Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

T he relevance of ethical issues for an information provider in the field of drugs and drug addiction, as it is the case of the EMCDDA, to carry out its activities has been repeatedly pointed out. As such, several of its main partners, as the UNODC or the Council of Europe Pompidou Group, have developed in a recent past concrete initiatives aiming firstly to identify what are the most relevant ethical issues in the field of drug-related information and to establish afterwards ethical frameworks helping decisions-makers, scientists and practitioners to better develop their own activities in their respective fields of activities. These questions are essential to effectively carry out EMCDDA activities in the field of collection, evaluation, assessment and dissemination of drug information, both in the area of demand and demand reduction and in the one of supply and supply reduction. The EMCDDA amended mandate also requires an ethical basis to better inform its activities in a number of new fields. Among these, one may underline some possible future activities relating, for instance, with non substance based addictions. The main topics on which the drug related ethical debate has been focused till now are: Vaccination against drug dependence; Quasi-coerced treatment for drug users; Non voluntary drug testing; Medical research; and Epidemiological research. Within the future development of the EMCDDA activities, the list of topics which could be provisionally identified as having an ethical dimension is extremely vast. An in depth scientific basis on these issues seems then to be essential.

Biography

Ignacio Vzquez Molin (Madrid, 1963) has a Law degree by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain and completed his Ph.D in Hispanic Philology at the age of 43 years at UNED, Madrid, Spain. He has been a European Union official since 1992. Currently, he is Principal Administrator, being in charge within the EMCDDA Directorate of Diplomatic Relations and Ethical Issues. He is also the EMCDDA Data Protection Officer. He also teaches comparative literature at the Instituto de Estudios Ibricos e Iberoamericanos, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. He has published many articles on literature and history and several fiction books