Course
Reversal:
Poland
Moving
From
"Zero
Tolerance"
Toward
Eased
Drug
Laws
1/14/05
After five years of tough new laws aimed at reducing drug use in Poland, the Polish government appears headed for a change of course. In the first formal steps toward revising its drug laws, the Polish Ministry of Health last week published a series of proposed revisions to them. Most dramatically, the proposed drug law revisions would decriminalize the possession of drugs for personal use -- a stark contrast with current harsh policies that punish drug possessors with up to a year in prison and user-dealers with up to eight years. The revisions would also lift some restrictions on who can provide methadone maintenance therapy to heroin users and may open the way to the medical use of substances currently considered to have none, such as marijuana.
As is the case everywhere, the most popular illicit drug in Poland is cannabis, according to the European Monitoring Center on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). The country also has significant amphetamine and injection heroin using populations and is the home of "kompot," a weak opiate derived from opium straw. In recent years, Ecstasy has also made an appearance. While the proposed changes would mark a sea change in the Polish government's approach to drug policy, they are by no means a done deal. The health ministry proposal is now being reviewed by civil society organizations, after which the ministry will again revise its proposal. No major changes are expected at this point, however, since the groups that are now reviewing the proposal are for the most part groups that have lobbied for revisions in the drug law. Then the proposal will move to the Polish parliament for approval. "It is hard to say if we can get this through," said Kasis Malinowska-Sempruch, director of the Open Society Institute's International Harm Reduction Development Program (IHRD), who was been working with the Poles to move drug reform forward. "The government will possibly change in May, but we hope there will be at least a discussion of this in this session of parliament," she told DRCNet. Given the current parliamentary line-up, Malinowska-Sempruch put the odds of passage at fifty-fifty. "We have a good shot at this," she said. But the fast-moving process leaves little time for educating parliamentarians, and maybe that is something of a good thing, she noted. "This means there is little time for the opposition to organize." Artur Radosz of the drug users' group Kanaba.Info also hopes to see quick action -- before new elections may return a less friendly parliament. "It is possible the government will collapse before May and the new parliament and government will be dominated by parties that support zero tolerance," he said. "It would be much better for us if the government held together and we had parliamentary elections at the same time as the presidential election in November," he told DRCNet. "In either case, our battle has just begun, and we will have to fight hard to make this proposal a reality." For Kanaba.Info, the proposals are welcome indeed, although the group has problems with some particular provisions. "We believe that this proposition, and especially decriminalization of drug possession for personal use, is the first step on the road to developing truly effective and rational policy that is not concentrated on repressive strategy, but on reducing harms done to society and individuals by, actually, illegal drugs," said Radosz. "This proposition in its current form is not perfect, but we hope that together with other Polish organizations working on drug field, we will be able to influence and improve it, so it will be even more based on recommendations made by European Parliament. We hope that the final version of these new drug laws will make it possible to distribute through pharmacies not only expensive synthetic THC drugs, but will allow at least medical patients to grow their own plants." But while the battle to win parliamentary approval has just begun, the fact that this new proposal has been floated by the Ministry of Health reveals that drug reformers and human rights advocates have been waging a quiet campaign to reform the laws for several years. Conferences on harm reduction and Polish drug policy last summer and fall organized by OSI and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights saw nearly unanimous denunciations of the current zero tolerance approach by activists, drug reformers, drug treatment professionals, and politicians alike. OSI's Malinowska-Sempruch also intervened in the debate with a letter in the Polish magazine Politics a year ago this month. "Poland is a country with some of the most retrictive anti-drug laws in the world," she wrote. "Repressive regulations to not cause a decline in drug use and addiction, however; on the contrary, such laws have played a role in the explosion in drug use in countries like the Ukraine and Russia." Malinowska-Sempruch also specifically criticized laws punishing simple drug possession. "Punishing a drug dependent person is a questionable means of rehabilitation," she noted with remarkable understatement. "There was a total lack of discussion on the effects of the new drug policy on users and society as a whole," she explained. "A year ago we organized small meetings, strategized on how to move forward, then began engaging with the non-governmental organizations, and held meetings under the auspices of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. The theme was the impact of present drug policy on both users and society. The presentations were very clear -- things as they currently stand are not favorable. The Ministry of Health was present at those meetings." By last summer and fall, all the pieces were in place. According to Kanaba.Info's Radosz, by mid-summer, the National Bureau for Drug Prevention had prepared reform legislation whose centerpiece was improving the law's language on providing drug treatment for users. The bureau also called for education instead of punishment for persons caught with soft drugs. But while the bureau had not called for decriminalization of drug possession, by the time the health ministry unveiled its proposal last week, it had added that provision as well. "Representatives of the health ministry attended those fall meetings and officially informed us they were working on drug policy," said a pleasantly surprised Radosz, "and what do you know but they included the decriminalization measure in their proposal last week." Minister of Health Marek Baliciki deserves praise for the moves, said both Radosz and Malinowska-Sempruch. "When this process began, we were basically focused on making methadone maintenance more available. The major change will be that not only formal medical institutions but also other groups that meet certain criteria could run such programs," said Malinowska-Sempruch. "But in the meantime, the ministry added an additional amendment, the one saying personal possession is not a criminal offense." While the proposed revisions are a step forward, there is still a ways to go, said Radosz. "The authorities still use the phrase 'drug addict' instead of 'drug user,' and the new policy is designed to provide treatment for drug addicts. They still don't recognize that drug use in most cases does not mean drug abuse, let alone addiction." Kanaba.Info is also disturbed by the proposed article barring "promotion of drug use." "We do not welcome this provision, and if it becomes part of the law, we will go to court because it violates our constitution, which explicitly guarantees freedom of speech and expression." Poland may be a staunch ally of the United States, but when it comes to repressive drug policies, even Eastern European friends of the US are falling away from the fold. We will monitor the progress of the Polish reforms.
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