Reto Signer - This is my experience with drugs, Methadone, etc. [This testimony was acquired from a TNT member in Europe and translated for this website]

My name is Reto and I was born in 1968. I grew up in a relatively normal and stable middle class home. When I was in school I did sport and after high school, I did an apprenticeship and also attended the military in Switzerland. 
It was during this time that I also experienced a search for the reason or purpose of my life (like many at that age do). I thought that I would find purpose in making money or status and power, and at other times I searched purpose in entertainment and my girlfriend, or even Cannabis, but none of that seemed to bring me to that sense of being fulfilled and instead thereof, I only experienced the dissatisfaction growing bigger and bigger as life went on!

Except for smoking Hash (compressed, processed Cannabis), and later I started snorting Heroin and Cocaine. This road of trying out drugs took me right to the extreme of drug taking, which was when I became a junky, who mainlined (injected) Heroin and Cocaine. Dealing drugs, staying in mainline rooms (places where Heroin is acquired and injected, often state funded) and as participant in methadone programs I was a doomed man. After a methadone "therapy" (substitutionary programs) I consumed more Cocaine than before. With clean injection and warm mainline-rooms etc. my drug consume was easier and more simplified. With having said this, it was only after I ended up in the gutters that the bell rang, so to say, and woke me up for mew to see my real need. A rehabilitation center in the country side, without the luxuries brought me back to reality.

Finally I found the Answer that gave me strength and motivated me to continue to fight, it was Jesus, He forgave my sins. Every day I praise Him and thank Him. I was rescued from the slavery of drugs. He gave me strength to get up and fight! Every day I praise Him, I'm thankful and I grow spiritually. Afterwards i studied further. I have been clean for 17 years now! I'm married and we have a 4 year old daughter and 2 year old son. Even today I thank every day for my new life. I found the true foundation to live and have my own family. Jesus alone shall have all the glory.

VISIT: www.noharm.co.za FOR MORE INFO!

The inclusion of harm reduction policies in the new national drug master plan is the issue we are addressing through this website and petition action!

Most South Africans have never heard the term harm reduction and don't even know that it is about to become part of the new drug policy in the national drug master plan (implementation: April 2012-2016). We want to make South Africans aware of the full implication of such a small term and the philosophy behind it. And, give them the chance to speak out against it. All people, every language and colour, rural and urban, poor and rich see the devastating effects that drugs have on our country and we need to work together for a more hopeful future!
"Harm promotion, dubbed harm reduction, is a flawed notion proponents of the drug legalisation movement use as a tactic to normalise drug use, claiming it is inevitable". [1]

What is Harm reduction?

Harm reduction is promoted as an attempt to minimise the harm done to addicts and society, through the introduction of measures to control the environment in which illicit drugs are obtained and used. In practice however, harm reduction usually involves one or more of the following:
• Methadone maintenance programs - the long term provision of Methadone, Suboxone and Subutex to addicts. All of them have addictive properties and should therefore only be given in a transitional phase.
• Needle exchange programs (the provision of clean needles and syringes by the state to intravenous drug users).
• Providing free drugs and paraphernalia to addicts.
• Legalising and decriminalising the use of dagga.
• Providing shooting galleries and needle parks.
• Ultimately legalizing the use of all drugs, such as in Portugal.

Berndt Schmidt, Switzerland - Harm Reduction brought needle exchange programs to Zurich back in the late 1980's. AIDS, hepatitis, sick junkies and slums were the arguements and motivations to introduce Harm Reduction policies here in Switzerland. Nobody wanted to have such an illegal market in Zurich. From everywhere in Europe the drug dealers were coming to deal at the needle parks. The political left, Intern Minister Ruth Dreyfuss introduced it on federal level, before which, there was a pilot project in Zurich. All political forces against it didn't succeed. I think their false "compassion" for the addicts was a key that they used to push the law through.

Photo insert: TNT member, Berndt Schmidt, giving his testimonies to other drug addicts at a center in Zurich on Sunday, 25th of September 2011 (Idea Spectrum magazine)

The high availability was an invitation for me to start using Heroin. Before this policy, it was not easy to get injection material or you had to pay 2 CHF (Swiss Franks) per needle. I think also that others I know, who was also liberated from Heroin addiction through convertion to Christ, had this same experience. Recently, a street worker told me that the concentration of Heroin on the market at the moment is very low. But in the Heroin distribution program the concentration is very high (artificial Heroin). You can go 8 times a day to have your kick (to get drugs and inject it) at these places for public drug use. They have been discussing for years now, to also start a Cocaine distribution program, but they have not succeeded.

[Berndt is a TNT member in Switzerland. Read his full testimony]

Harm Reduction in SwitzerlandSwitzerland

• 1987: Zurich permitted drugs
• 1987-1992: Regular drug users in Zurich increased from a few hundred to more than 20 000 in one needle park

Sad Facts about Harm Reduction

• In some countries with needle exchange programs over 70% of addicts continue to share needles (Doctors for Life International)
• HIV incidence among daily users of Vancouver's Needle Exchange Program (the largest NEP in the Western Hemisphere), was 75% higher than among drug abusers that did not use the program (Vancouver study)
• The above was even after results was adapted to compensate for differences in ethnicity, accommodation like communal living in NEP group and prevalence of prostitution in NEP group, HIV/AIDS was still more prevalent amongst NEP group (American Journal of Medicine)