CARICOM hosting forum on drug abuse

CARICOM National Drug Observatories representatives will benefit from a regional seminar to be held today and tomorrow in Georgetown.

The CARICOM Secretariat said in a statement yesterday that it has collaborated with the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) to strengthen the capacity of representatives to gather, analyse and report on drug-related information and to enable the development of evidence-based drug policies and programmes.

The statement said that the seminar is part of the response under the Drug Demand Reduction (DDR) component of the Tenth European Development Fund (EDF) Crime and Security Programme between the European Union (EU) and CARIFORUM.

The statement said that the DDR component seeks to strengthen institutional capacity of national and regional drug demand reduction entities and practitioners to effectively develop strategies and implement policies and programmes in CARIFORUM. The statement said that the use of illicit drugs continues to rise in CARIFORUM countries and a lack of institutional capacity has been identified as one of the challenges in the response against this issue.

The two-day event will, among other things, review the results of household drug prevalence surveys which were recently undertaken in the Caribbean; discuss the policy changes related to marijuana and their implications for research; and promote the Standardized Indicators for National Drug Information Networks Manual, along with data collection tools to pilot these indicators in selected countries in the Region.

It will also receive updates on the progress of the EU’s Cooperation Programme between Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union on Drug Policies working groups on early warning systems, annual reports and problematic drug use scales. The status of the 2018 Report on Drug Use in the Americas being drafted by CICAD.

The seminar will be held at the Ramada Georgetown Princess Hotel.