 I want the honour of a lifetime to serve as Mayor of Athens for three years. I'm the youngest player in the history of Europe's oldest city. I'd like to tell you that I don't think that anything we have done is as important as what we have done when it comes to architecture. Nothing compared, nothing. Because this is at the end of the day about human life and it's at the end of the day about the right of humans to reclaim their lives. At the annual members meeting of the Correlation European Harm Reduction Network, participants had the chance to visit the Drug Consumption Room of Okana, the largest service provider in Greece. The Drug Consumption Room started as a pilot project back in 2011 to reduce needle-sharing and infections, to end overdoses and to reduce public nuisance caused by the Open Drug Saints in Athens. The room could only operate for nine months as a pilot project before the prosecutor shut it down. Athenians had to wait ten years to be able to finally open it again. So this is the entrance. People step in, we ask them to wash their hands whenever they come or we give them masks. We have here some soap and water device so we want them to be clean when they first come in. We measure temperature, we measure oxygen, we ask them what time they do drugs before coming here and we ask them what substance they use here and we give them the right equipment. For scissor, sniffing heroin or injecting coca, dye or heroin. Next we give them what they want to do the use and we show them that this is the place for injecting drugs. This is the place for sniffing. We have this special pirex place with our doctor. Also we have the special vein, how do you call this? Laser scanner. We help them to find the vein. If there is a good vein, you can see that there are three marks. This is excellent. We have their base so they are stable and you can really mark it and inject. We have to support their health. By all means, so that's why we have these devices. They are not allowed to have any drug dealing. It's clear that you are not allowed to use violence, to involve in a drug use of change or something like that. Mr. Theohares, you have to introduce yourself. The president of O'Connor, you may already know him. We have a DCR, the first DCR in southeastern Europe. All this support came with very, very good and great political support. Meaning that we had the first citizen of the country, the president of the Hellenic Republic who came and inaugurated the DCR. I don't know whether there is another country that this happened and this is a great success. We have the support of the prime minister. The prime minister paid a visit to the DCR and it was a political commitment of his party to create a DCR, which is not also easy for a conservative party to have this so liberal option as political, let's say, commitment. This is the equipment that we place on this kit. This is for injection. That's why we have this. And we have another kit where we place the pipe. We have the safeguard for the pipe, for the mouth, so that they are safe when they use this. This is another kit for homeless, for the hygiene, so they can wash themselves whenever they're out. And we have all the places that they can visit to get some help. Maybe they don't want to enter the area, either the first floor or the DCR. They're allowed to. We always give them equipment if they need to have a safer drug use. Do you want something? Wait a minute. That's it. Careful. It's really important to show them that we have an aloxone kit here. It's very easy, it's simple, it's safe. We can use it. Everybody in Okaná, not only doctors. Everybody in municipality. They can have a dose and they can use it. We have used here 45, 46 doses, not only here, but outside the streets. Do you give also an aloxone to the user? No. It's not yet permitted by the law, but gradually we would like to expand that. Our thought was to have this aloxone as a take-home aloxone, as an aloxone that they can use the peers, the family, the friends. All people can use it. Till now we have only the professional, at least we have this, because we didn't have this in the past. And this is a great weapon for us. Because we have this weapon, but we need to move on. I think that the government is ready to do a step forward. How is the relationship with the neighbourhood? Actually, it's very good, because prior to opening, I used to have visits and really sensitized them towards what we're going to do. They were really afraid, oh, you're going to gather all these people, we're going to have problems outside and so on. And I said, no, that's the opposite. When we are open, nobody is going to stay outside. Whenever there is a problem, they give me a call, because they know me personally, the whole neighbourhood. And things have changed, have bettered for them. Can you explain to us what CSHA is and how this market evolved in Athens? CSHA is crystal methamphetamine. What was important is that through correlation, we had as practice the opportunity to work in a joint project back in 2014 and to try to trace new psychoactive substances in Greece. So CSHA, which is practically it's not very new, but homemade CSHA, homemade crystal methamphetamine in Athens, was something new. So we traced some spots where it was manufactured in Athens in a very bad quality, producing very big problems in the health of the people consuming it. What proportion of the people that you see among migrant populations? I would say that at this point almost 30-40% are migrants. Really? There are lots of people there. Mostly Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yes, yes. And sometimes we ask for translators to come along with us while we're doing street work. This use came from some migrants' flows that we had and these people created also some material that they use. We said we will not distribute only syrics. We will distribute pipes for their use because we saw that their pipes were very thin and they were cracking very easily and they were creating lots of things in their mouth. We started giving them pipes and we have almost 6600 pipes given to them with special mouthpieces and not to transmit these diseases. This is another area, a separate area for CSHA smokers. So there are four seats you can see. We close it and it's pretty safe. We have lots of people who need and demand this kind of support. Yes, it's closed. There is a special fan here. Yes, to clean the air. And here you can see we have the kitchen so they can prepare something. They have a snack, they drink showers for disabled people as well. A laundry here, the terrace where they can stay and relax for half an hour after the drug use. There is an office with the social workers so they immediately can have an appointment if they need to and they step out or after if they want to stay on the other area on the first floor. So this is our DCR. Thank you. They actually enjoyed this, they were really surprised when they saw the quality and they said, is this for us? We need them to feel more like their family. It's that family trying to give them