By Jean-Luc Robert

An international Forum of the International Antiprohibitionist League on drug legalization was held in Athens on 22-24 November. The forum was attended by several experts coming from Latin America as well as from Central and Western Europe.

Supported by the Greek Health Ministry and sponsored by several Athens-based firms, this demonstration was the occasion to launch the second stage of the IAL's political strategy. After having received the support of the major experts of the drug phenomenon in its denunciation of the damage caused by prohibition, and after having released important information on the topic by publishing brochures and organizing conventions and demonstration, the IAL, with this forum, has launched the debate on how to legalize drugs and on what type of legalization to adopt.

A debate began - which is all but closed - between the proponents of state-controlled drug distribution and free-market legalizers. The French lawyer and professor of law Francis Caballero supported his project of a "passive market", whereby markets would be organized by national corporations or by the State, which would ban advertisement, guarantee the quality of the products and ensure a regulation according to the risks connected to the consumption of the different substances. To the other end, the Professor of economy at Liverpool University Richard Stevenson supported his thesis according to which only the market and market rules should organize the production, the marketing, the prices and the products' availability. Other experts occupied an in-between position, including Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard University Lester Grinspoon, who advocates the need to tax the drugs according to the harm they cause. Other medical experts advocated the system according to which heavy drugs are sold with a medic

al prescription.

The debate therefore remains open, but with the increasing need to go beyond a simple criticism of the prohibitionist model, and to submit concrete ways of enforcing the antiprohibitionist model.

Among the most concrete suggestions:

- to support the Liverpool experience, which is about to be canceled by the British health authorities despite the fact that it yielded extraordinary results (stabilization of drug consumption, 0,1% drop in the number of HIV-positive drug consumers thanks to syringe exchange schemes and controlled drug distribution, etc.):

- representatives of Latin America have asked the IAL to support their campaign against the criminalization of coca leaf production, an ancestral production in the Andes;

- an important commitment on the part of the IAL was also decided

for a syringe exchange campaign in New York, and in support of Marco Taradash, member of the European Parliament, and of Emma Bonino, president of the Radical Party, who will be tried at the beginning of February following an act of civil disobedience. A few weeks ago, Taradash and Bonino presented syringes in front of New York City Hall, an act which violates the U.S. law.

Moreover, the IAL's leading bodies will verify the possibility of holding this spring's IAL Congress in a place evocative of the war on drugs.