 It is necessary to consider harms beyond the public health approach. The harms of the dominant drug policy regime are broader. Time has come to a broader understanding of the harms produced by the moralistic condemnation of activity which do not harm others. The dream, or better said, the illusion of a drug-free society, the militarization of the war on drugs. During my presidency, with the advice of various groups, including drug treatment providers and parents, I signed a law to criminalize personal possession of drugs. A decade later, I know that it was a mistake. You have seen the international harm reduction conferences for many years focusing on public health issues. And it took some years before we went back to talk and discuss drug policy issues. What is much more, for me, much more relevant and much more interesting to debate what causes the harm that we are trying to prevent and what we are trying to treat. I used to be a police officer. I'm learning, for instance, that harm reduction is much more than I thought it was. So I'm really grateful for being invited and to be here. There's a big push for compulsory treatment in Thailand. The strategy hasn't really changed since the big war on drugs that happened in 2003. It's still focused on incarceration, forced treatment. For me, the key issue, because we're kind of involved in it, is TB. The whole question of TB amongst injecting drug users. I've just been to a session now and it's the biggest killer of drug users. It's a neglected issue. Scale is important, but quality is also very important, so let's not forget about quality. We have generated so much evidence. We know harm reduction works. However, the major disappointment for me over this decade is that all the funding for harm reduction continues to come in the former Soviet region from external donors. Where there is no funding from external donors such as Lithuania, for example, there is almost no national funding for harm reduction for needle exchange. Financing of harm reduction is for sure the major issue in the region. Global fund is decreasing its funding for middle income countries and the majority of countries in the region are middle income. What we need to be very watchful of is to make sure that austerity measures do not become an excuse for services being cut. I very much hope that we start using sound evidence against irrational drug policy, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because we simply cannot afford to be wasting money. What I learned from this conference is that we should involve definitely the private sector to support harm reduction programs. Harm reduction programs saves lives and the private sector is not excluded from saving lives. The government should take care of adapting laws that allows private sector to benefit from supporting harm reduction programs in every country. How do you see this conference? Have you learned something important you can take home? Every time I come to this conference I learn many things important to take home and trying to relate it to how we can organize better Arab drug users to participate and advocate for their own rights in the Middle East or Arab nations. Shame is a big issue amongst everyone. It's part of the culture and learning from other people in the world how to maybe circumvent that and deal with that. What's really sort of positive for me from here in this conference is a lot of people who are HIV positive that have a long drug use history are super active and we see them and they're visible and they're taking part, they're speaking out. So, I mean that gives me real hope that even though things in Russia are complicated even though there is significant repression across this region people have the strength and the courage to speak on behalf of their needs, needs of their colleagues and friends. Often we would have things to say and contradict that she will not like, that she may not agree with and that she may object to. However we do not say these things for the sake of being obstreperous or difficult but because the lives, wellbeing, dignity and human rights of our community are ultimately what is at stake in everything that you do. Remember that for many of you this is the job but for us it is quite literally our lives.