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Drug users face human rights abuses that are too many to just list off.
The fact of the severe criminalisation of drug possession, of drug use, buying drugs,
that so many drug users are detained and sent to compulsory treatment where they may be beaten,
they may be forced to crawl through their own excrement.
We have horrible stories from all over the world of terrible abuses that people who use drugs face,
for no other reason than they at some point consumed drugs or were perceived to have consumed drugs.
Just the rights violations that happen in the “treatment” setting,
the majority of drug treatment models that are used to “treat” drug users,
they are not evidence-based, it is not methadone, it is not buprenorphine,
it is not science-based drug treatment methodology, which is what we push for.
Treat people with respect and listen to the science, instead it is making people feel
that they are less than worthy of decent treatment and treating people like animals.
That is, I would say, the most wide spread and heinous abuse that happens to drug users across the world.
People are being sent to these “drug treatment centres” that are not centres,
there is no treatment, there is no trained medical professional there.
It is perhaps, somebody who has decided that they are and expert and they have been allowed
to open a treatment clinic because there is no government oversight,
or maybe they have paid off an official, or whatever else.
Nobody is caring enough about the rights of drug users to step in and close these places down.
Or say, you know what? These people may be may use drugs, but first they are people.
Above all else, we are just all people.
Why can’t we just treat each other with respect and dignity?
For further information on human rights, ***/AIDS
and to endorse Now More Than Ever, the Joint Statement,
visit, www.HIVhumanRIGHTSnow.org
Subtitles: Arielle Reid, István Gábor Takács �