51st session of the CND

/ EMCDDA Director, Wolfgang Götz
/ Statement by EMCDDA Director Wolfgang Götz at the 51st session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND)
/ 11 March 2008, Vienna

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51st session of the CND

Your Excellency, distinguished delegates, Mr Chairman,

I am honoured that the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction has been invited to contribute to this critically important debate on the progress made towards achieving the challenges laid down in the 1998 UNGASS and its accompanying Declaration on the guiding principles of drug demand reduction.

I speak to you today as the Director of an agency that works exclusively in the realm of information. I think, therefore, that it is particularly appropriate to comment on the Demand reduction declaration and its action plan — where the need for sound information plays such a significant and central role.

In our deliberations here this week, it is important to remember that the Demand reduction declaration represented the first international commitment to a balanced approach, where demand-reduction measures were given the same precedence as supply-reduction actions. The declaration also underlined the importance of drawing up comprehensive strategies that included prevention, treatment and risk-reduction activities. And, most of all, it called for evidence-based programmes and pointed to the need to base our actions on a sound assessment of the situation.

I am pleased to inform you that, today in Europe, there are few who would question the wisdom of this approach. In fact, the existence of my own agency, the EMCDDA, is a concrete example of the consensus that now exists to ensure that a sound evidence base is available to inform both policies and actions. The investments we have made in data collection and analysis now allow us to talk with confidence about the drug situation in Europe — in a way that was simply not possible in the past. This key achievement is reflected in the strong European contribution to the biennial reporting exercise… and it has also enabled us to contribute complementary information to UNODC through our participation in the technical working group.

I am also pleased to say that we can concur with many of the conclusions that have been made by UNODC Executive Director in his report on the world drug problem.

His clear conclusion that long-term and sustained demand-reduction strategies can impact positively on the drug problem, is one we would strongly endorse. We also endorse his conclusion that Europe has made progress in developing more diverse and evidence-based prevention programmes, and by increasing the availability of drug treatment, particularly substitution treatment.

We also concur with his assessment that European Member States have intensified their efforts to counter drug-related HIV and that this has lead to an expansion of services in this area. We are not complacent in Europe on this issue but our assessment is that a pragmatic mixture of prevention, treatment, and harm- reduction measures has had a real impact on this problem.

Another important conclusion made in the Executive Director’s report, and reiterated by the Secretariat in the introduction to this debate, is that it is not sufficient simply to act — we must ensure that our actions are also effective. Again, this is an area where information is essential and the EMCDDA is now focusing its attention on identifying and disseminating best practice.

Your Excellency, distinguished delegates, in our deliberations we must also look to the future. Any positive assessment of the progress we have made must be tempered by acknowledging the challenges we still face. The Biennial Reports Questionnaire was an imperfect tool but it did represent an important first attempt to monitor demand-reduction developments at a global level. In his recommendations to the report, the UNODC Executive Director emphasises the importance of this kind of information, and notes the need to establish a better framework for future monitoring of demand-reduction efforts including the need to harmonise concepts and reporting tools. I would ask you to consider this issue carefully, as without regular and sound reporting on the global demand-reduction situation the future work of this Commission will be seriously undermined.

Finally, the Executive Director recognises the need to work closely with international and regional bodies to reduce the overall reporting burden on Member States and to maximise the use of resources. As Director of the EMCDDA, I restate our commitment to work closely with UNODC both to provide information on Europe and to contribute to developing better reporting tools. In the recent technical working group, we saw that other international and regional bodies are also equally willing and able to provide assistance in this respect. This kind of united approach can, I believe, both allow UNODC to better concentrate its efforts on capacity building and data analysis in those areas of the world where it is currently lacking, and allow a better understanding of what we need to do to respond more effectively to an evolving global drug problem.

Thank you for your attention

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