Prague, 25 March 2019. The 3rd COPOLAD II Annual Meeting of National Drug Observatories brings together this week 60 officials and experts from National Drug Observatories (NDO) from 15 Latin American countries, 13 Caribbean countries and 5 European Union (EU) countries, maintaining the highest response to the call in the region. The Cooperation Programme between Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union on Drugs Policies (COPOLAD), managed by FIIAPP, promotes this activity which will take place in Prague from 25 to 29 March.
The meeting is organised by COPOLAD in close collaboration with the National Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addiction Office of the Government of the Czech Republic,the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) an the Inter-American Observatory on Drugs (OID-CICAD). It presents the progress achieved between the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the EU, through the sharing of the results achieved in the framework of the working groups developed since 2016.
At the opening ceremony the welcoming words were given by Viktor Mravcik, Director of the National Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addictionas host country of the meeting; Marya Hynes, Acting Director of the Inter-American Drug Observatory (CICAD/OAS); Ana Gallegos, Head of Sector of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), Germán García da Rosa, Director of the Area of Public Administration and Social Affairs of the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Public Administration and Policy (FIIAPP),and Teresa Salvador-Llivina, Director of COPOLAD.
COPOLAD promotes knowledge exchange and capacity-building of professionals at the National Drug Observatories.
Throughout this week, the progress achieved by the four working groups that were defined during the 1st COPOLAD II Annual Meeting dof National Drug Observatories in Jamaica in December 2016 is presented: Early Warning Systems; Studies to evaluate and validate scales and indicators of “Problematic Drug Use” (PDU); Production of National Drug Reports; and New Methods for Detecting and Confronting problematic use and new threats.
In this space, the work carried out by each group, results, and progress achieved in the participating countries is shared, while various support instruments are presented for the implementation of these advances in all the countries that wish to incorporate them into their legal and institutional frameworks. The working groups have been made up of the majority of CELAC countries, with the contribution of EMCDDA, OID-CICAD, as well as European experts and reference countries.
