Citric Acid in Heroin: How Much is too Much?
My family in chains; My parents affair with heroin.
Does England Need a Drug User Union?
Hi, I received a comment from Joe (hi Joe!) who said he was writing an aricle on why Britain needs a drug user union and could we help? Well, it happens to be good timing Joe, because it is a discussion on many peoples lips – how to unify and strength the voice of the drug user in the UK enabling it to become more effective addressing issues that routinely affect the lives of drug users. For England however, it is even more pertinent as we are currently adrift in what might be a diverse and eclectic drug user movement, but it is one without a unified voice, or indeed a mechanism to sift and reflect back through the real concerns of the drug using community at large. So what do we do? Well, we can start by answering Joe’s question. Do we need a drug user union in the UK? (Note: this is pitched at a newcomers look into the drug user union movement so does not go in depth into some of the issues that are bubbling away for the movement).
We do need a drug user union in the UK, just like they do in many other parts of the world. Whilst a trade union’s primary role is to represent their members on employment issues, a drug user union has often emerged in a country to focus on issues affecting drug users in treatment. And just like a workers union would fight for better pay and working conditions, a drug users union focuses at least half of their energy on ensuring drug users in treatment get treated fairly, humanely, and equally – like anyone else who is a consumer of a health service.
Historically and no different from many other countries, drug treatment in the UK has varied widely in its ability to reflect the needs of its client group and has often been modelled on extremely punitive, isolating and demoralising approaches to treating drug use. The most widely used approach has always been the ‘Carrot and Stick’ model, where users are rewarded with privileges for compliance. This often means permitting take home doses of methadone if users choose to ‘get with the programme’ and show it by presenting no positive urine samples. The Carrot.
The stick happens when users are punished punitively when they ‘fail’. This has varied from the inexplicable; a reduction in ones prescription (just when they are showing they perhaps need an increase) to the common; drink your methadone supervised -which can mean rather humiliatingly drinking it at the chemist in front of everybody (including your children’s friends parents). But anyone who fully understands drug dependence in all its complexity, will know that punishments make no hay when it comes to the decision, or the overwhelming need to use drugs. In fact punishments often simply isolate the person further and drive them deeper into their dependence/addiction. People become resentful, unable to confide in the people who are supposed to be supporting them, and simply lose the resources, the motivation and the knowledge about how to make the changes they wanted to when they started the programme.
T wenty years ago when ‘user involvement started in the UK, we were coming out of the dark ages in terms of drug treatment. Today, with a high degree of user involvement around the country, things have been much better for the average drug user in treatment. But success in the UK has been patchy to say the least, and todays political ideology that directs the funding wand has caused not only cut backs in drug treatment but has created a whole series of new problems, problems which are ripe for a drug user union to tackle.
The UK needs independent union/s for drug users simply because they must have an independent voice in their treatment which affects, like a work or a trade union, a huge part of ones daily life. Much of todays user involvement is now suffering from the left turn it took many years ago to follow the money (and sometimes the support as well, both are understandable to some degree) and get into bed with the same health authorities they needed to have clear heads about. This has not only influenced some of the decisions such groups have made, sometimes at the expense of their communities, but has now left them defenseless to big budget cuts in the health service, money which is no longer ring-fenced to protect drug treatment. Drug User Groups that have spent years working, often for no pay, sometimes doing or supporting much of the work of professionals, have, at the stroke of a pen, been vanquished. Thanks for all the work mate, but seeya later.
Perhaps if we had set up as unions, even to the extent where users who wanted to join could pay their dues with the knowledge that they were getting something for their money; positive change, we would have a strong lead and vision for the way we want drug treatment to go in this country, a direction which is centred around the needs of the client, not the government, and not the key-worker or consultant. The client who is, after all supporting a massive industry of jobs, careers and reputations.
But drug user unions have a much bigger part to play in civil society. Unions can offer educational, lifelong learning and training opportunities to their members, just like real unions.
