ABSTRACT: Preface to the book "THE COST OF PROHIBITION ON DRUGS", Papers of the International Anti-prohibitionism Forum, Brussels 28th september - 1st october 1988; Edited by Radical Party

The reports presented at the Brussels meeting have confirmed that the traffic of drugs is a weapon aimed at the entire planet. That fact is recognised in the official literature of the various governments, and proved by investigations of the European Community, and reports by the Control Organ of the United Nations. The enormous capital gained by organised crime from the drug industry is the main source of today's social violence, corruption and deterioration. It is also a serious obstacle to development in the less privileged parts of the world as well as in the industrialised countries. The profits from the drug trade are such that two or three years of those proceeds would suffice to wipe out the entire foreign debt (approximately $1,200 million) of all the developing countries. And yet, no government, until now, has had the good sense either to change their policy of prohibiting the consumption and sale of drugs, or even to seriously analyse its results.

As a result of the reports presented by physicians, sociologists, philosophers, economists, judges, the police, and psychiatrists, from the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, Holland and Italy, and the four daily sessions of general discussion in Brussels, a concrete proposal for a reform policy was launched. Although the discussions were very open, and included extremely varied positions as to possible solutions, a few focal points were identified upon which the immediate launching of a large-scale international anti-prohibition campaign could be based.

They are the following:

a) the legalisation of the production, trade and sale of the drugs today prohibited - marijuana, heroin and cocaine - would lower their price by 99%, which would result in the immediate exclusion of organised crime from that trade;

b) adequate State-imposed taxes would discourage consumption and at the same time guarantee the quality of the substances, thus reducing to a minimum the harmful effects to consumers, e.g. the spreading of AIDS and other diseases;

c) the status of the drug addict would immediately be changed, as he would no longer be forced to have dealings with the criminal world, allowing his problems to be handled more effectively - from the human, medical, psychological and social points of view;

d) the international Mafia would be dealt a blow the force of which not even the combined efforts of all the armies of the East and West would today be capable of inflicting, beginning with depriving it of the main source of its wealth and invincible power;

e) the profit cycle would be broken, and the source of underground propaganda provided by the thousands of retail sellers - one of the most powerful incentives to the spread of heavy drugs and the increase in individual consumption in society - would cease;

f) legalisation would cancel from one day to the next the raison d'ętre for the millions of violent acts perpetrated against the weakest and the most vulnerable;

g) legalisation would liberate the police forces and the magistrature from the burden of these crimes, rendering their actions in maintaining the public order automatically more efficient and effective;

h) the enormous sums of money presently spent in financing useless manhunts would become available for financing campaigns of dissuasion and rehabilitation of addicts;

i) there would be an end of the climate of international "emergency", the effects of which have become progressively more deleterious to the constitutional state and which has caused the passing of laws which respect less and less; human rights (a prime example of this being the reintroduction of the death penalty in many States where it had been abolished), the guarantee of fair trial, and freedom of trial.

This volume was produced - thanks to the efforts of Barbara Roffi and Maurizio Turco, the generosity, both financial and otherwise, of Laura Arconti and Laura Terni - as the Italian Government prepares to introduce new and more repressive laws. Such laws only render organised crime more ferocious and more powerful - and the situation in the United States is obvious evidence of this. Proclaiming absolute prohibition in connection with drug use will do no more than render the lives of drug addicts - and others - more difficult. Regulations which are not feasibly applicable on a general scale, such as those providing for the punishment of users of substances which are widely diffuse and socially tolerated, such as hashish and marijuana - even if applied minimally - will only result in the increased arbitration of the police forces or the magistrate, and at the same time definitively compromise the functionality itself - already in question - of the police forces and the judiciary.

We are aware that opposition to repressive madness is only possible through social and political action on a trans-national scale. The objective of the Radical Party and CO.R.A will be achieved also and only through the contributions, initiatives, and comparisons presented by you in the pages of this volume.