The Danish Drug Users Union’s 13th. International Memorial Day July 21, 2015.

– The Danish Drug Users Union’s 13th. International Memorial Day July 21, 2015.

– The ceremony started at 19.00 at the public Memorial Site of Deceased Drug Users, in the middle Copenhagen and next to the relatively open drugs scene. Sunrays, lit up the 213 colorful flowers, planted on the lawn, symbolizing the still extremely large number, of fatal overdoses in 2013.

President Jørgen Kjær start welcoming the approximately 100 people who has gathered to participate at the 13th. International Memorial Day in Copenhagen. And JK spoke on about how an extremely high number of 183.000 drug users lost their life globally, caused by overdoses in 2013, as a direct consequence of the “War on Drugs” and the unregulated drugs distribution almost everywhere. “The “War on Drugs is a failure and our politicians and governments worldwide must start to listen to the 7 former presidents – commissioners of the “Global Commission on Drugs”, who sensibly propose decriminalization and state regulation of the distribution of the currently illegal drugs. JK also spoke about how 2015 has been a huge financial challenge – as the earlier funding from the social ministry was changed – because an earlier minister back in 2012, publicly donated a million to a friends project, even her friend never applied for the funding. This mishap caused the state auditors to demand the ministry to perform a complete renewal of earlier pool funding structures, but never noticed BF about it before it was implemented and a fact, that the pool from where BF had its funding of 850.000 annually in 15 years, was revoked and therefore there was no ministry funding to start 2015 with. Miraculously our local politician Anne Mette Omø Carlsen from Copenhagen municipality, responded on a half year old invitation and visited BF in March – and got impressed of what she saw, incidentally on the very same day as she was going to a meeting, where her party decided who they would point at, when Copenhagen’s surplus means within political negotiations was dealt out between relevant projects, on a later point. There Anne Mette succeeded to negotiate the huge sum of 811.000 Dkr. to fund BF and 100.000 to our SyringePatrol. This lucky incident was a direct “lifesaver” that avoided that BF ended up going bankrupt in June, as we were destined to do, right until our new “angel” and savior visited BF and decided to fund us with extraordinary means. For that we are Anne Mette eternally thankful.

Second on the speaker stand was our international speaker Ruaidhri Mac from Uisce Dublin who among many other things, in his speech revealed, that a shockingly high number of 72 drug users, committed suicide by hanging in 2012. (later I got this explanation from Ruadhri; “A little before that there was a lot of coke around on credit. And there was much intimidation for the debts owed. Like a microcosm of the Euro economy. Same is happening with weed. So people hung themselves believing they would be shot dead anyway. That is some of the 72 for sure” – (JK= this is a direct consequence of the failed “War on Drugs” where the cruel and money greedy cocaine cartels have a 100 % monopolly on the cocaine business worldwide – and on top of this they now since 2009 added Levamisol a cattle dewormer that and Fenacetin which was taken off the human medicine list in the 80’ies because there were a suspicion, that it could cause liver cancer – these things is solely added to boost their already enormous profit – and the content of pure cocaine is on average only 20 % so with an average of 3 different profit added additives, their profit is eminently extremely high.

Incidentally our activist brother and funder and leader of the Norwegian “Association of Humane Drug Policies” Arild Knutsen were present and Arild video recorded Ruaidhri’s speech and publishes it online here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHyZRFH0RVU

The next on the speaker stand Kuki Lise Møller Christensen who lost Niklas her only 23-years young son, who died from an overdose shortly after he was kicked out and quarantined from his substitution treatment. Later Kuki wrote a poem book: “The first scream the last sigh! – about Niklas’ light childhood and heavy youth with drugs – from which Kuki reads a couple of heartbreaking poems.

Now it was time for BF’s musician Mårten “Charlie Campari” who sang and played his own composition “My three horses” a brown, a yellow and the strongest a white – and yes you guessed right Mårten sings about heroin. Again Arild recorded and publish it here:

Next speaker was Anja Plesner Bloch initiator and leader of a user union – started back in 2012 as an anti-12-step/Minnesota – Facebook group called “Stepless Thinkers”- as in 2013 changed to a less confrontative name; The “User’s Academy”. Anja is an extremely gifted speaker and writer, who always manage to express her opinions in a very direct – cut the crap fashion, and her points is always razorblade sharply expressed.

After Anja Ruaidhri proved to be a really great artist, singer and guitar player, while he sang a Johnny Cash tune – judge for yourself from watching Arild’s video:

Last speaker of the day was one of our many years heroes – Dr. Birger Schroll who for decades helped a countless number of homeless drug users in several Norwegian cities, who survived with Birger’s helpful prescriptions of various substitution medicine. Birger expressed his huge contempt for the Norwegian and Danish health authorities who only use their power to control and deny every creative way to help the vulnerable groups overcome their hard struggles for survival. Lately Birger has been challenged with prostate disease – as has taken its toll on his health. Ending his speech Birger declared “Im soon 70 and have decided to start to take it more easy and look for a more calm pensionnaire otium. We wishes Birger all the best. The last traditional point of the day was the audience singing in common – an old freedom fighter song – that thanks to Kuki singing lead – sounded fairly OK. JK Thanked the audience and: “See you all again at July 21, 2016!