In 2014, a number of civil society organizations and researchers concerned over the health and well-being of drugs users and impoverished small-scale opium farmers set up the Drug Policy Advocacy Group (DPAG). The network advocates a shift away from Burma’s current, punitive drug laws to legislation that decriminalizes drug use and subsistence poppy farming, and which provides health care for users and helps farmers to gradually substitute their poppy crop.
Last month, Dr. Nang Pann Ei Kham, a medical doctor and coordinator of the Rangoon-based DPAG, oversaw a public workshop organized by DPAG members, which included civil society organizations such as the Myanmar Opium Farmers Forum, National Drug Users Network Myanmar and the Myanmar Anti-Narcotics Association. Members of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission and police officers of the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC) also attended the event.
During an interview with Myanmar Now, Dr. Nang Pann Ei Kham stressed the need to reform Burma’s drug laws in order to address widespread drug addiction in northern Burma and to help tens of thousands of poor opium farmers find an alternative livelihood. (Courtesy of Irrawaddy)
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