some emotional support to carry on with their day and later on with their lives towards therapy, whatever they decide whenever they are ready. Once they want to prolong their staying in this center and they have used the DCR they may come on the first floor and here they can relax, play some games have some private counseling, eat something, feel that they are safe and relax. We have a recreational room there so people can gather in small groups and do some of the stuff that really expresses their feelings. We have certain appointments with lawyers who usually has his appointments in these offices. How is it to be a drug user in Greece? We have been extremely stigmatized and discriminated. On top of that, HIV outbreak came like 12 years before and made things even worse. Actually, that was the turning point when we jumped into the scenery because they needed the communities they needed the insight, they needed collaboration. We were the first who realized that no, we have not to be apologetic not to be asking for help we have to really fight for our rights for human rights and we try to work a lot for dignity for the dignity of your choices and for the pleasure because pleasure is thrown upon so we wanted to create a union that people are happy to say yes, I use drugs, I'm not identified I'm not only a drug user I'm a person who uses drugs I'm also a mother, I'm also this, I'm also that you know, this was very new for Greece. There was an alarming need to offer this kind of services to these people for many years and how it was the major thing that triggered the experts the people from the health ministry to help these people I remember when everything was closed due to quarantine I went to the main office and said these people are gonna die they don't even have water to drink and all the stores are closed there are no rest, nothing so we started doing some street working Here is the hardcore places Ok, it's the centre of the city Open drugs It's the shelter and the day centre that we have And so the ministry is right in the centre of everything you do Do you have a lot of opiate and benzo uses just purely opiate and street benzo so synthetic benzo and CISA and crystal meth How do you start CISA? The mayor was and is with us in every action that we do we created with the municipality of Athens and Mr Bakogiannis the first hostel for homeless drug users in Athens during the Covid this was a point that when Covid here we had the lockdown in March in 2020 when Covid started within 20 days we created the hostel We have rooms for men and for women we have also rooms for families and little kids where there is special place for them and we also have this dining room where we have in the day centre where they can have a small food How many people are here? How many clients? 90 people are going to sleep here and 200 people are coming to the day centre Ok, that's pretty much Yeah, it's pretty too much There is a need for places like this Yeah, we need some more one or two So we're waiting in a few months to have five mobile units this year It will be great for Athens when this happens We are organizing and preparing mobile units in Thessaloniki, Patra and other areas, big cities of Greece How is the relation with the police? The police are actually the ones who are nearby they are very close to us Before starting this century we managed to visit them and explain get some sensitivity out of them and they really support us they send people here whenever they have some drug users that they know that belong to us they give us a call and we go to the police department and we take care of the whatever issue there is so we are on good grounds we are doing it together that's the thing, with the neighbours with the police we try to do it together and with drug users who are not here in this centre we try to relate that's the magic word we have the relationship with them What about the police? How do you see the role of the police? I don't think they treat people in a humane way in a humane manner and I have horrible memories as a user in the streets from the police from specific police forces There is this kind of you know, prohibition issue you are very vulnerable in their hands because you are illegal typically even with nothing with just a small quantity of something, you are illegal so you can be humiliated and beaten and to say a word that's a problem with me it's prohibition, it's a problem not exactly and the legal context is not exactly the policeman or whatever we should always look at the bigger picture there must be decriminalisation for a series of substances first, the most important thing for me is the police we should educate them and they should really be careful to use the most humane the most advanced let's say, in human rights persons and not the brutal ones when they have to do with people do not do harm to anybody but themselves personally I have faith to the people that they work in the police to some people that they work in the police forces and I think that by trying to treat them in a more human way and also from their part try to treat us as citizens in a human way we can find some common ground we are trying to speak louder to the people to the society that they should see the problem as if it was theirs they should see the problem as if it was their relative a person that they know a person that they have connection or contact and they should not see them as marginalised persons or criminals do you feel about the opening of the drug consumption room and are you happy with it they've done a fantastic job I totally support them and I think we lacked this kind of service and hopefully we're going to have mobile units, Athens need more and more services regarding drug users there is a big difference on comparing to the situation that we have 12 years ago still there are many things to be done mostly to decentralise the efforts and pay attention apart from Athens to other urban areas like Thessaloniki and others and also try to have the engagement of the ministers to implement certain kind of policies in order to bring the whole situation in a better way, not only Athens and at the same time to recognise and respect better the role of the civil society and the community because many of the things that they break their head in order to find solutions there are solutions if you listen and if you engage people that they have experience on this from their life from the field we must be united when we fight for harm reduction and human rights and when we are actually defending our community, people who use drugs we have to be united and to work together because we bring a knowledge and experience and an insight that cannot be found anywhere else and it will be so efficient and so smart to include this in our procedures nothing about us without us we have an HIV outbreak and skyrocketing mortality rates the last time the HIV outbreak in Rakuza was confronted it was because every stakeholder work together civil society organisations state structures the Ministry of Health because it's a necessity