ITALY - Professor of Sociology at the University of Naples, the most well-known expert on the Camorra. Director of the tri-monthly review "Observatory on the Camorra".

ABSTRACT: The prohibition policy led to the criminal take-over the drug market - particularly heroin and cocaine. These organisations established distribution and recruitment methods which create an ever expanding drug market which reaches even the remotest villages in the italian countryside.

("THE COST OF PROHIBITION ON DRUGS", Papers of the International

Anti-prohibitionism Forum, Brussels 28th september - 1st october 1988; Ed. Radical Party)

Drugs are commodities which are produced, distributed and consumed. And, as is the case for all commodities, the three stages are closely interwoven, the type of production also determining the type of distribution, which in turn has a direct influence on - at times even determining - the type of consumption. Moreover, the distribution and consumption of drugs - again, as for any other commodity - are subject to very strong constraints, both economic (the laws of the market), and legislative (the laws and regulations in force pertaining to business). When it is the existence itself of a commodity which is declared illegal - as in the case of drugs - production, marketing and consumption are all penalised, and further constraints are introduced which determine the forms in which the commodity-drug will be produced, distributed and consumed. When the penalty is removed, as has been the case in Italy and some other countries, only from individual consumption, no significant variations result in the drug ci

rculation process, which is essentially based - again, as for all commodities - on production and distribution which together determine the dimensions of the supply. Drug consumption, which determines the demand, is based on the collective request in a more or less specific target population. That request - once again, as it is for all commodities - is generated individually but also collectively, by the demand to satisfy a more or less specific need, a reasonably "central" one for the individual.

These considerations might be considered obvious or commonplace, by now fairly general knowledge in any society with a reasonably high level of education and an efficient system of mass communication. However, they are still necessary, because when we speak of drugs, we almost inevitably forget that they are also commodities, and that the forms of their consumption are related - and it could not be otherwise - to forms of marketing, which in turn are related to the forms of production. Moreover, we tend to forget that the forms of production, distribution and consumption of drugs have certain determinate features which are imposed by economic and juridical constraints. One of these in particular is the absolutely illegal status of those drugs.

It is that same forgetfulness which prevents our becoming fully aware of the global nature and wide ramifications of the phenomenon, thus encouraging that artificial segmentation of problems in reasoning and in planning interventions. Even discussion and intervention are kept separate. On the international level, debates are conducted and plans drawn up for intervening on production and transnational commercial circuits, with the participation of magistrates, the secret services and police structures specialised in combating narcotics trafficking. On the national level, the matter rests firmly in the hands of the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, the actions of which are basically limited to the fight against the drug trade. At most, advisory commissions are set up, or there is the Special Affairs Ministry, where officials of the Ministry of Health are called on to participate alongside magistrates and representatives of the police and - by means of an absolutely partial selection - representative

s of bodies and associations concerned with the rehabilitation of drug addicts. No real co-ordination or exchange between the two levels exist, except in the form of the preponderant presence - in both - of representatives of social control organs. The problem of drug consumption, circulation and distribution is never effectively tackled because it is always reduced and limited solely to consideration of the effects produced by the drugs on the consumer and the forms of control and assistance to be adopted. If, instead the drug problem is to be tackled in its entirety, we must begin by considering consumption which is unquestionably the linchpin - or, if you wish the heart - of the entire mechanism. The prevailing attitude towards drug consumption is behavioristic because, on the one hand only the market is observed - and more or less superficially, since no attention is paid to the real dynamics which cannot be limited to movements of men and goods. On the other hand, there are the effects produced by cons

umption, which are almost always limited to the individual and generic observations on generations and social classes. Consumption lies somewhere between market and effect, like a "black box" which cannot be opened, making any effort useless and unproductive. Research, reasoning, and intervention are all based on observable behaviour - as it is not possible to know what the "black box" contains, it is of no interest. Naturally, detailed hypotheses as to the contents of the "black box" abound (ranging from identity crises to value crises, from family conflict to equality of the sexes, consumerism, and so on). In reality, it is the tacit agreement to avoid placing in question the behaviourist method of interpretation, and thus the existence of the "black box". However, it is precisely at consumption level that we must begin if we are to come up with meaningful solutions to the problem - i.e. rendering it socially harmless, removing that burden of social and individual destructiveness it presently represents, b

ut which we are not entirely certain that it should be attributed.

