Decriminalisation is a fundamental policy reform in order to address the harms caused by treating people who use drugs as criminals, and to end the inequality of the law and to stop the aggressive surveillance of individuals and their communities. And when we talk about health care for people who use drugs how is that fully realised when we treat people as criminals first and foremost.

Something is wrong in the system, I see most of my friends going in and out of rehab and prison.

Not only am I a better doctor, but a better person for my involvement in the harm reduction community, because the other people here keep me honest.

Criminalisation of people who use drugs has lead to prison overcrowding… …a criminal record is not something innocent, it has a myriad of other consequences.

Whenever a policy is put in place an evaluation of that policy should also be put in place, and this is something lacking (in the criminalisation of drugs and people who use drugs)

The effectiveness of drug treatment interventions can never be fully realised when we are treating people as criminals

People who use drugs should be front and centre in the response

This research found that in 2014, the total estimated national spending on harm reduction in Hungary amounted to just €1.26 million. By contrast, researchers estimated expenditure on punitive drug law enforcement in the same year to be approximately €2 billion, almost 2,000 times the amount spent on harm reduction. If a tiny proportion of this expenditure was redirected to harm reduction this would transform harm reduction programmes in the country and save countless lives.