in Copenhagen. This chain of solidarity was extremely gratifying on an emotional level. It enabled our groups, often subject to strong feelings of rejection in their own countries, to discover brilliant and enthusiastic counterparts from elsewhere, with little inclination for bemoaning their fate, while we tended to view ourselves as a peculiarly French phenomenon. Today this chain of solidarity enables us to evolve in partnership within the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD), chaired by Jude Byrne. (See part 2 of Chapter 7 written by her). In 2003, the association took on a new dimension with the organising of the États généraux des usagers de substitution (EGUS – General Assembly of Substitution Users, 2006). This annual event was devised as a forum for exchange for all stakeholders, users, healthcare professionals and ordinary citizens. Our idea of providing users with a platform remains linked to the fundamental notion that Drug addicts of all countries…unite! drugs form part of the field of potential activity in the path through life of As we have seen, self-support was a con- any human being. As Nicole Maestracci, cept imported from abroad. Charismatic drug tsar in France from 1998 to 2002, leaders, now dead as a result of AIDS and rightly expressed it: a world without long forgotten, such as Werner Hermann, drugs does not exist. Unfortunately, this founder of the German JES group, or brief improvement in matters was fought John Mordaunt, leader of the Mainliners against by an ill-assorted alliance of oppogroup in the United Kingdom, profoundly nents to HR policy and supporters of allinfluenced the first French self-support out medicalization, namely the historically associated twin cronies of the moral activists. In 1997, the Eighth International Harm order and the health regime. Reduction Conference was organised in Paris. To mark the event, we brought together two hundred people of all Turning point of addictology, or the nationalities decked out in t-shirts bear- cuckoo-in-the-nest policy ing the explicit symbol – an Eiffel Tower transformed into a syringe – crossed out Harm reduction is a necessary condition by the slogan ‘I’m a drug user’. Two hun- for changing how drugs are represented dred jokers proclaimed their drug use at but is not enough to achieve this. One of the tops of their voices at an official con- the political messages of Limiter la casse ference addressed by three former minis- and ASUD was to insist on bringing legal ters. These shared moments created ties and illegal drugs closer together with that were strengthened through personal the aim of educating. It was necessary relationships formed with self-support to exploit the potential of identifying, for leaders such as Jude Byrne, from the example, consumption of cannabis with Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users traditional wine-drinking, with the objecLeague (AIVL), Mat Southwell, organiser tive at heart being to destroy negative of Respect in the United Kingdom and representations of the drug addict by Joergen Kjar of the Drug User Union stressing consumers’ responsibilities as of drug addicts for a purpose other than to share drugs seemed utopian even to us! Not only was the future to prove our worries unfounded, but the official support from the Ministry of Health in 1996 gave legitimacy to our slogan ‘Association of criminals funded by the State’. As a real HR policy was gradually implemented that included one of the most liberal systems of access to substitution treatments in the world, our audience gradually expanded. The ASUD newspaper, with a distribution of 4000 copies in 1992, then became the voice of drug addicts. In 1996, money from the ministry and funds raised by French charity fund Sidaction enabled us to produce 20,000 copies of every issue, which were distributed throughout France, gaining a wider audience and helping other ASUD groups to emerge across the country, and to infinity and beyond.
Testimonies