by Jean-Luc Robert

The fundamental impeachment of the prohibitionist policy is no longer the monopoly of the Radical Party and of the antiprohibitionist movement. This reformist movement has found a prestigious ally, and its theses are shared by the European Community at its highest levels. A committee of inquiry of the European Parliament states that the repressive policy applied to date has failed to reach its objective, that is, halting or at any rate reducing the penetration of drugs. It therefore invites all member States to develop new policies.

Though this is not yet an open promotion of pure and simple legalization of drugs, the "regulation of the trade of the substances which are currently prohibited" is now on the agenda.

Such parliamentary committee of inquiry, established by the European Parliament last April, presented its findings after none months of analyses, several reports and documents and the opinion of experts and anti-drug officials. It is no wonder, therefore, that the careful analysis of the concrete results of the current policies, of their costs and benefits - on the basis of well defined criteria, such the curve of the traffic, the number of overdose cases, the situation of crime and delinquency, the spread of AIDS, the consequences of the traffic on the legal economy - enables to establish that the exacerbation of the problem is no fatality, for which the only answer should be the toughening of the repressive strategy, but the logical consequence of the illegality of drugs itself.

One of the practical and directly applicable recommendations which the committee puts forth is that "the possession of small quantities of illegal drugs for personal use should no longer be considered a crime; this to avoid turning the drug user into a delinquent, and thus jeopardizing every possibility of his social rehabilitation";

The report continues, stating that "drug users should be guarantied free access to medical treatment and to free clean needles, and the prescription of substitute drugs (temgesic and methadone). It is recommended that drug users be taken into medical and social treatment; the latter should be guarantied clean drugs in established quantities in order to reduce the casualties, the contamination with the AIDS virus and induced crime".

As far as the battle against drugs is concerned, efforts "should not focus on the consumers and on the lowest echelons of the traffic hierarchy, but on the highly organized international crime".

Moreover, the report suggests to reconsider the classification of drugs on a more logical basis. The list starts from ultra-soft drugs such as tea, coffee and chocolate, to hard drugs such as heroin and crack. In between there are hashish, tobacco and alcohol, which are classified among the medium-soft drugs; LSD, amphetamines and cocaine are classified as medium-hard drugs. According to the report, there ensues from this classification the need for a single health policy for all drugs, regardless of their legal status.

The change of trend which the Radical Party has long since been advocating has therefore found a first, prestigious corroboration in this official document of the European Parliament, which urges to adopt "a pragmatic harm reduction approach" on drug dependency.

Having reached this result is a victory for the antiprohibitionists: obtaining that the debate on the legalization of drugs stop being a taboo subject in the institutions and be seriously taken into consideration.

The radical member of the European Parliament Marco Taradash views the adoption of such recommendations as the end of the ideological and institutional monopoly of prohibition. As vice president of the committee of inquiry, Taradash has played a fundamental role. No doubt, the event represents an emancipation from the strategy of the "war on drugs" imposed by the United Nations under the pressure of the U.S.