Abstract
There is a growing acceptance of the so-called harm or risk reduction approach. Accessible care primarily directed at drug user’s physical and social functioning, without requiring abstinence (or at least not immediately), persuading users to quit, including needle exchange programmes and the prescription of methadone and other substitute drugs, has increasingly become a realistic modality in the provision of care for drug users. And it has positive results. The Council of Health Ministers of the European Union (EU) adopted in December 2002 specific Recommendations encouraging this risk reduction approach. (Council of the European Union, in press). Whichever way you look at it, the acceptance of this pragmatic approach is contrary to the slogan ‘A Drug Free World*/We Can Do It’ adopted for the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) 1998. Obviously the seriousness of the actual problems in the EU is stronger than the doctrine.
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