FRANCE - Attorney General in Valence. In 1987, on the occasion of the opening of the Law Year, he made a discourse which was substantially an indictment of the drug prohibitionist system as regards the damage that system caused at all levels of society. That discourse, which caused a sensation, was published in its entirety by the country's most authoritative newspaper "Le Monde".

ABSTRACT: Drugs are not forbidden because they are dangerous, they are dangerous because they are forbidden. Also, their repression has proven inefficient. But a democratic state does not have the right to decide what is wrong or right for a person. Using this argumentation, the author advocates the abolition of all repressive laws regarding drugs.

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

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

I shall begin by posing a question: Is it fitting or proper to describe cannabis, cocaine, opium, or their derivatives, as "drugs"?

In as far as it is possible to make even an approximate estimate of that phenomenon, official U.S. statistics estimate that there are 20 million users of cannabis, 6 million users of cocaine, and an undetermined and constantly increasing number of opium addicts who consume approximately 15 tons of pure heroin per year in the U.S. The importers of these products are already greedily eyeing Western Europe (which is a close second to America in the consumption of drugs), as they no longer consider North America an adequate market, since sufficient quantities are now produced there to progressively reduce its yearly importation (of cannabis, in particular).

Considering the ease with which those products cross our borders, it is obvious that the Western European market will, in the near future, be increased.

We can only speculate as to what the dimensions of that increase will be. In fact, Mr. Leroy, an examining magistrate of Paris and eminent narcotics expert, has estimated that in France alone, the control or elimination of that traffic would involve the surveillance of 6,300 kilometres, the controlling of 71 ports, 110 airports and 970 points of easy entrance, and checking the 180 million persons and 120,000 regular flights yearly entering that country.

In light of this, it is not surprising that, despite the resolve of the law enforcement agencies, the long and patient combing, the careful cross-checking and the many dangerous operations executed, only about 5% of the drugs introduced into French territory is intercepted.

The logical conclusion then - assuming that our police forces are reasonably efficient - is that, since 95% of the narcotics intended for distribution in France enter the country without much difficulty, the methods currently used to dissuade - in spite of the severity of the penalties imposed - are obviously ineffectual.

I might also add that production is not likely to decrease.

The champions of prohibition propose - as an accompaniment to repression and integrated into a general development programme - encouraging the drug-producing countries to grow alternative crops. Now, it is a proven fact that the peasant farmers - in Colombia, for example - earn ten times as much growing coca leaf than they could growing any other crop. It is equally known that those unparalleled earnings constitute only a very small part of the total cost of drug production (but that is another matter). Just imagine the amused smiles of those Colombian peasants at the thought of planting substitute crops - even legal and subsidised ones...

As a result, South American countries - some of which balance their national budgets with "narcodollars" - are not in the least interested in giving up that "manna from heaven".

The opium situation is more or less the same. That substance is the miraculous resource of the "Golden Triangle" (Thailand, Laos, Burma), the "Golden Crescent" (Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan) and will be before long also of the Near East (Lebanon, in particular), where millions of tons of that drug are produced each year.

Then, there is hashish, which is being grown in enormous quantities on every continent.

The products from these vast harvests are destined invade our borders in a terrifying, clandestine wave. Terrifying because, it carries with it death, corruption, dangerously manipulated products, and prohibitive prices resulting from the enormous risks and difficulties involved in illegal drug running. And it is terrifying also because of the prostitution and delinquency resulting when addicts must find the money to pay those viciously inflated prices. Then there is the obligation of small dealers to recruit new users to satisfy the ever-growing greed of the big suppliers.

At this point, three aspects of the problem emerge: the irreversible nature of the increase in production; the failure of police attempts to stop importation; and the dangers implicit for entire populations of the consumer countries (not only the users).

All these calamities - and many others which it is impossible to cover here - have a single cause; the prohibition of drugs.

Drugs are not prohibited because they are dangerous; they are dangerous because they are prohibited.

That paradox is easily proven, availing ourselves of the impeccable reasoning of Professor Huylsman of Erasmus University of Rotterdam: "The problems created by the use of drugs, whether legal or illegal, can be stated as follows. First of all, there is the alteration of the state of health due to excessive consumption and the repercussions of this on the user's entourage; and second, the illegal manner in which drugs are distributed, the resulting high cost and danger of alteration, and the increase in drug-related crime.

It is apparent that the first could be attributed to any consumer product. The second, however, only arise in cases where use of the product in question is illegal.

Now, only the secondary effects, which are related to prohibition can degenerate to the point of becoming a risk to society.

The primary effects, which are known and observable, present consequences to which society adjusts to well enough, reacting as it does daily with tolerance or indifference. Consider any normal consumer product found on the market today (food products, for example). According to a report released on July 27, by the American Public Health Authorities, excessive consumption of certain diet foods has become a major health concern in the United States. Illness due to food excess and unbalanced diet now represent one of the main causes of death in that country. (Of 2.1 million deaths in 1987, 1.5 million were due to diet-related illnesses (coronary disease, arteriosclerosis, diabetes, and some forms of cancer).

