Highlights:
Reducing demand of drug is the cornerstone of Italy’s action. Italy believes that strong anti-drug-trafficking efforts can and must go hand-in-hand with policies focused on the rehabilitation and reintegration of individuals suffering from drug use and its consequences. Prevention, education, early detection and screening are at the basis of Italian activities in this field. The role of UNODC is essential to providing guidance, promoting the best practices and strengthening international cooperation.

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Excellencies,


My congratulations to UNODC on its invaluable work leading up to this year’s World Drug Report.

Italy shares UNODC’s founding spirit and mission. We fully support the view that drug use and drug addiction deeply affect the lives of individuals, their families and their communities. Drug use is harmful to society and can lead to crime. It must be countered relentlessly. We believe that strong anti-drug-trafficking efforts can and must go hand-in-hand with policies focused on the rehabilitation and reintegration of individuals suffering from drug use and its consequences.

We welcome the UNODC’s conclusions regarding the complexities of global drug consumption trends. A state of high alert is still warranted in Italy, despite the encouraging decrease in consumption. We need to stress that new challenges are emerging, as the World Drug Report has noted: stimulants, synthetic “designer drugs”, and even prescription medications used inappropriately are becoming more widespread and difficult to control.

Reducing demand is the cornerstone of our action. Prevention, education, early detection and screening are at the basis of our activities to prevent drug use and, when prevention was not successful, to minimize its consequences through early intervention. Building family skills is a UNODC principle that has inspired one of our main projects: to offer guidelines and promote activities that will create greater awareness and provide educational skills on drug problems for parents and teachers.

Italy is committed to preventing drugs from becoming a chronic disease for the user. This is why we support strategies that place drug addicts on a path that begins with early detection, moves on to treatment and care, and in the end promotes rehabilitation and reintegration for the full recovery of individuals. In this spirit, at the latest meeting of the Commission of Narcotic Drugs we were proud to contribute to the presentation and approval of the EU resolution: “Promoting Rehabilitation and Reintegration-Oriented Strategies in Response to Drug Use Disorders and Their Consequences That Are Directed at Promoting Health and Social Well-Being among Individuals, Families and Communities.”

We believe that this ongoing care strategy should always include the prevention of drug-related diseases, such as HIV infection, hepatitis, tuberculosis (TBC) and drug-related mortality. We thus fully subscribe to the comprehensive approach of prevention, treatment, and care, outlined in the World Drug Report, which is still the only way to reduce the number of new HIV outbreaks among drug users.

These same principles of promoting health and social well-being also guide our commitment to international cooperation projects. Italy has supported the UNODC/WHO Joint Programme on Drug Dependence Treatment and Care since its launch in 2009, with a particular focus on activities in Albania and Serbia. Programme activities there respond to both substance abuse and addiction associated with other issues, such as health, poverty, violence, criminal behaviour and social exclusion.

Data collection and research are rightly mentioned in the Report as crucial to understanding illicit drug markets. The Italian government also believes that more effective action stems from a better understanding of the phenomenon and from sounder analyses. This is why we are promoting projects that aim to enhance available data and data analysis.

The role of UNODC is essential to providing guidance, promoting the best practices, and strengthening international cooperation and coordination so that countries can adapt their national policies to today’s challenges of illicit drug-trafficking. Italy welcomes the World Drug Report 2011 as a further step in this direction.