Aljona Nesterovich, Talinn Health Care College - 2023 Edition

The course "Global Health, Drugs, Policy, and Power" is such a great opportunity to expand your knowledge in the field of global health, policy, power, and drug substances. I am very thankful for this experience, which has changed my understanding of drug consumption-related challenges and main measures to improve the situation. Furthermore, it was incredible to meet so many amazing people from different countries with their unique experiences. I highly recommend it! 

Gianna Gayle Herrera Amul, University of Geneva -  2022 Edition

I have anxiously waited to attend this course which was postponed because of COVID19 and it was worth the wait. The course content was rich and offers a different perspective on drugs (which includes the most common and also the most harmful drug in society today - alcohol) offering a harm reduction approach to drugs. It was a complete contrast to the war on drugs that have ravaged several countries in Asia, including extrajudicial killings that have affected thousands in the Philippines, and have enabled the weaponization of death penalty for drug offenses in Singapore. While I remain cautiously optimistic about the prospects of harm reduction approaches in more countries in Asia beyond Thailand, I am encouraged by the progress made in other countries in other regions. 

I would recommend that this course be offered as an executive education course to policymakers and law enforcement officials too so that they can have an alternative point of view about drug issues in our societies. I sincerely enjoyed and learned a lot - not just from all the lectures, from the various speakers both in-person and those who joined online, but also from my classmates who passionately shared experiences from their countries and their own work. I am deeply indebted and appreciative to our course coordinators - Dr Jennifer Hasselgard-Rowe and Dr Barbara Broers - for organizing a wonderfully enlightening week on global health, drugs, policy, and power. 

While there is room for more issues to be covered from different regions like Asia, Latin America and Africa, there was considerably appropriate coverage of the core issues to problematize drugs, policy, and power.    

Atacan Befrits, Sweden - 2019 Edition

"Drugs, Health and Human Rights at the Geneva University is one of a few pivotal starting points in a new paradigm for the global fight against disease, harms and societal consequences from substance use in dangerous ways or dangerous amounts. As a global advocate and consumer expert in nicotine, it was an honor and a privilege to attend the summer school class in June 2019. I came away with a much better understanding of the wider landscape with stakeholders everywhere. I also came away with huge amounts of useful, crucial and valuable connecting lines between the dots that rule global substance policy and national legislative strategies, like mass incarceration in the USA for example. Interestingly for me, zero of the lines we used at UNIGE to connect the dots looked anything even remotely similar to the lines that many politicians and law enforcement agencies argue is the right way to look at the problem. In our class we had extremely well positioned policy advisors from African countries. Some of these brilliant and empathic people had church teachings very very deep and initially baulked at the notion of seeing addicts as normal people with a condition or to argue for nations to start turning down the heat on the unwinnable war against drugs. I have the deepest respect for the strength in faith that people like that have, and even they connected dots in a vastly more humane way that law enforcement generally does.

The absolute majority of all substance use globally is non-problematic. A small percentage predisposed or in a life-situation conducive to escapism however do get serious problems, similarly to with alcohol. Smoking however is somewhat different as it has a strong deleterious health effect on 99% of the users rather than the 5%-10% seen in other forms of drug use. Global Health, Public Health, National Health, and the resources spent to ensure and restore best attainable individual health are all numbers games – making the money stretch as far as possible. Prevention is rightly cited as one of the most important global actions that needs to be pursued to conserve scarce resources for other ailments than NCD’s – For drugs this can equally well mean use drugs safely as do not use drugs at all ever. In my subfield nicotine, the consumers and the scientists who we work with look at the harms and risks rather than the use itself. The WHO and many nations have taken the opposite views on nicotine, but interesting and very much conflicting is that drugs is increasingly seen as mainstream to have a prevention - harm reduction approach on, That is however only part of the story and it is very difficult to prove that resources spent on prevention (no use at all) have material benefits in lower costs. Harm reduction however, the flip side of prevention has a long track record of massively successful impacts on health. Harm reduction is seen in so very many walks of life that we don’t even think about it. Food standards, seat belts and helmets, rubber concrete in kids’ playgrounds – the list is endless. Harm reduction is a vital component of any ethical and defensible strategy on substance use – and the framework on how Harm Reduction works and should/could be implemented is applicable to any form of behaviour that carries risk.

I hope you will take this course and come away understanding that when industry can assume almost all the costs for lowering risks massively in entire populations – then it is unconscionable for any actors in Public Health to not embrace and utilise this to the fullest extent possible. In Africa, in Latin America, in Central Asia and in South eastern Asia and the pacific too. Regulated industry is fantastic, but it is industry all the same which means it is a machine built for making profit, not for the common good. As long as the regulator is aware of the different motivations and reasonably cushioned against corruption, industry is the best option for harm reduction, at least in nicotine/tobacco.

I recommend this course for the excellent faculty, guest lecturers, and genuine importance of the subject matter. Walking the walk is every bit as important as talking the talk, that much was obvious, so don’t expect to go home and still see the unfortunates in your society with the same eyes again, ever."