It’s time to change the drug policies

The 5th Latin American and 1st Central American Conference on Drug Policies was held in San José, Costa Rica, on September 3-4, with cooperation and support from both United Nations and Organization of American States agencies. This is an official summary of the ideas shared by the participating specialists. Nicaragua, with its extremely conservative official positions, was not represented at the event.

Specialist from the Continent

The general coordinator of the organizing committee for the Fifth Latin American and First Central American Conference on Drug Policies opened the conference with this phrase: “Latin America has its own voice and is seeking to lead the change from a path that has so far only led to war, violence and the criminalization of our peoples’ most vulnerable sectors.”

We must change current policy

The conference was jointly organized by CONFEDROGAS, a consortium created last year by six Latin American civil society organizations, all committed to achieving a profound change in drug policies, and by the Costa Rican Association for Drug Study and Intervention (ACEID), created a year earlier by professionals, artists and activists interested in changing Costa Rica’s drug policy to one based on a human rights approach with the mission of reducing stigma and discrimination against drug users as well as reducing risks and harm associated with the supply and demand of illegal substances.

With the participation of the host country’s highest authorities as well as government officials from the region, representatives from the main United Nations (UN) and Organization of American States (OAS) agencies and prominent specialists and activists from civil society, the two days of intense discussion left it clear that Latin America intends to move towards a paradigm change on drug policies, to one that respects human rights, recognizes that drug users have rights and incorporates a public health approach to address drug use. They also raised the need to move forward on drug market regulation policies. More than 500 people attended and participated in this meeting, Latin America’s most important conference on drug policies.

We see the result:
Increased violence

The meeting’s introductory words were given by Celso Gamboa, Costa Rica’s security minister, who opened the conference on behalf of President Luis Guillermo Solís. “Much of the fight against drug trafficking leads us to criminalize poverty… Violence has been met with violence and the results have not been successful; they have generated more violence,” Gamboa said, noting that efforts should be focused on “those who handle the economic capital of these structures.” He said that Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly “is debating the legalization of medicinal marijuana, which shows that the country is open to discussion, permeable to new ideas.” And he concluded that “We must rethink the strategy from a public health perspective but also as an economic issue. Enough with punishing this problem! If we don’t opt for prevention, we’ll reap bitter fruits.”

Giselle Amador Muñoz, ACEID’s executive director, then called for “urgent dialogue to modify current drug policies.” She defined the conference as “a forum for analysis and reflection among public, private and academic institutions, international agencies and civil society.” On referring to current drug policies, she quoted Einstein’s famous phrase: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

We’re for a change of paradigm

Yoriko Yasukawa, resident coordinator for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Costa Rica, began his intervention with the concept of achieving “a comprehensive human development strategy and development policies and programs that cover the entire population.” “We must do more to ensure recognition for the rights of people who use drugs,” clarifying that “more than proposing specific amendments we need a change of paradigm.”

Amado Philip de Andrés, regional representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for Central America and the Caribbean, stressed that “we need to structure truly comprehensive drug policies.” He also recommended that other experiences be taken into account: “We have to look at the experiences in other places to see results and opportunities.”

Jorge Luis Prosperi, representative of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) in Costa Rica, expressed concern about limitations to equitable access to health systems in Latin America. He pointed out that “people with drug abuse problems are stigmatized and rejected not only by society but also by the health systems and services.”

César Núñez, director of the Regional Support Team for Latin America for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), brought a message of reflection from his organization to the opening of the conference: “Responses to HIV should be based on scientific evidence and on human rights principles.”
Paul Simons, executive secretary of the OAS Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), stressed the role and importance of civil society in planning drug policy in the region and described society participation in drug treatment and prevention networks as “noteworthy.”

We find the bellicose
approach iniquitous

Ana Gabriel Zúñiga Aponte, deputy minister of the presidency and president of the Costa Rican Drug Institute’s Directive Council, underscored the importance of main¬streaming human rights in any action taking place regarding drug policies. She said “it’s important to understand that the drug issue must be humanized,” and seconded the position that “civil society organizations must be incorporated into the dynamics of drug policies.”

Costa Rican Minister of Health María Elena López Núñez saw the conference’s importance as “input for the development of public policies on drugs” and agreed that “the current approach has not had the success we expected, so we must combine the use of new alternatives.”