We know that cirrhosis of the liver is, for the most part, caused by alcohol, that tobacco can cause cancer of the respiratory tracts, and that coffee is destructive to the nervous system.

We also hear it repeated endlessly that opium, cannabis, and cocaine poison our youth.

The harmful effects of many other substances presently consumed by man (sugar, cannabis, coffee, opium, fats, cocaine, and so on) could also be presented in the same light, as vaguely reminiscent of "drugs", precisely because they can be harmful to the human organism.

But then, we could turn the whole thing around again, and say that sugar, cocaine, alcohol, opium, tobacco, fats, coffee, cannabis, and so on, are nothing more than so many consumer products, which cause health disorders only if used excessively. Thus, a moderate use of any product by the consumer will do no more than improve life and encourage conviviality.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that the dangers of those substances not be explained to children and adolescents. However, adults must be left to decide for themselves what they will or will not do to their own bodies. Our bodies belong to us; we are their sole arbiters, even if the consequence of our actions is our own destruction. That is the least of our rights.

Only totalitarian States assume that they have the right to dictate what a citizen is allowed to do as regards his own health - sometimes even including the denial of his right to die as he chooses.

In any case, one thing is certain; all the fuss made about what are referred to as "drugs" (cannabis, opium, cocaine, and their derivatives) must cease. For, if the real consequences of their use were examined calmly and objectively, it would have to be admitted finally that, in themselves, they cause much less harm to the human race than many of the other substances I mentioned, and that the dangers presented by their use are caused more by their prohibition and its consequences than to any direct effect.

True, there are 150 deaths every year in France by overdose. However, evidence proves that those overdoses are usually either accidental or suicides. When they are accidental, the cause is usually the adulteration which is possible precisely because they are illegal - and thus, uncontrolled.

As regrettable as those deaths are, they are nothing when compared to the other causes of death in today's world. In an attempt to convince those individuals who talk about the "scourge of drugs", let us imagine a truly free country - which we shall call Utopia.

The government of that imaginary country decided a few months ago to lift the prohibition of - what for convenience's sake we shall continue to refer to as - "drugs". That decision, predictably, caused an uproar. Scientists, physicians, and magistrates (specialists in the prosecution of drug addicts) stirred up public opinion and indignant reaction by predicting the imminent decline of the human race.

Underground dealers and importers were not loathe to join the crusade - some of them actually distinguishing themselves by the force of their virtuous wrath.

All, however, was to no avail. For the government - firm in its intent and deaf to the outcry aroused artificially by deceived and uninformed public opinion - kept to its decision to decree tolerance in the conviction that it governed a democratic country.

Within a short time, a few shrewd importers - hardly more dishonest than legal importers of cognac, wheat or cotton goods - quietly made contact with Colombian peasants, Moroccan producers and Turkish farmers, in order to acquire at reasonable prices the coca, hashish or opium poppy, from which they would obtain a good, legal and regulated, profit. And it is even possible that included among those shrewd importers were the straw-men of some of the more virulent objectors of yore.

The products, upon arrival at the borders of Utopia, were examined by the authorities, and any altered or falsified substances eliminated, thus assuring faultless quality to the consumer. There was an immediate end to the vicious "cutting" with amphetamine, arsenic, lactose, strychnine, or other poisons previously done by unscrupulous dealers to increase doses, often resulting in their clients' deaths.

Prices rapidly dropped to a normal level, as drugs were now easily produced from crops grown in favourable climates, and sold in pharmacies or other appropriate outlets at prices five hundred times less than that of the poison previously sold on the streets.

Henceforth within the means even of the least affluent, the use of drugs no longer involved recourse to the usual expedients of prostitution or robbery. The vicious circle had been broken which allowed stolen objects to be delivered to organised 'fences' who then transformed them into cash destined to the large drug suppliers.

Very soon, a large portion of crime disappeared; prison ranks diminished by at least a third; and the police were free to concentrate on other tasks. Public peace was gradually restored.

The user of drugs became an ordinary citizen, no longer considered a delinquent or ill, and consequently freed from the untimely solicitude of the psychiatrist or the expiatory vengeance of the judge.

Obviously, the authorities saw an immediate increase in the use of those products, which were suddenly within the means of all. However, they also knew that it was initially the result of curiosity, and that most would abandon a habit which essentially did not appeal to them.

There will always be the true drug addict, the individual who indulges excessively in a drug, or a substance - comparable to the alcoholic, the heavy smoker, or individuals afflicted with coronary obesity.

But let us leave Utopia behind and return home. Persecution of drug addicts there is at its height. They - and only they - are "forbidden to consume". For the moment, no one would think of forbidding the alcoholic to drink or the heavy smoker to smoke and criticising of the use of sugar or coffee is still a long way off.

