ABSTRACT: Prohibition is the guarantor of the development and the expansion of organized crime. Only by legalizing drugs can we affect the flow of capitals that this enormous business creates and thus seriously tackle the problems of drug addicts. It is an illusion to believe in the possibility of a society consuming no drugs.

(Notizie Radicali n. 55 of 13 March 1989)

The development in the drugs sector at a national and international level is not threatening, it is catastrophic. Especially in the eighties, crime has developed in the sense of a transnational organization for drug traffic, and the income deriving from the drug business ranges from 300 to 500 billion dollars each year. Even if lately the profits seem to be reduced, in the eight years of our decade there has been a flow of capitals equivalent to over 2,500 billion narco-dollars. A sum which is twice the whole debt of the Third World.

After having recycled these sums of money on international markets, the organized crime invested hundreds of billions of dollars which, once "cleaned", participated in the legal circulation of the economy. The South American cartels, the North American unions, the European mafia families, the Middle Eastern or Eastern clans, all have expanded at a global level, and no control is possible through the power of the state. Prohibition on drugs, and the war against the drug traffic, have caused, under the economic aspect, the opposite effect to the declared one. The prohibitionist policy has become the guarantor of the development and the expansion of organized crime. A truly radical change of the situation can be obtained only if there is the political will to really attack the weak spot of organized crime, that is, the flow of capitals.

Prohibition on drugs, established by the 1961 convention, must be dropped in order to start a process of legalization which will necessarily lead to a State-controlled and taxed regulation.

In favour of legalization there are reasons relating to political economy and security. Thanks to legalization we would deprive the criminal world of its main source of income, and this would not mean to surrender to crime, but on the contrary it would mean the use, at last, of an effective weapon.

The true capitulation is that of accepting the impossibility of attacking the major centres of the criminal power. Legalization would also deprive the terrorist groups of part of their responsibility in the purchase of weapons, putting an end to the phenomenon of narco-terrorism. But it would have beneficial effects also on the condition of the drug addicts: by operating a decriminalization of millions of drug consumers, their alienation, which is caused by the illegality in which they are forced to live as "criminal drug addicts", would diminish; the social misery, in constant increase among drug addicts, would also be reduced, while at the same time limiting the damages, amounting to several hundreds of billions, which are caused by the crime that surrounds drugs. Drug addicts could purchase their drugs at reasonable prices, and would also have the guarantee of obtaining pure, undiluted substances.

They would find themselves in the same conditions as alcoholics, medicine addicts, nicotine addicts, who can ask for help, ask for advice or undergo treatment. The present difference between the "legal-addicts" (those who use permitted drugs) and the "illegal-addicts" (those who use forbidden drugs) has lead to the formation of two different classes of rehabilitation and help. And the losers are those whom the state has pushed toward illegality. We know that toxicomania, in itself, is a social problem that has no solution. No society in the world is free from drugs. Drug addiction can be neither fought nor forbidden; it a disease that can be cured - with the voluntary help of the drug addict - only by means of a choice of free will and under the conditions of legality.

(translation by Petra Potz)