But drug user unions have a much bigger part to play in civil society. Unions can offer educational, lifelong learning and training opportunities to their members, just like real unions. Historically, unions have not only negotiated for and championed better workplace rights with employers but for a better deal for working people in the wider world. Having battled to extend the right to vote, it was the unions that created a political party that working people could vote for – the Labour Party. It is perfectly possible, as is reflected in perhaps one of the world’s most brilliant Drug User Unions, The Swedish User Union, for drug users to become directly influential in a country’s national politics; becoming to Go To organisation on drug related issues: Nothing About Us Without Us – the slogan for the drug user movement.
So yes, the collected strength and political ability of the English user movement is perhaps at a bit of a crossroads, or on a cliff edge, or even a sinking boat. It has only to look to its brethren in Scotland and Ireland (north and south) to see shining examples of cohesive and effective partnership working and union values, forging better and more humane drug policies in various sectors like health, criminal justice, treatment etc. But the space is empty for a unified user voice in England, the seat is up, the pantry littered with almosts and nearlies. Yet the values of a drug user union are urgently needed today. For those drug users still struggling with substandard or punitive treatment, poor engagement opportunities, or one size fits all care, it is just as much-needed for the society we live in, the drug policies that desperately need our thoughts, creativity and input, the solutions to community drug issues that only we as drug users can really pinpoint and tackle effectively. But that’s not all. What about unions at work?
OMG! I just LOVE these Canadian drug users!
(THRWU) – A World’s First!
Black Poppy and INPUD, are more than pleased to report on THRWU, the world’s first ever harm reduction workers’ union which went public on 11 November 2014. Members of INPUD have been involved in this campaign, with a major shout out going to Torontonian Raffi Balian – (a long time friend of both Black Poppy and member of INPUD since its beginnings). Raffi has been a serious mover and shaker on the East Side of Canada for about 20 years now, setting up CounterFIT, which has consistently brought us all innovative, user led and drug user centric projects while inspiring people from all over the world that there is a time to stop thinking and just do it! So it was no surprise to see Raffi, (the guy kneeling down with the green jacket on the left in the picture below) at it again, enthusing, organising, promoting and supporting his fellow junkies, workers, and of course the community.
Toronto Harm Reduction Workers Union -What are you waiting for -give your local union leader (IWW) a call and start talking!
The majority of these workers have been hired for their lived experience of using drugs, incarceration and homelessness and are continuing to organize with the goal of unionizing all of the city’s harm reduction workers.
Discrepancies in wages, with workers doing similar work taking home vastly different pay.
People work for years without raises, and have limited to no access to benefits, vacation and sick days.
Management depends on social assistance to provide the basic benefits that workers need (such as emergency dental and drug benefits). This is especially detrimental for those of us hired because we live with HIV and/or Hep C, or use opiode substitution therapy.
Workers are discriminated against based on the lived experience they are hired for.
Many positions are extremely precarious, with grants and funding threatened by conservative and anti-science ideology, and austerity budgets that endanger public health.
These are very real issues affecting the daily lives of people who’s work is not just a job, but a ’cause’, a life, based on their lived experience and a way to put their heart and soul back into their communities, funneling years and years of privileged insight into their work, which has gone such a long way towards stemming the HIV epidemic in the drug injecting community. And damn right they deserve paid work or a raise along with everyone else! Damn right their should be the chance of promotion from volunteer to worker, to team leader to manager. Let’s all be clear here, harm reduction would not work saving the lives it does, reducing the harm it does, stemming the tide of infectious diseases that it does, without the world’s harm reduction workers and many of these are our peers. People who use drugs, used drugs, are on prescriptions etc. The majority of work is unsung, underpaid and under acknowledged for the real impact it has on the community.
So who are we talking about exactly? Well, let’s let THRWU speak for themselves!
“Harm reduction is an evidence-based and practical approach to dealing with the harms associated with drug use…Harm reduction also aims to respond to harm experienced on a structural or societal level (such as stigma, discrimination and criminalization). This work should be grounded in the values of respect, non-judgment, and in the promotion of self-determination and self-empowerment for folks involved!
Boy oh boy, lets wish them luck with their new unionised labour force and their further organizing efforts!
