War on Women Who Use Drugs

Source
Drug User Peace Initiative
Download this resource
Year
2014

INPUD’s Drug User Peace Initiative created the following resource, A War on Women who Use Drugs. This resource argues that the so-called ‘war on drugs’ is, in reality, a war on people who use drugs, with certain groups being subject to disproportionate abuse, human rights violations, stigma, and police attention. The resource documents the disproportionate harm of the war on drugs to women of colour, young women, poor women, and female sex workers. The resource pays particular attention to female sex workers, describing how female sex workers who use drugs suffer from double discrimination, stigma and criminalisation which in turn increase risks of abuse, violence, STIs and alienation from service provisions.

Contents include:

  • Invisibility, inequality and stigma
  • Health, healthcare, service provision and harm reduction
  • Violence
  • Incarceration, violence and infections
  • Interference with bodily integrity
  • Sex work and drug use
  • Conclusion: Moving forward.

This resource is useful to sex workers seeking to better understand how the war on drugs impacts female sex workers and women in general. It will also be useful in alliance-building with harm reduction organisations

You can download this 10 page resource as a PDF above. This resource is in English.