Citywide is a national network of community activists and community organisations that are involved in responding to Ireland’s drugs problem. Citywide was set up in 1995 to bring together Dublin communities that were struggling with the heroin crisis; it now works nationally, linking communities across the country that are now dealing with a much broader range of problem drug use. Citywide is actively engaged in promoting an interagency response to the drugs problem, supporting partnership between government departments/agencies and community and voluntary bodies in the NGO sector. Citywide supports local groups both in delivering drug services in their communities and in participating in partnership structures at local and regional level. We also work in partnership with the Drug User groups in Ireland to support their involvement at all levels of policy making. Citywide acts as the representative body for the community sector in Ireland on national drug policy committees and plays a lead role in lobbying and campaigning on policy issues, with a particular focus on the clear and enduring link between Ireland’s drug problem and socio-economic disadvantage.

Citywide es una red de activistas y de organizaciones comunitarias que buscan responder al problema de las drogas en Irlanda. Citywide fue creado en 1995 en Dublín para reunir a las comunidades afectadas por la crisis de heroína. La organización trabaja a nivel nacional, vinculando a las comunidades a través del país que intentan ahora responder a problemas mucho más amplios en cuanto a las drogas.

Citywide est un réseau national d'activistes et d'organisations communautaires qui visent à répondre au problème de la drogue en Irlande. Citywide a été créé en 1995 à Dublin afin de rassembler les communautés affectées par la crise de l'héroïne. L'organisation travaille au niveau national, en reliant les communautés à travers le pays qui cherchent dorénavant à répondre à des problèmes bien plus vastes vis-à-vis de la drogue.

Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign

The Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs, which began in April 2023 and runs until October 2023, is considering how Ireland should respond to the issue of drugs, at a time when there is general agreement that our existing approach is not working.

As a society, we are adding to the burden of our policy failures on key social and economic issues with an approach to drugs that increases 

blame, shame, stigma and criminalisation.

To help us to understand why it is not working and what kind of change is needed, we would like you to hear the stories of people who are living with the impact of our current approach, people who use drugs, their family members and community activists, who are working together to bring about change.

We invite you to listen to our stories and to join the national conversation about why we need change:

 includes five episodes, where five activists from across different communities tell their own stories of how our current approach to drugs has impacted on them and how it has led them to working to bring about change. Our community activists include people who use drugs, their family members and members of the wider community, working together in solidarity to bring about change.

Ireland: Untold Stories podcast series

The following letter was drafted by a coalition of 29 civil society organisations and community networks in the European Union. The letter urges the German Presidency to propose to the EU Horizontal Working Party on Drugs (HDG) that the current draft EU Agenda and Action Plan on Drugs 2021-2025 be rejected, and measures are taken to ensure an appropriate and inclusive strategic development process for the next EU drugs strategy.

We are writing regarding the proposed EU Agenda and Action Plan on Drugs 2021-2025, published by the European Commission on 24 July 2020 (the “2021-25 EU Drugs Agenda”, or the “Agenda”). We have serious concerns regarding both the process for its development as well as with the substance of the document and urge the German Presidency to propose to the EU Horizontal Working Party on Drugs (HDG) that this draft cannot be accepted, and to outline an appropriate and inclusive strategic development process for the next EU drugs strategy.

The formulation of the 2021-25 EU Drugs Agenda through a unilateral Communication of the European Commission without consultation with EU Member States and other relevant EU actors, including civil society is deeply problematic. If the HDG accepts this document as it stands, a worrying procedural precedent will be set. To date, the ‘EU’s drugs strategies and action plans are developed through a rigorous process that allows Member States to work together on the development of strategic approaches. This involves a series of negotiations, evaluations and compromises so that consensus can be reached in the form of a new strategy document.’ The 2021-25 EU Drugs Agenda appears to be the result of a hasty, opaque and non-participatory policy-making process, and represents a drastic departure from agreed EU policies. The lack of appropriate consultation and engagement inevitably means that the different experiences and views of EU Member States and other relevant EU actors have less weight in the new document. It fails to adopt a balanced, integrated, and multidisciplinary approach to drug matters; it is not rooted on human rights, public health, and the key international drug policy documents; and it envisages a diminished role for civil society and affected communities.

The European Union has been a global leader in advancing a balanced, integrated, and multidisciplinary approach to drug policies. The 2005 and 2013 EU Drugs Strategies established a consolidated framework that has become a ‘central guiding model’ for national-level drug strategies across the EU. However, the 2021-25 EU Drugs Agenda proposes -in its own words- a ‘paradigm-shift’. It disproportionately focuses EU policy on law enforcement and supply control, to the detriment of the priority previously given to public health, human rights, international cooperation, and scientific research and evaluation. If implemented, it will signal a diminished support for evidence-based drug treatment and harm reduction services, and it will weaken the voice of the EU in international drugs fora, where it has been a key global actor in defending the balanced, rights-based approach adopted by the 2016 UNGASS Outcome Document.

