ABSTRACT: The motion passed by the first congress of the Radical Anti-Prohibitionist Coordination in Rome (16 July 1989).

(Notizie Radicali n. 175 of the 14th of August 1989)

The first congress of the CO.R.A, held in Rome on the 16th of July 1989

states

that the extraordinary success of the "anti-prohibitionist ticket on drugs - against political and ordinary crime", born upon the initiative of the Radical party and of the CO.R.A, and present at the European elections in conditions of absolute disadvantage owing to the almost complete lack of information concerning its motives and its goals, is a proof of how the almost monolithic consent on the prohibitionist policies, boasted by many national governments and supra-national institutes (such as the United Nations), is in fact based on the censorship of information and on the power of the political and economic forces - not only the overt ones - concerned about maintaining the status quo;

states

that such success is also the expression of the transnational and transpartisan policy of the Radical party, which has given a significant contribution in the sense of political initiative and financial support to the establishment, on the 31st of March, of the International Antiprohibitionist League, the foundation of which has been from the beginning one of the fundamental priorities of CO.R.A.'s programme;

confirms

that the reasons and the goals for which the CO.R.A. was established and developed, and acknowledges the fact that the evidence of the disastrous failure of all prohibitionist policies is no longer on the agenda only of isolated groups of citizens, rich with nothing but civil engagement, but is more and more the basis for official requests for a reformation of the policies concerning drugs enforced by rulers and administrators, from the mayor of Baltimore to the burgomaster of Hamburg, from the associations of British and Australian physicians to the German police union;

denounces

that while the power of international criminal organizations connected to the drug trade increases, while violence and crime increase in the cities of the world, while the AIDS epidemic - almost uniquely caused by needle-administered drug addiction - is spreading, the main governments of the world, and especially the Italian one, have willingly neglected to elaborate a strategy adequate to the needs of drug addicts and effective for the protection of the health of the whole of society:

The congress of the CO.R.A. consequently decides:

1) to ask to federate the CO.R.A with the International Anti-Prohibitionist League, in the shared belief that prohibition, just like crime linked to drug traffic, will be destroyed only if a strong campaign at a transnational level will be organized;

2) for Italy in particular, the beginning of a sanitary summit on the hypocritical policies of the Italian Health Ministry - the only one in Europe not even to have signed the London agreement for the free distribution of needles to drug addicts as a preventive measure against AIDS - and as regards the Corporation of Physicians and of the medical associations responsible for the hypocritical connivance with those policies, based on prison repression, which risk the life and the health

of consumers and non-consumers; and as urgent measures of sanitary policy the Congress requests

a) the legalization of hashish and marijuana, the prohibition of which serves no sanitary purpose;

b) the enforcement of the procedures of controlled distribution of heroin and cocaine to drug addicts, on the model of the successful British experience in Liverpool;

c) mechanisms of free distribution of sterile needles in exchange for used ones, and of condoms to drug addicts, even those who are in prison;

d) the increase not so much of the number of structures but of the range of services to provide, through public and private centres, to drug addicts and to the consumers of legal and illegal drugs, alcohol especially:

The Congress of the CO.R.A.

addresses an appeal to the citizens of the approximately 8,000 Italian municipalities involved in the coming administrative elections, asking them to work to make the presence of strong antiprohibitionist-oriented tickets to be possible, against political and ordinary crime and for the safeguard of the freedom to choose, also as far as abortion is concerned, a right which is presently endangered by similar prohibitionist and illiberal tendencies;

The Congress of the CO.R.A.

addresses itself mainly to the social reality, today pushed toward clandestinity, made up of drug addicts and AIDS sufferers, in order for them to determine, also by joining the CO.R.A and the Radical Party, a more rational and human policy on drugs;

The Congress of the CO.R.A

as from immediately appoints its organizations to summon the second Congress of the Association for next autumn, in order to guarantee the maximum possible presence of Italian members and the development of the transnational activity of the CO.R.A.