The Elusive Search for Rights-Centred Public Health Approaches to Drug Policy: A Comment

Abstract

While it is common for United Nations member states in international meetings to espouse ‘public health approaches’ to drug policy, actual policies appear not to have caught up with this rhetoric. There is a lingering over-emphasis in narcotic drug policies on policing and incarceration at the expense of urgently needed investment in health and social services for people who use drugs. These policies have lethal consequences in the transmission of potentially fatal infections and preventable overdose deaths, and they impede progress in social and economic development. The experience of a number of countries, mostly in the European Union, highlights that bringing public health evidence into the center of drug policy decision-making can have broad social, economic and public health benefits.

Keywords

• drug policy
• opioids
• overdose
• public health
• harm reduction