Alain Renard

Patricia van der Smissen

ABSTRACT: "Drugs are not prohibited because they are dangerous, they are dangerous because they are prohibited." With this phrase from Georges Apap, Attorney at the court of Valence, France, the prestigious Belgian judicial magazine "Le journal des procès" presents its article - which we publish here - on the "International Round Table on Antiprohibition on Drugs" held in Brussels in September 1988. "The practical modalities of a liberalisation are still to be determined" , affirm the article's authors, "but a status quo is unacceptable"... "Systematic imprisonment of drug addicts and small-scale dealers will without doubt remain one of the monstrous aberrations for which this century will have to answer".

("Single issue" booklet for the XXXV Congress of The Radical Party - Budapest 22-26 april 1989)

On September 29 and 30 and October 1, 1988 an "International Round Table on Drug-antiprohibitionism" was held in Brussels, organised by the Radical Party. Doctors, psychiatrists, sociologists, economists and magistrates from various European countries and from America made an appointment at the Palais des Congrès for a meeting to discuss the results of their experiences. On the agenda, nothing less than the legalisation of the sale and use of narcotics. This proposal, supported by various papers, was discussed at length during the Congress.

1. The war against drugs which has been going on in all the western countries since the first world war, has been a failure.

Increasing quantities of drugs are produced in the countries of the Golden Triangle and in Latin America. New countries trying their hand at production are also emerging on the market: Lebanon, for example. The power and the profits of the criminal organisations (the Mafia, the Medellin Cartel) which guarantee their production and their transport, are such, and crossing points over the frontiers so numerous that it is an illusion to hope to be able to prevent drugs spreading in western countries. After the first prohibitionist regulation was passed in the 20's, the number of drug addicts has not ceased to grow and today it is reaching alarming proportions.

2. Drug prohibition is dangerous for public health.

The prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920's, as well as giving rise to criminal organisations, flooded the market with totally adulterated "rot-gut". Recently imposed restrictions on the sale of alcohol in the USSR have caused the mushrooming of myriads of illicit distilleries, whose dangerous products are in circulation. In the same manner, drug prohibition today excludes all official control of the components of the substances on sale, and this explains how the product distributed on the opiates market contains no more than between 5% to 10% of pure heroin, in a devastating compound of talc, arsenic, strychnine and amphetamines.

3. The prohibition of drugs gives rise to crime.

Prohibition of drugs has no impact on the quantity available on the market. It does, on the other hand, effect the level of drug prices. The risk involved in illegal sale explains the high level of the current prices. The profits, all the more exorbitant as trade is repressed, determine the evolution of criminal organisations specialised in drug production, transport and commerce. A few of these organisations have reached such dimensions that in many Latin American countries, they have succeeded in subordinating political and judicial power to their own interests. Hasn't one member of the Medellin Cartel recently suggested, in order to avoid being extradited to the USA, that he himself would pay his country's external debt? General Ambrogio Viviani, the ex-chief of Italian counter-espionage, has neatly expressed the perfect integration of this criminal network: "From the production centre to where it is actually used, international crime has achieved a chain of routes, numerous and progressively more tortuou

s, characterised by the use of means and systems which are very different from one another, not only to avoid repression, but also to be able to reach consumers(...)

Once the organisation of the drug trade is in action, it is also used, given its perfection, for other criminal requirements, such as illicit arms trade,etc." But the user himself is urged to delinquency by prohibitionism. Tempted more easily by drugs because the first doses are often free or sold at reduced prices, the drug user becomes a drug addict and will then do anything to procure his substances, which from that moment on will be sold to him at the full price. He will therefore have recourse to the most extreme ways of finding the necessary money for his personal use: theft, prostitution, drug dealing, sometimes even murder. In this way, the prohibitionist laws succeed in making the drug addict a delinquent in the most traditional meaning of the word.

4. Prohibition is immoral.

In most Western European countries, the possession and use of narcotics are punished by imprisonment. Many criminologists, including the Canadian Professor Marie-Andrée Bertrand, are indignant because of the immorality of these incriminations: "the pedagogic function of penal law, which should remind citizens of the values dearest to the social group, is distorted by its own introduction of severe penalties for acts which do no harm to others." Prohibitionist laws are all the more immoraly perverse when they condemn the additional delinquency (theft,etc.) that they themselves contribute to creating.

5. Prohibition is expensive

Prohibitionist policy requires a revision of police, administrative, prison and judicial infrastructures which are particularly costly. Many economists taking part in the Congress, have emphasised the enormous relevance of the expenses involved in the repression of the drug trade. This deviation of funds appears even less justifiable since repression has been shown to be relatively inefficient. One solution exists: legalisation of the sale, possession and use of drugs. It is difficult to foresee with any certainty the consequences of legalisation. Various likely scenarios can nevertheless be considered. The disappearance of the risk linked to the drug sale would cause a significant drop in their price; it has been affirmed in the United States that the price of legal heroin would drop to 1/60 of the level of its price on the black market (Richard Stevenson, Faculty of Economics, Liverpool University). As a result criminal organisations would lose a large part of their power which depends on the enormous pro

fits generated by prohibition. It is not an exaggeration to maintain that a good number of these organisations would suffer a fatal blow. Once the market was legalised, an official quality control could be established just as with tobacco and alcohol. But, in particular, induced criminality, the crimes committed by drug addicts in search of the necessary cash to buy their dose, would disappear. Legalisation would also have the effect of taking drug addicts out of the alienation into which prohibitionist laws have forced them, and by rehabilitating them, it would help them to gain access to social, psychological and medical assistance. Some, in particular Professor Lester Grinspoon, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, suggest imposing taxes on the trade of the legalised substances, whose profit would be destined to financing prevention, treatment and training- programmes.

