 Thank you very much for this introduction. Especially about this new initiative with the commission to conduct a study on the new cycle of these substances. So my organization, the ACRU, has an international network, international program of drug policy called the European Drug Policy Initiative. And we work with NGOs in five other countries, one in Romania. There is a representative from Romania here. And we have one NGO from Bulgaria, from Portugal, Abdesh, and Serbia and Poland. And our A is to make coordinated advocacy actions for evidence-based, public house-based drug policies. And we produce documentaries and films about drug policy in various countries. So if you go to our website, it's drugreporter.net. Then you can find, like, how many, but it's, like, hundreds of short advocacy movies online, available online. And these movies are now also used in universities for teaching students about drug policy. So our topic is today, new cycle of these substances. And in the media, there are a lot of European monitoring center for drugs and drug addiction is this. A new narcotic or psychotropic drug in pure forward preparation that is not controlled by the UN drug conventions, but which may pose a public health threat comparable to that posed by substances listed in these conventions. So these conventions, we have three United Nations conventions on drugs versus the 61, second is 71 convention and service, the 88 convention against illicit traffic in narcotic drugs. So these conventions define the lists of illicit substances. And now we are talking about those substances, which don't belong to this list. So they are designed after this election of these conventions. So they are not controlled, but their effects are very similar to the effects of illegal drugs. So this is the purpose they are designed to avoid criminal sanctions. And while we are talking about this now, as Carol mentioned, there is a big boom of these substances right now. In 2009, there were 24 new substances registered in the EU. Then in 2010, it was 41. Then in 2011, 49. And last year, it was 73 new substances registered. So you can see that there is a gradual increase in the number of new substances. And this is the number of online shops selling legal highs in the EU. So you can see that there is a really rapid increase of online shops in the EU. Why it happened now? There are different theories about this. One theory is that in 2008, 2009, there was a huge decline in the purity of illegal drugs. For example, MDMA, which is the major substance in ecstasy pills. And in 2008, for example, there were huge seizures, police seizures in South East Asia where they seized tons of the precursor substance which MDMA is made from. And in Europe, there are a lot of crackdowns, police crackdowns against the illicit laboratories. So probably this also boosted the designing of new substances. This is a graph from my country, Hungary. In before 2008, 94% of ecstasy pills contained MDMA as the major pure substance. After just last year, this is from last year, you see that only 4% of ecstasy pills seized contained MDMA. So this shows that now there are kind of rich diversity of psychoactive substances in ecstasy pills. So actually, now we have a completely different situation than five or six years ago. There is another explanation why these substances are flourishing. And this is the globalization of drug trafficking and it becoming online. So there are now online financial transactions. It's very hard to follow them. In pharmaceutical companies in China or India, they are selling these substances to Europe and North America. So the BBC made a documentary a few years ago that a reporter is going to China, to the pharmaceutical company, and he's asking for a substance. And the Chinese company says that, yes, of course, how much you need. And he's asking like, oh, but maybe this will be banned in two months. Okay, no problem. We already designed the next one, which won't be banned. So it's like very easy. And of course, online shops make the purchase very easy, very unnamed. So it's much better for the users to order it than go to the street dealer. And of course, another explanation is that they use online marketing strategies, targeting young people. This is an example. So they are targeting the dancing, the clubgoer, young people, and they are selling these drugs as euphoric and they enhance your party experience. Oh, no, this. And this year we made a study in five European countries on new psychotic substances in Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Serbia. The aim is to assess how professionals and affected communities perceive or how they see the trends in the use of these drugs, how they see the impact of policies, and also what are the recommendations for policymakers about these new psychotic substances. And we asked our NGO partners to identify 10 or 20 key people from each countries, like professionals from different fields, policemen, doctors, psychiatrists, social workers and drug users. And we prepared a questionnaire. So we made more than 100 interviews in each countries. And now we are analyzing the results of this questionnaire. So we asked what are the major substances we are talking about. And there are two major groups of these substances. One is the stimulant group. So, you know, amphetamine type stimulants and catinones. Catinone is a synthetic version actually of the substance in cat leaf, which is like consumed in Ethiopia and Yemen. And these drugs are stimulants, usually snorted or injected. And then there are the synthetic cannabinoids, you know, which are like replacing marijuana. But they have a synthetic ingredients. There are many, many kinds of ingredients and they are selling it as herbal or botanic things, but actually they are synthetic. So they have nothing to do with herbs, but they just put them on herbs. We also asked our stakeholders why people use these substances. What are the motivation for young people to use this? So the major answer was that it's cheap and it's easily available. Then the legal status that people don't, they are not afraid of criminalization because these drugs are legal. Then, as I mentioned, this smart marketing strategies also help the boost of these substances. Then it's interesting that the effect or impact of media, you know, that media usually they make a big hysteria or media hype about these