EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

COMMITTEE ON CIVIL LIBERTIES AND INTERNAL AFFAIRS

REPORT by Mrs d'Ancona

HARMONIZATION OF THE MEMBER STATES' LAWS ON DRUGS

Proposal for a recommendation

Recommendation 1

Notes that the divergent approaches taken to the drugs problem are currently impeding the harmonization of laws and practices to combat drugs and calls, therefore, on the Council to gear European drugs policy, both domestic and international, primarily to a tangible improvement in cooperation between Member States, regions and urban areas;

Recommendation 2

Calls on Member States to improve the extent of cooperation in drugs matters at national, regional and urban level;

Recommendation 3

Recognizing the need for pragmatism, calls on Member States to bring national laws into line with the way their laws are applied in practice;

Recommendation 4

Regards urban and regional policy experiments in the field of harm reduction, the reduction of demand for drugs and crime prevention as being of importance in finding new methods to curb the problems involving drugs;

Recommendation 5

Recognizes the importance of policy experiments in developing countries for finding new methods to reduce the problems involving drugs, including the participation of local communities in planning initiatives for the reduction of drugs consumption and drug-linked crop production;

Recommendation 6

Calls on the Council, in accordance with the programme of Community action on the prevention of drug dependence, to extend the powers of local and regional authorities to pursue their own policies on drugs, in accordance with the subsidiarity principle;

Recommendation 7

Calls on the Member States to do all in their power to ensure that the right to adequate medical treatment also applies without exception to those dependent on drugs;

Recommendation 8

Urges the Council to make more funds available for the prevention of the demand for drugs as well as for information and education, a harm-reduction policy and for improvement of the health and care facilities for those dependent on drugs;

Recommendation 9

Believes that, on the basis of Article 129 of the Treaty of Amsterdam support may be given to treatment programmes which make it possible for hard drugs to be supplied on medical prescription and subject to the necessary checks;

Recommendation 10

Calls on the Council to make an independent assessment in the Member States of the results of policy measures in the framework of the UN conventions on drugs;

Recommendation 11

Calls for the European monitoring centre for drugs to present a number of indicators on the basis of which such an assessment can be made prior to the UN General Assembly on Drugs to be held in June 1998;

Recommendation 12

Calls on the Council at the General Assembly on Drugs to be held next June to promote a reform of the UN conventions of 1961, 1971 and 1988 such that the contracting parties are authorized to decriminalise the consumption of illegal drugs, to regulate the production and trade of cannabis and its derivatives and to permit the medical prescribing of methadone and heroin;

Recommendation 13

Calls on the Council to consider the possibility of including the countries of Central Europe and Cyprus in the REITOX network;