Dear Rosie Boycott,

We would like to demonstrate our strong support for your courageous personal action and political campaign in The Independent towards the legalization of cannabis. It is very rare that a well-known and respectable person would set out her moral and political ideas, not fearing to support a right cause and notwithstanding the opinions of the others.

We share your views on cannabis, and like you, we have been trying for years to achieve a change in the laws on drugs. Let us explain you who we are and what we do. We are the Secretary and the Treasurer of the Radical Antiprohibitionnist Coordination (CO.R.A.), an organization that was founded in 1988 in Italy to fight for the legalization of drugs. We knew that to overcome prohibitionism we would have to work on the international (or at least European) level, our aim being consequently to become a transnational organization in order to table uniform draft laws and organize demonstrations in every State.

In December 1996, when we held the VIII Congress at the European Parliament in Brussels, our organization was joined by many citizens, MPs (and MEPs) from all over Europe. We achieved the drafting of a resolution in the European Parliament, which was signed by 61 MEPs, asking for legalization of drugs and a revision of the UN Conventions on drugs. We intervened at the UN in Vienna (thanks to the transnational Radical Party we are federated to, which has a status of consultative NGO in the UN) supporting the same cause. We are now gathering signatures from all over the world to support the right of doctors and drug addicts to choose the most convenient treatment for the cure of addictions. We also support the activities of civil disobedience run by the Dutch priest Hans Visser in The Netherlands, and by Marco Pannella in Italy. The latter has been condemned to prison as a result of his three time public distribution of cannabis in Rome in an attempt to bring the issue of cannabis to the public attention

.

We enclose some further information about our organization, its history and activities, and we hope to have the possibility to collaborate with you to reach our common goal as soon as possible. If you would like to do so, please contact our office in the European Parliament, Brussels, where Ottavio Marzocchi will be pleased to discuss anything further.

We look forward to hearing from you soon,

Eric PicardMarco Cappato

General Secretary of CO.R.A.Treasurer of CO.R.A.

CO.R.A., c/o European Parliament

97-113 rue Belliard

REM 5.08

1047 Brussels, Belgium

Tel: ++32 2 284 2258 (Ottavio Marzocchi)

Fax: ++32 2 284 9198 or 230 36 70

encl:

documents about the CORA: history, the motion of the last Congress, activities, Pannella and his civil disobedience, speech of Emma Bonino at the Conress of CO.R.A...