VII.

THE FIGHT AGAINST CRIMINALITY AND DRUGS.

THE RADICAL PARTY'S ANTI-PROHIBITION PROPOSAL.

THE BACK-LASH OF PROHIBITION. THE CHOICE OF CRAXI. (1)

THE BRUSSELS TALKS. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE LIA.

ABSTRACT: In the eighth part of his report to the Radical Party Congress in Budapest, First Party Secretary Sergio Stanzani describes the purposes and the actions of the PR's international campaign against drug prohibition.

(The 35th Congress of the Radical Party, Budapest, April 22-26, 1989)

The Congress gave us a mandate to revive and strongly develop the fight against prohibition, the great ally and accomplice of the enormous profits made by the Mafia and other criminals in the drug market.

The prohibition strategy has not only shown its impotence in putting a stop to criminality, but every time harsher repressive measures have been taken they have contributed to favouring the development of the clandestine drug market and raising its profits. It is thanks to prohibition that a substance whose cost is insignificant and would fetch ridiculously small prices is allowed to make profits of 4,000 - 5,000 per cent - so high as to make meaningless and ineffective all repressive dissuasion, as well as all international efforts to programme the cultivation of alternative crops.

The Mafia and other criminals thus dispose of a clandestine monopoly that allows them to acquire absolutely clean liquid cash which they can reinvest immediately in a situation where 95% of the distribution of drugs - as the data obtained by the police throughout the world shows - is absolutely free and uncontrolled.

As already happened with alcohol in the United States in the Thirties, the end of prohibition would have three positive effects:

1) it would deprive the Mafia of a clandestine market and thus of its unlimited profits;

2) it would remove the need of the consumer to commit continuous criminal acts in order to procure the money to buy drugs, and save society from such crimes;

3) through legislation the state and society would regain control over drugs, their production, distribution and consumption as well as over the health situation.

Today we can show with pride that, at least in this sector, the mandate you gave us has in great part been realised. Thanks to our comrades from CORA (2) and the financial and political support of the Radical Party, on last April 1 the LIA (3) was established. The LIA was established as a response to the back-lash of prohibition which, faced with the proof of its bankruptcy, reacts by harshening its repressive strategies and making new calls for an emergency.

The back-lash started in America in a demagogic run-off between two candidates who had little to say, and it was picked up and brought to Europe by the leader of Italian Socialism, that is to say, by the very party which had on many occasions over thirty years been the preferred debating-partner and often the ally of the Radicals on civil rights and public order issues. Not being able to impose the death sentence, as is done in many American states, Bettino Craxi proposed life-sentences for dealers and the incrimination of consumers and addicts. If this policy were to be approved a kind of "war on drugs" would be unleashed with an ensuing "society in war". Criminality would be strengthened and worsened as would be police action and repression. In this field too, what we most fear are the effects of drugged and one-sided information.

The foundation of the LIA was preceded by the International Brussels Talks in September '88 which reached these conclusions:

a) the legalisation of the production, trafficking and sales of drugs which today are prohibited - from marijuana to heroin to cocaine - would lower the prices by 99%: criminal organisations would be immediately excluded from the traffic;

b) the state would have the job of determining taxes sufficient to discourage consumption while guaranteeing the quality so as to reduce to a minimum the harmful effects for the consumer, including AIDS or other diseases;

c) the condition of addicts would be immediately changed inasmuch as they would not be obliged - as many are today - to live a violent life in contact with the criminal world and their problem could be handled in more humane and effective medical, psychological and social ways;

d) the international Mafia would be defeated in a way that not even the coalition of all the armies of the East and the West would today be able to accomplish by losing the basic source of its wealth and invincibility;

e) with the profit motive broken, there would be an immediate stop to the underground propaganda which hundreds of thousands of small pushers make into the strongest imaginable incentive to the spreading use of heavy drugs in society and to growing personal use;

f) legalisation would cancel from one day to the next the reason for millions of violent acts that are mostly practised on the weakest and most defenceless people;

g) it would liberate the forces of order and the courts from the burden of these crimes and immediately restore their efficiency and capacity to defend and protect the public;

h) it would make enormous sums now spent on futile manhunts available for campaigns of dissuasion and the rehabilitation of addicts;

i) it would end the international "emergency" situation which is constantly more damaging to the constitutional state and gives rise to laws that are increasingly less respectful of human rights (beginning with the re-introduction of the death sentence in many states which had abolished it) and of trial guarantees and liberty;

At the congress establishing the LIA, which had the encouragement and support of Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, there were about fifty prominent figures from the following countries: Canada, France, Italy, the United States, Colombia, Spain, Holland, Venezuela, Bolivia, Great Britain, Brazil, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and Denmark.

Marie Andree Bertrand, the Canadian criminologist and Radical Party member, was elected president of the organisation; elected as vice presidents were: Rosa Del Olmo, Venezuelan criminologist; Remo Di Natale, Bolivian jurist; Lester Grinspoon, American psychiatrist; Marco Pannella; José Luis Diaz Ripollez, Spanish jurist; Ralph Salerno, American ex policeman. The LIA Secretariat is made up of: Peter Cohen, Dutch sociologist; Georg Thamm, German sociologist; Anthony Henman, Brazilian anthropologist; Marco Taradash; and Kevin Zeese, of the United States.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Craxi, Bettino - (Milan 1934) Italian Socialist statesman, a parliamentary deputy since 1968. After becoming Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in 1976, he profoundly changed the face of the party by making it the corner-stone of broad reforms, including institutional ones, and of Socialist unity.

2) CORA - Radical Anti-Prohibition Co-ordinating Committee, an association founded in 1968 by Radial Party members interested in the drug problem.

3) LIA - International Anti-Prohibition League (of drugs).