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Public policies to combat drug trafficking in Belgium and beyond are based, among other things, on a militaristic rationale, which is supposed to neutralise the international drug trade networks operating in the country. The port of Antwerp is considered to be one of the gateways for illegal substances to the Old Continent and is one of the best places to deploy and monitor police crackdowns on drug traffickers. However, over and above the arrests and imprisonment of those behind the trafficking, and the destruction of the stocks of drugs that pass through the port every year, several questions arise in the fight against drug trafficking in Belgium. What are the sociological profiles of the people subjected to police crackdowns on drugs? What are the perverse effects of the public action taken by the state services (police, justice, public health) to combat drug trafficking daily? What are the hidden aspects, the unspoken aspects and the public inaction of the State in the fight against narcotraffic? Our guest speakers will explore all these questions in depth.
Invited speakers
Yassine Boubout is a law graduate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He has worked to support victims of over-policing and police violence in Belgian neighborhoods. He later served as an attaché delegate at the Belgian Mission to the United Nations in New York. Transitioning to humanitarian work, Yassine has served in South Sudan and is currently working in Yemen. His understanding of the drug problem is shaped by his experiences growing up in a drug-affected neighborhood.
Luc Rombaut works as a therapist to help people how to deal with their addictions (alcoholendrugscoach). Previously he has worked as marketing manager in companies and as an independent communication consultant, (mindfulness)trainer and professional coach. He is director of the drugprevention organisation called Drugstories and co-founder of a stressreduction training company called Itam. He has written several books about drugs and how to break free from addiction.
Nicolas Van der Linden is a part-time lecturer in Social and Cultural Psychology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He is also the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at Modus Vivendi asbl, a Brussels-based non-profit organization providing harm reduction services for people who use drugs. At Modus Vivendi, he also coordinates the Belgian efforts of Support. Don't Punish, an international campaign advocating for drug policies based on health promotion and human rights. He earned his PhD in Social Psychology from the ULB in 2011. More recently, he attended the European Union Drug Agency's 2021 Summer School and participated in the 2021-2022 Drug Policy Executive Course organized by the Pompidou Group's Drug Policy Academy.
Moderator
Denis Augustin Samnick is a research assistant at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp