Constance EU Policy advisor Standing Committee of European Doctors Belgium Birsen Dalbasti Public Health Expert Turkish Government Netherlands Yvan De Baerdemaecker Project Manager PRAG AP Belgium Jacques De Maen Secretary Prospective Rotary Action Group Addiction Prevention Rotary D 1620 Belgium Tanja Decker Public Official Representation of Bavaria to the EU Germany Tom Decorte Professor University Belgium Robert Delis EU Public Affairs Officer BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION Poland Zeynep Demir Corporate Communication Yesilay - Turkish Green Crescent Society Turkey Alienor Devaliere Policy advisor HAI France Carolina Diaz Minister Counsellor Embassy of Colombia Colombia Gokhan Dinc Program Manager Turkish Green Crescent Association Turkey James Drew Production Editor EU Reporter United Kingdom Muserref Pervin Tuba Durgut Board Member Yesilay - Turkish Green Crescent Society Turkey Luis Elizondo Legal and Global Affairs Mission of Mexico to the EU Mexico Mustafa Erata Public Health Expert Turkish Government Turkey Fetai Senior EU Policy Advisor Stop AIDS Alliance Belgium arcq frederick addiction prevention team La Defense Belgium Sonsole Fuentes Researcher Heart Healthy Hoods Spain Lucia Goberna Lehmann Institutional Relations Dianova International Spain Fiona Godfrey Director of Public Affairs European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) United Kingdom Ignacio Gonzalez Diplomat Mission to the EU Uruguay Nijole Gostautaite Midttun Clinical Psychologist NTAKK Lithuania Maria Gripenhoftner Professional board IOGT-NTO Sweden Jacobus Groffen Bestuur MMNL Moedige Moeders Nederland Netherlands Thomas Guddat Desk Officer Justice Saxony Liaison Office Germany Catherine Guinard EU PA Manager CRUK United Kingdom
Kathleen Yates Psychotherapist Advanced Intervention Service United Kingdom Corbisier Yves Addiction prevention team La Defense Belgium Patricia Zegwaard Chairman Stichting Coke van Jou Netherlands Christian Mirre Representative Foundation for a Drug Free Europe France Elena Goti Cohas International Relations Dianova International Sabine Germann Representative Mission de la Suisse aupres de L'Union Europeenne Suisse Croes Psychologist Stichting Coke van Jou Netherlands Varvara Zaitseva Managing Director Clinic of Doctor Isaev a non-profit Drug Guild Russian Federation Radu-Loghin Cornel Secretary General European Network for Smoking and Tobacco Prevention – ENSP Romanian Dominique Nguyen Health Policy and Communications Officer European Network for Smoking and Tobacco Prevention (ENSP) France Marianne Vaes Representative Permanent Representation for Health in Brussels Netherlands Linda Gustavsson Health and Social Affairs Assistant Permanent Representation of Sweden to the EU Sweden Axel Klein Team Leader CORMS Project Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies German Claude Riviere Resp. Affaires Européennes et Internationales Association Nationale de Prévention en Alcoologie et Addictologie (ANPAA) France Danielle Gonzalez Assistant of the Embassy Embassy of Colombia Colombia Copies of Presentations
Anderson, Newcastle University It is increasingly recognised that illegal drug policies are in need of reform - they bring considerable collateral damage through criminalization and violence due to vying for market dominance, they impair health, result in large prison populations and weaken governance around the world.1 UNGASS 2016 provides a unique opportunity for opening the door to policy shifts, paving the way for reform of the global drug control regime to permit responsible legal regulation, as is happening with cannabis. There is no one simple pathway for effective reform; it will require experimentation and and error2 and will also require a standard benchmark to address health outcomes across all drugs, legal and illegal. In the field of toxicology, risk assessment for human consumption of a wide range of products is based on margins of exposure (MOE) analysis.3, 4 We propose MOE as the standard tool to drive reform and monitor drug policy worldwide. WHAT IS MOE? MOE measures the of a benchmark or toxic dose (commonly the lowest dose which is 95% certain to cause no more than a 10% incidence of a negative health outcome in animals or humans) to human exposure.4 An MOE of 1 means that the chemical is being consumed at the toxic dose, while an MOE of 100 means that the chemical is being consumed at one hundredth of the toxic dose; the higher the MOE, the lower the risk to human health. Benchmark doses can be estimated from human data such as clinical trials or epidemiological dose-response information, but such information is unavailable for most illegal drugs. For this reason, the currently available estimations rely on toxicity data from animal experiments. Exposure is commonly measured by survey data, or by population-based consumption data. WHAT MOE Threshold?