Advocating drug policy change

A rational approach to drug control

The anti-drugs legal framework in Ukraine, which was drawn up fourteen years ago, has in most cases not resolved problems with the trade in illicit drugs. Moreover, the goals of the Political Declaration at the 20th UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs have not been achieved.

We can conclude that using force and punishment as the main pillars of drug control strategy is not always unequivocally effective.

For a long time the law enforcement agencies in Ukraine protested against effective approaches including harm reduction and safeguarding of human rights, especially those of users, which seemed new at that time.

However, in the last five years significant and fairly liberal changes have been introduced into the drug legislation. Opioid substitution treatment with buprenorphine was introduced in 2004 and methadone in 2008. Today three thousand people are receiving the treatment.

Last year, there was a significant liberalisation of the legal regulations in regards to supply reduction – the state no longer has a monopoly on the supply of narcotic and psychotropic substances. Harm reduction has become a key element of Ukraine’s drug policy and was included in a new law on the supply of narcotic substances.