In Uruguay’s 2021-2025 National Drug Strategy, the issue of drugs is deemed as a complex and dynamic phenomenon that involves various areas and parameters regarding the nature, causes, development and approach associated with it. It requires the design of customized answers to sufficiently cover the needs of society as a whole.
A risk and harm reduction model is a response for a comprehensive, balanced and multidisciplinary approach focused on individuals, communities and their bonding, to cover the subject’s various dimensions. It allows the design of strategies for anticipating, preventing and reducing risks through short, mid, and long-term goals, enabling a diversity of interventions. The scope ranges from regulated markets to personal health care, and consideration of how individuals bond to drugs. In this regard, the risk and harm reduction model includes the possibility of establishing abstinence as a therapeutic objective.
The accomplishment of this approach implies cooperation between supplemental sectors at the local, provincial and national levels, and in the international context, for combining the various dimensions of the phenomenon and to cover the sanitary, social, legal, economic, cultural, and environmental spheres.
Access to universal health care is sought with a comprehensive and multi-mode vision, based on the acknowledgement of various needs derived from therapeutic and non-problematic use of drugs; as well as problem drug use.
In this regard, the concept of coexistence aspired is based on the acceptance of diversity and the overcoming of social stigmas, which require a number of coordinated and cross-cutting answers focused on the needs of vulnerable populations.
The drug governance policy model sought requires a balance of State interests and contributions, with those of civil society and the public sector, and a policy articulated and interwoven through society’s economic, social and cultural development processes.
The actions developed are based on a concept of territory deemed as the vital space for the social coexistence processes of individuals that give way to, and explain, everyday life and generate opportunities for contributing to local collective development. Therefore, the roles played by local stakeholders –such as provincial and municipal authorities, civil society’s organizations and local enterprises, among others– become necessary through planning and participating mechanisms for the implementation required.
Among its components, the National Drug Strategy also includes the generation of answers for contingent situations such as sanitary and/or social emergencies.
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