substances and usually it's very much against drugs or they are depicting the negative effects, but for many young people, it serves as an advertisement. So they are watching television and oh, maybe I should try that. So they have a boomerang effect of this media campaigns or media hysteria. And then there are some users who say that the effects of these drugs are more intensive. There is a kind of drug user for clore. There's a lot of people saying that they don't cause dependence these drugs. So you can use them without being addicted. And then there is also reason for methadone clients who get methadone instead of heroin in hospitals. And these drugs are not detectable by drug tests. So then they can avoid drug testing from the blood and from the urine. We identified two major patterns of drug use of these substances. And one pattern is the recreational or club drug user. So these are young people usually late teens or early twenties who go to party and they use these substances as for dancing and you know to be awake and feeling good at parties. And the major root of consumption is snorting of these drugs. Of course with synthetic cannabinoids it's smoking. They are smoking it from cigarettes. And we also asked what are the risks of this kind of use? And in hospitals there are many psychotic episode cases when people just get paranoid or aggressive because of if they overuse these substances. And then another risk is unprotected sex. So a lot of young people just have sex after using these substances and they don't use any condoms. And also some people don't know but through the snorting you can get hepatitis C because through the blood if you share this snorting equipment you can get hepatitis C infection. And in actually two countries in Portugal and Serbia this was like the major main pattern of drug use. But in some countries as Carol also mentioned there is another pattern of drug use. This is like the dependent users who are using the substance daily every day. And usually these people belong to a different kind of social group so they belong to an unemployed uneducated, low class, marginalized groups. In Hungary and Romania many of them are Roma people so they belong to the Roma minority. Many of them are experienced heroin or amphetamine users so they switch from heroin or amphetamine to these new substances and they inject it. They inject the, they inject these substances. And actually what we can witness in Hungary and in Romania is that after heroin users switch to use these new stimulants they don't sleep, they don't eat. They are like losing 15 kilograms in a few weeks and they have like psychosis and paranoia and there are many emergency cases in hospitals. So some of our interviewees, toxicologists for example they said, oh I have a nostalgia for the good old drugs like heroin because we didn't have so many problems with them but now we are just really overwhelmed with these new substances. And in Romania, Poland and Hungary this is a very significant problem in the Eastern part of Europe. And this is also made even more severe this problem because of the financial crisis. We should talk about this I think that, and especially in regard to the injecting use because with heroin, heroin users inject four times a day or five times a day. But these substances are injected like 10 or 15 times a day because their effects are only very short so they are re-injecting it many times a day. So this means that they are using more syringes and they're sharing it more among each other and this means that there is a bigger risk of infections if you share needles, if you share syringes you can get HIV, you can get hepatitis C. And actually this just coincided with financial austerity in countries. For example in Hungary there was a very dramatic reduction of the support for harm reduction programs like needle exchange where they are giving out sterile needles for drug users. And that was less available sterile needles so this means that's more risk of infections and in some countries like Romania now we have witnessed a major outbreak of HIV epidemic among drug users. So it's like, Valentin will talk about it's like 30% of injecting drug users have HIV now. And you know, to treat HIV that costs much, much more than preventing HIV. So this is a graph showing that in Romania and in Greece in the European Union now there is a major epidemic, HIV epidemic. Before we were always talking about HIV in Russia or Ukraine outside of the EU. But now this is a very serious European problem and I think we should deal with it in the European level. So the question arises why there are so different trends in Western Europe or Eastern Europe? Why is it that in Portugal we don't have injecting use of these substances? There are some explanations for this. Like there is a different availability of illegal drugs in these countries like in Portugal there were like better quality illegal substances and maybe they are more available. And there is also an explanation that there is a difference between the drug policies in these countries. So in Portugal, for example, we have drug users decriminalized. So users don't face punishment. So it's a bigger motivation in Hungary or in Romania for drug users to avoid the police than in Portugal. And then there is also a question how much drug users access to treatment in Portugal? There is a bigger access than in Romania or in Hungary. And then the social status of drug users is different as I said in Romania and Hungary we have a huge group of Roma marginalized drug users who are living in very concentrated parts of the cities. So this, Kerala was always mentioned how the European Union is reacting to this problem. And there is this three steps approach for new psych of the substances. First step is identifying the substances. This is early warning. There are early warning systems in all countries. These are to detect these new substances. Then the next phase is risk assessment. Usually it's made by the European Monitoring Center on Drug and Drug Addiction. So they are assessing the risks of new substances. They produce a risk assessment report. And then by the initiative of the European Commission or the member states can initiate control measures. So they can decide how they will control these new substances. And what are the control measures? It's usually they are adding this new psych of substances