Antwerpen, 15 October, 1999
Dear friends,
Herewith I send you some additional remarks which I intend to add to the lobby document that I will present next Monday in the European Parliament (see my message of 12 October). They are thoughts that were put on the Spanish discussion list yesterday, by Iban de Rementería from Chile, but I feel they also reflect Jean Blanquarts' concerns (I hope so!).Kind regards,Joep Oomen4. Some observationsThe members of our Coalition have made several general and specific observations with regards to the Action Plan. It would be too difficult to summarize them all. Nevertheless, as an illustration, here are two of them. - Referring to the field of mental health, the Plan is based on a biological approach. To reduce the human conduct to its biological bases is a serious error that denies the human aspect. Only the consequences of the abusive consumption of drugs are a health aspect, not their causes. Thecauses of use and abuse of drugs are essentially cultural. Likewise, drug consumption should not be understood as an e
scape into nowhere nor as a vice. Drugs consumption should at least be admitted as an act of health, of self-medication, of care in the field of mental health. In fact, most natural drugs and all psychofarmaceutic substances have medical uses. Such is the original meaning of euphory, the capacity to bear something, to support a situation. Such is also the present and pragmatic sense of the use of drugs.- The Action Plan does not contain any consideration concerning the problem of the agricultural crisis in developing countries, as a result of the agricultural policies of the developed countries, that put the international prices for agricultural products below its real production costs. Thus, the peasants of the Third World compete on the international markets and their local markets with imports that are not sanctioned with compensatory tariffs. The production of drugs is an answer to this agricultural crisis, which is recognized by the Vienna Convention of 1988, the International Narcotics Control Board (I
NCB) and even the WTO agreements of Marrakesh of 1994. The latter foresee in a series of privilege measures on the markets in favour of alternative development to illicit crops. In general, none of these political and legal instruments have been implemented, which has condemned alternative development efforts to become a failure, including the efforts of the peasants themselves. Thus, the need is reinforced to use violence in order to reduce supply in the production areas with the chemical destruction of crops and directaggression to the peasants, as in the case of the Andean countries.
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