Brussels, 01/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 26 January, Commissioner Franco Frattini announced at a conference entitled Civil society and drugs that the Commission was to publish a Green Paper on “Drugs and Civil society in the EU”. The Green Paper, expected in June, will seek to strengthen civil society involvement in the development and assessment of the European anti-drugs policy, in line with the 2005-2008 drugs action plan (see EUROPE 8889). “The European Union's response to a worrying development is even closer European cooperation, which civil society has to be part of,” declared Mr Frattini at the opening of the conference. “Let us work together on a problem that affects several million Europeans,” he told representatives of European NGOs. In the EU, there are currently up to two million people with drugs problems and every year almost 8,000 people die from overdoses.