to lists of illicit substances or they are creating new lists for these drugs. They try to disrupt the trafficking chains and they are banning the shops of the selling these substances. And then they introduce new penalties for traffickers or users of these drugs. So the aim is to reduce the supply of these drugs for these measures. And this is how our stakeholders perceive this fight against illicit drugs. It's like a car race, you know, when the lawmakers are always few steps behind of the drug designers. Because as I mentioned before, the drug designers are already sinking ahead. So they are designing new drugs which will avoid the schedules of the banned substances. So our, the stakeholders, we asked, they said that it's necessary to regulate these substances. So it's not acceptable that these substances are sold by online shops. So we have to do something about it. But they are still very skeptical about the effectiveness of these procedures, like the Sisyphus fight, you know, that you are never, it's like a never ending fight. And some countries try to, you know, break this devil's circle somehow. In Poland, for example, the chief sanitary inspectorate closed down this shop saying that these substances usually are sold as a bath salt or they are sold as a plant, what is it? Like plant fertilizers. So then the chief sanitary inspectorate is coming, you know, this is not plant fertilizer, so I closed the shop. So it's like kind of consumer protection part. And they also amended their drug law and they introduced a new term, substitute drug. So this means that all those drugs that are substitutes for illegal drugs can be banned. And then in Romania, there was a law that requires shop owners to prove that the substance they sell, it's not psychoactive. So they can ban all the shops that don't, that cannot prove that their substances are psychoactive. Then in Hungary, White Country, in 2012, they introduced a generic list. What does it mean, generic list? It means that now they don't ban substances individually, like one by one, but they ban a whole group of substance. So they try to prevent, you know, designers that they can modify the molecule structure and then it's legal. And right now in Portugal, they introduced a temporary list of many new psychoactive substances and they banned the commercial activities with these substances. So our stakeholders said that these are very necessary steps. However, they have many concerns about the impact of this kind of legislation. And one of the concerns mentioned by our stakeholders is policies rarely driven by evidence. It's many times politicians or the decision makers react to the media hype of a substance and they, you know, when something, a death case happens and it's in the media, then there is a political reaction. But when the experts or professionals are asking to do something, then it's nothing happening. So it's like the politics is many times driven by media and not by the evidence. Then there is another concern that actually after banning these substances, you don't solve the problem. You just replace the problem that there is a black market. So these substances are still sold in the black market. And in Hungary or in Romania, after banning of the shops, there is still a black market of these substances. So we cannot say that only by banning the shops you solve the problem because we still have the problem. Then there is an issue of the transparency of the market. Like usually people in the illicit or gray markets, they don't know what they use. And the more you are pushing these substances underground, the less knowledge is available about these substances. And many of the experts say that the main danger of these substances is that we don't know anything about them. There is no research. There is nothing about like they don't know what are the long-term effects. They can affect the brain or how they are, what are the effects in the longer term. And there are some people who say that we need a different approach. Like we need to regulate somehow this market and we need some kind of consumer protection system. And stakeholders also have a concern about the criminalization of drug users. They say that the criminalization of drug users is counterproductive. So it's like having a boomerang effect. It does not reduce drug demand, but actually it just makes, for example, services less available for drug users. So they are like they cannot access treatment services. For example, in my country, Hungary, they just introduced from the first of July, they are restricting the penalties against drug users. So this is contrary to what the experts say. And then there are some issues with constitutional rights. For example, some people said that by banning groups of substances, then you are banning those drugs which have never been invented before. So we don't know anything about this drugs and they may have some medical value or anything they can be used for other purposes. And if we are banning them without any risk assessment, we just don't know this. And in Romania there are also concerns that it's very arbitrary how the police is using or the authorities are using this law. You have to prove you don't sell psychotic substances, but then it's just the authority who says which shop should be inspected. And then we have a lot of psychotic substances like coffee or alcohol and that's also psychoactive. So it's like a bit, and then there's an issue about evaluation and monitoring that in most of these countries there is no evaluation of what are the impacts of legislation. So they are suggesting also that if we have a policy then we have to monitor and evaluate the results. And this means that we need to know what are the impacts of these legislations on the market and the price, availability. And many times we just ban a substance but then we don't follow up what's happening. And then this was a very important concern about policies that the EU is claiming to have a balanced approach. That means that we have an approach that we have public health, social approach and also criminal policies. But in many countries there are no public health or social responses. Like the treatment system is not improved. There is no money for prevention for example. So it's like which is banned substances but we don't spend money on prevention, treatment and harm reduction. And the treatment system in