalf of the Vienna NGO Committee.

http://www.csdp.org/audio/WS_30025.WMA