(not delivered)

London, March 28, 1998

Dear friends,

The Radical Party is today, here in London, fully supporting the cannabis campaign of the Independent on Sunday.

But we want something more. We want, of course, a full legalization of the cannabis. But not only. We want a full legalization of all the drugs, in different ways, of course, in the most adequate way for each of those drugs.

The state can no longer abdicate from its responsability. Today, more than 30 years of prohibitionnism and the total failure of that policy mean exactly that: the abdication of our states, our government and our parliaments, from taking their own responsabilities, from facing in a legal and pragmatic way the question of the production, the distribution and the consumtion of those substances today prohited.

We all know very well the incredible disastrous of prohibition for the entire society: large diffusion of Aids, diffusion of overdoses, massive increase of abuses of drugs, creation of an enormous illegal business and its counterpart: mafias with a power never seen before, corruption of public servants, judges, politicians, policemen, businessmen, journalists, but also money laudering, reinvestments of the enormous profits of the mafia (over 500 billions every year) in sane economical sectors, etc.

The question today is not anymore: will the drugs be legalized ? The question is: when ? And it belongs to us to fight with more conviction, with more efficiency, with the force of the nonviolence, in order to obtain the legalization as soon as possible.

And for that, it's extremely important to unify our efforts, to create an european and a worlwide antiprohibitionist movement. It's what, with the transnational Radical Party, we are working for. Inside the United Nations for changing the international conventions, inside the European Parliament, inside the national parliaments to change the legislations, in the streets with our actions of civil disobediance, in front of the court of justice. But that's not enough. We have to do more. And we need your support. Your strong support.

Thank you very much to be here, thank you very much to The Independent on Sunday, and a special thank you to Rosie Boycott.

Good work!