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To the left: Bjørg Månum Andersson, Director General of the Department of Seniors and Social Services; Oslo's City Hall, the meeting venue.
ECAD Advisory Board held its regular meeting on June 18 in Oslo. The Board discussed routine issues on the agenda with focus on the budget.
Once again, the Board would like to bring attention to the fact that the ECAD economy fully depends on the membership fees paid by the member cities. Membership fees are charged in accordance with the city’s population. This model was introduced in ECAD in 1998 and is still considered as the most appropriate and fair. All contributions, larger as well as smaller, paid by the member cities of different size are essential for running of an international organization of ECAD’s scale. Besides the membership fees, ECAD’s economy is formed by the generous support received from the City of Stockholm in terms of providing the organization with premises and other office needs.
The volcanic ashes that clouded the European air space prevented ECAD from holding its 17th Mayors’ Conference in April in Malta. That is why the Board went through the preparations remaining ahead of this postponed conference which will take place on 23-25 September instead. The Board is satisfied with the fact that the conference programme holds in general and only minor adjustments are needed. See more information in the menu to the left under "Conferences".
The Advisory Board was presented an up-date on Youth in Europe (YIE) programme by its manager Jon Sigfusson, Reykjavik. The programme is prolonged until 2012 with a possibility of further extension. In short, the YIE includes two parts: a survey aimed at defining risk and protective factors in regard to drug prevention in each participating city; and a mobilization of society in order to use the knowledge in designing of municipal drug preventive action plan. To remind you, the YIE is an ECAD initiative based upon a successful programme Drug Free Iceland which resulted in a great improvement of the drug situation among the Icelandic youths. Now, the idea of the YIE is not to compare cities with each other – there are many sources enabling such comparison – but to give each interested municipality a tool and a methodology which is proven efficient in reaching targets in drug prevention among the young people.
When ECAD Advisory Board holds its meetings in different member cities, an important part of the agenda includes presentation of the anti-drug work conducted by the hosts. It gives the Board members a better understanding of the needs of the members which are spread though out Europe.
In Oslo, the Board enjoyed a meeting with Anniken Hauglie, the municipal commissioner, who gave a much appreciated reflection on the drug situation in Norway in general. In addition, Assistant Director General of the Department of Seniors and Social Services Nina Backer-Roed told about a collaborative model of crime prevention among youths which is successfully being implemented in Oslo since 2006: the SaLTo-model. For more information in Egnlish please click here http://www.salto.oslo.kommune.no/statistikk_og_analyse/
ECAD Advisory Board expresses its sincere gratitude to the host, Director General Bjørg Månum Andersson and the City of Oslo for the great organization of the meeting and for their warm hospitality.
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on September 9 - 10, 2010 in Jurmala, Latvia.
"Designing a Better World"
Self-help groups under precarious life circumstances:
How do we solve social and practical issues for those who left drugs and criminality behind?
International and local NGOs, volunteers, politicians, social workers and all interested are most welcome to join!
Conference is free of charge.
To get a special discount on the hotel price for your booking, please register before August 25!
Read more under Conferences in the menu to the left.
Conference Announcement
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Today (May 26), at the third day of the II World Forum, a Congress for World Federation Against Drugs has adopted a
Resolution for the Appointment of new Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
That is in support of the spirit of work and achievements of Mr. Antonio Maria Costa, UNODC Executive Director who is bound to leave the position this summer.
For Conference materials and speeches please visit www.wfad.se
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“Youth – Voice of the Future”
Reykjavik, Iceland
The conference is organised by Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture and the Nordic Council
Due to other Nordic events that take place at the same time - on May 20th – 21st 2010 - the Nordic conference Youth- Voice of the future will unfortunately be rescheduled.
The new dates for the conference are October 28th-30th 2010. New invitations will be sent out in August 2010.
One of the major projects executed during the Icelandic presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2009 was a comparative research on the well-being and lifestyles among Nordic youth.
The research project was carried out in all the Nordic countries, including the Faroe Islands, Greenland and the Åland Islands.
Based on the results of the research, the conference will focus on lifestyle and leisure-time activities, language and culture, education, gender and equality, extra-curricular activities and participation, local community networks, adolescent mental health, substance use, values and attitudes of youth.
More information under Conferences in the menu to the left.
