‘Viennese Blend’: Municipal drug services, their development and their governance

Abstract

After the fall of the Iron Curtain drug consumption in Vienna approached that of other Western European cities. Psycho pharmaceuticals (benzodiazepines) and substitution drugs (‘morphines’) are frequently used as replacement and as complement to the illegal ‘classics’ heroin, cocaine and cannabis, especially by members of the marginalized drug scene. The municipal drug services have expanded and diversified since the 1990s and have targeted marginalized poly drug users. During the last 20 years the aim of harm reduction has been successfully established, the thresholds of the services have been lowered and new user groups–also socially integrated ones–reached. Before 1990 the development of the drug services was governed by drug professionals, after that time a rapidly expanding municipal drug administration took over. The ‘Addiction and Drug Coordination Vienna’, which is closely linked to the major and the city council and thus to political decisions, furthered the socio-political integration of drug users, of drug consumption and of the drug services, but it also heralded the socio-economic rationalization of the services and promoted their collaboration with the repressive forces, operating along different rationales decided on different political layers.