In spite of the EU’s commitment to seek the ‘active and meaningful participation and involvement of civil society’ in the ‘development and implementation of drug policies’, the participation of civil society in the preparation of the 2021-25 Drugs Agenda has been deeply flawed. European NGOs were only allowed to provide input to the Agenda with the publication of the Road Map, on 10 June 2020, with no other opportunity to feed in the process, besides a call between the Commission and certain CSFD members in April. It should be borne in mind that the Road Map is a document of just over two pages that does not allow for a genuine understanding of, or feedback on, the Agenda. No draft of the Agenda was ever shared.

Furthermore, the European Commission disregarded the overwhelming majority of the 27 submissions sent by European NGOs, which urged the EU to retain the balanced and multidisciplinary approach that characterized the 2005 and 2013 EU Drugs Strategies. The fact that the deadline for submitting feedback was 15 July 2020, a mere nine days before the publication of the Communication, suggests that the consultation was not undertaken in the spirit of genuine inquiry, and that the Agenda was at least near completion when the Road Map was published.

Crucially, although the external evaluation of the 2013 EU Drugs Strategy was finalised in April 2020, the evaluation was not published or otherwise shared with civil society until three months later, on 24 July 2020, thus depriving stakeholders of crucial information when providing feedback to the Road Map. This is important, as there would appear to be a significant disconnect between the Agenda and the external evaluation. For instance, the evaluation consistently found that the 2013 Strategy had ‘sparked a considerable amount of progress’ in the cross-cutting areas of coordination, international cooperation, and monitoring, research and evaluation, which are precisely the areas now removed from the Agenda.

In addition to the grave concerns regarding the process and procedure, we felt it is important to bring your attention the key flaws in the draft Agenda:

. Although the Agenda explicitly claims to seek an ‘integrated, balanced, and multidisciplinary approach’ to drug policies, the draft is not balanced, as over half of its eight priority areas concern security and supply control interventions, with the rest distributed between prisons, prevention, treatment, and harm reduction. Public health measures aimed at reducing the harms that can be associated to drug use have been relegated from the first priority of the 2013 Drugs Strategy to the end of the new Agenda. The cross-cutting themes of coordination, international cooperation, and information and research, which have been successfully developed since 2013 to materialise the multidisciplinary and integrated approach, have been dropped. The many references to the balanced approach across the operative parts of the 2013 Strategy, for instance as the basis for increased coordination across all actors, interventions at the CND, and international cooperation, have also disappeared.

Deprioritising human rights and public health.

 Human rights have practically disappeared from the draft Agenda, which contains no reference to the relevant international or regional human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Furthermore, there is no mention of the International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy, a critical document developed with the leading support of Germany that lays down, for the first time, a set of clear and comprehensive international standards for articulating rights-based responses to illegal drug economies. In contrast, the 2013 EU Drugs Strategy explicitly referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention of Human Rights, amongst others, and human rights were mentioned several times in the section on international cooperation. Public health has been relegated from the first policy field in the 2013 Strategy to the last priority areas of the Agenda, and has been replaced by ‘drug-related security’ as the first goal of the document.

Dropping support for key international documents.

 Equally surprising is the little attention paid to the 2016 UNGASS Outcome Document - only a footnote in the preambular part of the Agenda, and a mention in the Action Plan, outside its priority areas -, even though it has been consistently described by the EU as ‘the most comprehensive policy agreement of the international community and a milestone in the discussions on international drug policy’. It is also inexplicable that the Agenda would completely fail to reference the 2018 UN System Common Position on Drugs, a watershed document championed by the EU and EU Member States, as it establishes for the first time a coherent position across all UN entities on key topics like decriminalisation and harm reduction.

Reducing the space for civil society and people who use drugs.

 Whereas the 2013 EU Drugs Strategy contained a commitment to promote and encourage ‘the active and meaningful participation and involvement of civil society’, the EU Drugs Agenda only mentions ‘engagement’ with the CSFD. Involvement with civil society beyond the CSFD has been omitted, and there is no reference to engaging with people who use drugs and clients of drug services, which the 2013 Strategy did.

Weakening the external dimensions of drug policy.