How do I organize a Harm Reduction Workers Union in my city?
For more information don’t miss visiting their website www.thrwu.org or by email and – if you are in Toronto – JOIN UP!!
Dont Miss this!!! If you want to find out the story of drug user activism in Australia by a woman who was not only there but integral to the very essence of active drug users doin’ it for themselves, setting limits in the sky and rockin right up to parliament house itself to get the job done – then you cannot miss this production!! From WHACK; Victorias Drug User Magazine; Annie Madden, the firebrand of an Aussie cog in the Aussie activist wheel, was asked to write about he years of experience and knowledge around the evolution of the Australian drug user history movement – and it is compulsory reading my friends! The History of Drug User Activism in Australia by AIVL’s Chief Exec and Superwoman incarnate, Annie Madden – get out your reading specs, sit back with your favourite tipple, and IV the contents of this fabulous issue….
Please click this link for the easy to read online magazine, which you can print out.
Annie Madden, Chief Exec, AIVL Australia; Australia’s Own Superstar Activist!
Annie Madden is currently the Executive Officer of the Australian Injecting & Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL) which is the national peak body representing state and territory drug user organisations and illicit drug users at the national level. Prior to her current role, Annie was the Co-ordinator of the NSW Users & AIDS Association (NUAA) for six years. She has an honours degree in Social and Political Sciences. She is on numerous national, Commonwealth Government and research committees including the recently appointed Ministerial Advisory Committee on AIDS, Sexual Health and Hepatitis C and regularly takes extremely effective roles in global United Nation and WHO reviews, committees, global guidance publications and drug related recommendations. She has been working in the areas of illicit drug use, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis for over 14 years, has been an injecting drug user for over 18 years and on methadone for many years also. Annie is one of the world’s most inspiring women user activists who has worked tirelessly day in and day out to challenge the discrimination and human rights violations occurring to people who use drugs. And not just in Australia where she works at the top of her game, going head to head with politicians and Charity heads, doctors and do-gooders, parents and always her peers – drug users, but around the world, wherever she gets the chance to fight against ignorance and discrimination, for women who use drugs, for all of us, of any colour. Annie Madden is a woman we should all be proud of, especially, as drug users, we are lucky enough to have her on our side. Coz she is a truly kind and caring person, humble, hard working, smart and emphatic. Thanks for all you’ve done Annie Madden, and all your future will bring. We send you thanks, light and love.
Your friends at BP and around the world, those who know you, love you, and those who haven’t yet had the pleasure, thank you.
Feeling a bit defeated?? Find yourself slowly crushed by the weight of a loved one’s ignorant viewpoints on your drug use?
Well Ditch it Brothers and Sisters!
Last year, just like every year on the 1st of November, that very special day in the drug users own calendar comes alive! Only last year, guess who should write one of the most moving, powerful and courageous testimonies of our times – but the Swedish Drug Users Union!
This readers, is no great shock as this world-class union consisting of 13 separate chapters including Stockholm, Malmo etc is consistently putting out some of the most innovative and high quality peer resources available, certainly within Europe, and is a 1st class example of just what your user group can do both inside and outside government. Remember, Sweden may appear liberal but it is in fact very conservative towards drug users and just demanding a globally approved and evidenced based needle exchange for the inner city, has taken years and years of struggle by the union (so they have opened it themselves sans local permission in order to save lives. Now that’s action!).
Along with the impressive journey travelled over (at least) the last decade pushed onwards by some of their leading Union members (a big shout out to the brilliant founder Berne and his team at the lead union of Sweden, and Kikki and her close team running the highly visible and hardworking Stockholm branch.
It is, dear readers, a day to proclaim and reclaim the precious rights to our own bodies and what goes in them, our independence regarding our alternative lifestyle choices, to relish and delight in our chemical search for enlightenment; and to have fun, be loud and proud and educate the consistently new ignorant people who read the tabloids and watch the chat shows to understand their news..
Reader’z, I implore you to read out and even copy a version of this truly excellent statement of our rights and our scapegoated position in English, be polite and ask SDDU if you wish to reprint any of it (credited of course) on your groups website and goddammit, pin it up in your local methadone clinic, prison or rehab on 1st November!
