ABSTRACT: The strategy proposed by the Bush Administration can only worsen an already deteriorated situation, in that the measures proposed are one of the main causes of the evil itself. If it was necessary to liberalize drugs already 17 years ago, it is ever the more necessary to do it now, in order to reduce the number of victims, of drug-addicts and of criminal offences.

(Notizie Radicali n. 224 of 17 October 1989 - Wall Street Journal - Il Sole 24 Ore)

Dear Bill, to quote the eloquent words of Oliver Cromwell: "I beg you for the blood of Jesus Christ to consider the possibility of having been mistaken" about the strategy you and President Bush are advocating in order to fight drugs. The methods you are suggesting - more police, longer years of imprisonment, military intervention in foreign countries, detention for drug consumers and a whole arsenal of repressive measures - can only aggravate an already deteriorated situation. It is impossible to solve the drug problem with this kind of strategy without endangering that human and individual freedom that is so dear to both you and me.

You are not mistaken when you think that drugs are a plague which is devastating society. You are not mistaken when you believe that drugs are disrupting our social texture, ruining the life of so many young people, while some of the most under-privileged among us are paying the highest price for that situation. You are equally not mistaken if you believe that the majority of the people share your concern. In short, you are not mistaken about the goal you intend to reach. Your mistake is to refuse to acknowledge the fact that the measures you suggest are among the main causes of the evil you deplore. It is quite obvious that the problem is the demand, but not only the demand in itself, it is the demand which must necessarily pass through illegal channels, repressed by means of force. Illegality brings about enormous profits which finance the murderous wars of the lords of drugs; illegality absorbs all the efforts of honest servants of the law, who are forced to use all the resources available to fight ordina

ry crimes such as thefts and aggressions.

Drugs are a tragedy for the people who depend on them. But with the criminalization of their use this tragedy becomes a disaster for the whole of society, without any distinction between consumers and non-consumers. Our experience with prohibition on drugs is a repetition of that of prohibition on alcohol in the thirties.

I have under my eyes some passages of an article I wrote in 1972 on "Prohibition and drugs". At that time, the hottest problem was that of the heroin coming in from Marseille; today it is the cocaine coming in from Latin America. Furthermore, today the problem is much more serious as compared to 17 years ago: more people are drug-addicted, there are more innocent victims, more drug-dealers, more men and more money involved in repression, more funds spent to avoid repression.

If hard drugs had been depenalized 17 years ago, "crack" would not have been invented (it was invented because the high cost of illegal drugs made a cheaper version very convenient) and there would now be far less drug-addicts. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent lives would have been spared, and not only in the USA. The ghettoes of our major cities would not be a no-man's-land infested with drugs and crime. Less people would be in prison and less prisons would have been built.

Columbia, Bolivia and the other countries would not be a prey to narco-terror, and the U.S. would not have distorted its foreign politics because of it."The inferno", to quote the words with which preacher Billy Sunday welcomed the coming into force of prohibition in the early twenties, would not have constantly carried the sign "for rent", and today would be much emptier.

The depenalization of drugs would be more necessary today as compared to 1927; but it should be acknowledged that it is not possible to wipe out all the evil committed up to now, at least not in the near future. To postpone depenalization, however, can only make the situation worse, making the solution of the problem even more difficult. Alcohol and tobacco cause lethal harm to consumers even more frequently than drugs do. The depenalization would not prevent us from tackling the problem of drugs the same way in which we presently tackle alcohol and tobacco: to forbid the sale to minors, ban publicity on drugs, and similar measures. It would be possible to enforce this kind of measures, whereas it is not possible to do the same under prohibition. Furthermore, a large part of the money we presently spend in the attempt to repress the use of drugs could be allotted for the treatment and rehabilitation of drug-addicts: in a climate of comprehension rather than punishment, we would witness a drastic reduction of

the use of drugs and of the damages caused by it.

It is from the deepest of my heart that I address you this appeal.

Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be shocked, as I am, at the idea that the U.S. could turn into a battlefield, and at the sight of prisons overloaded with occasional drug consumers and a multitude of people responsible for repression, with the faculty of violating the privacy of citizens under any pretext.

A country in which the gunning down of non-identified "suspect"

airplanes is seriously considered as an anti-drugs war operation does not correspond to the idea of the country you and I wish to leave to future generations.