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International Drug Policy Consortium

IDPC

IDPC is a a global network of NGOs that come together to amplify and strengthen a diverse global movement to repair the harms caused by punitive drug policies, and promote just responses.

Lobbying Activity

Response to EU Drugs Strategy and European Action Plan Against Drug Trafficking

26 Sept 2025

The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), a global network of over 190 civil society and community organisations, welcomes the European Commissions call for evidence on the new EU Drug Strategy. IDPC calls on the European Commission to deliver a drug strategy that reflects the EUs core values of human rights, social justice, and public health. This includes broadening the strategy beyond supply reduction, protecting civil society, prioritising harm reduction, supporting national innovation, and continuing to lead by example on the international stage. 1. Avoid an overemphasis on supply reduction The ECs current approach disproportionately prioritises supply-side interventions, despite overwhelming evidence showing that punitive supply reduction efforts are ineffective and are associated with severe human rights violations. The proposed Action Plans exclusive focus on supply-related measures undermines the EUs long-standing commitment to a balanced strategy. Recommendations: Develop comprehensive Action Plans covering all pillars of the EU Drug Strategy, including demand reduction, harm reduction, and international cooperation. Ensure equitable allocation of resources across all policy areas. 2. Safeguard civil society participation Civil society plays a vital role in shaping drug policy and delivering frontline services. Yet, across Europe, organisations face increasing repressionranging from burdensome restrictions to criminalisation and smear campaigns. Recommendations: Explicitly recognise and support the role of civil society and affected communities in the new Strategy. Safeguard their participation through legal protections, transparent engagement processes, and equitable access to funding. 3. Reinforce an evidence- and rights-based approach The EU Drug Strategy must be grounded in growing international guidance on human rights and public health approaches to drug policy. Recommendations: Reaffirm the EUs commitment to UN guidance, including the UN System Common Position on drugs, the International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy and reports from OHCHR and Special Rapporteur on the right to health Align drug policy goals with the SDGs. 4. Prioritise harm reduction and the right to health Harm reduction remains the most effective intervention to protect the health and dignity of people who use drugs. The current EU Drug Strategy was a landmark in recognising harm reduction as a key pillar. Recommendations: Expand and fund harm reduction services, including drug consumption rooms, take-home naloxone, and harm reduction in prison settings. Develop an Action Plan for harm reduction, with measurable, need-based indicators. Adopt a holistic approach that addresses intersecting vulnerabilities such as homelessness, gender-based violence, mental health, and migration status. 5. Enable policy innovation The failure of punitive drug policies underscores the need for flexible and innovative approaches. Several EU countries have already adopted reforms, including decriminalisation and regulated drug markets. Recommendations: Recognise and support national-level reforms and experimentation within EU Member States. Provide space for alternative models, evaluated through indicators measuring health and social outcomes. Promote responsible regulation, as supported by OHCHR, UNDP, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health. 6. Strengthen the EUs role at the UN In global drug policy forums, especially at the CND, the EU has historically promoted health- and rights-based approaches. Recommendations: Maintain a unified, progressive stance at the UN, grounded in international human rights norms. Base EU positions on key UN documents, including the UNGASS Outcome Document, UN System Common Position, and International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy. Ensure meaningful consultation with civil society in shaping and representing EU positions.
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Response to EU Civil Society Strategy

