The EU Action Plan on Drugs (2009-2012) requested that the European Commission propose an EU consensus of minimum quality standards in the field drug demand reduction. The contracted Research Institute for Public Health and Addiction (ISGF) at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has now published the documentation of the resulting EC co-funded “Study on the Development of an EU Framework for minimum quality standards and benchmarks in drug demand reduction”. The documentation includes a list of proposed quality standards for the areas of drug prevention, treatment and rehabilitation, and harm reduction (known as the EQUS standards). The prevention strand of the EQUS standards is based on the European drug prevention quality standards which were published by the EMCDDA in 2011 (see below on this page). The EQUS standards will underpin the work of the the European Commission regarding a proposal for an EU consensus on minimum quality standards, now planned for 2013.
Further details on the EQUS project can be found on the ISGF project website (see the executive summary) for the list of EQUS standards).