26 June has been transformed from its origins as a day promoting the worst aspects of prohibition to a day celebrating the resistance to the War on Drugs. Support Don’t Punish triggers a wave of actions around the globe from football matches between drug users and the police, to marching bands, peer education sessions, and acts of memorial. EuroNPUD has embraced Support Don’t Punish with the support of our main donor the Robert Carr Fund. By distributing small grants of €450, EuroNPUD has been able to stimulate local actions delivered by country drug user groups. In 2019, we decided to focus our campaigning capacity on International Overdose Awareness Day on 31 August as part of our sustained advocacy to document and promote the effectiveness of peer-to-peer distribution of Naloxone / Find out more about our Naloxone campaign on..>> https://www.euronpud.net/naloxone
The campaign was co-branded with SDP as peer-led harm reduction is very much part of the specialist peer adaption of SDP, Self-Support Don’t Punish Us.
In 2020, EuroNPUD is becoming an ever more efficient campaigning vehicle. Building on our rapid, multi-lingual and successful partnership response to COVID-19, EuroNPUD is committed to delivering two further coordinated country campaigns in 2020. The first is our Time For A New Normal campaign for Support Don’t Punish Day, which picks up the many gains that have been secured for people who use drugs as a result of COVID-19. Long requested and evidence-based advocacy asks for quicker access to OST treatment, for supervised consumption to be a last resort and for dispensing to be flexible and trusting have finally been achieved. The response of people on OST to being provided with weekly plus take home doses has been overwhelming to manage their medication sensibly. The much-feared pattern of mass diversion just has not happened.
Overall, people dependent on opioids are asking for a more respectful and meaningful treatment partnership and a dialling down of the “methadone police” approach. It is time to stop the constant guilt tripping of people who, in line with the evidence, are choosing long-term and even lifelong OST maintenance. Virtually checking in with clients allows for a less intrusive model of key working which prioritises support over supervision. When sanctions are not threatened and more varied treatment outcomes are respected, people who use drugs will often share what is happening with their drugs. As long as this is set with a wider discussion about our wider life goals, health and wellbeing, respectful questions about our drug use will not be experienced as threatening. When professional inquiries about our drug use are founded on the offer of support rather than backed up with the threat of punishment then a useful dialogue may follow. When the practitioner is driven by a desire to uncover and expose, it is unsurprising that they will be met with resistance, defence and stories that comply with what we think you want us to be.
Support Don’t Punish starts with the every day interactions between people who use drugs and harm reduction, drug treatment and wider healthcare professionals. Some years back, I saw a locum GP after I experienced a syndrome known to stimulant users as the “funky chicken”. This is spasms caused by an excess of adrenalin surging through the body like electric charges. It provided a perfect opportunity for my GP to enquire about my excessive pattern of freebase cocaine use that underpinned this physical reaction. Instead as soon as I acknowledged my use of drugs, her demeanour changed, she couldn’t sustain eye contact and I saw her write ADDICT in large letters across the top of my file!! It reaffirmed me in my general approach of managing my drug use as far away from the healthcare system as possible.
COVID-19 has seen many people re-engage with OST treatment systems and many longstanding OST clients have access to a much more flexible model of treatment. However, many Governments have set these changes as temporary measures. It would be crazy to go back to the old, restrictive, punitive, high threshold past. Instead we should build on this transformation of services and instead invest the released capacity in reaching those people dependent on opioids who aren’t yet able to access OST.
This will require new treatment options. Heroin Assisted Treatment provides a way of engaging people not attracted by methadone or buprenorphine. It is time that professional partners get over their discomfort with an OST therapy providing us with a pleasurable flash experience. EuroNPUD are also watching with interest the development of depot buprenorphine, which gives people dependent on opioids a way of accessing buprenorphine without the need for daily dosing or dispensing. This freedom from the treatment system is a powerful incentive and EuroNPUD welcomes Camurus sensitive development of their product. Their willingness to engage with people who use drugs helps manage concerns around the potential misuse of their product by unethical doctors or policy makers. We believe that engagement and dialogue is the best safeguard. We are very pleased to have signed a declaration with Camurus after a joint meeting organised by our Norwegian partners ProLAR and hosted by the Danish drug user groups, Brugerforeningen in Copenhagen in May 2019 about rights in OST treatment:
“People who are dependent on opioids have the right to the highest attainable standard of health. This includes access to and information about and the freedom to choose from available opioid dependence pharmacological treatments as well as psycho-social support.”
Follow the link to see the project page…>> https://www.euronpud.net/ost
At the same time, many drug user groups have stepped up during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure access to naloxone through peer-to-peer distribution schemes and access to needles, syringes and injecting paraphernalia through secondary needle and syringe programmes. This shows that we are not just consumers of services but we also potential partners in scaling up and driving up the quality of harm reduction services.
EuroNPUD is proud once again to support our country groups to undertake actions on 26 June. We call on providers, Governments and European institutions to work with drug user groups as is it clearly Time For A New Normal!
Follow the link to see the campaign page…>> https://www.euronpud.net/support-dont-punish-2020