ABSTRACT: Nick Harman, from Britain, is editor-in-chief of what is perhaps the most important financial weekly of the world, The Economist, where he is responsible for the antiprohibitionist campaign. In his intervention at the founding Congress of LIA (Rome, 30 March - 1 April 1989) he asserts the necessity to end the prohibitionist regime in order to legalize, tax, control and discourage the use of drugs.

(Notizie Radicali n. 66 of the 25th of March 1989)

Thank you very much for this wonderful organization, thank you also to CO.R.A. I will be as brief as possible. There have been many excellent interventions; I would simply like to make a remark. There has been a traumatic consequence to this meeting: outside of this building some apparently respectful people made a public exhibition, and this shows the consequences of prohibition: if you forbid something from the inside, people do it from the outside, if there is a demand there will be a consumption, there will be a supply, and there is no way out to this dilemma. As regards the arguments against prohibition, they seem to me very simple: in the context of legality, and only in the context of legality, can we establish the necessary framework of regulation, of discouragement, so to say, and of control of substances which are obviously dangerous. The most important form of control is not legal control but social control, a control which is neither rigid nor harsh. The very strong impulses we all share, as huma

n beings, to experiment with our mind, must not be subject to a police-like control, the control must come from society and from ourselves as members of that society. The effort carried out by prohibition is a useless effort, a dangerous effort. The drug problem is obviously a medical problem; but the present drug crisis is not a medical problem but a criminal problem, a problem directly created by the illegality of drugs. And this is obvious, tautological. If these activities were not illegal, they would not be criminal; this is the most simple argument to support depenalization. But there are other, more convincing ones: what is illegal? A thing is illegal when it is secret, and secrecy gives rise to other phenomena. I have recently had a discussion, and my rather indignant interlocutor said: "There is much information concerning drugs, but this information is not diffused", and I would answer back arguing that the degree of ignorance is greater, the more it is powerful and dangerous. This is one of the th

ings caused by illegality, because illegality involves a submerged activity and therefore the fact that the discussion and the information on drugs is not made public implies fear of the facts; and this is one of the greatest dangers of illegality. Furthermore, all that is illegal - and this is a thing that creates the most serious dangers - is also profitable for those providing the substances. I mentioned approximate figures. However, the profits of cocaine, from the original product to the product that is sold, appears to be about 5,000%. We are talking about the enormous profits of retail sale. And therefore, how can there not be an attraction toward these profits?

Some years ago I was in Pakistan with a person who played a very important role in the exportation of these substances and in the BBC: we were very impressed by the trend of the prices. Prohibition was not an experiment. It was an experiment from 1980 to 1983 in the United States, and was an an experiment that failed; I think we all agree on the fact that prohibition in the United States reduced the consumption of alcohol but produced more organized crime, and certainly produced a particularly dangerous kind of organized crime. It is certain that the gangs and the groups of gangsters that established themselves in that period, until alcohol was legalized, continued to deal with substances that remained illegal, but there was a period in which these organizations suffered from the end of prohibition. Of course today these forces concentrate on drugs, but these are very dangerous people, who have a great experience which is not void of links with this part of the world. It is not a problem affecting only the U

nited States or a single country, it is a problem that has international extensions: this aspect must always be considered. When young people die in misery in the streets of Milan, New York, Edimburgh or Naples, this cannot be forgotten: whole societies are thus being destroyed. Latin America, Colombia, are of course well known cases; there is the danger of subversion on the part of this kind of traffic, and its subversive nature is created precisely by its illegality. In Great Britain there is a long experience of control on drugs, particularly alcohol, and that started in correspondence with a serious social unease, caused by the diffusion of very cheap gin, and for the first time - it was the beginning of industrialization, when workers were hired at a very low costs - the British government, between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, acted in a relatively intelligent way. What did it do? There was a state control of the quality. A bottle of alcohol of any kind was submitted to th

is control, it had to be pure, and therefore people knew what they were buying.

The situation of illegality causes people to sell poison, and this of course has been an advantage also for Great Britain; the quality trade mark on Scotch Whisky, for example, was profitable; therefore quality control, control on what can be sold or drunk and imposition of taxes, sometimes even consistent ones, on certain brands of alcohol, to discourage the consumption considered harmful. Thus, the consumption of bad gin was reduced, and the consumption of beer was encouraged, which at at least is nourishing and not as destructive as gin. This comes close to what M.P. Teodori of the Radical Party said as regards his country, and I strongly recommend you to pay attention to what I said. A partial legalization, a policy based on tolerance that could allow for small quantities, is a thing that many countries, many societies are taking into consideration: we have had many discussions on the way in which this has been applied and then partly retracted in Spain and in other countries, and I think we should view

these things with a certain mistrust; however if you allow consumption, the possession for personal use, but maintain illegality as regards the supply and the sale of the substance, what you are in fact doing is allowing greater profits for the suppliers, and the legal owners of small quantities. Therefore we must be very cautious on this policy of pragmatic tolerance of consumption. This is something I would like to say on the side, but it is worth considering. I think that if a depenalization is applied, it should be a complete depenalization, and I think we should be very careful in making a distinction between legalization and liberalization. Legalization I believe means...I myself think that there are, within society, a certain number of young people who are silly, there are quite a number of silly and poor people who live outside of a social pattern allowing them to conduct a normal life. There are a number of people who are in some ways weak, handicapped, unhappy, and therefore it is necessary to mai

ntain a degree of social protection against the consequences of a drug that can damage people's minds. As a consequence I believe that a legalization regime should be completely distinct from a regime of encouragement or tolerance. And I think this is important.

I believe that the state has an important role to play, that this is not a libertarian kind of argument - my colleague physician would use this term, libertarian -, I believe it is a pragmatic argument, that is contrary to crime. The state should not withdraw, should not be absent. I believe we should create a legal framework in which the population should be informed about the consequences of the assumption of drugs, in which the quality of drugs should be controlled, and in which there would be taxes on this trade, with all the necessary dispositions, therefore higher taxes on drugs that are more dangerous from a medical point of view, and when I say drugs, I'm obviously referring to the whole range, from cigarettes to alcohol to heroin. There should be a uniform regime, but I think that any regime that defines the liberalized substances and those which are not is such, because there are substances that are not harmful after all, but no one knows what will happen after a certain period of time, because the

re might be surprises; very soon different things might be discovered on these products.

To conclude, there are two problems: there is a medical problem, and there is a sufficient number of experts and physicians here who could explain better than I can. There is a criminal problem, a penal problem, which presently seems the most serious to me, at an international level, at a level in which the survival of the state is truly endangered, as well as peace, tranquillity and personal security. The trend in Latin America must also be taken into account. And there are exponents here who can be better witnesses than I could be. I would like to end with a sort of a slogan: legalize, tax, control, discourage. This is what seems to me as being the most convincing approach, the reasonable approach in the context of a legalization of drugs, and I hope that an international movement with such purposes can emerge from this congress because we really need it badly.