>. "(...) It isn't easy after having spent billions and billions of dollars, after having talked loud for years, to admit that one has taken the wrong road. It isn't easy to admit failure, to admit - as Marco Pannella said in his speech here in Washington - that the king is naked and to look the naked truth in the face (...)
"I see that for every dealer who ends up in jail, a war of succession starts between two or three pretenders. An indiscriminate war that produces clashes and gun fights that end up leaving dead and wounded even among innocent bystanders.
"I see today that too many kids don't know why they should say no to drugs while the neighborhood pusher drives around in a super luxury car costing thousands of dollars. I see that drug users are exposed to ever greater risk of death, sometimes from overdoses, sometimes and increasingly from AIDS".
Certainly on the international scene the opinion that has had most influence on the drug debate is the one expressed in the columns of the "Wall Street Journal" by Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winner for Economics. In our country the article was reprinted in "Il Sole 24 Ore" and in "L'Espresso" on September 24, 1989. It takes the form of an open letter to William Bennett who co-ordinated the American anti-drug programme on behalf of President Bush: "Dear Bill, to use Oliver Cromwell's eloquent words, I beg of you, for the love of Christ, to consider the possibility that you may be wrong. The road that you and President Bush propose to us is the one of bigger police forces, more prisons, the use of our armed forces in foreign countries, the hardening of punishment for drug users, and an entire arsenal of repressive measures. All of that can only make an already bad situation worse. The war against drugs cannot be won by the use of such tactics without damaging human rights and individual freedom. (..
.)
"Your error lies in not understanding that what you propose will cause worse evils than the ones you deplore. The root of the problem obviously lies in the demand for drugs. But we are not dealing with a simple demand. The problem is that this kind of demand would be obliged to operate through prohibited and illegal channels. (...)
"Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But making their use a crime changes this tragedy into a disaster for the entire society, for both the consumer and the non-consumer in the same way. The experience of prohibition of drugs is a repetition of prohibition with regard to alcohol. (...)
"If the use of drugs had ceased to be punished, crack would never have been invented. (It was created because of the high cost of illegal drugs that had made even their economical versions profitable). And today there would be far fewer addicts. The lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent victims would have been saved, and not only in the United States. The ghettos of our big cities would not be no-man's-lands infested with drugs and crime. We would have fewer people in prison and we would not need to have built so many prisons. (...) Alcohol and tobacco cause more deaths than the use of drugs. Liberalisation would not keep us from treating drugs in the same way we treat alcohol and tobacco - to ban sales to minors, prohibit the advertising of narcotics and similar measures. (...) Furthermore if even just a small part of what we spend now in trying to impose drug prohibition were turned to cures and rehabilitation, if there were an atmosphere of compassion and not punishment, the r
eduction in the use of drugs and the harm to consumers would doubtless be noteworthy. (...)".
Friedman also analysed the relationship between the cost of the drug war and the results that it could have been expected to reach. In an article published in the "Financial Times" (the British financial daily, ed.) on September 7, 1989 the economist once again contested Bush's choices in reflecting on the funds being appropriated: "Bush doesn't know the arguments which consider that these evils are not caused by drugs in themselves, but by the fact that they are sold on a black market without regulation and run by criminal gangs. What is even more remarkable is the abysmal difference between the dimensions of the problem as he describes it and the resources allowed by the self-imposed limits of the funds appropriated. The President has asked for an authorisation to spend 7 billion 900 million dollars next year with an increase of only 2 billion 200 million; more than half of this increase is earmarked for a prison construction programme previously announced. Thus the real appropriations will be 8 billi
on 400 million dollars with an increase of only 1 and a half billion. Only 2 billion will go to the countries of the Andes over a 5-year-period. The estimates of the turn over of the drug traffic are necessarily imprecise, but is thought that they amount to 100 million dollars a year."
