UAE renews its support for international co-operation to combat drugs

VIENNA, 18th March, 2017 (WAM) -- The UAE has reiterated its sustained support to the ongoing international efforts to fight and eradicate drugs to protect the health and safety of human beings from this scourge, which represents a global concern and requires greater co-operation to address it.

Before the 60th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna, the UAE stressed that it has achieved positive results in the fight against drugs at the national level, given the reduction in the number of drug addicts over the past years, the same levels were maintained during 2016 when seizures and confiscation operations rose by 25 percent over the previous year.

The audience discussed the latest developments in this field, and the latest narcotic substances and their effects. They also discussed ways to criminalise these substances globally, within the agendas of the international conventions on drugs.

They also reviewed global experiences and studied the draft resolutions, which member states desire to adopt within the policies and strategies to fight drugs, as well as the organisation of more than 80 workshops and events that would contribute to the development of ways to combat the phenomenon.

Delivering the UAE’s speech before the audience, Colonel Saeed Abdullah Al Suwaidi, Director-General of the Anti-Narcotics Federal General Directorate at the Ministry of Interior, said that the UAE, in light of an overall national strategy, has adopted 26 operational indicators to assess the progress of performance that has been made in the fight against drugs at all security, customs, health, educational, and civic sectors, based on the shared responsibility to protect society from this scourge.

On the sidelines of the meeting, the UAE also reviewed its preventive and field efforts in its fight against drugs through the Ministry of Interior.

WAM/Hazem/Majok