(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Member States are reporting progress in their efforts to reduce the demand for illicit drugs in the Region.

Based on the ten Country reports presented yesterday (3 March) at the regional training workshop on Standards of Care for Treatment and Rehabilitation Facilities for Substance Abusers, in Jamaica, several countries have varying types of care and treatment methods for drug and alcoholic dependents.

Several Member States have also noted the positive impact of care and treatment in reducing the demand for illicit drugs in their country and agreed that quality care and treatment was critical in drug demand reduction.

Despite this however, it was noted that while there was a wide range and reasonably high quality of service in some countries, others were still struggling to set up structured systems and yet others had no formal systems or mechanisms for the provision of quality services.

Participants attributed this to the challenge of mobilizing resources as well as the absence of established standards, and agreed that it was of critical importance to bring each country to a level of minimum standards of care and treatment for drug and alcoholic dependents.

It was also agreed the more public /private sector partnership was necessary to assist with the mobilization of both human, financial and materials resources.

The two-day workshop which is being held in Montego Bay, Jamaica is organized jointly by the CARICOM Secretariat and the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD). It has created a forum for more than forty regional and international stakeholders in drug demand reduction to discuss, identify and establish standards for care and treatment for substance abusers.

The Meeting which started on 3 March precedes the meeting of European Union and Latin American and Caribbean (EU-LAC) countries, at the same venue, on improving drug treatment services in EU-LAC cities.