Prevention Abroad

”It shall be unlawful for the habitual user of narcotic drugs to operate any motor vehicle on any street; and it shall be unlawful for any intoxicated person, or any person under the influence of intoxicating liquor or of a narcotic drug, to operate or attempt to operate any motor vehicle on any street.”

But still our world is not like this, and if this is what we are aiming at accomplishing we know that we have hard work in front of us. Still we have started our fight for a healthier and a more secure society. It is in this text we are going to see what is being done in other countries around the world, to see if there is anything we can learn from to make our own country better in the war against drugs in traffic.

Since Sweden is a member of the European Community (EC) we shouldn’t allow the member states to think about drug problems as if there was a solution. The EC spend most of their time trying to find out what is going on, while they do nothing to prevent it. The biggest problem is that drug taking has risen in member states in different times and under different conditions and that there are wide differences in research traditions. This means that it is hard for the politicians to find a way that helps every country since there are also wide differences in the models used in treatment in these countries.

However, there have been positive changes. The EC’s latest plan contains some positive elements. Greater co- operation between governments and drug prevention agencies has started to build a drug-free Europe, and the subject of drugs is nowadays important in the debate in the EC. They have for example started a European Drug Prevention Week, which is there for encouraging and improving drug prevention.

There are also great many International Harm Reduction Networks, one of them is the ECDP- European Cities on Drug Policy- which is supported by the European Commission as a project to have greater co-operation between the member states.

Drinks and Drugs in Traffic

Drinks and Drugs in Traffic The truth is that the governments really do understand what needs to be done, but the problem is that they aren’t doing much for the prevention. There is a need for more effective programmes aimed at promoting healthier lifestyles, which would include information about drugs and their effects- a need to promote help not only for young people but also parents and teachers. Books have been published to advise these individuals on symptoms etc.

Alcohol and tobacco are also included in the drug prevention approaches. You can recognise the role that tobacco has on starting young people off in their drug career.

In Australia there is a huge public educational campaign to drink- driving. There are for example campaigns like “Rethink your third drink” which relate to how much drivers may drink and still remain within the legal blood alcohol limits. This is meant to reduce the incidents and severity of all car crashes and to improve the safety of road users. The involvement of alcohol in road crashes is a major safety concern since it is the most important factor in fatal road crashes in Australia- one third of road fatalities have happened due to drink- driving! And in the Netherlands 1 out of every 20 persons is not sober when they drive. The governments in our world therefore want to change the drink- driving attitude and behaviour.

In the USA there are special pubs and restaurants where a person handing in the car- keys gets free non-alcoholic beverages throughout the evening, just to prevent the drink- driving. This could be a possibility in decreasing crashes, since alcohol remains the drug that is most implicated in road crashes. Other drugs are also found, mostly in combination with alcohol, which makes everything even more dangerous.

So what are we supposed to do to prevent this? There are many international campaigns against drugs in traffic and the United Nations has very much to do with it. It believes that it is a matter of informing different parts of our society to the problems with drugs, telling people what happens etc. In total, the government should have the goal of decreasing the amount of victims by making laws and initiating harder penalties. In India, for example, the law is very severe. The minimum penalty is ten year imprisonment for even very small quantities of hashish. This is because they do not want any drugs to interfere with their culture, and since it’s mainly the tourists that bring the drugs they want them to be caught.

The society should educate children and adults about the dangerous consequences of illicit drug use and addiction. In this way people should recognise the worth of their existence and the loftiness of their purpose in life, and in this way say no to drugs.

The most vulnerable targets for drugs of any kind are the youth and the children. During the teenage years these young persons want to explore the way of living and they may come on a dangerous path with drugs on the way. In the third world countries, the risk of children getting involved with drugs is greater because of the disparity between tourists’ lifestyles and that of the local population. Therefore tourists are getting more and more hated in different places in our world.

Schools and the media play an important role in the fight against the use of and traffic in drugs. It is here that we should see effective programs.

Home and family life are also very important in reducing demands on the supply of drugs. It is here that we build up the internal controls during our childhood that will help us build up our external controls further on in life. If we do not get a secure childhood both controls will fail to develop and the result will be that more children will stand in greater risk to get stuck in some kind of drug addiction.

Finally, the related rise in drug related crime, together with the mass consumption of drugs, demonstrate the need for a radical reappraisal of this whole approach.

The significant trend in the late 1980s and 1990s has been the concern about the normalisation of drug use amongst young people. In the future we should have the ultimate goal to reduce the attractiveness of drugs to young people.

We should make laws and to quote the United Nations Convention:

“Illicit traffic is an international criminal activity/…/ which demands urgent attention and the highest priority.”

We should start working now. If it would be possible we could allow people to take acceptable risks with their own lives providing they do not harm other people, but this is very hard, and we’ll have to see how it goes in the future. But we should aim for the quote:

“No drugs, Better Roads, Safer Roads, Saving Lives”

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