BrugerForeningen Memorial Day on Monday 21st July 2008
Speech By Matthew Southwell
Thank you for inviting me to speak at this Memorial Event.
During the minute´s silence, I looked out across the sea of balloons that you have placed in this park to symbolise the lives of drug users who have overdosed in Denmark. This caused me to reflect on the many friends that I have lost from HIV, overdose, Hepatitis C and from other drug-related deaths, many of which could have been avoided. There is an obvious sadness in losing our friends and family but this sadness is compounded by society´s failure to put in place proper interventions that would support our community to live healthy and functional lives.
When governments stop seeing drug users as citizens and no longer view us as full human beings, it is not such a large step for government to disregard our lives altogether. It is only a matter of scale when we consider the attitudes that underpin the failure to provide drug users with proper services and much more profound human rights abuses against drug users. We saw this a few years ago in Thailand, where the Prime Minister decided to clear the whole country of drug users leading to the summary execution of 2000 drug users. The extermination of Thai drug users was only stopped after the brave campaigning of Thai drug users themselves with support from the international harm reduction and drug using movements.
If we are to properly challenge human rights abuses against drug users, we need to recognise that this starts with demanding effective treatment services for dependent drug users, challenging the failure to provide proper needle exchange facilities in countries like Sweden, and demanding access to Naloxone schemes that enable heroin users to save each other from overdose. It is only a matter of scale between the failure to ensure that drug users are free from cruel and degrading treatment and the much more substantial abuses of human rights that we saw in Thailand and have seen with other marginalised communities.
Therefore, while I am inevitably filled with sadness when I look out across these balloons symbolising the lives of people who have died in our community, I am also filled with inspiration looking out at the faces of all these drug users in our community who are alive today. It reminds me that the drug using community is not part of the problem; it is actually part of the solution. As drug users, we need to stand up with pride, acknowledging that sometimes we face difficulties in our lives and that there are times when our lives go better than at other times. However, it is from these experiences that we gain insight into the problems of those in our community who are currently experiencing the greatest difficulties with substance use. We can use this experience to create solutions that can be applied to help those struggling with substance use. These solutions are best found and implemented when professionals and drug users work together in partnership. We have already demonstrated that when we work together we can find solutions for the problems that drug use brings to all in society, not just to people using drugs, but also to the wider community, including our families and those people who we live alongside.
The problem is that at the moment we make drug use much harder work for communities, for families and for individuals than it needs to be. If we can start to treat each other with love and respect, to honour each other in the way that BF symbolises so beautifully, then I think we can start to move towards a world where drug use is increasingly normalised, where drug users are treated with respect, our families do not have to feel shame, and our communities can live alongside us with understanding and tolerance.
I hope that this day is another step in the growth of BF. I congratulate you on the fact that you are coming up to your 15th year anniversary, which is an amazing testament to the work of local activists and an inspiration to many other drug users around the world who are struggling in difficult or more difficult circumstances.
So in conclusion, it is vital that we don´t forget those in our community who have died but lets also carry on fighting for those who are still alive.
Thank you very much.
Matthew Southwell
Mat was a founder Director of the UK Harm Reduction Alliance and a former chairman of the National Drug Users Development Agency. He is presently the Managing Director for Traffasi, a training and consultancy company specialising in the development and promotion of high quality practice in drugs work where its focus is on emerging drug trends and policy initiatives. Traffasi's approach is founded on community development, reduction and motivational principles.