Big thank you to Theo Van Dam and the Netherland’s LSD for starting our special global day.
The international drug users’ movement welcomes the introduction over recent years of a human rights discourse into discussions about drug law reform, harm reduction and public health, and the clear delineation of the systemic relations between global punitive prohibition and the grotesque violations of the rights of people who use drugs.
However, on this, International Drug Users’ Day, the International Network of People who Use Drugs wants to push this discourse one step further and affirm the positive right of people to use the drugs of their choice without the undue interference of police, judicial, and medical authorities. This right is implied most clearly by those to privacy, bodily integrity, and the right not to be discriminated against.
For too long, human rights discourse has largely ignored this thorny issue, and has focused to great effect on the egregious human rights violations rained down upon people simply on the basis that they choose to use drugs whose usage is deemed unacceptable subsequent to the passage of the three global conventions that together comprise global prohibition.
The range of such abuses is vast, systemic and grotesque, and includes abrogations of the right to vote, of the right to liberty, to privacy, to physical and mental integrity, to freedom from cruel and inhuman treatment, to freedom from involuntary medical procedures, to be free from discrimination, and to the highest attainable standard of health. Repressive drug laws also jeopardise the right to safety by denying people access to drugs of known quality, quantity, and purity, thus exposing us to the risk of overdose, poisoning and infection, as well as to sterile means of administering injectable drugs.
These systemic rights abuses driven by a globally repressive legal environment of varying degrees of viciousness has included torture, forced treatment, police shakedowns and violence, arbitrary mass incarceration and detention, the denial of access to medical services (most notably denial of the right to access treatment for HCV and HIV), and the denial of access to harm reduction services. Harsh drug laws jeopardise the right to family life by denying drug using parents access to their children, and in some countries people, especially women, known to be users of illegal drugs have been forcefully sterilised. These violations driven by a combination of puritanical moralism, racism, sexism, and the biopolitical imperative of governments to exert control over, and discipline, the bodies of their citizens, has created a world in which people who use, and in particular who inject, drugs are massively, disproportionately affected by blood borne viruses, most notably HIV and HCV. These violations are not glitches in the system of drug control, nor the actions of a few ‘rogue’ enforcement agents, rather they are constitutive of, and directly entailed by, prohibition.
People who use currently illegal drugs have been labelled immoral, criminal, and sick, often a combination of all three at the same time. We have been moralised over, criminalised and pathologised. On this International Drug Users’ Day, we say enough. On this International Drug Users’ Day we assert the right to bodily integrity, and to privacy, we reclaim control over our bodies and minds and assert the right of consenting adults to use whatever drugs they choose, whether it be for pleasure, to self-medicate, to enhance performance, to alter consciousness or to provide some succour and relief from hard lives, we insist that as adults that right is ours. We defend the right of adults to use their drugs of choice in their homes without causing harm or nuisance to others, and to carry them in public without fear of police harassment, abuse and intimidation.
The use of consciousness altering drugs is an integral part of the human experience, common to all cultures throughout history, as such drug use is neither bad, mad, nor sick, it should not, and need not, be a crime. The use of currently illegal drugs is not a sign of moral depravity, a character fault, a marker of criminal tendencies, or of pathology, it is no more and no less than one aspect of what it is to be human, a part of the diversity of human experience. Doug Husak, one of the few academics to have seriously looked at this issue concludes in his book Drugs and Rights that ” the arguments in favour of believing that adults have a moral right to use drugs recreationally are more persuasive than the arguments on the other side” he continues that those of us who reject the war on drugs, which is in reality a war on people who use drugs, “should be described as endorsing a pro-choice position on recreational drug use”.
To assert and defend this implied right to use drugs INPUD will be launching a ‘Charter of the Rights of People who Use Drugs’ laying out the basic rights to which we, like all other members of the human family are entitled. This charter will be prefaced by a detailed exposition of the multiple areas of life in which the rights of people who use drugs are violated, simply on the basis of what drugs we choose to use.
