Abstract: Respect for human rights is a defining feature of harm reduction, which is commonly characterised as a public health-based movement. The importance it attaches to ‘user-friendliness’ and the view that drug users have a right to the same respect and dignity that other users of health and social care services receive is largely undisputed among harm reductionists. Within harm reduction there is also a developing discourse identifying drug use itself as a human right; nudging harm reduction towards being a rights based movement. This allows us to describe two philosophies of harm reduction: a ‘weak rights’ version, in which people are entitled to good treatment and a ‘strong rights’ version that additionally recognises a basic right to use drugs. Prioritising human rights or public health can lead to different concepts of harm reduction and different forms of ‘right action’. Privileging health may even, in some circumstances, be consistent with prohibitionary policies if these reduce harm. By contrast, the strong rights version of harm reduction subordinates public health considerations to the right to use drugs and implies support for policies that may sometimes increase harm. In the UK, the publication of ‘The Angel Declaration’, which recognises a right to use drugs and proposes a skeletal regulatory framework for a post-prohibition era, adds to the impetus for harm reductionists to clarify whether they fully embrace a right to use drugs within their understanding of harm reduction. This paper elaborates these issues in the context of the constraints upon the development of an evidence-based approach to controlling drug use that arise from the UN Conventions of 1961, 1971 and 1988.

Abstract: This research has tested a structural model of risk and protection factors among 1437 at-risk adolescents in Switzerland. The model was used to identify important gender and age differences. Our research shows that interactions between parents, peers, negative mood, and secure self create a range of risk factors for girls and boys, and for younger and older teens. Negative peer group was a greater risk for young girls than for young boys. Negative mood can serve as an early warning sign for boys, as can negative peer group for girls. Mood for boys was marginally associated with a substance-using peer group and with poor relationships in the family. This suggests that for boys the focus of prevention should be on family relationships and for girls on peer relationships. For older girls, secure self was the greatest protector against substance-using peers, whereas for younger boys and girls, parents continued to offer some protection. The focus on development of secure self in older girls holds promise for secondary prevention.

Abstract: It is difficult to draw causal conclusions about the effectiveness of secondary prevention programs for adolescents at risk, when the programs use a variety of different interventions. The Action Plan is an instrument that is designed to make collection of such data possible. This allows calculating different kinds of intervention patterns for each participant and program, which, in combination with outcome measures, gives an estimate of successful vs. less successful interventions. The study compared intervention patterns from 12 different sites in a national intervention program in Switzerland. The program, called supra-f (www.supra-f.ch), started in 1999 and will end in 2005. Results are presented from the ongoing study with approximately 600 adolescents. We calculated effect sizes (ES) to compare interventions with outcome measures. Effect sizes (ES) are presented on well being, coping, self-esteem, delinquency, and substance use (cigarettes, alcohol, cannabis) in relation to intervention packages, risk groups (low, moderate, high), and age (two groups: 11-15 and 16-20 years of age) using data collected from 1999-2002.

Abstract: Die Schweizer Drogenpolitik gerät wieder in Bewegung. Nach einigen Jahren der relativen Ruhe fordert nun eine Expertenkommission des Bundes die Entkriminalisierung von Besitz und Konsum. Die Diskussion unter Fachleuten, Politikern und Betroffenen ist eröffnet.