VIII National Conference on Drug Policy
Conclusions and Perspectives
More information on: www.conferenciadrogas.com/2010
With over 400 participants and the presence of specialists, government officials and activists from Argentina, 4 and 5 October was held in the auditorium of the annex building of the Chamber of Deputies, the Eighth National Conference on Drug Policy. Organized by the civil association Intercambios, a nongovernmental organization in Latin America, key on issues of harm reduction and drug policy, under the auspices of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and other United Nations agencies, the meeting focused on necessary legislative reforms to decriminalize drug users and focus them on the field of health. “The debate is installed; it’s time for lawmakers to strengthen the road. Public health and human rights must be at the heart of drug policy debate” said Graciela Touzé president of the Intercambios Civil Association, who is the Conference organizer at the National Congress for the eighth consecutive year.
An opening with strong definitions
“Without a law that decriminalizes possession for consumption and a serious control of precursor chemicals and funds, what we are doing now do not classify as a serious policy,” asserted Stella Maris Martínez National General Nation Defender of the Public Ministry, during the opening ceremony of the VIII National Conference on Drug Policy that was organized by Intercambios Civil Association on Monday and Tuesday in the auditorium of the National Congress.
In turn, Monica Cuñarro, executive secretary of the National Comission Coordinator of Public Policy on Prevention and Control of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs, Transnational Organized Crime and Corruption, noted that “except Argentina and Venezuela, all the countries in the region have decriminalized possession for personal consumption.”
The public prosecutor warned about the increase of the violence associated with organized crime: “Despite the fact that Argentina has not the governance at risk because of drug traffic, there are more violent situations than before: a man shot in a mall, the triple crime of ephedrine traffickers and twenty murders in Federal Capital to get trade routes to Spain“. She linked these events with the paradigm of the war on drugs “operations as Condor, Plan Colombia and Mérida led to countries like Mexico to extreme levels of violence that are moving to Guatemala and Costa Rica”.
Graciela Touzé, agreed: “The debate is installed, it’s time for lawmakers to consolidate the way. Public health and human rights must be at the heart of drug policy.” From his role as chairman of the Committee for the Prevention of Drug Addiction and Drug Traffic Control of the House of Deputies, the legislator Fabián Peralta said there is “policy decision that the bill of the reform of the drug law 23,737 will be treated this year or early next year” and it was proposed “to end the assumption that every user is an addict.” Cuñarro and Martínez claimed that the reform should include the proportionality of punishment. “The number of detainees has tripled: poor women who are not dangerous, that are arrested and sent to inhuman places for being mules,” said Martínez.
From the Ministry of Labor, Lucía Garcia, coordinator of Addiction Prevention Policies, anticipated that this issue is being incorporated into the worker’s committees and she presented the Observatory of Vulnerable Situations in the Work Field, developed with the Faculty of Law of the Buenos Aires University.
Also attended the opening ceremony: the judge Martín Vázquez Acuña and the health expert Alicia Gillone, members of the advisory committee on drug issues of the Chief of Ministers Cabinet; the former legislators Leandro Gorbarcz and Juan Sylvestre Begnis, authors of the mental health bill and the creation of a prevention program of addictions which have the unanimous sanction of Deputies; Oliver Moss, secretary of Global and Political Affairs of the British Embassy in Buenos Aires; the UN members Rubén Mayorga, UNAIDS Country Coordinator for South America, Marcelo Vila, representing the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and Carola Lew, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Sent adhesions: the Chief of Ministers Cabinet Aníbal Fernández and Alberto Sileoni Minister of Education; the politician Ricardo Alfonsín from the Unión Cívica Radical party and the deputies Cecilia Merchán and Victoria Donda, who greeted “the opening of a debate that takes us out of certain paralysis of the existing legislation” on the same date on which both presented a bill to amend the Law 23,737.
Drugs, control and security
On Tuesday morning, on the panel “Drugs, control and security” the increase of micro-trafficking was addressed. “We’re moving towards the separation between personal use and drug trafficking; but legislative tools are also needed for the micro-trafficking, which we have neglected and has grown in Argentina,” said Alberto Binder, penal policy adviser of the Chamber of Deputies and President of the Latin American Institute on Security and Democracy (ILSED), who said that also with the drug use decriminalization, the micro-trafficking policy must minimize the use of punitive tools: “This requires a prominent role of municipalities to impose closure of places and other measures, because they know for sure the map of the kiosks where drugs are sold”.
In the Argentine map of substances consumption, the growth of psychotropic drugs was highlighted, which rose from 25,000 units in 2008 to 42,020 in 2009, asserted Raquel Méndez, head of the Department of Psychotropic and Narcotic Drugs of the National Institute of Drug Administration, Food and Medical Technology (ANMAT): “When we speak of psychotropic we refer to clonazepan, benzodiazepines and other drugs related to self-medication. Laboratories every year adduce market growth, our question is whether we argentines, really need to consume in such quantities“, said the expert.
There was also a growth in narcotic drugs sales, which rose from 20,780 units to 31,980, “but we think, in this case, it is a good thing because it is used for terminal diseases, pain therapy, that previously were used less than necessary in the country ” Méndez said.
A comprehensive assistance model: Bahía
A model of drug care service was presented by the Brazilian Antonio Nery Filho, coordinator of the Centre for Research and Therapy of Drug Abuse (CETAD), Faculty of Medicine, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), who explained that the model includes seven combined strategies:
1) Implementation of street clinics on harm reduction for drug users (which means that abstention is not imposed);
2) Expansion of the service network with more health care centers;
3) Conduct of a weekly program about drugs on a large reach media;
4) “You don’t play with alcohol and traffic”, informative interventions in the gas stations;
5) Health care face to face in the streets;
6) Reflection and training to community workers on drug issues, and
7) Dialogue with therapeutic communities about their approach.