 The 2021-25 Drugs Agenda risks weakening the external action of the EU in bilateral and multilateral drugs fora, as it does not set clear guidelines for EU coordinated intervention, and it does not provide strong support for the key international documents that the EU has been forcefully defending and promoting in the last years. For instance, the Agenda does not provide any concrete principle or guideline for intervening at the CND, even though it is arguably the centre of the international drug control system, and the role of the EU there is more important than ever. This contrasts greatly with the 2013 Drugs Strategy, which committed the EU to a ‘strong voice’ in the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, with the aim of promoting the balanced approach. Another case in point is the only reference to alternative development in the whole Agenda, which can be found under the heading ‘dismantling drug production’, and is not deemed to warrant even one of the 24 priority areas set in the document. This is especially surprising considering that the 2018 Council Conclusions adopted exclusively on this topic committed the EU to a ‘leading role (…) in the funding and implementation of alternative development’, and stated clearly that the success of alternative development goes ‘beyond an exclusive focus on illicit drug crop monitoring’.

 In spite of the EU’s leading role in fostering scientific knowledge and research on drug markets and drug use through the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the 2021-25 EU Drugs Agenda has dropped the cross-cutting theme on monitoring, research and evaluation, and science-based drug policies are scarcely mentioned in the operative parts of the document. Again, this makes a striking contrast with the 2013 Drugs Strategy, which featured a whole theme on research and evaluation for ‘a better understanding of all aspects of the drug phenomenon’, and provided a role for the EMCDDA in supply reduction, international cooperation, and the overall implementation of the document, among others.

 Although the 2021-25 Drugs Agenda explicitly seeks to reduce drug-related stigma, the European Commission press release accompanying the publication of the proposed Agenda was deeply stigmatising, as it puts drug policies at the same level as child abuse and firearms trafficking. Furthermore, the Agenda contains some instances of stigmatising language (‘substance abuse’ and ‘substance misuse’) that did not exist in the 2013 Drugs Strategy.

In light of the above and following established practices for the development of previous EU drugs strategies, we urge you, as the Council Presidency, to take political leadership and encourage the HDG to reject the draft proposed by the European Commission. A new process for strategy development should ensure that the new document reflects in a balanced manner the existing EU and the latest international commitments (in particular the 2016 UNGASS Outcome Document), the views of the EU Member States and all the relevant actors within the EU institutions, and engages meaningfully with civil society.

We would also be grateful if you could share this letter with your HDG colleagues before the 9 September meeting.
We remain at your disposal for any further discussion on this matter, and look forward to our continued cooperation on this and other topics during the German Presidency.

Drug policy experts raise concerns regarding the draft EU Agenda and Action Plan on Drugs 2021-2025 - Open Letter

The Civil Society Forum on Drugs, an expert group of the EU Commission, is urging the Commission to provide adequate funding and staff to drug coordination and support demand and harm reduction interventions.

The European Commission is preparing the new Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) to define budget priorities for the post-2020 period. There are many concerned civil society voices warning us that EU decision makers would like to deprioritise social and health programs while there is a growing focus on security, border control and migration issues. Drug policy is a multidisciplinary field that has strong connections to both security and health policies – and its health and social elements are often left out of consideration. The drugs unit of the European Commission, that coordinates work in this area, has been renamed the Organised Crime and Drugs Policy Unit and is seriously underfunded and understaffed. This is a significant obstacle to the strengthening of coordination efforts in the implementation of the European Union Drug Strategy and the newly adopted Action Plan for 2017-2020, an example of pragmatism, humanism, and evidence-based policies unique in the world.

The Civil Society Forum on Drugs (CSFD), an expert group of the European Commission, has sent a letter to the Commission recommending to strengthen drug coordination in the administrative structure of the European Commission, by providing adequate funding and staff to this issue. We also urge the Commission to prioritise social and public health interventions to reduce drug demand and drug-related harms in the new MFF. You can read the text of the letter below.

Civil society recommends the EU to strengthen drug coordination

Stigma experienced by people who use drugs prevents many from seeking help and support, making it extremely difficult for people to move beyond their addiction and pushing them into further isolation and danger, according to research underpinning Ireland’s first campaign to address drug related stigma.

This Citywide campaign aims to break down stigma, to shift attitudes and to move towards a situation where people who use drugs are treated with respect and dignity.

Stop the stigma campaign launched

CityWide commissioned this paper to explore possible structures and processes through which to engage with, hear the voice of, and empower Black and minority ethnic communities in relation to issues of drug use.

CityWide hopes that such a development would enable it to be informed about the particular needs of those involved in problematic drug use within Black and minority ethnic communities, to enable Black and minority ethnic communities to influence the development and implementation of the National Drugs Strategy, and to support effective policy and service responses to their needs.

The paper was prepared on the basis of interviews with fourteen people involved in community based service provision in relation to problematic drug use (9) and with people involved in Black and minority ethnic organisations (5).

Two research reports on drug use in new communities in the Irish context were reviewed. In 2004 Merchants Quay got a grant from the National Advisory Committee on Drugs and Alcohol to carry out an exploratory study on problematic drug use among new communities. 1 This addressed patterns of drug use, methods of drug use, motivations for drug use, risks drugs users are exposed to, levels of awareness of health promotion strategies and services, and barriers to accessing support services. This noted that carrying out research with drug users from new communities was particularly challenging and demanding. It is a small qualitative study.

In 2009, the Western Region Drugs Task Force commissioned research that presents an overview of new communities in the west of Ireland, explores substance use in their countries of origin, explores substance use in Ireland and among new communities, and reviews the risk factors for substance use in new communities, barriers to effective service utilisation and possible responses.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

Stimulating and supporting a black and minority ethnic voice on drugs issues

The last year has seen Ireland make huge strides in how we think about drug policy. As we face into an uncertain political future in Ireland, it is important that we maintain this momentum and keep driving towards policies that work.

This is particularly true in 2016 as our own National Drug Strategy only runs to the end of the year, and as global drug policy is considered at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session. Regardless of the composition of the incoming government, there are a few key messages we can keep focused on.

The way that we have historically addressed drugs and drug use globally has been an expensive failure. It is now widely recognised that drugs and drug use are not discrete issues to be ‘solved’ by criminal justice mechanisms. Rather, much more benefit and value can be accrued from having a health focus, which is why the London School of Economics have called for a massive global shift from criminal justice spending to health spending.

The simple reality is that the primary reason we spend money on the criminal justice side is supply control. We want dealers off the street, which means that there are less drugs available for sale, price will go up and demand will go down, shrinking the size of the market. The problem is that it doesn’t work like that.

The UNODC estimates that only 3% of pure heroin that is imported into Ireland is seized. Our best efforts have only a temporary impact on price and availability, and consequently do not significantly affect either supply or demand in the market.

This is not to say we shouldn’t try to control supply or have sanctions for those that deal in illegal substances, merely that the way we are currently addressing these issues is ineffective and expensive.

As an example, in our zeal to criminalise dealing so we can control supply, we have also criminalised those who use drugs. It is not only an offence to possess for the purposes of supply, but also just to possess for personal use.

Criminalising possession in this way does not really discourage use – rates of problematic drug use in societies are largely independent of a simple criminalise / decriminalise variable – but it does have repercussions.

It disproportionately impacts on people from poorer areas, it acts as a barrier to future employment for people convicted, and permits negative stereotyping of drug users. It’s easy to label someone a criminal in this way, but this doesn’t solve anything.

This is why grassroots community organisations like Citywide have been outspoken in their calls for the decriminalisation of possession. It is also why a Joint Oireachtas Committee – with cross party and cross house membership – also concluded that possession for personal use was best dealt with outside the ambit of the criminal law.

However, not only have we criminalised those who use drugs, but also potentially those who work with people who use drugs. Our current laws contain a range of permissive offences – so for example, not only is it a crime to possess drugs, but it is a crime to permit someone else to possess or use drugs on your premises.

Criminalising possession doesn’t discourage use – We need real solutions

Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign invites you to attend its 20th anniversary conference

The conference will be addressed by President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins

This year 2015 marks the 20th anniversary of Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign. It is also a year when drug policy reform issues such as decriminalisation are being put on the policy agenda in Ireland in advance of the development of the next National Drugs Strategy. As part of its 20th anniversary celebrations, Citywide is holding a major conference on the overall theme of Drug Policy Reform to look at the following questions:

What have we learnt from 20 years experience of trying to tackle the drugs issue here in Ireland?

How can we link our experience in Ireland to the international debate on moving from the ‘war on drugs’ to a public health and human rights approach?

How can we bring together the learning and evidence from the Irish and the international experience to feed into the new Irish National Drugs Strategy?

 Academic, Researcher, Community activist, Colombia: 

International drugs policy and the “War on Drugs”- the impact on communities in Colombia.

 Executive Director, International Drug Policy Consortium: 

The UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs & the shifting global drug policy landscape.

 Co-ordinator, London School of Economics IDEAS International Drug Policy Project 

Linking current developments in Irish drugs policy to the international policy context.

 Co-ordinator, Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign: 

20 years experience of community involvement – key lessons for the next National Drugs Strategy.

Minister of State Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD:

The way forward for Irish drugs policy -Key issues for the next National Drugs Strategy.

Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign

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