Graciela Touzé, president of Argentina’s Civil Association Intercambios, spoke on behalf of the CONFEDROGAS consortium. She sees the legal initiatives in several Latin American countries; the experiences of regulating the marijuana market in Uruguay, Washington and Colorado; and projects for varying degrees of decriminalization in Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Costa Rica as “signs that our societies are acknowledging that the bellicose approach is a worn-out paradigm whose dire consequences can no longer be tolerated.” “We’re convinced,” she said, “that we’re experiencing an historic opportunity for our Latin America to move towards agreed-on positions and coordinated actions that respond to our peoples’ cultural practices, real respect for human rights and better public health practices.”

Resistance comes from fear of change

The Regulated Drug Markets panel was chaired by Jorge Hernández Tinajero, president of Mexico’s Collective for a Comprehensive Drug Policy, a member of CONFEDROGAS. The following summarizes the main interventions in that area.

Augusto Vitale, coordinator of Uruguay’s Regulation and Control of Cannabis Institute, presented details on the Uruguayan government’s decision to regulate the cannabis market. “Our cannabis regulation policy is one of care rather than of liberalizing the market,” he said, “Regulation policies can be considered social devices. We’ve learned how political activists and civil society should be involved in regulated markets, sharing a common perspective that the problem is multi-causal.”

Carmen Rosa de León Escribano, executive director of the Teaching for Sustainable Development Institute in Guatemala, put an interesting conceptual development on the table in considering future policies for drug market regulation: “We’re trying to present models that haven’t been tested,” she said. “Resistance comes from fear of change. We don’t know where we’re going because there aren’t lessons learned from which we can change. What we have is lessons learned about what we shouldn’t do. We need to look for different routes.”

Peruvian psychologist, journalist and businessman Manuel Seminario Bisso, who manufactures and markets wholefoods enriched with native flours, expressed his opinion from the Andean worldview about coca prohibition: “When we talk about coca leaves we’re talking about a sacred plant. We would be willing to give our life for it. Coca allows us to understand our role in life, the possibilities we have to fulfill our dreams. We must change the image the world has about coca leaves.”

Norton Arbeláez, founder and board member of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group of Colorado, USA, described the experience of regulating the cannabis market in both his state and Washington. He said life went on the same and all of society’s fears that everything would fall apart with the regulation of cannabis simply didn’t happen. He considered that we can adopt a regulatory model that takes into account the particularities of each country and put an end to this lucrative business.

John Collins, coordinator of the London School of Economics’ International Drug Policy Project, described the current framework of UN conventions as “unsustainable,” arguing that the idea of a drug-free world is impossible and has generated many terrible consequences. It’s important that drug policies move from standardized responses to pluralist ones.

In her role as panel discussant, Colombia’s Catalina Niño Guarnizo, who coordinates the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s Program of Cooperation on Regional Security, stressed that “regulation allows users to free themselves from the illegal markets, which are violent precisely because they are illegal.”

We think responses need
a public health perspective

The experts on the “Drug consumption and public health approach in Latin America” panel, chaired by Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) senior consultant Coletta Youngers, voiced the region’s growing concern about drug use in highly vulnerable social conditions, a situation compounded by a widespread acknowledgement of the need to generate responses from a public health perspective.

From Brazil, Myres Maria Cavalcanti, coordinator of the Technical Area of Mental Health, Alcohol and other Drugs in São Paulo, shared the Open Arms Program experience based on harm reduction strategies. He pointed out that “its goals are to build a network of user support services with a harm reduction approach and make comprehensive health care services available.”

Catalina Pérez Correa González, research professor for Mexico’s Legal Studies Division at the Economic Research and Teaching Center and member of that country’s Research Consortium on Drugs and the Law (CEDD), presented the latter group’s report titled “En busca de los derechos: usuarios de drogas y las respuestas estatales en América Latina” (In search of rights: drug users and State responses in Latin America), which evaluates governmental responses to illegal drug use in eight Latin American countries. The report concludes that “there is persistent criminalization of those using these substances and we have to rethink a change of focus towards a health and harm-reduction approach to replace the current punitive and criminalizing approach.”