27 Aug 2025

The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) is a network of 190+ civil society and community organisations. CSOs play a critical role in shaping drug policies grounded in human rights and holding governments accountable for human rights violations. Yet, civic space is shrinking across the EU and candidate countries. We urge the EU to adopt an inclusive and rights-based Civil Society Strategy. Shrinking Civic Space in Drug Policy Across Europe, punitive drug laws have entrenched criminalisation not only of people who use drugs but also of the CSOs that support them. Live-saving harm reduction and treatment services face legal uncertainty, stigmatisation, and operational threats. Increasingly, civil society groups face foreign agent laws, inspired by Russia, in countries including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, and Ukraine. These laws target internationally funded NGOs with discriminatory labels, disproportionate reporting requirements, and smear campaigns, eroding public trust and operational capacity. Poland is also witnessing worrying legislative trends regarding NGO transparency. The rise of authoritarian and far-right regimes across the region has led to travel restrictions and arbitrary inspections, surveillance and complex registration processes, restrictive funding controls, harassment, censorship and legal risk for disseminating harm reduction informationoften mischaracterised as drug propaganda. In Hungary, a constitutional amendment in March 2025 prohibited drug use and promotion, prompting aggressive crackdowns on reform-oriented and harm reduction NGOs, drawing global condemnation. Compounding this, drug policy discourse is increasingly dominated by security-focused narratives, sidelining health and human rights approaches. EU and national funding is now heavily skewed toward drug enforcement, with negligible support for harm reduction or reform advocacy. Over the last 5 years, European Commission drug policy funding has excluded harm reduction civil society altogether. This comes amid widespread funding cuts from key international donors (e.g. France, Germany, Netherlands) and the 2025 foreign aid rollback by the U.S. Trump administration, which severely disrupted harm reduction service delivery, particularly those led by peer and community groups. Key Recommendations for the EU Civil Society Strategy A strong and inclusive civil society is essential for developing effective, just, and evidence-based drug policies. The EU must act decisively to protect and support these vital actors to ensure meaningful inclusion, accountability, and sustainability: 1. The mandate for civil society participation should be co-developed, ensuring shared understanding and mutual expectations. 2. CSOs should be consulted as governments set their policy priorities, and contribute transparently and constructively. 3. CSOs should be genuinely involved in formulating policy drafts, engaging professionally and collaboratively, and ensuring that policies are grounded in health, human rights, care and support, instead of securitisation. 4. CSOs should take part in implementing drug policies, and be allocated sufficient and sustainable funding to do so. 5. CSOs should contribute to assessing policy impacts in a skilled and meaningful way, holding governments accountable when needed. 6. Governments should repeal laws that restrict civic space, and ensure that recourse mechanisms are in place for those facing threats or attacks. 7. The EU should retain and strengthen (including via funding) existing mechanisms for engagement, such as the EU Civil Society Forum on Drugs (CSFD) which has become a key vehicle for NGO participation in EU drug policymaking. 8. Core, flexible and sustainable funding should be allocated to civil society and community-led organisations, especially those working in repressive environments. Longer analysis and references available in the document attached.
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Response to Evaluation of the Council Framework Decision on criminal acts and applicable penalties for drug trafficking

12 Feb 2025

International Drug Policy Consortium submission for the evaluation of Council Framework Decision 2004/757/JHA The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) is thankful for the opportunity to comment on the Council Framework Decision 2004/757/JHA. 1. Move away from eradication goals The Framework Decision aims to reduce the availability of illicit drugs. The evidence is clear: the highly punitive approach has failed to reduce the scale of the illegal drug market. Instead, the market is thriving and has become more complex - while the human rights situation is deteriorating. The Framework Decision should move away from the unrealistic goal of eradication and instead aim to reduce its most harmful aspects, including reducing health harms, violence and abuses against affected communities. 2. Clarify the exclusion of personal consumption from imposition of criminal sanctions The Council Framework Decision proposes to focus on the most serious types of drug offences, excluding personal consumption. This is fundamental, considering the severe health and human rights harms associated with the criminalisation of people who use drugs, as highlighted by UN human rights experts. This principle should extend not only to drug use, but also possession, cultivation and purchase for personal use, and social sharing. 3. Strengthen the principle on proportionality The Framework Decision calls on Member States to impose effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties, including custodial sentences. People targeted by drug law enforcement are generally involved at the lowest levels of the trafficking chain, are among the most marginalised, and face multiple and intersecting layers of vulnerability. While their incarceration has no effect on the scale of the market, it has long-lasting impacts on their lives. According to the principle of proportionality, situations of vulnerability and marginalisation should be taken into account in the imposition of any sanction, and prison should be used as a means of very last resort. In line with the UN Common Positions on drugs and on incarceration, the Framework Decision should explicitly promote alternatives to punishment. 4. Address the human rights implications of the use of new technologies States increasingly rely on surveillance technologies in drug policy, including pre-crime profiling, so-called gangs databases, registries of people who use drugs, individual bio-testing as a condition to access services, biometric mass surveillance at borders, and the criminalisation of encrypted tools. This has led to a wide range of digital rights violations, disproportionately impacting marginalised communities. The protection of human rights, including digital rights, should be acknowledged and promoted as a core objective of the revised Council Framework Decision. 5. Provide Member States flexibility for much-needed reforms As Member States are considering legal regulation as an alternative to punitive drug control, the Framework Decision has been used as an obstacle to these reforms. A revised Framework Decision should allow for sufficient flexibility for States to decide how best to control their drug market, including through legal regulation regimes. 6. Promote the EUs balanced approach in drug policy The EU is the global champion of a balanced approach to drug policy, demonstrating leadership and pride in the drug response enshrined in the EU Drug Strategy 2021-2025, focusing on demand, supply and addressing drug-related harm. The revised Council Framework Decision should serve to enhance and further promote this balanced approach, and the EU must ensure that the Framework objectives do not undermine other aspects of the EU Drug Strategy, in particular in relation to protecting health and human rights.
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Response to Revision of the mandate of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction

