NAIROBI - Stigmatisation and criminalisation of people who use drugs and other harmful substances including alcohol and marijuana deters them from seeking vital life-saving services, experts said during the Harm Reduction Exchange meeting, in Nairobi, Kenya, on Wednesday, November 27. Instead, experts said, people who use these harmful substances should be embraced and given the necessary support and enabled to access vital assistance. Through this way, they can get assistance which will enable them to recover and become economically productive. ALSO READ: Tobacco harm reduction advocates call for more robust campaigns in Africa A Ghana-based non-governmental organisation that advocates for evidence-based public drug policies and harm reduction, Harm Reduction Alliance, said stigmatisation and criminalisation remain significant issues in Africa. The oganisation’s Executive Director, Samuel Cudjoe Hanu, said stigmatisation and criminalisation impede access to existing harm reduction services and undermine the political and financial support needed to implement and expand these services. “Discrimination and stigmatization prevent people from accessing simple services that we have,” Hanu told New Times on the sidelines of the Harm Reduction Exchange. “We need to take steps to stop stigma and discrimination so that people can access service so that they can go back to work.” Hanu said that although 108 countries include harm reduction in national policies, criminalisation and punitive responses to drugs remain dominant in most places. “These approaches undermine harm reduction efforts, and they continue to fuel stigma and discrimination and deter people who use drugs from seeking vital, life-saving services,” Hanu said while delivering his presentation “How Science-led Innovation and Regulation are Changing the Harm Reduction Landscape”. “Discrimination, penalisation has not served us well. There is a need for us to show more love, more commitment to people who use drugs. People who use drugs are human beings just like us and there is a need for us to show them love so they can love themselves.” He said there is a need to understand that there is now efficient evidence based public policies that can be used to manage drug use. “We need to follow the science. Science is the best way that can help all of us,” Hanu said. Research shows that disclosing one’s status as a drug user can result in harm including discrimination, violence, harassment, social exclusion and arrest. People who use drugs are often reluctant to access healthcare and service provision due to concern about criminalization and discrimination, and they may also conceal their drug use problem from healthcare and service providers during consultations for the same reasons.
