Born and raised in Athens, Efi Kokkini, 37 years old, is a co-founder and vice-president of the Greek Drug & Substitute Users Union, created three years ago. She has been a drug user since the age of 16 and a methadone user in the Greek OST (Opiate Substitution Treatment) programme for the last seven years. Her personal experiences as a drug user and the neglect, discrimination, stigmatisation and criminal drug policies that herself and her community have been subjected to, urged her to become an activist in order to advocate for drug users' rights, raise awareness on significant issues related to their lives, mobilise them to raise their voices demanding equal treatment and support in the struggle to stop this merciless and inhuman war on drugs. She strongly supports the value of harm reduction which can minimise the damage caused to drug users by inefficient and harmful socio-political and economic strategies and she is clearly against drug prohibition and the criminalisation of drug users
Efi collaborates with many Greek NGOs involved in the committee responsible for drafting a national strategy on HIV/AIDS, in a platform project initiated by a number of drug user-ally organisations implementing harm reduction policies. She also represents her Union in national and European events, meetings and conferences. She has written several articles published on the Union's blog and social media pages, and also in a number of national journals. Her Union is the focal point of 'Correlation in Greece' and she is also a member of INPUD (International Network of People who Use Drugs) which she has represented as a speaker at two conferences. She is also involved (representing her Union) in the 'Correlation Hepatitis C' initiative.
Efi has been the nanny of six-year-old twin brothers since they were babies. She is also a psychology student in the final year of her degree. She would like to continue studying with a postgraduate research on addiction. She hopes that her knowledge of psychology combined with her empirical knowledge will make her support for the drug-using community even more dynamic and integrated.
