Shout out loud: We need a world free from drugs!

Active – sobriety, friendship and peace is today celebrating its 20th anniversary. In the last 20 years the youth temperence movement in Europe has been steadily growing and getting stronger. Being proud on the work we did the last 20 years, we look at the situation of young people in Europe today and we are angry. The young temperance movement in Europe is growing, we are getting bigger and we are from all over Europe. We all agree that a life without drugs is a better, more fulfilled life that gives us more possibilities. We want more people to get the opportunity to live a drugfree life. We want the alcohollobby to be kicked out of the policymakers, politicians and adults beds. We want the adults all around us to start taking responsibility for cleaning up the mess they impose on us young people. The problem all around Europe is not young people, the drugproblem is not a young person problem. The problem is lazy, afraid and incapable adults who do not work against the drugproblem.

In Europe we live in an intoxicating culture and the problems caused by alcohol consumption are increasing. More and more young people have easier access to all alcoholic beverages and are, moreover, dramatically exposed to the harms caused by alcohol. Alcohol commercials are targeting young people, alcohol policies in Europe are poor – the ”EU Strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol” is a much more watered document compared to the WHO Global Alcohol strategy. Availability, affordability, marketing of alcohol are political measures that the grown-up world is negelcting.

Those suffering the most from the lack of political will in Europe are children and young people. Being aware of the deteriorating situation in Europe, Active adopted a updated alcohol policy. Actives vision is a democratic diverse and peaceful world free from alcohol and other drugs where an individual can live up to its full potential.

Alcohol is not an ordinary commodity and therefore the alcohol market should be regulated. The principles of disintrest means that particular profit interests should be kept out of alcohol handling, which can be done by policies regulating import, production and retail of alcohol. And the whole population must be target group for drugpreventive work, this gives most result since the group of average consumers stands for the most of the alcohol related harm in society.

- We demand that direct and indirect alcohol marketing should be prohibited all over Europe.
- We demand that the European Union recogize the member states and all other European countries rights to maintain their retail monopolies on alcoholic beverages.
- We demand that age limits for purchasing alcoholic beverages must be effectively enforced, and violations of the age limits should be met by sanctions.
–    We demand that prices on all alcoholic beverages should be high in order to lower the consumption.
–    We demand that youth organisations and youth sport clubs should take their responsibility in informing about the harms of alcohol consumption, thus their activities should be alcohol free.

We are young people from 20 different European countrys, we are many and we are fed up with the adults all over our continent who dont take their responsibility!

Active Congress, August 2010