Cipriano Tix Lucas, mayor of San Andrés Sajcabajá, Guatemala, and member of the American Network of Intervention in Situations of Social Suffering (RAISSS), defined Latin America’s situation as “dramatic.” He stressed that “we must continue seeking common strategies and the sus¬tainability of centers and conscientious partners and larger budgets for treatment, prevention, harm reduction and social insertion.”

Denise Tomasini Joshi, deputy director of the International Harm Reduction Development Program of the US-headquartered but multinational Open Society Foundations, put the focus on compulsory treatment centers, expressing concern about “the great proliferation of private centers, which often operate with the government’s consent, approval, support and/or funding. She said “a lack of [patient] consent, overcrowding and ill-treatment are commonplace in them.”

Manuel Antonio Molina Brenes, president of the executive board of Costa Rica’s Alcohol and Drug Dependency Institute, was this panel’s discussant. He argued that “the public health perspective has become an empty phrase and we have to give it new meaning, redefine it, maximize it,” stating that the pillars to achieve this “must be human rights and re-humanization.”

We’re concerned about the many
women imprisoned for drugs

Latin America is the most unequal region in the world. Inequality is expressed in the lack of access to goods and services but also in discrimination based on gender, age, ethnic and many other conditions.
In the panel on “Drugs and social inclusion,” chaired by Ernesto Cortés Amador, coordinator of the Political Incidence Area at ACEID, activists, specialists and representatives of the affected sectors analyzed, discussed and offered proposals for thinking about the future of those who today seem to have no future.

Rosa Julia Leyva, representing the National Security Commission of Mexico’s Secretariat of the Interior, opened the session with a moving account of her personal experience being imprisoned for a misdemeanor related to small-scale local drug-dealing and explained how it turned her into an activist dedicated to responding to similar cases. She concluded that “we must make visible the situation of the many women who are criminalized and incarcerated and living in highly vulnerable situations.”

Anamelva Esther Félix Sotelo, coordinator of the project “Promoting a listening and welcoming space for women prisoners” from the Anexo-Chorrillos women’s prison in Peru and a member of RAISSS, described the experience of Barrio Women, an organization seeking to empower women in at-risk and vulnerable situations, improve their quality of life and help reduce poverty in areas of Lima and the provinces.

“This is a project that works with women who were born and raised in a context of high risk,” she explained, “where risk is so commonplace it ends up being their ‘comfort zone.’ All of them have or have had a direct or indirect relationship with alcohol and drugs.”

We want to turn high-risk areas
into therapeutic neighborhoods

José Luis Zárate Zárraga, head of the Community School Center of the Bolivian foundation called Munasim Kullakita (Take care of yourself, little sister), and also a RAISSS member, offered the experience of a project developed in the high-risk community of El Alto based on prevention, harm reduction and dealing with any kind of exclusion and social suffering.

“This project consists of community-based treatment, aiming not so much at change as improving the living conditions of individuals, groups and communities,” he explained. “It tries to respond to the 90% of excluded people, who would never decide to go to a rehabilitation center. We want the communities where they usually live to become therapeutic neighborhoods.”

Nischa Pieris, researcher and analyst in the Inter-American Commission of Women, addressed the invisibility of women incarcerated for drug offenses. She defined the majority of them as “young, with low socioeconomic status and schooling, who play a lead role in maintaining their families. They are heads of households, single mothers and their low profile makes designing public policies com¬plicated.” She concluded by pointing out the paradox of “talk about the social inclusion of people who have nearly always been excluded.”

As discussant, Julita Lemgruber, coordinator of the Center for Studies on Public Security and Citizenship at Brazil’s Cándido Mendes University, pointed out that “the majority of prisoners in most of our countries are there for drug related offenses.” And concluded that “I don’t dream we can reform the prisons, we’ll never get that far.”

Not all violence is caused by drugs

The second day of the conference began with the following contradiction as the premise: Several countries of the region are facing extraordinary levels of violence often associated with drug trafficking, yet paradoxically, one of the factors contributing to the increased violence is a heavy-handed response by authorities. The State’s role, the contexts of poverty and marginalization, the role of the security forces and the regulation of the drug market were some of the issues raised for discussion by the appealing, heterogeneous first panel, which was called “Drugs and violence” and was chaired by WOLA Public Security researcher Adriana Beltrán.

