부산대학교 도서관

Since the 1960s, illicit drug use in Europe has been marked by the serious health consequences of drug injecting, in particular of heroin. The present article discusses the development of two major harm reduction interventions conducted in Europe to reduce heroin injection and its detrimental consequences, namely opioid substitution treatment and needle exchange programmes. Data collected by the EMCDDA, the specialized EU drug monitoring agency, show that these interventions have progressively become part of the common response in Europe for reducing problems related to drug injecting. The data illustrate the emergence in the mid-1980s of these measures as 'new' public health responses to injecting drugs and HIV/AIDS, a process that was preceded by intensive discussions between stakeholders at national and local level. Data also indicate that the scaling up of the measures was not immediate, but happened only about a decade later, during the 1990s—and predominantly in the Western part of the European region. While current social, cultural and legal responses to drug use in EU Member States remain diverse, a recent assessment of national priorities and approaches in preventing infectious diseases and drug-related deaths showed a considerable trend towards a convergence of policies across the whole region. This is discussed in relation to strategic guidance and target-oriented action plans that emerged at the level of the European Union since the late 1990s, concluding that European policy consensus was mediated by EU guidance, while not originating from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]