Thank you for inviting me to speak to you here today. My name is Job Joris Arnold and I represent the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies. ENCOD -for short- is a European network of currently 156 organizations and individual citizens, all affected and concerned by current drug policies. We believe future drug policies need to be just and effective, i.e. based on respect for human rights and on scientific evidence.

Now, I have been asked to talk to you about what’s going on at the UN-level. And I see some signs of hope, so I might just have some good news for you today.

1998 In 1998 the UNGASS, which is the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Illicit Drugs, convened in that building right there around the corner and had some 180 countries sign up to this fantasy of stamping out drugs worldwide within a ten years.

Persons whose lives are affected by drugs policies suffer the deterioration of their health, the effects of exclusion and stigmatisation, and the violation of their most elementary rights due to a policy that is imposed by international organizations, -International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and by our own country. Participation of affected persons’ organisations in the design and evaluation of drugs policies is anecdotal and, when it happens, it has no influence in the decision making process.

The anti-drugs strategy has turned throughout the years into an open warfare against users. Having signed and implemented the directives of international organizations, governments deny the evidence of harm reduction policies being more just and effective. They prefer to respect political agreements without any scientific base, and some cases signed more than 40 years ago, instead of developing real policies centred on the public health, based on human rights and sensitive with the gender differences.

The Civil Society Forum on Drug Policy should not become yet another addition to a long litany of failures. We propose to postpone this first meeting of the Civil Society Forum to a new date within the next 3 months, and use the two days in Brussels to discuss the way in which it should be organised next time.

1. Can the European Commission explain what are the reasons for not inviting all 75 organisations that applied to the August 17 deadline to the first meeting of the Civil Society Forum on Drug Policy in the EU?

2. Can the European Commission indicate, for each organisation that applied to the August 17 deadline, and for each organisation that ultimately made it to the selection, the specific reasons for selection and omission from selection?

The European Union offers an excellent opportunity to compare the impact of different policies and facilitate the exchange of information and experiences with good and bad practices. As such, co-operation in the field of drugs policy, both between countries and between institutions and civil society organisations, may help to develop effective approaches without making too many avoidable errors in the process.