On April 11, 2008 at Open Society Georgia Foundation was held the presentation of the report of monitoring and advocacy for drug user’s rights by Centre for Constitutional Rights.
The current project funded by Open Society Georgia Foundation aims at protecting the rights of drug users, namely, legal assistance in the Criminal and administrative proceedings, monitoring the legal proceedings, analyzing relevance of local Georgian legislation with international standards.
Throughout the project 34 drug users were provided with legal assistance, 287 persons were given consultations, 92 court cases were monitored.
The society was informed about the project via TV advertisement, dissemination of informational brochures. The TV advertisement was aired on Public broadcasting.
With the purpose of in-depth study of respect of drug user’s rights, the sociologic research had been carried out within the framework of the project including study and analysis of the existing environments.
The project implementations revealed that alongside with stiffening administrative penalties there was a drastic increase in indicators on detention of drug users by police and placement for expertise. The indicators are considerably higher in numbers after stiffening administrative responsibility than before.According to data of 2006, the change in numbers of placing for expertise for establishment of the fact of being under the influence of drugs:January 1 – September 1 – 2995 persons (during 8 months), September 1 – December 31: 9954 persons (during 4 months).The facts show that the state policy on drug users shifts its focus to raising money from drug users by increased penalties in favour of the state budget.The information about the presentation of reports was disseminated via TV company “Caucasus”, “Rustavi 2”, “Public Broadcasting”.
Tea Akhobadze
National Public Health Program