ARDA - Asociación de Reducción de Daños de Argentina

ARDA is an organization of national scope that since 1999 has brought together professionals from the social health, law and social sciences fields and aims to contribute to the dissemination and implementation of public policies aimed at reducing harm in the area of drug use. The origins of our organization date back to the mid-1990s, the height of the abstentionist-prohibitionist policies increased in Argentina since the implementation of the Drug Law 23,737. At that time, some professionals who knew the policies that were carried out in some European countries to face the HIV pandemic and attentive to the damages of the implementation of the Drug Law that were beginning to become visible, decided to found the Association. Pioneers in open and public opposition to Law 23,737, we have carried out actions in all possible areas of intervention. In the course of our activities we have trained professionals and promoters who work with drug users in education, health, social organizations, prison, recreation, etc. Our members promoted the creation of the first services that work from the perspective of harm reduction, such as the Carlos Gardel Center in the City of Buenos Aires and the Agudo Ávila Center in Rosario. We have participated in the production of various bills on the decriminalization of drug possession, in the organization of marches for the decriminalization of cannabis and in the preparation of protocols of the Supreme Court of National Justice, we published more than 20 books, we carried out interventions preventive in massive events like Creamfields, Cosquín Rock, National Beer Festival, etc. The world needs a more effective, just and above all more humane drug policy. Let's work together to achieve it.