Drug consumption is the result - whether we like it or not - of a demand for drugs which originates in a sizeable, and ever-increasing, portion of the population - the young in particular. That demand, undoubtedly, also includes individual and collective needs which it is believed, or hoped, will find satisfaction in drugs. What are those needs? What part do they play in the life of the individual? What mechanisms of social interaction activate them? How can they be satisfied without resorting to drugs? These are all questions without answers, because the problem of drug consumption has never been studied seriously, without ideological constraints or preconceptions. However, I will not approach that aspect of the problem here. My intention is to formulate the problem only.

My observations must inevitably begin with consumption, because - without going into structures, internal ramifications, individual motives or social causes - it is my conviction that the drug phenomenon today exists because considerable portions of the population request and demand drugs. However, the drug phenomenon has been transformed into the drug "problem", with all the implicit potential destructiveness to the individual and society, by the type of response that was given - and was meant to be given - to that demand. If drugs are today a problem of such social, economic and political relevance in most of the world's countries, the fault lies in the method of intervention chosen - prohibition.

What has happened is that all States, faced with a social demand for drugs - social as it originates in different social strata, related only by virtue of belonging to the same generation - have been able to offer no other solution than blanket penalisation, perhaps in the conviction that that would suffice to check the growth of that demand and cancel it out.

The result, to the contrary, was the creation and development of the criminal drug trade. The social demand for drugs - alarming and debatable though it may be, but precisely as such deserving of special attention, extensive research and discussion - has been thus disregarded and made a crime by all States, with the result that it has been delivered into the willing hands of international organised crime.

The demand for drugs, despite the fact that their use is considered a crime, has not been eliminated. It has, in fact, increased - although in different ways in different countries. The supply, thanks to prohibition, has been rapidly monopolised by criminal organisations - those already in existence, such as the Mafia, as well as more recently created ones, such as the drug trade organisations of Central and South America, Africa, Turkey, Afghanistan, Laos and Thailand. Prohibition has made consumption a crime, but it has not impeded its expansion, either numerically or geographically. The only result has been the further growth and development of organised criminality, to the extent that we can safely assert that the criminalisation of drugs has strengthened existing organised crime and created new criminal organisations internationally. But, above all, it has favoured the establishment of a network of exchange between world criminal organisations, interconnected for production and marketing of drugs, as

well as other forms of illegal traffic - the arms trade, for example - and the recycling of those profits earned from criminal activities into the international financial circuit. Drug prohibition has created an international Mafia which has become an economic power capable of influencing whole national economies and international monetary exchange. The criminal organisations' control of the drug supply has gradually brought about considerable changes in drug consumption as well - which was inevitable given the characteristics of the drug-commodity and the logic of intervention in this criminal market.

When organised crime began to take over the supply of drugs, the demand was not extensive enough in any country to justify large investments of human and economic resources. Drug consumption was limited more to low-profit substances such as marijuana and compounds such as LSD, and affected restricted groups of youths involved in ideological-political protest and had little to do with drug consumption as such. The criminal organisations were not interested in the satisfying of such a limited demand, especially in an absolute market monopoly. Thus, in addition to stimulating the demand for light drugs, they differentiated the supply by introducing into the market massive quantities of heroin, which up to then had circulated in very small quantities and via individuals or small groups of consumers. A drug which would probably have continued to circulate in small quantities within small isolated groups has thus been made available in large quantities, above all in the large cities, subsequently coming to repr

esent a substantial commercial proposition on a vast scale. Therefore, as a substantial group of habitual consumers, did not yet exist, the criminal organisations began genuine promotional campaigns which included the free distribution of the product and counselling on its most effective use.

Heroin consumption would not, however, have spread so rapidly had the criminal organisations not put into operation their planned marketing of the product, cynically exploiting its greatest potential as a long-term, profitable investment - the fact that it created total dependence in those using it, making them drug addicts.

The drug addict is then the creation of organised crime, an achievement of the most cynical sort, perpetrated in full knowledge of the consequences. In fact, it is expected that the addict will proselytise, thus widening the base of consumers. Many habitual heroin users eventually become pushers in order to procure the drug they need, or think they need. For the criminal organisations, this is an optimal method of extending distribution, and stimulating new consumption. In this way, a large and immediately visible organisation is not necessary, and most of the risk of dealing is pushed onto the addict-pushers who are generally not part of the criminal organisations.

While only some drug consumers end up as pushers, almost all end up resorting to crime or prostitution in order to obtain the money for purchasing drugs. Perhaps the most disastrous effect of prohibition - at least as regards individual relapse - is this inducing of non-criminal drug consumers to perform criminal acts.

And so, the drug experience - due exclusively to the illegal status of drugs - becomes for most inexorably a road to deviant and often criminal behaviour.

