Vienna Declaration on drug use

• April 24, 2024

After extensive research on the impact of the "War on Drugs" in the world, the international scientific community calls for recognizing the limitations and damages of the penalty of drug use, which has resulted in an increase in people with HIV / AIDS.

During recent years, national and international drug surveillance systems have shown a general model of lowering the price of drugs and increasing their purity, despite massive investments in the application of anti-drug laws.

The data also shows that the number of countries where they inject illegal drugs ; being women and children increasingly affected.

Outside Sub-Saharan Africa, the injection of drugs represents approximately one in three new cases of HIV.

In areas where the HIV is spreading faster, As in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the prevalence of HIV can reach up to 70% among people Users of Injectable Drugs (UDI ), and in other areas more than 80% of all HIV cases are within this group.

Anti-drug laws

The figures show that anti-drug laws do not produce positive results; on the contrary, the consequences of their implementation are harmful. Some of these consequences are the outbreaks among people who inject drugs, who are in prison or in recovery institutions, as a result of policies that criminalize this population. lack of virus prevention services in these places.

In addition, the application of punitive laws removes UDI from health services, increasing the risk of transmission of diseases such as hepatitis C and B. crisis in the penal system , by unprecedented incarceration percentages, in a number of nations. This has negatively affected the social functioning of entire communities.

Although racial disparity, in percentages of incarceration for drug offenses, is evident in many countries around the world, the impact has been particularly severe in the United States, where approximately one in nine African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 go to school. jail, mainly for the application of the anti-drug law.

The stigmatization of people who use illicit drugs reinforces the political popularity of penalizing drug users and undermines HIV prevention and other health promotion efforts.

Video Medicine: INTRODUCING THE VIENNA DECLARATION (April 2024).