Drugs are prohibited. And that prohibition resulted in the creation of a drug Mafia, one example of which is Colombia's Medellin Cartel, a syndicate of cocaine dealers, constituting a parallel national economy and dealing on equal terms with official authorities. One of the members of that cartel even founded a Nazi Party, in the hopes of beginning a career in politics. It is common practice for men like these, thanks to the enormous financial resources they command, to maintain private militias, which are in fact small armies and fleets of over fifty aircraft. These men corrupt institutions and spread terror, through kidnapping and murder. In 1984 alone, the drug Mafia in Colombia ordered the assassination of a Minister of Justice, thirty magistrates, many journalists, the editor of the country's oldest newspaper, and hundreds of policemen.

In the name of what must this disastrous situation be tolerated? What rationalisation could possibly justify it?

Prohibition is not justifiable other than as an indispensable rule of social co-existence.

Prohibition which has as its sole aim the standardising of individual behaviour is an offence to liberty.

The Supreme Court of Argentina, ("Jurisprudencia Argentina") on October 15, 1986 (Law No. 4535), decreed:

"Constitutional prohibition of interference in the private lives of private citizens is equivalent to the concept that the State must not impose its ideals upon the individual, but provide the opportunity for him to choose those ideals. That interdict is sufficient in itself to nullify Article 6 of Law 20-771 (the unconstitutionality of which has been declared) which considers the simple possession of drugs for personal use a crime...".

It should not be surprising that this vigilance originates at the highest legal authority of Argentina, one of the countries most recently under the heel of totalitarian regimes.

In fact, any prohibition characterised by the contempt for human rights and a legislation of exception could be termed, "Nazi".

At the time the preamble to the international conventions on the fight against drug addiction was being drawn up, the World Health Organisation was requested by the Vatican to include the respect for human rights. That request was refused.

As that Organisation is entirely dependent on the U. S. support, it is not surprising to hear that in the United States the addict is considered as practically sub-human - someone against whom all abuse is permitted.

Although examples of this abound, I will limit myself here to just two, which should illustrate my point more than sufficiently:

- A detection test (as to whether an individual uses drugs) which results positive authorises the head of any company in the U.S. to fire an employee;

- In 1986, the wife of the President of the United States publicly congratulated a young girl for having denounced her own parents as drug addicts.

In France, a Minister of Justice, upon taking office recently, called for the imprisonment of all addicts. A short time later, he estimated - and it is not clear on what basis - the addicts in France at 800,000. With all due respect to the Minister, if that estimate bore any relation to reality, his proposition would have necessitated concentration camps to accommodate all the new prisoners. Fortunately, he was prevented on that occasion from carrying out his plan. However, it is to be hoped that - as he was a true democrat - he would, in any case, never have gone to the extreme once referred to as "the final solution". Dr. Olievenstein, an eminent French authority on drug addiction, in his analysis on November 29, 1986 of the Minister's proposal, commented: "We are being overwhelmed by Petainist Regression!".

Well before that Minister's appearance on the scene - which simply aggravated an already existing situation - French legislation on drugs was already characterised by repressive provisions derogatory to common law. For example :

-A prisoner accused of a common law offence cannot be detained under surveillance of his guards for more than forty-eight hours. However, for a "narcotics" offence, that limit can be extended to four days;

-The Court of Petty Sessions, with jurisdiction over common offences - and thus not authorised to pass down sentences exceeding five years - can, for narcotics offences, pass down sentences usually reserved for crimes - i.e. up to twenty years;

-The maximum penalty for arrest for debt, which is 4 months, becomes 2 years when narcotics are involved;

-Informers receive reduced sentences, and the simple charge of use - on a good day - which is indictable as "inducement to usage", can bring a sentence of five years' imprisonment.

All this not including the taking away of passports, the revoking of drivers licenses, professional suspension, confiscation, expulsion, and obligatory treatment of addicts.

Legislation of exception, contempt of human rights are the recognisable principles of an ideology which evolved, from the Eugenic theories of the late 19th century, to the Nazism of our own century which reached its zenith with Hitler's rise to power and declined with his fall.

That ideology is characterised by State interference in the private lives of citizens, the State's claiming the right to take charge of public health, deciding what is or is not good for the individual (the latter being a throwback to times when what was good, what was just, and what was true was also decided for the individual.

An ideology of exclusion of the alienated (indeed, his elimination), has quietly been revived, and is insinuating itself clandestinely in the spirit of society, as the memory of the concentration camps gradually fades.

That ideology of exclusion at present only affects addicts, but it is spreading, encouraged by the narrow-mindedness of the persecution mentality.

It is thus clear what the stakes are. If the prohibitionists succeed in perpetuating the present state of affairs, we can expect anything as regards our liberty. For that persecution will soon be extended to include first drinkers of alcohol and tobacco smokers, then the undesirable social categories, finally coming to include the different religious and ethnic groups. "Petainist regression", Dr. Olievenstein?

At this point, vigilance is essential. However, there is the comforting thought that, parallel to this situation, a salutary increased awareness seems to be gaining ground. Clear-sightedness is also on the march, and might shortly confront the forces of obscurantism on equal terms.

The best proof of this tendency is the fact that I have been able to express what I have today.

We must remain optimistic - for history teaches us that in the end the abolitionists have always triumphed, and each of those triumphs has constituted yet one more step on the long but steady road to human enlightenment.