Drug use = my choice!
More information: Protecting rights to ensure health: International Drug Users Day 2013.
A Vending Machine for Crack Pipes? Now that Rocks!
Well, I’ll be damned, harm reduction is getting down with drug users -how fabulous when we find a glowing example of a perfectly useful, innovative and user friendly invention that actually makes it out of its’ idea stage, only to leap frog over the community hysterics into production and onto our streets; the streets of Vancouver in this case. A vending machine for crack pipes -selling the pipes that one may be constantly in need of (if one has a constant preoccupation with the white rocks, that is…) for just 25c.
OK, so as the VICE news item below says, the over-arching idea behind this was to prevent HIV or Hepatitis C transmission that people COULD be exposed too, when finding themselves sharing pipes and some bodily fluids from the associated burnt or cut thumbs and lips that can occur from heavy sessions on the pipe. But I notice at least one of the vending machines is located in a popular drop in service, which on its own provides an important moment for a user to touch base, be seen by peers and health professionals, add to an important data pool on drug usage, – and all at the same time as making a personal positive health choice and a chance to reduce harm. Nice one!
Mariner James of the Portland Hotel Society with the machine.
Three Cheers for our Junkie Peers!
So three cheers to the continuation of user ingenuity and peer outreach in Vancouver, they have done us all proud. I should say however, that the sheer scale of what drug users are up against in Vancouver seems to ensure our colleagues are constantly fighting hard to maintain some semblance of humanity for our community there.
The Downtown Eastside, centered on the intersection of Main and Hasting streets in Vancouver, has one of the highest concentrations of injection drug users in the world. An overgrown ‘Skid Row’ is flush with prostitution and destitution, most of its residents live in badly maintained hotels and hostels lining Main Street.
Out of 12,000 residents in the area, some 5,000 are estimated to be drug users and any chat with a peer from these streets or indeed a look at any of the documentaries on You Tube about the area, shows our peers are struggling; crack and methamphetamine use remains steady or is increasing and even injecting heroin use continues to rise as much of the scene is now buoyed by pharmaceutical opiates which appears to be collecting young, newer users whereas in other places, like the UK and Western Europe, we are seeing injecting heroin use dropping among the young and plateauing among older users..
Since 2008 it seems over half of Vancouver’s opiate users are on methadone or similar OST’s although the figures aren’t as encouraging for its aboriginal population. For up to date information on the drug situation in Vancouver, Click here.
Although the battle to save lives and promote humane drug policies in Vancouver however is ongoing, there are certainly signs that the current interventions are working. Yet the aim must be to examine the strategies that are showing results Statistics show the number of new HIV infections (incidence) may be decreasing among people who inject drugs, females and Aboriginal people and where targeted, innovative health and harm reduction responses are delivered, results generally follow.
In Vancouver itself, initiatives across the board have given us all a welcome insight into just what targeted, user friendly and progressive health interventions can do. The project STOP (The Seek and Treat for Optimal Prevention of HIV/AIDS Project) was a three-year pilot funded by the Ministry of Health and ending in March 2013. This fascinating endeavour would ultimately transform the HIV system of care in the city through a variety of initiatives and activities we now know as imperative for change, such as community engagement with people living with HIV, evidence review, consultations with both service and healthcare providers, the development of population-specific reports, constant assessment of the current state of the HIV system of care, policy change, and the funding, monitoring and evaluation of over 40 pilot activities. Phew! A terrific document was recently published which I urge anyone interested in progressive health interventions for this community, to read this (Click Here).
Toronto user activists, still innovating and agitating for their community.
Recent moves to copy Vancouver’s famous safer drug consumption room INSITE – (sometimes known as a supervised injection centre or clinic) has been underway, and a feasibility study on injection rooms was actually requested by the City of Toronto in 2008 (and later expanded to include Ottawa). The study was then undertaken by researchers at the University of Toronto and staff at St. Michael’s Hospital, after watching the developments at INSITE.