these countries is very unprepared for the substances. I mentioned before that some doctors said that oh it was much better before when we had this heroin users you know they were just stoned. They were stoned sitting at the treatment center. They were not aggressive. They were, but with these substances they are paranoid aggressive. And we don't know what to do with them because with heroin users there are medical treatments like methadone. But with these substances they just don't know what to do with these people. And they don't know about the effects of these substances. So it's like very, very hard. So this is one of the very important lesson learned from this study that we need to invest into treatment system to train professionals how to deal with these new substances. Also to find new treatment methods which are adjusted to these stimulants drugs. And also it should be made available for these treatment sites that they have to test substances what their clients use so they know that what are these drugs. So there are treatment guidelines missing and trainings missing from the system. And then there are some media campaigns and most of our professionals said that they are not very effective. That they try to scare young people that you should not use this drug because then this and this happens. And actually we have now quite a few good research about this kind of media campaigns. And they say that this kind of mass media campaigns are not very effective. In Poland, for example, there was a big campaign. This poster says that legal highs will burn your brain. And this is like a scare campaign. They want to scare people from this dust. But this is from Romania. And this poster says that even the cows are smarter than designer drug users because they know what grass to eat. And these designer drug users, they don't know what to eat. So it's like, again, stigmatizing. And UNODC, the UN Drug Agency, just released a report about drug prevention. And one of the major conclusion is that this kind of prevention campaigns are not effective. Still, you know, from political perspective, sometimes it's very good because you can show it to the window like, yeah, we spent to this campaign. So there is a gap between evidence and politics again here. So and then what are the recommendations of our stakeholders? It's like reallocating resources to education and public health. We need to spend money on research of these substances. We need to decriminalize drug use. And there were some professionals who said that we need even more strict drug laws. But this was a minority and other people said we need to invent something like a new approach for these drugs. And actually, there are no, like, there are like no ultimate solutions for this problem. There are countries that are now experimenting with different policies. As I told you, a lot of European countries are experimenting with different approaches. Now it's like, there is one country, New Zealand, which has an interesting approach that they are requiring the producers of these substances to prove that they are low risk substances. So it's like putting the burden of proof to the producers and not to the government. It's just being accepted now in New Zealand. So we will see, I don't know how it will work. But it's an interesting question. And of course, I think these substances also push us to rethink our approach to drugs in general. Like, we should think about how effective our drug policies are, how can we improve our efforts. And now my organization is part of a campaign which aims to urge governments to make an overview of the past 50 years of drug policies because the 61 convention is 50 years old and there was no evaluation on how it works in practice. So we are asking member states of the UN to make a transparent review of UN drug policies. We have a website, countacosts.org. So that means that we should count the costs of drugs and drug policies after 50 years. And in 2016, there will be a general assembly of the UN on drugs, which we discussed drugs. So the last general assembly was in 1998 on drugs. That year, the slogan was a drug free world, we can do it. And the aim was to make it free of drugs in 10 years. But of course now we see that it didn't work very well. This idea, so probably this time we need a more realistic approach, not like so utopia approach, but something which has more to do with the reality. What I think is that drugs are here to say, so we won't have a drug free society. I mean, that's an utopia, it's a nice utopia maybe, but it will never happen. So we need to find policies that are like more based on evidence and based on human rights and public house. This was the poster of the 1998 UN Guest. And now actually the EU will be also engaged in this procedure of the UN Guest. The European Commission is coordinating this, and I think the EU should find a united voice to speak about these issues. I think now we have a very interesting time and as far as I know this EU Commission study will be discussed at the European Parliament too. So we hope that this kind of studies also can contribute to the discussion. And then I hope that the EU will find a consensus. And this will be a good one. I am the member of the Civil Society Forum on Drugs. This is an expert group of the European Commission. It consists of 40 NGOs from Europe. And actually it serves as a platform of dialogue between the Commission and Civil Society. And it was established a few years ago, so it's quite new, it's a fresh experiment. I think it's a very good channel for the Civil Society to channel its voice to the decision makers in the EU. And I hope that we will also establish some kind of relations to the European Parliament because I think it's also important that the European Parliament is speaking to the Civil Society about drugs. So actually this is just happening now. Yesterday we had a meeting here in Brussels with the members of government. They have a horizontal working group on drugs. They are sending representatives and we had the joint meeting, first joint meeting of Civil Society and governments. And I hope we can have similar meetings at the European Parliament too. Okay, thank you very much. And this is our website, so you can find many information about this. We will publish the report soon. So if you, we will collect your emails and then I can send you the report to all of you.