ReageraMera

Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen

There are few places on earth that can be considered 'remote' anymore. Long-distance travel that used to take weeks or months is now just a few hours away by airplane.

The world is industrialising at an ever increasing rate. It is estimated that by 2030, 61% of the global population will live in urban areas, many of them in so-called ‘super-cities' of 20 million or more people. Tokyo or Mexico city will no longer be the exception, many of these huge conglomerations will be in the developing world. Historically mass migrations from the countryside to cities have resulted in the creation of slum areas, social deprivation and environmental damage.

Television and radio programmes can reach people even when roads cannot. In fact they regularly used to pass health education messages to rural groups. Mobile phones, once the fashion accessory of the business elite, have become everyday tools to link communities.

No everyone has benefited equally from globalization. The emergence of transnational corporations that dominate global markets have resulted in startling inequalities.

Of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries. Three quarters of the world's top 200 corporations are based in industrialized countries. They account for more than one quarter of global economic activity while employing less than one percent of its workforce. Those same corporations have annual sales of 18 times the size of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24 per cent of the total world population) living in "severe" poverty.

Communities that live in areas where illicit drugs are grown or sourced also suffer harm from global drug abuse because their social, political and economic development is hampered by the drug trade.

Drug trafficking impacts most heavily on some of the world's poorest communities, undermining efforts to support their positive development and destroying local cultures.

This is the environment and the realities we have to face when we talk about drug abuse prevention.  

Human beings cannot exist in isolation. We live together in families, social networks and communities. We invest in each other and our relationships, we value and maintain our connections.

In order to have our needs met, we rely on each other for love, affection, support, care and understanding. Our society is therefore based on complex interactions and dependencies.

Drugs undermine all of this.

Drugs distort an individual's decision-making process, limiting the ability to care for oneself or others.

Drug abuse overrides or replaces healthy social interaction, undermining the fundamental relationships within society.

All aspects of drugs result in widespread harm - from cultivation, production, transport, distribution and consumption.

Drug prevention work has a strong interaction with other drugs, above all alcohol and tobacco. Use of different drugs often occur together, with shared mechanisms of dependence and the resulting harm often comes from combined misuse of several substances. People who die from overdose often have large quantities of alcohol and legal drugs in the blood.

It is therefore very important that prevention is not directed towards one group of substances but involves joint action against alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and doping.

In 2003, the world's first global treaty on health was signed. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) took 4 long years of negotiations between the 191 member countries of the World Health Organisation. The most important feature of the FCTC is that it covers all aspects of tobacco, ranging from health warnings on the packets to the advertising, promotion and sponsorship activities of tobacco companies. In addition, the treaty sets out measures to control the sale of cigarettes to minors and tackle smuggling.

Attention is also given to supporting farmers to diversify their crops and to find other ways of earning a living than growing tobacco. Basically, the treaty covers the whole cycle of tobacco from the plant to the end product. It is the foundation of a global commitment to a comprehensive strategy to combat tobacco. It links together elements of supply and demand.

As you can imagine, finding a balance between all the competing interests of the countries was a real challenge. The World Health Organisation maintained a strong political commitment and complete focus during all of the slow and sometimes painful negotiations. To support the WHO, the health community united around the process. A special coalition of NGOs shadowed the negotiations, keeping up the pressure on the governments and monitoring and exposing attempts by the tobacco industry to infiltrate national delegations or influence the debate.

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is a good example of what can be achieved when committed NGOs cooperate and work together.

NGOs support and reinforce social connections between people.

They build stronger and more resilient societies, upholding the key of cooperation, solidarity, human rights, justice, and equality of opportunity.

NGOs give communities a voice, particularly those without political or economic power which suffer disproportionately from global drug abuse.

Drugs have no place in this vision and always involve harm.

Like-minded NGOs and community groups need therefore to work together to counteract pressure to liberalise drug policy.

Policy makers at all levels need an awareness of the harm of drug abuse. NGOs have an important role to play in this matter.

As NGOs we have a number of assets:

First of all, many of us share similar fundamental values and are all committed to working towards the same aim.

We also enjoy significant levels of public trust and confidence. A number of surveys have consistently shown that NGOs are considered more trustworthy, more so than governments or industry.

NGOs have the capacity to work together in a collaborative way. By sharing information, idea, advocacy tactics we can move the global agenda forward.

Globalisation can also work in our favour. We can influence the political, social and economic environments internationally. We can hold governments accountable for their policy decisions at home and abroad.

The strength of the international drug control system is its universality, with all governments solidly behind the United Nations drug conventions.

But drug policies are too important to be left to drug experts and to governments alone. It is a society-wide responsibility that requires society-wide engagement. This means working with children, starting from parents and teachers, to ensure that they develop self-esteem. This means to support family-based programmes, because prevention begins at home. This means advocacy.

People can be steered  away from drugs. And those that do suffer the misery of addiction can be brought back into society. This is the true meaning of harm reduction which goes far beyond its usual narrow definition.

We all want to help the poor farmers - to switch from crops to sustainable livelihoods.

We all want to help the drug addicts - to save them from a life of misery.

We all want to reduce the violence and crime associated with the drug economy.

My key message is:

Human rights are incompatible with drug abuse. All individuals have the right to a life that is not harmed by drugs. Policy makers need to to defend and protect this right. The rights and interests of drug users are not servd by supporting the continuation of drug abuse.

Alcohol, tobacco and drugs are phenomena that affect every geographic region in the world and no country can tackle these problems alone. To have any impact, there has to be a consistent approach to these products and this means creating strong coalitions hat can help governments to find the political will to act.

As NGOs  we can play a crucial and very important role in this matter. AS NGOs we share a common responsibility to take this initiative and this conference, The World Forum Against Drugs, further and strengthen and build further on this effort.

For the health community , this is our opportunity and challenge!

Thank you for your attention.