State drug policy strategy: with Europe or with Russia?

Will police officers plant bags of weed on teenagers, demanding bribes and ruining their lives? Will the state contribute to the spread of HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis in Ukraine? Will the law enforcement system stop competing to put more people in jail for our taxes and start fighting organised drug crime? The answers to these questions are rooted in the State Drug Policy Strategy for 2023-2030. Its adoption was postponed for three years due to a lack of political will, but now it is important for Ukraine's accession to the EU and the document has been put up for public discussion. NGOs that have once again submitted their comments to the document express well-founded fears that the Government will ignore the proposals and maintain the repressive model of drug policy based on the Russian model.

"The published text was created in 2021," says Nazariy Sovsun, co-organiser of the Freedom March for Drug Policy Reform and board member of the NGO Urban Initiatives and Social Transformations. "During this time, the legal field of the civilised world has been radically updated, science and technology are moving forward, and Ukraine can only respond to this with an archaic text that does not correspond to the realities of today.

The good news that Ukraine almost has a national drug strategy is overshadowed by the bad: there is a risk that the government will be tempted to adopt this important document purely formally, without diving into the details, which is water under the bridge and not at all European principles. It may even adopt it without any intention of implementing it. Just for the sake of a tick in the certificate of readiness for European integration."

And this cannot be allowed to happen, the participants of