3. ANTIPROHIBITIONISM ON DRUGS

Prohibition, as a complex of punitive judicial norms that strike the production, sale, and consumption of substances that are determined to be "drugs" proposes itself as protector of the physical and moral integrity of citizens, guarding them against the effects on consciousness, sobriety, and supposed toxicity of those substances.

The results of this legislative model, 30 years after its full development, are evident: a minor criminal element has rendered the streets and neighborhoods of certain cities dangerous; the major criminal organizations reinvest their immense profits from drugs in every type of business, both legal and illegal and they pollute, corrupt, and influence governments and control entire nations. Enormous financial resources are spent by states for the repression, imprisonment, policing, and jurisdiction of the drug trade, to the detriment of its usual duties: and thousands of persons, most of them young, die by infection and overdose as a result of the impurity of the products put into circulation.

The most recent example, made evident by its fatal effects, is the prohibitionist policy expressed by the slogan "the war on drugs," which was launched by President Reagan at the beginning of the 1980's, and immediately supported by the UN with the Vienna convention of 1988. "The war on drugs" has been a clamorous failure, a "flop" of global proportions that wasted millions of dollars and simultaneously condemned millions of young people to the "free" consumption of the black market, and subsequently succeeding only in enriching the already enormous wealth and power of the cartels and narco-mafias. In this way, another industry was created: the business of those who are supposed to fight the black market. Every nation has enormous budgets and specialized agencies as well as a great number of workers who depend on the government jobs. The failure of the war on drugs is also this: the financing of enormous bureaucracies that live and prosper without producing results.

The prohibitionist model has felt the effects of this general crisis, even in the most intransigent governments: inertia, more than political desire, have maintained this way of thinking. Then why not admit that prohibition has failed in respect to its goals, that drugs are actually part of the free market and are openly sold and that its harmful effects are a massive phenomenon in society?

It is time to change course. The real and most necessary objective is the destruction of the economic and commercial illegality of drugs. The legalization and regulation of the substances in question, as well as their production, distribution, and consumption, is required.

Since the 1970's in Italy, the Transnational Radical Party has, - during the first massive emergence of the use of psychoactive substances - intervened and denounced the moralistic, authoritarian, and anti-scientific nature of prohibitionist legislation.

With repeated actions of civil disobedience, including the public use of drugs, Marco PANNELLA and the radicals have obtained a first victory with the modification of Italian law: in 1975 the non-punishment of the consumption of "moderate amounts" was introduced.

Later, with the increase of the use of heroin and other drugs that cause dependency, and with the first deaths by overdose, the TRP proposed the "controlled distribution" of drugs on behalf of the public administration, with the objective of eliminating or reducing the illegal market and the drug mafias, and to subtract the consumers from illegal activities that constrain them to risk their health on the black market or from infection with AIDS.

Always in Italy, with two successive referenda the TRP has attempted to decriminalize narcotic substances. In 1980, the first referendum was declared unacceptable by the Constitutional Court, which judged it incompatible with International Treaties. The second, in 1993, was instead accepted and had a widespread public success, introducing an important contrast between Italy and its adhesion to International Treaties. In 1995, after repressive measures were surreptitiously introduced into the Italian legal system, the radical reformation movement collected more than 500,000 signatures and has since proposed a new referendum of an anti-prohibitionist nature. The referendum should take place in the spring of 1997.

In 1988, thanks to the efforts of CORA (Radical Antiprohibitionist Coordination), who have promoted the legalization of cannabis, and the IAL (International Antiprohibitionist League) in 1989, and the success of the "Antiprohibitionist Lists" in the European elections of 1987, the battle broadened to an international and institutional level and has become a global proposal for the regulation of the production, distribution, and consumption of psychoactive substances.