The results of the study were released in April 2012 and it advised Ottawa to introduce two “safe consumption” sites and Toronto to open three sites. While they didn’t recommend specific locations, they did suggest more than one centralized location, which is what Vancouver has with its Insite program. Around the same time a Public Health initiated study emerged recommending Montreal also open up to four safe drug consumption rooms, openly referring to the benefits such sites have repeatedly shown in reducing the number of overdose deaths, assisting people to make positive changes in their lives and reducing the drug paraphernalia found on the streets and in the parks.
Although conservatives in Toronto raced to dampen spirits with their usual confused concerns about the recommendations, the brilliant partnership working recently undertaken by drug user activists like those at VANDU, who worked long and hard with various groups, advocates, researchers, health professionals, lawyers and others to fight for the special exemption to Canada’s Federal Drug Laws which enabled INSITE to remain open for good, (an exemption which now finally stands) today means that cities and provinces like Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, can also fight for a similar exemption -and should.
Yet before we say goodnight to our peers in Vancouver (and across Canada) may we just wish our friends luck as they embark on their latest Crack Pipe Vending Machine initiative and hope that other countries may soon follow their courageous lead. Well done in using another tool in the fight to prevent HIV and Hep C, in fostering rights and responsibilities for people who use drugs, and forwarding the adage that judgements and moralising will never help the drugs debate, only humanity, intelligent policies and community partnerships involving the drug using community -will provide us all with the solutions we require now and for the future. G ‘Night friends.
Pic: Another recent initiative that drug using peers have been trained up in, in Toronto -using the anti overdose drug Naloxone, to be administered to an opiate user at the time of an overdose to essentially restart breathing again.
The Crack Pipe Vending Machine -A Vice Article.
“Crack pipes: 25 Cents,” reads the sign on a shiny vending machine, painted in bright polka dots. Decades ago, this device sold sandwiches. Now, when you put in your quarter and punch in a number, there is a click, a pause, and a little whirr. Then the spiral rotates until a crack pipe—packaged in a cardboard tube to avoid shattering—drops into a tray. Then you reach through the flap and retrieve your new stem.
According to the BC Centre for Disease Control, Hepatitis C and HIV can be spread through sharing crack pipes. The intense heat and repeated usage that comes with crack addiction can quickly wear pipes down to jagged nubs. Users are always in need of fresh supplies. Like distributing clean needles, making crack pipes available is just good public health policy, as users don’t have to resort to risky activities to come up with the cash to buy one on the street.
The crack pipe vending machine was the dream of Mark Townsend and Mariner Janes, of the Portland Hotel Society (PHS), a non-profit that provides services to persons with mental health and addiction issues. There are currently two machines and they’ve been in place for six months. Each holds 200 pipes and needs refilling a couple times each week.
One of the machines is located at PHS’s bustling Drug Users Resource Centre. As I arrive there with Mariner, people greet each other as a writing workshop wraps up, while others queue up for lunch. I ask if anyone wants to talk to me about the vending machine that stood in the corner.
Joe looks at me like I’m an idiot, then smiles, and adds: “It’s a vending machine, what else do you need to know?” He says he uses it all the time and that “a quarter is way better than what’d you have to pay on the street.” A bit of a debate kicks off about how to improve the machines e.g. including other crack related supplies: lighters, push sticks, etc.
A woman named DJ chimes in. She uses the machine and tells her friends about it. She says she’d like to see more pipe vending machines around the Downtown Eastside. “But bolt them down… People go: ‘Hey, pipes!’ And shake it to get them to drop out for free.” Mariner nods his head, all too aware of the shaken machine dilemma.
Mariner hopes that distributing pipes will one day be as accepted a practice as handing out needles to IV drug users has become. He says, “the stigma around crack use is much higher than, say, heroin or any other drug. There’s a particular quality of panic.” And he worries about the possible sensationalism that the vending machines might attract from more conservative commentators.
But community support for handing out safe crack smoking supplies is growing. Three years ago, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority began a pipe distribution pilot program. The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users started even before that. Vancouver Police have come round, giving the nod to some harm reduction initiatives, even directing users to the safe injection site and other programs.