In light of this, many discourses on the rehabilitation of drug addicts could end up sounding like mere rhetoric for, often enough, the real problem is the fact that it is impossible to rehabilitate a criminal when he has already been condemned by society and imprisoned.

Re-assimilation into society of these individuals is never total, even when the offence is no longer criminal. I have limited my diction here, as regards the perverse effects of drug prohibition on the individual, to the heroin market.

However, the most immediate and direct consequence of the wholesale handing over of the entire drug market to organised crime is the potential unlimited extension of the area of drug consumption.

When the market appeared to be declining or there was a loss of interest, the criminal associations, after having assailed young users with heroin, further differentiated the supply by increasing the quantity of cocaine on the market. And here as well, a drug - the demand for which had been limited for decades for reasons of cost and availability to a very small portion of the population - was transformed into a mass product by organised criminality.

In fact, the widespread marketing of great quantities of cocaine with the ensuing monopoly of the drug market by organised crime is the most glaring example of the results of prohibition. With the introduction onto the market of cocaine, the international Mafia has exploited a good deal of the enormous drug consumption potential of that drug which lies in the fact that its appeal is not limited - for example, as heroin is to the young - to any particular group, but appeals to a wide variety of classes and all ages.

The diffusion of cocaine is moreover facilitated by two factors in particular : one, the low level of social alarm - and also, initially much uncertainty - over a drug which had not been demonised by literature, and which did not appear to cause psychological dependence; and, two, the concept that taking cocaine in certain ways stimulated creativity and did not alienate the individual from society.

In addition, with cocaine the criminal organisations have a pre-packaged supply for the increasingly widespread demand for a stimulation of the senses, heightening of perception, the stimulation of the imagination and increasing productivity. Whether it is true or not that cocaine produces these effects is not important. What is important is that the criminal organisations manipulate the drug market as they please, modifying and differentiating the supply on the basis of the demand which evolves in the various segments of society, encouraging the massive circulation of drugs previously limited to small, even marginal, groups. In practice, the criminal organisations run the drug market on a model very similar to that of the multinationals for fashions for the young, promoting styles and fads with the unfortunate result that they succeed in reaching considerable portions of today's youth.

Besides these operations for expanding already existing markets and creating new ones, the criminal organisations - not limiting themselves to satisfying the drug demand - stimulate and force that demand through their vast distribution networks, which considerably profit also from the efforts of the drug addict pushers on the heroin market, and the consumer-pushers in the cocaine market.

The fact that narcotics consumption in many countries - in particular, Italy - has reached the dramatic dimensions it has must therefore no longer be blamed on individual and/or social ills, but totally ascribed to criminal organisations and the legislation for prohibition which allows those organisations to exist.

It is incorrect to place the problem of legislation in the context in which it is habitually placed - the terrifying threat of an explosion in the drug demand. The drug demand today is doped and swollen by the methods used by the criminal organisations for distribution - and proselytising. The increase in consumption is also linked to the continuing geographic expansion of the market, which the organisation model assumes and stimulates: new dealers are forced to create new outlets, and anyone needing quick money knows he can earn it peddling drugs. In the Italian regions of Campania and the Mezzogiorno, this organisational model has resulted in market expansion and drug penetration to even the smallest, out-of-the-way villages. All research conducted has demonstrated that even in social and territorial contexts where there was no drug consumption whatsoever, the moment a "sales outlet" appeared - almost always in the person of a drug-addictpusher, but also sometimes non-consumers and members of the family

nucleus - inexorably, a process of circulation by consumer contact began. When the "sales outlet" disappears - even without police intervention - consumption falls rapidly, only to rise again as soon as the "shop" reopens.

In practice, there is always a supply available which, combined with actions to create and stimulate demand on the part of the criminal organisations, produces an increase in the consumption of narcotics. These drug-demand support actions by addict-pushers and consumer-pushers are much more sophisticated than is generally thought. In Campania - but also in other regions of Italy - criminal organisations have invested profits from drug dealing in discotheques, including the mega-versions, night-clubs and other meeting places for the young, which provide the most favourable conditions for increasing illegal drug consumption, while at the same time earning legal profits. In many cases, the opening of a discotheque signals the consolidation of drug consumption in the area and a passage to the management level.

The available examples are too numerous to give here. They all demonstrate however that it is not so much individual or social factors which are responsible for the diffusion of drug consumption, but the drug marketing programmes created, organised and implemented by the criminal organisations operating in an area. These are more or less directly international drug mafia enterprises, all under the 'protective' umbrella of prohibition - for, as we have said, it is prohibition which allows criminal organisations to retain both the monopoly and control of the expanding world drug market.