Belgium

The police make a brand new discovery

Confiding in the idea that a good temporary idea can become a final one, the Belgian "Gendarmerie" has recently announced its intention of prolonging its anti-drug plan of ten more years. A plan which, started in July 1989, should have solved the problem in one years' time.

A minimum period for a plan of such value, based on particularly brilliant remarks. Thus, according to the "gendarmerie", the "typical" path followed by a drug-addict is a well known one: after having experimented with soft drugs (hashish, for example), the drug addict very often switches to hard drugs (heroin, for example), and his financial needs becomes increasingly important. After having interrupted the relations with his family, which is a very frequent case, he is left with few possibilities to provide himself with the money necessary to purchase drugs. Hence the "resorting both to theft, and to prostitution". These considerations are the origin of a whole series of measures which have already proved their ineffectiveness in other European cities: informing the public opinion about the consumption of drugs, dissuasion, toughening of police controls. Who could imagine that such a plan could work? What does it matter? After a year of experience, the conclusions have been taken: according to the "gendarm

es" themselves, the results are extremely worrying".

United States:

The CIA to have relations with the drug traffickers

The U.S. Minister of Justice started an enquiry following the accusations according to which the CIA allegedly used the estates belonging to a Mexican drug baron to carry out military training operations. In fact, it seems that it was the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) to provide these informations.

Panama

So many deaths during the U.S. raid...

The official figures on the exact number of civilian casualties during the U.S. raid against Noriega will have to be corrected, or rather, increased. New bodies of victims, mysteriously disappeared, have been found, and the Panamanians are unanimous in declaring that the official figure of 700 victims among the civilian population is a broad under-estimation. It therefore seems that in a single military operation, the war on drugs has claimed more victims than drugs itself in one year.

Brazil

Drugs and adolescents

According to a research conducted by the "Centro de orientacion sobre drogas y atencion a toxicomanos (CORDATO), the consumption of inhalant drugs affects 99% of the children abandoned in some districts of Brasilia. The survey shows that 88% of the abandoned children and adolescents and 72% of those who live in public institutions use inhalant drugs at least once a day. The highest percentage, 99%, concerns the adolescents of the neighbourhood of Ceilandia, the poorest of Brasilia. Even if these figures cannot be projected at a national level, they do show, however, a strong tendency toward an increase in the consumption of drugs among the 30 million children who benefit of the vital minimum, of whom 7 million are - according to the official figures - abandoned by their family.