The Goteborg city forum on “Drug Treatment Policies and Inter-Agency Cooperation” will take place on May 28-29, 2009.  This event will bring together two of the three working groups of the EU-LAC Drug Treatment City Partnerships initiative:

·        Improving drug treatment public policies and inter-agency cooperation, also called Group 1.

·         Improving drug treatment services in EU and LAC cities, also called Group 2.

The profile of the participants invited to this Forum is:

• City Mayors, and Deputy Mayors
• Members of the National Drug Councils
• Treatment Specialists who have already participated in the Montevideo Technical City Forum last December 2008, and the Montego Bay, Jamaica, Technical City Forum a few days ago. To see the list of participants of these two forums, visit the websites of both events.

Objectives of this City Forum

1. Discuss ideas about how to lead drug treatment coalitions in the city, stressing the role of the city mayor and his/her team

2. To present the Göteborg model of inter-agency cooperation, and examine how different institutions and organizations work together to address drug treatment challenges (including a visit for specialist to a local treatment center)

3. To bring Mayors and Deputy Mayors to a table of discussion to evaluate the effectiveness of evidence-based public policies

4. To present the results of the Montego Bay and Montevideo technical fora (where 30 EU-LAC cities have agreed on two assessment tools)

5. To work on designing local drug strategies based on treatment needs in cooperation with regional and national agencies and institutions.

This activity corresponds to group 1 & 2 of the EU-LAC 2008-2010 collaborative actions.