We must say that Friedman's evaluation is excessively cautious; in fact, a sub-committee of the US Senate put the global value of the drug traffic at about 500 billion dollars a year (an estimate shared by the weekly "Fortune") of which 300 billion is the US share of the operations. All the more reason for taking Friedman's conclusions seriously: "If the United States hopes to to reduce this lucrative business, they will have to offer the producers equally lucrative alternatives. Given the intensity of the demand (and a probable increase in price due to the reduced production), all of this would cost a great deal more than what is now proposed. Bush is trying to put out a forest fire with a water bucket. (...) The alternative to these sanctions at the expense of the consumer would be to remove criminal penalties for using drugs and at the same time to extend the program of information and rehabilitation (...).". President Bush did away with these criticisms with a remark broadcast by all the US televisi
on networks: "Anyone who judges our strategy by its price tag has not understood the problem". It is a fact, however, that even the front of those who have helped the President in his campaign against drugs are today criticising - albeit on varying grounds - the direction it has been given. This is the case of the "New York Times" which recently wrote: "But theses initiatives, however praiseworthy, are inadequate. Almost all the increase of about 2 billion 200 million dollars in appropriations for the current fiscal year is earmarked for the federal prisons and would be deducted from the fight against drugs. Only 718 million dollars of these new appropriations diverted from other programmes would in reality be spent during the next year. The Bush plan continues to provide for a distribution of the appropriations in the ratio of 70% for repressive measures and 30% for the information and rehabilitation campaign whereas there is a broad consensus that the resources should be divided equally between the two. T
he limitation of the funds would seem to force the balance in this direction (...).".
The New York Times pushes hard on this point, and article by Peter Eamill reprinted in Italy by the (Communist daily, ed.) Paese Sera on September 7, 1989 states: "In an hour of national television, Bush and Bennett and Co. have managed to turn a tragedy into an operetta for the light-headed. Throughout the United States there must have been storms of laughter as soon as the police, the drug dealers and the consumers heard the details of the great anti-drug plan. Clearly this administration is much more concerned with bombers and savings-and-loan institutions (many of which are used to re-cycle money coming from the earnings of drug dealers) than it is with the plague of narcotics. The details of the plan are comical: for example, Bush wants another 620 million dollars for the construction of prisons, but has only provided 37 million (to be divided among all the states, naturally) to educate people to avoid the problem.".
Friedman's opinion is certainly not unique and in American university circles above all it finds many adherents and occasions for articulate debate. Ethan Nadelmann, professor of International Affairs at Princeton University has published his most interesting point of view in the Los Angeles Times. The article than became the subject of debate thanks to its reprinting on September 8, 1989 in the Herald Tribune. Nadelmann's consideration also take a critique of the Bush plan as a point of departure: there is a desire to "persecute the occasional consumer, especially of marijuana, with a forcefulness not seen in the last twenty years. This is a gross and costly negation of the lesson offered by the history of drugs. Seventeen years ago the Shafer Committee, set up by President Nixon, recommended removing criminal penalties for the use of marijuana. In the same year the Canadian government's Le Dain Committee did the same. Ten years later a study group established at the Academy of Sciences arrived at the
same conclusions. In the eleven states that removed penalties for marijuana during the 70's the levels of consumption were equivalent to those in the states where penalties still applied. A 1988 study made by Michael Aldrich and Tod Mikuriya for the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs revealed that removing the penalties in California saved the state half a billion dollars that it would have cost to make arrests. In the Netherlands, where penalties were removed for cannabis in 1978, consumption among young people has dropped. All the facts demonstrate that to make a goal of punishing marijuana users is not only stupid but costly, counterproductive and immoral (...). It would seem that more police and more prisons are the main answer to the problem of drugs in our cities. Once again the lessons of history are ignored. During the last decade the cost of repressing drugs has approximately tripled and the number of Americans in prison has doubled. The cost of for the construction and maintenance of the prison system a
re the highest growth item in many budgets (...) Despite this increase in repression many aspects of the drug problem in American cities are getting worse. (...) The government needs to threaten the vitality of the illegal drug market and to break down the distorted structure of incentives that trap many young people in our cities and introduce them to the world of drugs. Decades of attempts to do this by using penal measures have provoked the failure of this approach. The only solution is now a policy of controlled drug legalisation. The government must regulate and tax it, but it must also make the more dangerous drugs available to those adults who want to use them. There is no other way of removing the dealers from this kind of business.".
