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If repeal of drugs prohibition is the future, how can practice match up today?
Mike McCarron, Board Member and Jolene Crawford, Director, Transform Drug Policy Foundation Scotland, Glasgow
Abstract
There is a growing international body of dialogue and critique arguing that the War on Drugs, with Prohibition at its centre, has failed. It has failed to reduce drug problems and additionally entails huge costs and other harms of its own. Thoughtful, open and pragmatic discussion is now needed about policy and practice alternatives. Views of drug users and research such as that on controlled heroin use published by Dalgarno & Shewan and by Hunt & Turnbull should inform this discussion.
The parallel workshop will be introduced by brief scene-setting and reference to the growth of drug law reform discussion in Scotland in recent years. Thereafter it will be a structured interactive session. It will engage participants in discussion about what the implications of Prohibition Repeal would be for services and day-to-day practice. In particular, how practice today is or could be more compatible with such drug law reform.
Discussion is likely to look at such areas as assessment of drug use risk and control, drug supply and safety, personally defined recovery and steps towards it, one-to-one and mutual aid group support.
Of particular interest would be new possibilities of practice that offer hope of reducing levels of injecting and drug related deaths, which in Scotland are proportionally the highest in Europe.
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