World Anti-DrugTransnational Internet contest - "Maya"

Questions

• What should be in the Internet age and growth of online communities informational methods to combat drug addiction? What do you think, what means will be most effective today, and how the state should behave in order to successfully affect the suffering of drug addiction and to conduct prevention among healthy population?
  

  Hello, I am glad to welcome all of you!

  Nowadays drug addiction is a socio-biological threat of a global scope. It may be attributed to the special sphere of social pathology, because drug addiction is the biggest danger among all social hazards and it brings damage exceeding all the disasters that have only occurred in the history of mankind. There is no country which is immune to the adverse effects of drug abuse and drug trafficking, no matter how strong democracy and political system it has. Traditionally, the fight against drug use was based on abstentionism that is actions aimed at decreasing the drug abuse in society by means of voluntary or compulsory refuse. However, today it’s a useless doctrine, because it leads to the increase of violence, criminal cases, corruption, prison overcrowding and other negative indicators. In this regard, the question about finding other approaches was raised; and the philosophy of harm reduction was introduced as one of the possible solutions.

  It is a fundamentally new concept, which is expected to limit and prevent the harmful consequences of drug abuse. Thereby, this method has created real conditions and solid ground for the struggle against drug addiction. Harm reduction programs are actively supported by several countries, especially in my native Australia, where it has received approval and financial support from government. For today a considerable part of the world's leading specialists in the field of harm reduction are natives of Australia; and the international consortium of harm reduction is guided by a group of experts from Melbourne.

  I believe that aspiration to the harmonious combination of harm reduction methods and activities aimed at restricting the drug use based on explanatory work, training education workers and community leaders are the only right ways to resist this problem. This approach is supposed to lead us to the unity of alternative views on the issue of drug addiction.