Caribbean Community National Drug Observatories representatives are currently benefiting from a regional seminar which commenced yesterday at the Ramada Princess Hotel. The CARICOM Secretariat has collaborated with the Inter American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) to strengthen the capacity of representatives to gather, analyse and report on drug-related information and to enable the development of evidence-based drug policies and programmes.
The seminar is part of the response under the Drug Demand Reduction (DDR) component of the Tenth European Development Fund (EDF) Crime and Security Programme between the European Union and CARIFORUM. The DDR component seeks to strengthen institutional capacity of national and regional drug demand reduction entities and practitioners to effectively develop strategies and implement policies and programmes in CARIFORUM. The use of illicit drugs continues to rise in CARIFORUM countries and a lack of institutional capacity has been identified as one of the challenges in the response against this issue.