Mariner spends his days behind the wheel of PHS’s needle exchange van, doing outreach and distributing clean needles and pipes around Vancouver. There is a neighbourly, comradely feeling between him and the people who use the vending machines, or sidle up to the his van whose purpose is announced in giant letters on the side panel of the vehicle.
Sometimes, a client will ask for a more subtle approach, so as not to announce to the entire neighbourhood what’s going on. Mariner will pull into an alley, or even use a less obvious vehicle. And if a more anonymous interaction is what the user wants, all they need is a quarter. That’s his philosophy—meet people on their own terms, and provide services as a peer, not an authority.
The look and feel says: I am a machine that dispenses a basic health care supply to the community, not a judgement or moral lecture.
This article was authored by: Garth Mullins ; for VICE and has been copied fully from the VICE.com website.
Norway’s’ Drug Users’ Inject Some Common Sense into Parliament!
Norway’s Drug User’s Day has been arranged every year on November 18 but this year it seemed quite special. Arranged by Arild Knutsen and his companions in The Association for Humane Drug Policies to raise awareness about the issues facing people who use drugs in Norway, this year would see a contingent of passionate drug user activists face their country’s politicians across the table in Parliament – offering opinions and answering questions – all upon invitation by the current Labour Government.
The film shows how drug users in Norway effectively banded together to ask their government to implement heroin prescribing for many of its country’s 10,000 users.
Fully subtitled, the film follows a large group of Norway’s drug users as they put their thoughts and views across to their country’s politicians in an articulate, direct and heartfelt way way, asking simply for the considered implementation of more progressive drug policies that would permit many the chance to live a more dignified life; for is that not their right like any other?
They ask why, when the results from heroin prescribing in neighboring Denmark is so encouraging as to now be expanded, can’t Norway consider a heroin (diamorphine) trial or programme? Why, when more and more European countries continue to collate positive and encouraging data on the outcomes from heroin prescribing clinics does Norway continue to hold back a tool that could provide so many heroin users with stability, dignity, and well being?
Ronnie Bjørnestad from proLAR and Borge Andersen are also profiled as fighting for drug users rights.
A film by Chistoffer Næss and Per Kristian Lomsdalen, Munin Film.
Here is something you will rarely hear about emanating from Australia, or mooted by its politicians. Yet it is worth shouting about -and worth emulating — and demanding more recognition for its many excellent years of work outside the drugs field! In Australia, the user run, federally funded AIVL (Australian Injecting & Illicit drug users League) is an incredible, national organisation that is at the centre of the some of the best harm reduction initiatives in OZ and in the world. Extremely well versed in drug policy and politics, AIVL and its team of extremely able people who use/d drugs (many at the top are women!) have been tireless in their innovation, research and developments to help empower the drug using community in ways to look after themselves, each other and their communities. The publish a National user magazine called Junkmail (like our BP blog,by coincidence -(we called it Junkmail after BP’s letters page although Junkmail has been the Aussie national mag for many years)). Many states like NSW, Queensland and Victoria also have their own excellent magazines by and for users – with NSW probably having the longest running user mag in the world in Users Voice by NUAA.
Positioned as the national drug user organsiation, AIVL members stretch across Australia, and in each state there is another State ‘user run’ organisation, which has just as much oomph, savvy, and articulateness as their ‘mothership’ AIVL. Organisations like QuIVAA (Queensland Intravenous AIDS assoc) which aims to “represent the diversity of interests of injectors and illicit drug users, through systemic advocacy aimed at addressing issues affecting users in Queensland” (Fantastic!) -along with other groups in what can sometimes really seem like a police state -Northern territory for example, or where in Western Australia they lock up more indiginous folk per head of population than anywhere in the world, targeting plenty of drug users and throwing them in the lock up in the process, over and over again…Shameful.
AIVL gives you the list of contacts for all states in Australia – great orgs to seek out should you ever be travelling there and need advice or help with scripts, legal issues, the low down on the local scene etc.
AIVL, is Australia’s national org – (click here) but here is a list of Australia’s State Organisations run by and for people who use drugs.
What have we been writing about?
Cocaine – How Do You Take Yours?