Toronto City Council voted to endorse the Vienna Declaration on Thursday, raising a loud voice against the war on drugs.
“The war against drugs has failed,” said city councillor Kyle Rae, who brought the declaration to council after attending the AIDS 2010 international conference this July, where it was announced. “In every jurisdiction and in every community, we know that policing this issue is not enough.”
The principles of the declaration favour a public health approach to dealing with drug addicts, rather than enforcing ever-stricter drug laws, which advocates say doesn’t work, and in fact can cause greater harm.
The “War on Drugs” has failed, particularly with regard to the spread of HIV in middle-income nations and some developing nations in Asia. The disease is now starting to bleed into Africa as well.
The spread of HIV among injection drug users is a most crucial issue in middle-income countries: poor nations simply cannot afford so expensive a vice on a large scale, and affluent nations often have instituted harm-reduction policies, such as needle exchange and opioid substitution programs, to mitigate the health risks.
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The 18th International AIDS conference was held this year in Vienna, Austria. The Vienna Declaration, which calls for international reform of illicit drug policies, is the official declaration of the conference.
Joining us tonight on Done by Law to discuss the Declaration is Dr Alex Wodak, who has long been an outspoken advocate for a harm minimisation approach to drugs. Dr Wodak is a physician and Director of the Alcohol and Drug service at St Vincent’s Hospital, and President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation.
Embassy – Failed tough-on-crime policies destabilize countries and economies, fuel violence and rates of HIV infection. The Vienna Declaration, the official declaration of the recently completed International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, seeks to improve community health and safety by calling for the incorporation of scientific evidence into illicit drug policies. The controversial document asks governments around the world to reject the war on drugs, which has cost trillions of dollars, created widespread violence and ultimately killed tens of thousands of people.
Trouw – Hiv hangt samen met seks – het meeste nieuws over de achttiende aidsconferentie in Wenen van afgelopen week ging daarover. Daarmee bleef een ander onderwerp dat daar is besproken onderbelicht: het drugsbeleid.
Wereldwijd komen de meeste hiv-besmettingen – meestal geassocieerd met onveilige seks – voor ten zuiden van de Sahara. Maar in zo’n beetje alle westerse landen, Azië en Zuid-Amerika dreigt, zoals het op de conferentie heette, een ’ongedocumenteerde maar groeiende hiv-epidemie’: onder drugsgebruikers.
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Like many other police officers, I have witnessed the tragedy of the HIV epidemic first hand. It is one thing to read the statistics demonstrating the connection between illicit drug use and HIV; it is another matter entirely to patrol the streets, day in and day out, repeatedly arresting men and women infected with the HIV virus.
Our country has one of the finest health-care systems in the world, but our laws surrounding drug use result in unnecessary disease and death.
New Strait Times – After nearly three decades of the HIV pandemic and more than 33 million infections worldwide, more than 19,000 participants at the 18th international AIDS conference in Vienna last week were re-energised with some good news and new hopes in the search for effective prevention and treatment strategies.
Unveiled for the first time in Vienna were the results of a study on an anti-retroviral drug containing vaginal gel that could protect women against HIV infection. With up to 50 per cent of the global HIV infection occurring in women and rising rates of women becoming infected in Malaysia annually, this represents the most significant and promising result that will allow women to protect themselves from HIV during sexual intercourse.
Given that abstinence, using condoms and being faithful have been unsuccessful in preventing HIV infection, a vaginal microbicide gel is a critical step forward.
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Last week, Canadians heard howls of protest that Stephen Harper hadn’t attended the World AIDS Conference in Vienna, and that Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq had “failed” to sign the Vienna Declaration on global antidrug policy. This did not speak well of Canadian politics, which can be insufferably myopic. It seems no other G20 leader attended the conference, and certainly no world leader or health minister has signed, or would dare sign, the Vienna Declaration — which essentially calls for a wholesale reassessment of our current approach to fighting drug trafficking and addiction.
Last week, thousands of scientists, physicians and activists fighting the HIV and AIDS pandemic around the world gathered in Vienna to discuss the latest breakthroughs — and frustrations.
There were reports on several landmark studies describing the crucial role that treatments can play in reducing the infectiousness of HIV-positive individuals. And there was encouraging news from Africa, where a study found that an intra-vaginal anti-viral gel could reduce the risk of HIV infection among women who used it by 40%.
But there was also sobering news at the 18th International AIDS Conference, including stark evidence of how the HIV epidemic is raging unchecked among some populations of illicit drug users.
Vienna was selected to host the biannual meeting of HIV experts because it is the gateway to one of the world’s most rapidly growing HIV epidemics: that among heroin users in Eastern Europe. Outside sub-Saharan Africa, about 1 in 3 new HIV infections stems from injecting illegal drugs, and in some parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 70% of those who inject illicit drugs are infected with the virus.
Medscape Medical News – More than 13,000 clinicians, researchers, and public policy experts have signed a declaration calling for the global decriminalization of drug use and the implementation of evidence-based policies to halt the rampant spread of HIV infection among injecting drug users (IDUs).
Released here at AIDS 2010: XVIII International AIDS Conference, the document, known as the Vienna Declaration, states that in parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where the spread of HIV is most rapid, infection “can be as high as 70% among people who inject drugs, and in some areas more than 80% of all HIV cases are among this group.” Yet these countries have some of the most punitive antidrug laws in the world.
“The International AIDS Conference is a unique mix of advocacy, activism, and science that you don’t see at other conferences,” Evan Wood, MD, director of the Urban Health Research Initiative at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, British Columbia, told Medscape Medical News. Dr. Wood was a coauthor of the Vienna Declaration.