Is there an increase in the use of drugs in a legalised market?

If the vast majority of those participating in the Round Table declared themselves to be in favour of legalisation, some do not conceal their concern as regards the risk of increased consumption. Insisting on the particularly perverse effects of

heroin and on the quasi-impossibility of dealing with them, Doctor Reisinger, psychiatrist and research doctor, Brugmann Hospital, Brussels, hopes for an improvement in the public health policy as a preliminary to any form of legalisation: "Being aware of the effects of this product at close range, I am not keen to see it being sold freely on street corners." Of course, there is an uncertainty which requires a more moderate analysis. A first question arises: will legalisation have the effect of making drugs more accessible to the public? Let us turn the answer round and first ask ourselves whether in the system of prohibition we know today, "hard drugs" are less available than they could be in a legalised market? On this topic, Milton Friedman, Nobel Prizewinner for Economics, was able to write that, until today, drugs have paradoxically been one of the only products whose sale is completely free. Over 1.000 sale points exist in some Italian cities. The layer of the population which is most at risk (the sec

tion who are between 5 and 30 years of age) is necessarily exposed in schools, discotheques, and other meeting places where masses of narcotic products are available. According to Professor Lamberti, who has examined the different techniques used by dealers to distribute their products, there is no doubt: we should attribute the increasing demand registered in our countries over the last few years, to ceaseless professional activity exercised without control, in the spirit of greatest cynism, by the criminal organisations. Prohibitionism has quite simply handed the management of the expansive dynamics of the market over to them. How could the liberalisation of the drug trade still aggravate the situation? The abolition of the veto does not seem, by itself, to have to play a decisive role in public behaviour. It could perhaps bring a few who are curious, released from the fear of punishment, to try one substance or another, but it is not impossible that this might steal from the market a potential public whos

e preference to the transgression of the social norms may be disappointed. The lowering of the price of the product, added to the depenalisation of its use, certainly constitutes the most serious element. Legalisation, integrating the drug trade into the traditional economic circuit, would force it to submit even further to the market pressures. The decrease in price of a product which represents unequally, for some, a power of attraction, should therefore normally foster demand and encourage consumption. Without doubt, it is essential to be very careful here. It cannot be taken for granted that the distribution of narcotics, given the danger they represent, will obey the rules of supply and demand so faithfully. On the other hand it is felt, as Dr. Roelandt feels regarding the existence of particular characteristics which predispose a few individuals to addiction, it may be doubted that the price of the substances would influence the development of the phenomenon to any degree. Among the number of phenomena

which lead to addictive behaviour, Micheline Roelandt also mentions "social stress" which the prohibitionist system as a whole contributes to reinforcing. As we have already said, it is impossible to foresee with any certainty the effects of the legalisation of drug consumption. As regards heroin, experiments of great tolerance, with established prices, have been made in Amsterdam. According to Peter Cohen, consultant to the Dutch Government in the narcotics field, it does not appear that these have caused any significant increase in the number of drug addicts living in the city. On the other hand, Professor Grinspoon maintains that taxation on the sale of narcotics in no uncertain way influences price levels and incidentally demand. The ideal would be, in his approach, to establish a balanced price, sufficiently dissuasive for the profane, but not prohibitive to the point of giving rise to secondary delinquency and generating a black market. Finally, and perhaps this is the crux of the matter, it is essent

ial to count on the prevention which must back the liberalisation of the trade. A policy of treatment and aid adequately equipped to accomplish its gigantic task, should be set up. Campaigns of information and dissuasion programmed with intelligence, which would offer the public a convincing argument should, more than any brutal prohibition, protect them from the dangers of drugs. "Society" , as Marco Taradash - one of the promoters of the antiprohibitionist movement - reminds us, "getting rid of the crime supported by the drug trade, would do no more than give individuals back the space and freedom in which everyone, adequately taught about the risks involved, would assume their own responsibility as regards their own body, and their own life. Doubtless there are risks. But it is necessary to know that our Western States do not forbid their citizens from intoxicating themselves with alcohol, ether, petrol or detergents until they die. Self-destruction is not against the law because the law can do nothing to

prevent it. There is no real dissuasion except through solidarity.

A conclusion of sorts. It must be repeated, uncertainty exists. Professor Savona, criminologist at the University of Trento, ended his speech by inviting researchers to go more deeply into their analyses of the effects of legalisation. The practicalities of liberalisation are yet to be defined. But it is impossible to escape from one conclusion: the status quo is unacceptable. Boundless criminality which is encouraged by prohibition exacts new solutions. Systematic imprisonment of drug addicts and small scale-dealers will without doubt remain one of the monstrous aberrations for which this century will have to answer. It is not the best of this Round Table's merits that, in proposing a new perspective for the future, we are brought to reflect on the basic iniquity of the present situation. And we are also invited to refuse the journalistic and judicial song and dance with which we are so generously entertained on the subject of the "anti-drug war", in which - as has been amply demonstrated - the ideological,

political and cultural stake is not absent. The debate this time has truly begun. The general hope is that it will find its way to Parliament.