About Us

The International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) is a global peer-based organisation that seeks to promote the health and defend the rights of people who use drugs. INPUD will expose and challenge stigma, discrimination, and the criminalisation of people who use drugs and its impact on the drug-using community’s health and rights. INPUD will achieve this through processes of empowerment and advocacy at the international level, while supporting empowerment and advocacy at community, national and regional levels.

INPUD is a movement of people who use drugs (current and former) who support the Vancouver Declaration. The Vancouver Declaration sets out the demands of people who use drugs, emphasising that their human rights must be respected and their health and wellbeing prioritised. INPUD is a global network that seeks to represent people who use drugs in international agencies such as the United Nations and with those undertaking international development work. We believe that people who use drugs should be meaningfully represented in decision-making processes that affect our lives. INPUD is committed to demonstrating at country level how people who use drugs can constructively contribute to the development and delivery of services for our community. We believe that we have a unique insight that can help money be spent wisely thus delivering better results for individuals and the wider community. We are asking the international community to stop always framing us as the problem and instead to recognise that we are part of the solution when is comes to addressing problems associated with drugs and drug policy around the world.

Read INPUD’s Strategic Plan 2021-2024.

Read INPUD’s Consensus Statement on Drug Use under Prohibition.

Our Articles of Association can be found here.

Mission Statement and Vision

INPUD is a global peer-based organisation that seeks to promote the health and defend the rights of people who use drugs by highlighting and challenging stigma, discrimination, and the criminalisation of people who use drugs through processes of empowerment and advocacy at the international level, while supporting empowerment and advocacy at community, national, and regional levels.

Our vision is a world where people who use drugs are free to live their lives with dignity.

INPUD’s Aims

1. An end to drug prohibition, the legalisation of drugs and the protection of the human rights of people who use drugs.
2. Effective prevention, treatment, care and support for people who use drugs who are living with or affected by HIV, viral hepatitis, TB and other relevant health issues.
3. Universally available, low-threshold harm reduction to support safer drug use and reduce drug-related harm among people who use drugs.
4. Self-determining networks of people who use drugs that advocate for their own health, citizenship and human rights.

INPUD’s Principles

Pro drug user rights: People who use drugs have the right to be treated with dignity and respect and to live their lives free from discrimination, stigma and health and human rights violations.

Pro self-determination and self-organising: People who use drugs are best placed to represent their interests and the network will champion the prioritisation of people who use drugs in consultation and advocacy processes.

Pro harm reduction and safer drug use: Harm reduction services should be available and accessible to all people who use drugs, which includes information on safer drug use strategies.

Respecting the right of people to take drugs: We take a non-judgemental, rights-affirming approach to drug use and believe people who use drugs have the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

Pro legalisation: We are committed to achieving fundamental drug policy reform, including the full decriminalisation of drugs without sanctions as an intermediate reform on the path to INPUD’s goal of legalisation of all drugs.

Pro equality: INPUD’s organisational philosophy is based on self-determination, equity and social justice principles