Professor Vicknasingam is Professor of Addiction at the Centre for Drug Research, Universiti Sains Malaysia, and former Director of the Centre. He has more than 20 years of experience working with drug users both locally and internationally. Since 2015, he has been a member of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) World Drug Report Scientific Advisory Committee. He is also currently on WHO’s Expert Panel for Drug Dependence. In Malaysia, he is a drug policy advisor for the Malaysian AIDS Council.
His research is focused on understanding and developing behavioral interventions for people who use drugs. Over the years, he has found that the biggest challenge in translating scientific evidence from research to effective programmatic intervention is influencing drug laws and policies. He has a keen interest in drug policy issues and advocates for a shift from a punitive to a public health-based drug policy.
He has more than 20 years in the field of drug addiction and harm reduction. An area of interest is to integrate drug harm reduction with tobacco harm reduction. From his experience, there are a high number of people who use drugs (PWUDs) who also continue to smoke at an alarming rate. In addition, PWUDs who are successfully enrolled in drug harm reduction services continue to smoke. There is a need to develop tobacco harm reduction interventions for PWUDs. This dual dependence is understudied.
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