José Miguel Cruz, professor in the Politics and International Relations Department of the Florida International University, began by saying that there’s no single way of characterizing the link between drugs and violence: “Not all violence is caused by drugs.” He then focused on the situation in Central America, where the rates of violence have become much higher: “The increase in violence has to do with heavy-handed security policies and is more associated with that than with drugs.” He explained that “Central America is a transit region, it doesn’t produce or consume large amounts of drugs and drug trafficking is neither the main security problem nor the main cause of violence.”

From her experience as a community leader and youth counselor on violence prevention in highly vulnerable communities in El Salvador, Martha Guzmán de Castro told of the stark reality of glue-sniffing children, homeless people and prostitutes and explained how the gangs known as maras were taking over the countryside and as “their power increased and they fought over territory… they violate, cut processes, destroying families and killing hopes.”

Are we ready for regulation?

Xiuh Guillermo Tenorio Antiga, general director of Civic Participation for the Social Prevention of Violence and Crime at Mexico’s Secretariat of the Interior, referred to its new approach in drug policies. “The new model Mexico is working with,” he said, “is to include social prevention, and this is a 180-degree shift.” He also noted society’s role: “The State can’t do it alone; the citizenry has to be included.”

Mike Trace, president of the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) in the United Kingdom, presented a proposal to modernize the application of drug laws and redefine strategies to reduce supplies, taking into account that the plan of a drug-free world such as is envisaged by “the war on drugs” turned out to be conceptually flawed, difficult to implement and with unintended consequences. He said we must accept that the illegal market can’t be eradicated. We have to develop new goals, refocus our strategy and our investments and tolerate benign forms of drug markets.

In his role as discussant, public safety specialist Juan Carlos Garzón, adviser to Colombia’s Ministry of Justice and to the Commission for the Reform of Drug Policies in Guatemala, said that “public policies shouldn’t be evaluated by their intentions but by their results, and the current security policies haven’t given the citizens good results.” He proposed a series of questions about resource distribution and how to regulate the drug market: “Could regulation be an opportunity to strengthen the institutions or should the institutions be strengthened in order to have regulation?” He then posed this ironically rhetorical question: “Latin America isn’t ready for regulation, but was ready to take on prohibition?”

How losing the war on drugs
changed everything

Drug policies in Latin America often promote situations of discrimination, rejection and violence that lead to rights violations. What institutional resources exist and what actions can be undertaken to promote advocacy?

With these questions, the participants on the Drugs and Human Rights panel presented different ways human rights are being violated today and described details of the reforms being implemented in some countries. Luiz Paulo Guanabara, executive director of Psicotropicus–Brazilian Center on Drug Policy, chaired the panel.

Mario López-Garelli, an official at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights offices in Paraguay, presented a study on drugs and human rights in Mexico and Colombia. As he explained, “This issue has arisen from considering, among other things, the situation of those incarcerated and the application of criminal justice from the perspective of its effect on indigenous culture and territories, as well as from observing the implementation of public security measures.”

Mary Price, legal consultant to the national US organization Families against Mandatory Minimums, developed some proposals to reform criminal justice in the United States that are currently being discussed. They are based on the idea of “how losing the war on drugs changed everything.” This lawyer views every dollar the Department of Justice spends on prisons and detention is a dollar not spent on implementing laws dealing with violent crime, drug cartels and cases of public corruption, financial fraud, trafficking in persons and child exploitation.

Marta Iris Muñoz Cascante, director of the Costa Rica Public Defender’s Office and a board member of the Inter-American Association of Public Defender’s Offices (AIDEF), shared an extract from the documentary “Un sueño llamado libertad” (A dream called freedom), which recounts the situation of women imprisoned in Costa Rica. She then gave details about the passage of Law 9161 “to introduce gender proportionality and specificity to the Law on Psychotropic Drugs, specifically to the crime of introducing drugs into penal institutions.” She expressed her belief that “this reform is a hope for Latin America because it effectively amends the article in the law that establishes an 8-20 year prison sentence.”

We must overcome
the emphasis on criminal justice

The AIDEF statement reads: “Current drug policy in our countries emphasizes a criminal rather than preventive response based on respect for human and health rights. This has distanced us from the goals intended in a comprehensive approach from the perspective of health, criminality and social impact, causing serious distortions in public policies and the social fabric.”

