ABSTRACT: Intervening in the debate on the legalization of drugs, which had been raised by Marco Pannella, the author remarks that the only way to try to understand and persuade drug users is to free them from the blackmail of illegality and crime. Just like many homosexuals have been able to quit prostitution thanks to the political campaigns conducted by the "Fuori!" (1), drug users could also recover social dialogue and the right to speak out if only they were placed in the conditions of not being criminalized.

(Radical News n. 200 of 31 August 1987 from "La Stampa" of 26 August 1987)

It is likely that in these days, the many or few (like me) who judge Marco Pannella's proposal for an international-scale liberalization of the drug trade as the only way to destroy the clandestine market and its tremendous consequences to be extremely reasonable, abstained from taking part in the debate out of a sense of pity and discomfort faced to the banality and the vulgarity which Pannella's proposal has been submerged with.

In the absence of concrete arguments and of valid experiences, some have said that Pannella is simply seeking spectacular achievements, that he exhumed the proposal of the liberalization only to fill the gap of the political debate in mid August, and that his proposal, if accepted, would turn Italy into the Mecca of a world tourism of drugs users (ignoring that the liberalization which is proposed would need to be negotiated on an international scale). In the best of cases, Pannella has been accused of being a utopian, who lacks any pragmatic approach to things.

But would these downright pragmatists be content with determining initiatives such as the one announced by the newly appointed minister of social affairs Rosa Russo Jervolino ("I have contacted Minister Zanone to devise an action of preventive education in barracks"), or with decisive arguments such as the one advanced by the professor of psychiatry of the University of Rome ("Since barbiturates were outlawed, the number of suicides committed with such substances have dropped to zero")? Someone - not the mafia, but a convinced prohibitionist - went so far as inviting the magistracy to consider whether Pannella's proposal contains elements of a penal offence, and this while the clandestine international drug traffic reaps incredible profits.

In this discomforting context, only Gianni Baget Bozzo (on "La Repubblica" of last Sunday) said something significant: he recalled that, except for minors, for whom effective preventive measures should be devised (but today drug users themselves sell drugs in front of schools in order to raise the money to support their habit), drug users are citizens like us, who have made a motivated (in their opinion) choice, and that those who want to help them should start by admitting that, if they do the things they do, drug users must some sort of reason. In the general uproar produced by the criminalization of drugs - the clandestine market, the crime it creates, initiatives for recovery based on psychological and at times even physical constraint - such reasons, which surely exist, are ignored.

Drug users do not speak out not only because they are made dumb by their habit, but also because their problem is obscured by a smoke screen, made of prejudice, the profit of the clandestine market, the good intentions of pious people (for whom liberalization would mean the removal of one of greatest incentives to "conversion").

How can I make an effort to discuss with a drug addicted pupil, if we are both prisoners of the perverse spell created by the criminalization of drugs? The reasons of his choice are almost irrelevant for me, compared to the distress of knowing that he is involved in a miserable and criminal circuit. On the other hand, any attempt of his to consider the problem clearly is obscured by the concern of getting more drugs if he need them...

In the seventies, many homosexuals managed to come out of their humiliating and pathetic conditions as mentally retarded or as prostitutes through the Gay Liberation movements. Becoming aware of their rights had also meant a human promotion for them, helping to remove the dark aura (and the relative pleasures) to their condition and making them become part of a constructive social dialogue. It is that crazy to imagine that there can be a "Fuori!" for drug users as well?

We are sick of the fact that only external experts talk about drugs, and to be honest we are equally dissatisfied with the testimonies of former drug addicts who are now being treated in detoxication communities and who often speak with the tone of their saviour-master. Clearly, it may well be that the "reasons" of drugs cannot be expressed in acceptable formulations, but the effort of claiming public respect for one's rights could perhaps be a more effective therapy for drug users than all the forms of recovery which consider them as objects, and not subjects of social initiative.

Drug users should speak out, express their reasons, and say whether "liberalized" drugs would be better or worse for them. Without this, the discussion will always remain limited to the choice between pure and simple alternatives of social hygiene, whereby the problem is only that of devising the best tactics to coexist with an annoying type of parasites.

Translator's notes

(1) Fuori!: Italian gay rights movement, founded in Turin.