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The topic of cocaine has been on the top of media and public discussions in Sweden lately. ECAD director Jörgen Svidèn addressed the debate together with Fransisco Santos Calderon, vice president of Colombia, in one of the biggest Swedish newspapers Nerikes Allehanda on March 21, 2010. Today ECAD publishes this article in English.
In his book Beauty and Hell, Italian writer Roberto Saviano says:
“There is no product, no idea, and no article that has had such a growing market over the last 20 years.” He is talking about cocaine.
According to police and customs and other initiated sources is cocaine on its way to be established in Sweden. Cocaine has until now been a rather minor problem in the country but this picture is changing.
From having been restricted to the jet set groups in our major cities it is spreading to new groups, and to the whole country. The price on cocaine has fallen and today it is not just a champagne drug for the well-to-do people on the fancy nightclubs. This development is very worrying, not the least because of the great impact the production of cocaine has on the environment, direct for the priceless rainforests in Colombia and indirect for the environment and climate in the world.
Development in Sweden
In Western Europe has since long been the second drug after cannabis. According to EMCDDA is abuse of cocaine growing in a number of countries. In Sweden has cocaine until recently played a rather marginalised role, but there are reasons to believe that Sweden are on its way to be even with its European neighbours if the problem is not noticed. The Swedish customs confiscated 32 kilo of cocaine the first sex months 2009, compared to 10 kilos the same period 2008. The Police is reporting the same trend; a growth both in the number of seizures and in weight. In Sweden’s 25 largest cities it is reported that cocaine is the fastest growing of all illicit drugs.
The price on cocaine has during the same time been reduced dramatically and it is no longer expensive to abuse cocaine. One gram costs approximately 800 SEK, a bit more in the central parts in the largest cities and a bit less on the countryside. This means that the price has nearly been halved the latest ten years, which obviously makes it easier to recruit more abusers.
New groups
Accessible data indicates that nearly 80 % of all cocaine in Sweden is in the three largest cities. The normal picture of a cocaine abuser, the wealthy people around nightclubs, is on its way to change. Cocaine is still to be found there but it is misused in far more wide circles. The drug is now to be found almost everywhere. To take one example, nine out of ten people who contacted the treatment facilities in Stockholm this year because if cocaine addiction, was young construction workers. Cocaine is furthermore spreading to suburbs, smaller cities and to new groups, often to marginalised and vulnerable groups, football supporters and to office guys who need to be “refreshed” for their daily meetings. The police is also reporting that there is a tight connection between cocaine and violent crimes. There are also signals that young people snorting cocaine does not see themselves as addicts, though they does not inject.
Why worry?
We mean that there are serious reasons to worry about this development. One is of course that cocaine is strongly addictive and that it affects the central nervous system with severe damages to the body. There is however other reasons than just personal to refrain from cocaine. Cocaine abuse has widely more and for humanity greater effects than purely medicals ones. Misuse of cocaine has global consequences and that for two important reasons. Drugs in general are to great extent financing the wars and terrorisms we see for instance in Afghanistan and Colombia, where kidnapping and murders connected to this belongs to the everyday situation. In addition to that, the production of cocaine destroys huge areas of invaluable and for humanity necessary natural assets.
Around 70 % of all cocaine produced in the world originates from Colombia. The drug lords and the cartels have concentrated their activities in extremely ecological sensitive eco systems; in the Andes highlands and the rainforests in Amazons. These environments contain very sensitive ecological and biological zones. Colombia's rainforest accounts for 10 % of the planet's biodiversity. According to WWF has some 17 % of all original rainforest been lost due to devastation, not the least because of illegal felling to grow cocaine. This has huge impact on the greenhouse effect, when the Amazons is a great and important consumer of carbon dioxide. There is obviously a strong connection between cocaine production and global warming. The devastation of Colombia’s rainforests is furthermore destroying biological diversity, which leads to dramatically reduction and even loss of unique animal species.
To produce one gram of cocaine for an abuser, four square meters of irreplaceable rainforest is destroyed; for every hectare of cocaine cultivation, four hectare of Amazons forests are vanished. Only between 1990 and 2000 an area equivalent to the seize of Skane (a region in Sweden) was devastated to grow cocaine – and it goes on and on.
