CHRONICLE

Welcome to ECAD's new website
 

Written by Tomas Hallberg, director ECAD

Last autumn we conducted a survey among our member cities regarding their views on ECAD's work, and what changes and improvements they wanted from us. One of the most frequent answers was that the they wanted a better/more up-dated website and more exchange of information between the member cities. We have now started this work and as you have already seen, there are some news which we hope will make the ECAD website more rewarding and worth visiting. I would like to take this opportunity to thank photographer Maria Söderberg for her help with the layout and all the pictures, and our new webmaster Camilla Rosenhaug for her work with our website.

However, for successful reconstruction of the website, we need help from our members, for example regarding the headline Activities in ECAD cities. Here we hope to get input from the member cities with materials that could be of interest for our readers. This could be anything from results of local surveys on drugs, starting up new projects, campaigns and drug policy programmes to conferences and seminars that are not explicitly aimed at ECAD members but are of general interest.

For ECAD conferences and seminars there is a special headline like before.

On this page, Chronicles, we offer space for voices both outside and within our organisation.
Furthermore, we shall build up links to our member cities. Also here we need help from our contact persons in Europe to suggest websites that are most relevant and interesting for our readers.

UN Conventions on Drugs are the base of our work, and something we constantly refer to.
Unfortunately, we have the impression that too few people are actually familiar with their contents, and they may also be somewhat difficult to get hold of. The conventions are by no means 'easy reading', especially if they are not in your native language. Therefore we have decided to make them accessible in as many languages as possible. To begin with, you can find them on our website in English, Russian and Swedish.

ECAD was launched as a reaction to the resignation to drug problems in many cities in Europe. ECAD still has the same standpoint today. It does indeed make a difference which drug policy is pursued, and we shall not silently look upon and administer an increasing spread of drug abuse.
It is easy to become pessimistic regarding the direction the drug policies are heading in many European countries. What we need to keep in mind is that these new trends seldom are decided upon with consensus in the city governments or parliaments. There is always an opposition which may need our help and support against these trends towards legalisation or liberalisation of drugs. Also, there are actually countries and cities which choose another direction. We shall continue reporting on these positive changes.

We should not forget the underlying discontent among large groups of population in the countries that have an expressly liberal drug policy since many years. For example, as a letter to ECAD pointed out, five out of six French-speaking cantons in Switzerland voted against free heroin distribution in 1999, even if the proposal won by a slim majority in the country as a whole.

We who work at ECAD aim at getting better in sharing the knowledge we acquire in drug issues. Among other things, we mean to achieve this by keeping this website topical and up-dated, and through our Newsletter which will be published with greater regularity.

February 2002

Tomas Hallberg
Director / ECAD

 
 
 
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