Addiction policy needs a strong coordinator with an interdepartmental mandate

Without strong coordination across departments, even the best person at the head of the department will work with their hands tied. This is precisely the essence of the current situation surrounding the Department for the Coordination of Addiction Policy at the Ministry of Health, and the personnel decision on its leadership will not change this essence.

In addition to the health agenda, addiction policy also has a security, fiscal, social and regulatory dimension and concerns legal and illegal markets worth tens of billions of crowns. It cannot therefore be fully managed within a single department.

Countries that manage this policy place coordination across departments. In France, MILDECA is directly under the Prime Minister. In the USA, the ONDCP is based within the Office of the President. Portugal, whose anti-drug policy is still cited as an international model, chose a similar logic in 1998, but in a different way: the government entrusted the preparation of a national strategy to an independent commission of recognized experts and made their report the basis for its further action.

We recommend applying a similar principle to the process of selecting a coordinator. The Prime Minister's Office should publish the profile of the required competencies, the timeframe by which the coordinator should be appointed, and what powers they will have. Experts who are not only experts on the given issue but also understand how it works in practice should be invited to the selection. The resulting choice should then be publicly justified by how the selected candidate meets the profile and what the scope of his or her agenda will be.

We recommend that the government appoint a strong national drug coordinator with a clear mandate granted by the Prime Minister and with the authority to bind individual ministries. This must be a person who is not afraid of pressure from the alcohol, tobacco, gambling, or pharmaceutical lobbies, understands the functioning of the gray economy and illegal markets, and can realistically coordinate departments with conflicting interests. There are only a few such people in the Czech Republic, and the state should acquire them, not lose them.

According to the information we have, the selection of the national coordinator is currently being carried out under the responsibility of the Chief Director, MUDr. Dita Protopopová, and the name is still unknown. We do not consider this a good procedure: this is not a criticism of her personally, but rather the fact that she has only recently taken up the position and cannot have the experienced knowledge of the terrain that this agenda requires. Without strong coordination across ministries, nothing substantial will change regarding this decision, whatever the outcome.

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