Jorge Paladines, the national missionary coordinator of the Public Defender’s Office of Ecuador and a CEDD member, recounted how Ecuador’s Law 108 released detainees. In his opinion, “This opens a new path in Ecuador’s human rights; it seeks to restore the public health system and improve detainees’ due process.” He noted that “the amendment now separates trafficking into four blocs, depending on the drug involved, and provides sentencing in each case.”

The discussant was Rodrigo Uprimny, director of Colombia’s Center for Law, Justice and Society (DeJuSticia), who assesses this era as one “that allows us some optimism,” referring to the amendments presented by some of the panelists. He concluded that “States must prioritize their obligations on human rights over and above their obligations on drug policies.”

We should decriminalize drug use

The United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs, called for 2016, offers the opportunity to bring the debate established in Latin America to the global stage. What opportunities and obstacles lie ahead? Can consensus be built among our region’s countries in order to move towards amendment proposals? On the panel “Looking towards UNGASS 2016,” chaired by Pien Metaal from the Netherlands, who coordinates the Latin America Drug Law Reform Project at the Transnational Institute, officials and experts from different countries presented alternative drug policies focused on the future and stressed the importance of civil society’s contribution.

Eugenia Zorbas, focal point on drug trafficking and organized crime issues at the Department of Political Affairs at the UN headquarters in New York, opened the panel noting that UNGASS 2016 offers “a very valuable opportunity for exchanging ideas” and stressing that “the UN emphasizes the importance of human rights standards for this task.”

Gerardo Isaac Morales Tenorio, assistant general director for development challenges at Mexico’s Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, made it clear that his country is willing to open “a substantial, plural, inclusive and transparent debate” and is working on “decriminalization of drug use and the search for alternatives to incarceration.” He further stressed that we must put the emphasis “on comprehensively preventing and reducing the negative effects, particularly social harm.”

Forty years of war on drugs
have been a failure

Paul Simons, executive secretary of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), stressed the need for a public health approach to the drug problem. To achieve this he described the importance of “direct participation by the health ministries, national drug commissions and civil society in formulating public drug policies related to prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.”

Sonia Aiscar, representative of Argentina’s Ministry of Planning for the Prevention of Drug Addiction and Action against Drug Trafficking, added her agreement with others that “today’s implementation of the international drug rules hasn’t achieved effective solutions either in the fight against illegal drug trafficking or in reducing problematic use, generating consequences even more negative than the harm they are trying to prevent in some countries. We understand that the war waged on drugs for over 40 years has failed in its objectives.”

Sonia Matilde Eljach Polo, the consultant on Drug Policy Issues for the Colombia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, urged that the political level of the debate be opened, saying that “I hope UNGASS 2016 will be remembered as a decisive moment in dealing with the drug issue.” Nonetheless, she didn’t hesitate to clarify that “changing international consensus is very hard; a single country can veto the possibility of a change. It’s unimaginable that an amendment that would open new approaches won’t be opposed by some country.” But she saw it as worthy of optimism that “Latin America is taking the lead in a discussion that I hope will be fruitful.”

As this panel’s discussant, José Alberto Briz Gutiérrez, general director of International, Multilateral and Economic Relations in Guatemala’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, remarked that the drug problem is “a debate that is growing among governments and civil society and also in regional interconnections. This debate leads to us to seek balance for state and institutional work, and public institutions may be able to make progress with administrative or legislative reforms, such as some countries have been doing through various experiences.”

What’s happening in
California and “Crackolandia”

During the conference, Celeste Orozco, an Argentinian journalist, was awarded first prize in the IV Latin American Prize for Journalism on Drugs for her article “Fórmula magistral: dispensarios y cannabis medicinal en California” (Master class formula: clinics and medicinal cannabis in California) published in the quarterly magazine The Hemp Connoisseur.

The jury considered that the text “shows a comprehensive proposal regarding what the future of a drug policy will be. In general terms, it opens up the debate about the best way to distance ourselves from a model in which drugs are synonymous with so much death. At its core is a discussion that is currently taking place in many parts of the hemisphere. It includes good research and a well-narrated story, with a journalistic handling that gives a broad overview of what’s happened in California.”