To grow their illegal crops, they furthermore use a variety of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides to grow their illegal crops. These destroy biomass because of their high toxicity. In the year 2000 alone, approximately 4.5 millions liters of these chemicals were used. These chemicals, solvents, acids and bases are dumped into Amazon streams and rivers, damaging the environment and the normal functioning of aquatic ecosystems, especially the biological cycles and the very existence of their fauna. The quantity of chemicals dumped into the Amazon river systems each year is equivalent to two Exxon Valdez disasters.
Conclusion
Our universal environment is one of the most important questions and on the top of the political agenda, as well as for every man, all around the world today. We are fortunately moving towards a better understanding of our activities impact on the environment. On the present climate meeting in Copenhagen it is discussed nations responsibility to save the planet from further destruction. Still, every man has a great responsibility.
The drug lords cocaine cultivation destroys invaluable natural resources with huge negative impact for the environment. This will continue if the demand is not stopped. One important issue in this is to stop the glorification of cocaine, strangely enough often supported by popular culture and mass media. People using cocaine or contributing to idealise the drug are not idiots. They are as all of us capable of making rational choices. It is not only in Copenhagen important decisions has to be taken four our world. We all have a great responsibility for this!
Fransisco Santos Calderon Jörgen Svidén
Vice President of Colombia Director, ECAD
Subcategories
The ECAD Mayors' Conference
25th MAYORS´ CONFERENCE
and 6th World Forum Against Drugs 
Conference materials
Kevin Sabet, PhD, Director, Drug Policy Institute, University of Florida, President, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), USA
Speech at the WFAD /ECAD 25th Mayors Conference, Gothenburg, May 15, 2018 (Video 5min.)
Supply reduction in Peril? A lot of the worlds`s drug supply emanates from a war-torn Columbia.
Dr. Michael Jonsson, FOI, Swedish Defence Research Agency
Text to the slides (PDF)
In Columbia, a peace deal has been struck, which gives hope for a closure of insurgency and violence. (PDF)
Thomas Pietschmann, Dr, Drug Research Section, Division for Policy Analysis and Public Affairs
The International drug control system, global/regional and national drug patterns and trends, and supply reduction efforts at the international level (PDF)
Photo: Götaplatsen @ Klas Eriksson
Annual Mayors` Conference and the 6th World Forum Against Drugs will take off on May 14-15 in Gothenburg this year.
This joint event will address a growing interest to the effective prevention practices, full recovery and alternatives to incarceration and to life-long dependency on drug treatment.
The conference will create a room for elaborating a practical guide to how a recovery city will look like, this will be grounded on the recent evidence-based research. Sheffield Hallam University (UK), Ghent University (Belgium) and the City of Gothenburg have already started working on this guide in practice.
In order to find out more and to register please visit a joint webpage here.
MAYORS` CONFERENCE 2017
ECAD 24th Mayors` Conference materials
On June 12-13, the city of Kaunas hosted ECAD 24th Annual Mayors`s Conference 2017
Safe Cities Without Drugs. Preventing, Protecting, Policing
Key-note speakers:
David W. Spencer, Field intelligence Manager, Drug Enforcement Agency, European Region
Supply reduction and dismantling drug trafficking organizations: In what ways can local communities benefit (PDF)
Kim Nilvall, Swedish National Bureau of Investigation, Intelligence section, Organized crime
Police work in socially disadvantaged areas in Sweden: Impact of drugs on urban crime (PDF)
Torsten Stodiek, Deputy Head, Strategic Police Matters Unit, Community Policing Advisor, Transnational Threats Department, OSCE
Preventing terrorism and countering violent extremism and radicalisation that lead to terrorism:
A community and intelligence led policing approach (PDF)
Jon Sigfusson, Director for Icelandic Centre of Social Research and Analysis, Reykjavik University, ICSRA
Youth in Europe and Planet Youth (PDF)
Laimonas Vasiliauskas, Senior Specialist, Serious and Organized Crime Department, EUROPOL
European Illicit Drug Market (PDF)
Antonio Boscini, Health Director, San Patrignano Community, Rimini, Italy
Recovery and social reinsertion: San Patrignano Community model extended (PDF)
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME (PDF)
FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT (PDF)
Conference Booking Form
Kaunas Castle
Picture: @Rokas Tenys
Warm welcome to Kaunas, Lithuania!