IMPHAL, March 4: The Community Network for Empowerment (CoNE) is organizing a three days workshop on drug policy from March 4-6 at its office at Palace Compound.
During the first day of the workshop today, M Gandhar Secretary CoNE as one of the facilitators said that despite a serious drug use problem in the state lasting more than two decades, no state drug policy is in place to address the issue.
“Drug use prevention programs have not been modified to address the changing nature of drug use including the growing practice of injecting and associated health concerns such as the co-infection of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C,” he continued.
He then said there are huge gaps in the programming of drug use prevention and the state since the later is entirely depend on the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in implementation of drug use related programs in terms of resources and planning.
Other facilitators of the workshop, Nalinikanta of CoNE and Melody, Project Manager of Project ORCHID presented their session on “Drug use scenario in Manipur and evolution of CoNE-An overview”, “Understanding harm reduction: Impact and benefits” respectively.
Nandini Pillai of Nossal Institute for Global Health; Umananda Chakpram, STRC; and Tripti Tandon, Lawyers Collective spoke on “Principles and international drug policy framework”, “Good examples of drug policies”, and “Human rights and drug policy, and Indian law, legal system and drug policy” respectively.