The second prize was awarded to the Mexican collective Dromómanos for the text “En las entrañas de crackolandia” (In the bowels of Crackolandia), a tale about the slums of Río de Janeiro and São Paulo, published in the Sunday magazine of the Mexican newspaper El Universal. According to the jury the text “is a work that very accurately represents the consequences of the current drug policy. The research is good, novel, very graphically done and well resolved, with more of a reportorial street profile of getting into the reality to talk of the tragedy of drug trafficking’s victims. It presents a model of journalism that tries to get right into the guts of the problem to report on just how serious it is to have drug dealing, distributing and trafficking in the excluded communities.”

Newspaper journalists from all over the continent attended the conference to generate a critical mass of trained, committed journalists with a perspective linked to respect for human rights, inclusive policies, drug policy reform and harm reduction that could help strengthen the democratic processes throughout Latin America.

Drug users and
producers speak out

There were also satellite events at the conference. These took place from the day before, during and after the conference in different venues.

One such event was the Continental Meeting of Latin American Cannabis Activists. Sebastián Martínez Arias from the Cannabis Movement of Costa Rica read a statement from this movement that includes the following: “There are increasingly more of us cannabis users interested in knowing about the experience of others in Latin America and continuing to act according to the particular circumstances of each region, as we have been doing in order to consolidate a Latin American cannabis movement with political effect in each country.”

Another statement was offered by the growers of poppies, coca and cannabis, who are seeking international recognition. Javier González Skaríc from the Observatory of Crops Declared Illicit read their document, in which they say: “We encourage the groups of activists in favor of reforms, the organizations connected to the United Nations system, other international bodies and the governments of Latin America, to make visible the rights of small-scale farmers, processors and users so their demands can be represented in UNGASS 2016.”

Civil society representatives from different Latin American countries addressed the OAS member states to request a review of the orientation of the drug policy being conducted in the Americas. Looking towards UNGASS 2016, Keila Ábrego from the New Opportunity Foundation of Costa Rica, read a document that stated: “We encourage the OAS to call for a broad-based open debate so that all sectors of society can know about the different aspects of the issue and contribute to strengthening national and regional strategies as well as formalizing mechanisms of social participation in the design of policies and programs on different aspects of the drug issue, involving all civil society organizations, civil associations, foundations, mutual societies, grassroots community organizations, academia, networks, and organizations of drug users and producers.”

We deserve the same rights as all citizens

Another satellite event involved Latin American Youth. Different sectors of young people expressed “the importance of including young peoples’ perspective and that of the coming generations in the debate about drug policies, trying to empower young people to become involved in projects and initiatives that generate knowledge and information, enabling them to act as agents of change and promote respect for human rights from a young person’s perspective.” Brun González from the organization Espolea of Mexico read the document/summary.

The position of the Latin American Network of People who Use Drugs, presented by Laura Flechas from the Miguel Ángel Vargas Foundation of Colombia, contains a strong criticism of the criminalizing of poverty: “We ask for the same rights as those already guaranteed to organized minorities… No one should stop being a citizen just because they use drugs… We demand treatment without criminali¬zation or forced imprisonment, and programs to reduce risks and harm.”

Latin America now has its
own voice on the drug issue

At the end of the conference, held for the first time in Central America, Ana Helena Chacón, second Vice President of Costa Rica, the host country, stated: “The legalization of drugs is a regional issue; it can’t be a Costa Rican issue; we can’t become an isolated country in the middle of a region with virtually nonexistent borders.”

Argentinian Pablo Cymerman, institutional relations coordinator of Intercambios and coordinator of the Con¬ference’s organizing committee, gave the closing words: “In these two days of dialogue and debate it has again been made clear that Latin America has its own voice and seeks to lead the change from a path that has up to now only led to war, violence and the criminalization of our peoples’ most vulnerable sectors…. Throughout these two days of intense work the complexity of drug-related problems has become clear. The dire consequences generated by the hegemonic policies we’ve adopted so far have also become evident…. We need a policy built on social participation that takes into account the needs, expectations and interests of the various social actors. These are the challenges that are rallying us.”

This official conference synopsis was translated, subtitled and edited by envío.

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