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view on challenging stereotypes, presenting his digital storytelling initiative, Story Turns( www. storyturns. org). Working with people who used heroin, he involved them in workshops to make a short video telling their personal story. Instead of the‘ dark, seedy, anonymous’ portrayal of drug users, the project resulted in‘ humanising’ stories and images – the message that( in the words of one participant)‘ there’ s more to me than addiction’.
Psychologist Dr Suzi Gage shared another imaginative initiative, the‘ Say why to drugs?’ project, which uses podcasts to look at the harms and the potential benefits of drugs, with‘ no judgement, no spin and no hyperbole’. Her first series, in conversation with rapper Scroobius Pip, took the conversation to young people and aimed to take them into territory where they could ask questions and build up a full and fair picture of drugs and people who use them.
the theme of changing the narrative continued, from both a UK and international perspective. Michael Shiner from the London School of Economics focused on disproportionate policing, particularly stop and search, which had‘ engulfed policing since 1980’ and intensified since the Stephen Lawrence inquiry gave
police‘ more power with less accountability’.
He explained that he was part of an organisation called Stop Watch, which was trying to change the narrative around stop and search, including tackling the‘ massive disproportionality in relation to drugs’.
Maria Phelan of Harm Reduction International( HRI) widened the view to the global state of harm reduction. While there had been progress on opioid substitution therapy( OST) in Monaco, Senegal and Kenya, funding cuts – and in some cases the lack of momentum to prioritise harm reduction – had scaled down progress in many countries.
Referring to HRI’ s latest biennial report, she highlighted that harm reduction in prisons‘ lies far behind what’ s available in the community’, with several programmes closing since the last report and Spain being‘ the only country that has anything up to scale’.
While Europe was seen as the‘ leader of a harm reduction approach’, there had been a decrease in needle and syringe programmes in the last two years, including in Portugal – the result of its financial crisis. Hepatitis C among injecting drug users remained a serious concern.
‘ There has been growth, but not fast enough,’ she said.‘ The biggest question is how do we get countries to invest and sustain funding? It’ s about protecting the gains we’ ve made.’
in a talk about supervised injecting facilities, the Scottish Drugs Forum’ s Kirsten Horsburgh suggested that doubts about their advantages tended to relate to lack of knowledge. When presented with clear benefits( from the results of 135 research projects) and‘ myth busting’ facts, most people were persuaded that providing a sterile environment was beneficial all round and did not perpetuate drug use.
Sharing this kind of research and information was of great benefit to drug users – the‘ popular scapegoats’, according to Mat Southwell( main pic) of the European Network of People who use Drugs( EuroNPUD).
‘ Drug user organising is no longer seen as separate, marginalised work,’ he said.‘ Europe has a strong network of drug user activists and we realised there was a need to get our act together and mobilise … We need to seize the opportunity to be active partners – we are high level advocates and technical providers.’
Looking at developing joint advocacy plans with other networks and running simultaneous campaigns would‘ help to create more noise’ and move towards meaningful representation with government and the EU.
But above all, the close working and informationsharing had the potential of much greater results – a key message from this year’ s Hot Topics.‘ We are committed to solidarity,’ he said.‘ Changes can’ t happen in isolation.’ DDN
HINER |
MARIA PHELAN |
KEITH SABIN |
MAGDALENA HARRIS |
KIRSTEN HORSBURGH |
www. drinkanddrugsnews. com February 2017 | drinkanddrugsnews | 7