Dennis Peron

California Cannabis Buyers Club

1444 Market Street

San Francisco, CA 94102

New York, March 10, 1998

Dear Dennis,

The Transnational Radical Party is both a political party and a Non-Governmental Organization in consultative status with ECOSOC of the United Nations.

Since the beginning of the 1970s, TRP has been involved in drug-related issues from an antiprohibitionist angle. We are writing to you today because we have the sense that in a way we a common political approach to the matter. Recently we read in the Times that you and your fellow activists are ready to disobey the law, and be incarcerated, in order to see the enforcement of the outcome of the 1996 California referendum.

Radicals, mainly in Italy, have methodologically used civil disobedience and referenda in their struggle for civil rights. In the 1970s we legalized divorce, in the 1980s we legalized abortion, now in the 1990s the time has come for the legalization of drugs. Of all drugs!

Since 1995, we have focused our international activities at the United Nations on many human rights issues, and lately, finally, on drugs. As you may have heard, next Summer the UN General Assembly will convene a special session on Narcotics - June 8-10 - in order to reaffirm the international community's strong commitment to the 'war on drugs'. We favor harm reduction policies, nevertheless we are convinced that we will never be able to change the current insane situation unless we legalize, and therefore regulate, what is now an illegal context in which the force of the law is replaced by the law of the force.

We are pleased to enclose a brochure on the party and its international activities, a booklet on antiprohibition, a briefing paper on the UNGASS as well as a position paper that we have prepared in order to link drug-related questions with Human Rights issues for the final session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of Vienna.

Together with other organizations we are going to organize a public demonstration in front of the UN headquarters in New York for the opening of the Special Session. But, at the same time, we would like to organize a panel discussion on alternatives to the war on drugs inside building with prominent speakers.

It will be a pleasure and an honor for us if you could give some thoughts on these particular events. Hoping to hear soon from you, we wish you all our best for your primaries. Regards.

Cordially,

Marco Cappato Marco PerDuca

UN Representatives