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Gadejuristen - The Danish Street Lawyers
My name is Nanna Gotfredsen and I am a street lawyer in Copenhagen.
We are at the open drug scene right now.
It’s just behind the main station in Copenhagen
and we have had an open drug scene here for 30 years– 25 or 30 years.
What we are doing here with our bike is that we are
sending out a legal team providing users, homeless people,
and outdoor sex workers with legal advice and legal assistance.
It’s the package: Pump, filter, water, injection needle.
We have several kinds of needles that we can offer.
If you don’t use these, then we have some bigger ones
and we also have a pump that is bigger.
But this is what you have in the ordinary set here
and also alcohol cleaner.
And this is a J-Key card. Information for safer injection.
This is a question and then you have the answer on the other side.
There is not doubt that law enforcement
cannot prevent people from using drugs.
Using drugs has other reasons than
whether it is criminalised or not.
When the police is targeting the open drug scenes
you can only make it worse for drug users.
They are fighting so hard to stay alive
and we can see that from the constantly high
death rate in Denmark
This is our office – The street lawyer.
Drug users, homeless people and all of them are here with us.
We can be like 30 or 40 people up here,
and so we would like some more space.
Homeless people are having their clothes and things
and papers and things like that in the office.
We have just a very small internet café.
This is the map that the police is using.
We have 14 no-go zones and when you are banned
- it is only drug users and homeless people
who are banned from being in these zones -
it will cost about 100 euros every time you are in these areas.
We have the main station here and the church is here, and here
in an overlap of 3 no-go zones we have the needle exchange program.
So what is the message you are sending?
It is “do you want a fine or ***? Pick yourself.”
‘Fixerum’ means ‘user room or injection room’
and that is from Vancouver in 2004 and it is still like that.
And this is 2 huge garbage disposers in Copenhagen
where users are injecting and using their drugs
because we don’t have injections rooms.
Actually it is explaining the choice…
what choice do we have?
We cannot choose that people are not using.
We cannot choose a drug-free society – that’s an illusion.
But we can chose – do we want them to inject like this?
With nurses and safety?
Or do we want them to inject like this? That’s our choice.
We’ve had the discussion about injection rooms as well
for about 15 years in this country.
The majority of our politicians still find that
establishing safer injecting facilities is too controversial.
It is characterised by legalising drugs.
So people still have to use around here on the open drug scene,
in our back yards and they are put at great risk for overdose,
infections and amputation because of that.
I also speak in favour of what you can call injection rooms
where you can go inside and take your illegal drugs,
get clean needles, and also get access to healthcare
if you have any diseases or have been infected or have anything…
that you can get help in these places
and also take your drugs in a safe place,
so that we don’t have people lying around
for instance taking an overdose outside
in the cold weather or during the winter
If you have a safe injection facility,
we hope from the police and I think the citizens hope the same,
that there will be a very clear reduction in
injection pumps and needles around this area.
It is my opinion that Denmark, like many other states
is under social pressure from the UN system or from,
for example, the Americans and others,
not to engage too much in for instance injection rooms
or prescription of heroine and such
because they feel that it is undermining
the international treaties in the area.
The treaties were made in 1961 when the world
looked a little different. So, I think sometimes that
the UN system should actually be in favour of
making sure that human rights, for instance
securing that people get access to healthcare,
also on a street level even if they are drug users or homeless or the like.
And actually, the UN in this question has been doing the opposite
and it has been very unfortunate.
We see a room with nurses and doctors, a clean room,
I think it can be there in a few years.
Punishment as a tool to prevent people from
potentially harming themselves is absurd.
So we need to start with decriminalising drug users;
at least stop the war on drug users and invite them –
they need to be socially included, they need acceptance,
they need healthcare - that is the first think to do.
Subtitle script by: Arielle Reid �