ABSTRACT
Drug consumption in Hungary was officially recognized as a social problem for the first time in the mid-1980s, at the Thirteenth Congress of the Hungarian Socialist Worker Party in 1985, where the drug problem was mentioned by high-level politicians. However, information about young people using drugs was availabe in professional circles since the end of the 1960s. Until the beginning of the 1970s, legal regulation of drug-related issues merely meant the ratification of international conventions and contracts. The amendment of the criminal code in 1971 referred not only to the Single Drug Convention in 1961, but also to the necessity of the increased protection of society. The first version of the programme dealing with the nation’s answer to drug use in Hungary was prepared for discussion in 1990. In 1996 the secretariat of the Inter-ministerial Drug Committee prepared the “Draft of the multi-disciplinary drug demand reduction strategy”.
