DATA REPORT

Recommended citation:
Tammi, T., Rigoni, R., Matičič, M., Schäffer, D., van der Gouwe, D., Schiffer, K., Perez Gayo, R., Schatz, E. (2020):

This is the first monitoring report covering certain areas of drug policy and practice produced by Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network (C-EHRN). The purpose of this report is to enrich the information and knowledge base of harm reduction interventions in Europe from the viewpoint of civil society organisations, meaning organisations that directly work for, and with, people who use drugs. We believe that this approach is a necessary, and useful, contribution to the development of drug policy in the region.

We plan to repeat this reporting on an annual basis to identify developments and changes over time. A lot is being learned in this first pilot phase and adaptations to the focus and questions will be made, accordingly, as well as a recognition of certain limitations with regards to coverage and validation which we cannot easily overcome. Consequently, the information provided in this report is sometimes anecdotal and represents the situation in a particular city or region and informs us as to the experiences of a specific organisation in the field. Such ‘real life’ information can contribute significantly to an understanding of the advantages, barriers and challenges of drug policy.
We will use the insights and information collected in this report within our advocate efforts to strengthen harm reduction policies in Europe and, we hope, our partners and contributors will do the same in their environment at a regional and national level.

More than one hundred organisations and individuals from 35 European countries have contributed to the collection of data with an amazingly high response rate; we thank all contributors for their great work and commitment. Without their engagement, this work would never have been undertaken at all.
In particular, we would like to thank the authors of this report, Tuukka Tammi and Rafaela Rigoni, who were supported by the coordinators of the expert groups, Mojca Maticic, Daan van der Gouwe and Dirk Schäfer, respectively. A special thanks to Dagmar Hedrich of EMCDDA for her ongoing and patient support.
We thank the European Commission, DG Sante, for their financial support and to the Regenboog Groep, Amsterdam, for their ongoing support of Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network.

Eberhard Schatz
On behalf of the C-EHRN team

read report here…