On September 5th and 6th I had the opportunity to participate in a public dialogue on drug policy in Bogota, Colombia initiated by Mayor Gustavo Petro Urrego: Conversatorio 2012 sobre ”New alternatives of intervention in the consumption of drugs and psychoactive substances”.
It was an amazing event and reminded me very much of my days at the City of Vancouver where I had the opportunity to work with then-Mayor Philip Owen in 2001 as he launched the City of Vancouver’s Four Pillars Drug Strategy with a series of public dialogues that brought people together to share views on his proposals for addressing drug problems in Vancouver.
Held in the beautiful auditorium at Bogota City Hall, throughout the day we heard from international experts, academics, public health officials and the Mayor himself, all of whom were focused on potential solutions to Bogota’s serious drug problem.
One big difference between Vancouver’s process and the one unfolding in Bogota is the speed at which change is taking place in Colombia. Mayor Gustavo Petro Urrego has decided that his beautiful mountain city needs some new ideas and is moving quickly to implement new approaches to Bogota’s drug problems. Mayor Petro speaks of a creating a new democracy where people with addiction problems are included in society and brought in from the cold, so to speak.
In late July of this year, Colombia passed national legislation decreeing that addiction is a public health issue and “Any person suffering mental disorders or any other pathology derived from the consumption, abuse, and addiction to legal or illegal psychoactive substances has the right to receive comprehensive care from the entities that comprise the General System of Social Security in Health and the public or private institutions specialized in the treatment of said disorders.”
This new legislation is a significant development and shifts the focus of government responses to drug problems in Colombia towards a health approach and away from the traditional response through the criminal justice system. Of course, mustering the finances to create a comprehensive system is a major challenge for Colombia just as it is here in Canada.
One of the innovations that Mayor Petro is moving quickly to implement is the establishment of a series of drug consumption rooms in three areas of the city. Consumption rooms are widely available in Europe as part of a comprehensive approach to marginalized people who use drugs. There is a growing body of evidence that supports these kinds of programs as important components of a comprehensive approach. For Mayor Petro this would begin to demonstrate that Bogota was changing its policy and reaching out to provide assistance to drug users in a new way.
For thirty years authorities in Bogota have tried to address inner city drug problems without much success. In 2000 they even tried draconian measures such as leveling the main neighbourhood where the urban drug scene was located, “El Cartucho”, to create a new park with the hope that the problem would disappear. Unfortunately and somewhat predictably the drug scene reappeared, only this time in four different areas of the city. Instead of one “problem” neighbourhood they now had four! These new areas of town, El Bronx, a section of Maria Paz en Kennedy, San Bernardo and Las Cruces, are the main problem areas in Bogota and mostly remain out of the control of municipal authorities.
El Bronx is the most notorious and has been abandoned by the authorities. It is controlled by organized crime and houses thousands of severely addicted people. El Bronx is an extremely dangerous place to venture into if you are not involved in the drug scene in some way, either as a user or a dealer. While I was there a police officer was killed in El Bronx while investigating an incident. City staff were very clear that they did not want to simply displace the problem again but wanted to begin to stabilize the situation in these neighbourhoods.
The establishment of consumption rooms is part of the Mayor’s strategy to change the culture in these areas rather than abandoning them and giving in to the local “drug mafia”. He is advocating a health and social approach be taken – one that would begin to establish harm reduction and treatment services and provide options to people to leave the drug scene. The primary drug that is used at the street level in Bogota is a substance called basuco or coca paste or paco. It is very cheap and is a product that is derived from the intermediate stages of cocaine production.
Last week Mayor Petro met with President Manuel Santos to discuss his ideas to implement consumption rooms. Early reports suggest that the door is open for the Mayor’s proposal to prescribe illegal drugs to users within a regime of treatment as a way of intervening in the drug market and coming between people with addictions and the drug mafia. This is a bold approach and we will follow how things develop in Bogota over the coming months.
