Report

Nordic Reform Conference 2017

Report

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Nordic Reform Conference 2017  

Report to Open Society Foundation

With GDPP’s support (Grant Number OR2017-39815), The Association for Safer Drug Policies was able to draw guests from all Nordic countries to the Nordic Reform Conference. The grants covered travel expenses, free tickets and a social event with dinner to activists from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Holland, United Kingdom and other countries.

WHY: To strengthen the ongoing shift towards decriminalization and ensure that the Scandinavian countries lead the fight for humane drug policies. The Association for Safer Drug Policies (ASDP) hosted a conference for politicians, organizations, health professionals, lawyers, users and others to discuss drug policies and harm reduction. WHERE & WHEN: Oslo, November 23-24, 2017.

Report to Open Society Foundation about Nordic Reform Conference

IN ADDITION •

We established an informal discussion forum on Facebook about drug reform in the Nordic countries.

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We identified and met with international partners to strengthen Nordic cooperation: An ASDP affiliate is now being established in Sweden.

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We announced the establishment of LEAP Scandinavia, a network of law enforcers pushing for alternatives to punitive drug laws.  

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED ✔ Our aim to bring together health professionals, academics and organizations from all of Scandinavia was successful. MOST NOTABLE SPEAKERS: Professor David Nutt (Imperial College London, Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs) Ann Marie Cockburn (Anyone’s Child) Steve Rolles (Transform) Ann Fordham (IDPC) Prof Harvey Milkman (Dep. of Psychology, Metropolitan State University of Denver).  See all speakers here: https://www.nordicreform.com/panel/

KEY NUMBERS  1,5 da ys 250 - 300 participants 3 exhibitor boots 2 parallel sessions 11 s p e a k e r s 5 panelists

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PROJECT ACTIVITIES


Describe activities to date: Nordic Reform Conference: 23-24 November 2017 Informal social gathering: 23 November Organisers’ and speakers’ dinner: 24 november Meeting with representatives from Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway to establish a Nordic cooperation on drug reform: 26 November 2017 Sunday Participant lists: See appendix. Note: The participants list does not include people who received free tickets, e.g. volunteers, co-organisers, politicians and guests of honour. Program outline: See appendix. Basic materials prepared for the event:

See all design materials here>>

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Amendments made to original plan: We originally planned for a single event, but eventually made an agreement with Normal Norge – an organization campaigning for more sensible cannabis policies in Norway – who hosted a parallel session featuring speakers specific to cannabis.


The reasons for amendment: We thought that this would make an interesting addition to the existing program, and it allowed us to strengthen the bond between our organizations as well as our respective audiences.

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PROJECT OUTCOMES What are the outcomes of your project? 250 - 300 participants gathered to partake in 2 parallel sessions to see 11 local and international speakers and 5 panelists. In addition we allowed 3 exhibitors to recruit new supporting members at the event. What impact has it had on drug policy at a national/regional/international level? It’s difficult to rate the impact of the conference already, as change takes time and the conference was only 2 months ago. But we can definitely say that it allowed important target groups (health workers, policy makers, drug user interest groups, drug policy activists) to receive information about how we can create safer drug policies in the Nordic countries. We got the attention from serveral national policy makers on how Norway can implement better drug policies and be a leading star in Scandinavia. How have you measured the impact? • We launched a feedback form right after the conference, see participant’s feedback in appendix. 


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DISSEMINATION AND MEDIA OUTREACH How were the findings and/or outcomes of the project disseminated? An article in Drug Reporter A participant writing about his experience in the conference Aftenposten (Norway’s biggest newspaper) published an interview with one of our speakers on the day of the conference. The street magazine Erlik Oslo wrote an article in their January edition about the reform movement and will also publish an interview with David Nutt in their February edition. This is not available online yet. Have you generated any media yourselves? We wrote about the conference in our blog (Norwegian). Here is a video summing up the conference. How successful was your advocacy and media strategy? Medium successful, due to the lack of capacity for reaching out to media. For the next conference we plan to work more on getting publicity.

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EVALUATION To what extent has your project achieved the goals listed in your application form? (copied from our application, marked with ✅ of what came through) “Bringing in speakers like Professor David Nutt (Drugscience) ✅ Ann Marie Cockburn (Anyones Child), ✅ Steve Rolles (Transform) ✅ , Ann Fordham (IDPC) ✅ and Prof. Harvey Milkman (Department of Psychology, Metropolitan State University of Denver) ✅ . Having speakers from all of the Nordic countries. Having politicians ✅ , health professionals ✅ , legal professionals✅ and organizations from all of Scandinavia ✅ , and well as from the Netherlands ✅ , UK ✅ , Finland ✅ , Iceland ✅ , and Estonia ✅ as attendees. To offer several of volunteer organizations free tickets and cover accommodation expenses. ✅ To establish Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) Scandinavia - The regional group of a global network of law enforcers that seek alternatives to punitive drug laws ✅ ” How do you rate the success of the project in comparison with your expectations? • It exceeded our expectations as we also had participants who don’t share our views on policy.  


What was your project’s greatest success? • Getting to team up with activists from other Nordic Countries and establishing a Scandinavian network for the future.  What was the greatest difficulty? • To organise this conference with only one employee working 40 % and a group of volunteers.  What are the most important lessons you have learnt? • There are many unorganized drug policy activists, as well as organizations without any funding, and we should help these people by supporting them with free tickets and maybe also accomodation and travel costs.  Were partnerships made that may have an impact on drug policy in the future? • We have found international voices to strengthen Nordic cooperation: 4 people would like to start their own ASDP team in Sweden.   •

We announced the establishment of LEAP Scandinavia, a global network of law enforcers seeking alternatives to punitive drug laws  

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SUSTAINABILITY Do you plan to continue this project? • Yes! We plan to organize the next Nordic Reform Conference in 2019  How will this work be sustained after the grant has closed? • We plan to apply for funds for the next conference. 

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We have income from membership fees 

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We have groups of volunteers who are prepared to work with the conference 

CO-FUNDING Please list any co-funding you received for your project. • Helsedirektoratet (the Norwegian Directorate of Health) gave us parts of the funds for this event  •


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We also partially funded the event by allocating funds from our own operating budget. 

FUTURE PROJECTS ASPD will continue to host the Nordic Reform Conference biannually, with the Norwegian Reform Conference taking place in the interim. In 2018 the Norwegian Reform Conference will focus on decriminalization models and how to implement decriminalization in Norway. Leading up to the conference we intend to publish a paper outlining a possible “Norwegian model” for decriminalization, drawing on experience from other countries and highlighting potential pitfalls as well as room for improvement. We hope that this paper can serve as a discussion piece for the conference, inspiring the speakers and panelists to move outside and beyond the Portuguese decriminalization paradigm when discussing solutions for Norway. Our funding situation for this paper is as of yet unclear, and the scope of the project will depend heavily on whether it will have to be done on a voluntary basis. If we are able to publish a thorough paper on decriminalization in 2018, however, we hope to follow it up in 2019 with an even more ambitious publication – outlining various models and key governing principles for regulating different types of drugs.

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There is no war on drugs, because you canʼt war on inanimate objects. There is only a war on drug addicts, which means we are warring on the most abused and vulnerable segments of society. Dr. Gabor Maté

www.saferdrugpolicies.com

9 facebook @nordicreform www.nordicreform.com
