John Mordaunt Trust

Mark Goldstein BSc

Adrian Garfoot MD - Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt MSc

Reverend Kenneth Leech DD RIP

The John Mordaunt Trust (JMT) was set up in 1996 to honour the memory of an influential AIDS activist.

The John Mordaunt Trust is an advocacy project set up to campaign for the health and human rights of ex/current injectors affected by HIV and other blood-borne infections (BBIs.)

John was deported from China alone as a result of his HIV status in 1986; when he had recovered from this trauma, he joined FRONTLINERS, the then People With AIDS Coalition UK,fighting hard for the human rights of other men, women and children affected by AIDS. Essentially John was a harm reduction activist, who began to speak out in the media of drugs-use as a human right, or at least that drugs users had the right NOT to be persecuted. As an ex-injection drug user (IDU), he was only too aware of how dangerous prohibition could be - risk of overdose deaths from unknown purity of drugs, fatal blood borne infections from lack of access to clean injecting equipment, imprisonment, not to mention the collateral damage of crimes committed against others in desperate efforts to access illegal drugs day-in-day-out...including violence related to drug-deals gone wrong. Harm Reduction strategies are essential within current drug policy, as drugs users cannot and do not know the quality (therefore DOSE) of the drugs they are buying. Harm Reduction initially sprung out of the need to prevent AIDS in society, but has become a lot more. Harm Reduction workers work along side drug users making sure they use drugs as safely as possible, thus keeping them as well as possible for as long as possible. Harm Reduction accepts that people use drugs and commits to keeping people alive without demanding they stop using. That said, if people want to stop using, a harm reduction worker is obliged to refer to the appropriate service to help them reach that goal.

The John MOrdaunt Trust keeps its members informed via a news letter called the Users Voice

In June 1998, JMT's founder, Andria (John's widow) arranged for the first ex-injector living with HIV+ - Marsha B (RIP) to address the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs about the failures of prohibition. Marsha was joined by Omarya Morales (RIP) a Columbian cocalera, whose home had been burnt to the ground by US-driven coca eradication policies.

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Wikipedia