11 Apr 2022

The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) is a network of +190 NGOs – including dozens of European NGOs – that seek to reform drug policies in order to advance social justice and human rights. IDPC welcomes a renewed mandate for the EMCDDA, as it plays a critical role in supporting evidence-based drug policies across the EU, and more broadly globally. A stronger, well-funded agency is therefore to be applauded. We also welcome several innovations brought forward in the proposal, including: • The enhanced role the EMCDDA in monitoring national drug policies, as well as its ability to evaluate and accredit national drug programmes. Many national drug policies are in practice not aligned with the principles of balance, human rights, and basis in evidence set out in the EU Drugs Strategy 2021-2025. • The EMCDDA’s new mandate to review and certify the national focal points that comprise the Reitox network, to ensure that national-level data is reliable. • We strongly welcome the initiative to monitor, assess and collect data on supply reduction policies and programmes. In the past there has been little scrutiny on whether supply reduction efforts are evidence- and human rights-based. This is an opportunity for the EMCDDA to develop new indicators to evaluate supply reduction policies grounded in evidence and human rights. • Finally, the new mandate would enable the EMCDDA to engage more intensively in international data monitoring and cooperation. There has been much criticism on the quality and level of data collection at the UN with regards to drugs and drug policy. The EMCDDA has a critical role to play in both sharing data and analysis from EU member states, and in building the capacity of other agencies and bodies. However, there are several elements in the proposal that raise serious concerns: • We are highly concerned over the clear imbalance in the new mandate of the EMCDDA towards supply-side issues, with very little focus on demand-side issues and health. This is a worrying shift as the role of the EMCDDA in highlighting evidence-based policies relating to drug demand and health is critical across and beyond the EU. The balance between demand and supply is at the very core of the EU Drug Strategy for 2021-2025 and its predecessors and should be reflected in the new EMCDDA mandate. • Where the draft does mention demand-side issues, it places an excessive emphasis on drug prevention-related activities but focuses little on harm reduction. For instance, while drug prevention is mentioned 41 times in the current draft, harm reduction and treatment are only mentioned 5 times, while recovery is not mentioned at all. • The lack of focus on human rights within the draft mandate renewal is also cause for concern, especially since much of the mandate relates to supply-side activities which have, in many countries, been associated with human rights violations. • Article 16 of the proposal requests the EMCDDA to develop EU-wide campaigns on drug prevention and raising awareness of the adverse effects of drugs. As the EMCDDA's principal scientific analyst on prevention pointed out, mass media campaigns warning from illicit drugs, despite the high costs and lack of evidence for effectiveness. This new role would therefore go against the EMCDDA’s own evidence of effectiveness. • The way in which civil society and communities will be involved in supporting the EMCDDA is unclear. Article 55 should be reviewed to create a formal mechanism through which civil society and affected communities, including people who use drugs, will be involved throughout the work of the agency, and that it is systematic and adequately funded. Furthermore, the EMCDDA should be required to consult and meaningfully involve people who use drugs and those who are the subject of their normative guidelines, following the “nothing about us without us” principle.
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