In the light of the above, it seems to us possible to take under consideration the particular position sustained by Prof. Francis Caballero, professor of penal law at the University of Paris. In the pages of "Liberation" (November 9, 1989) he espoused the need of creating a drug monopoly: "The perverse effects of the marriage of prohibition and repression have become disquieting. On the social plane prohibition increases crime and delinquency. The price of $100 per gram of heroin imposed by the dealers in fact leads drug addicts to commit many crimes: theft, burglary, breaking into pharmacies, prostitution. On the juridical level, repression is a threat to freedom. Due to the incapacity of stopping not more than 10 per cent of the substances in circulation, ever-greater use is being made of measures harmful to common law (...). On the plane of health, repression increases the dangerousness of the products (...), the isolation of the addicts leads them to disastrous behaviour such as exchanging syringe
s (...). As far as we are concerned, we recommend controlled legalisation entrusted to monopolies of production and distribution and based on the idea of < passive commerce >. Furthermore, such monopolies are sanctioned by the international law for commerce in narcotics for medical use (...). One cannot put on the same level a system that deprives delinquents of a part of their profits with another one that favours such delinquency and leaves it unpunished. We should remember that according to penalists the narcotics traffic is a crime without a victim. Differently from the victims of theft and homicide, the "consumer" never denounces the seller: this is a detail that changes everything.".
The feeling that the time is ripe for an anti-drug policy that is not necessarily repressive is also confirmed in an article appearing in the English daily "The Independent" (September 8, 1989) which wrote very simply: "Although President Bush has opted for the more popular choice of another crusade against drug pushers and consumers, the opinion is gaining ground that a better approach would be to remove the penalties.".
THE INTERNATIONAL ANTI-PROHIBITION CONFERENCE
On October 1, 1988 at the European Parliament in Brussels there was held a very important << International Anti-Prohibition Conference >> organised by the Radical Anti-Prohibition Co-ordination.
Among the many significant contributions was the speech made by Peter Reuter of Washington's Rand Corporation, the largest American institute for the study of social phenomena connected to crime: "The American policy appears to be ineffective and costly (...) the legalisation of the use and sale of drugs, which is the most radical change of social policy possible in the sphere of narcotics, has suddenly begun to attract much interest (...) If history teaches us anything it is certainly skepticism on the effectiveness of repression as a measure for controlling the drug traffic. With regard to drugs the country is not fighting a war, but rather has to face a chronic social problem (...) The image of a war against drugs, a platitude in the government's discourses on all levels, is deceiving: it provokes vagueness, the impression of easy victories and the search for enemies".
Another speaker at the Brussels conference, Josè Luis Diez Ripolles, the professor of Penal Law at the University of Malaga and famous for his studies on penal legislation and drugs, maintained: "I share the widespread opinion that the only successful way to confront the drug problem is within the framework of a policy that integrates all its stages from production or cultivation until consumption. With regard to the way in which it is possible to influence this whole process, I believe that the repressive policy which has been adopted until now, aside from other objections to it, has clearly shown itself to have failed (...) I am merely limiting myself to reporting a sensation that is widely felt in European legal circles and on the various levels of the Spanish administration (...) It is obvious that today the drug problem is not so much in the damage caused by its use, but rather in the emergency caused by the powerful organisations that traffic in drugs, that influence or are about to influence the
institutional organisations of many countries and even the whole democratic world itself".
During the same conference Peter Cohen, professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, illustrated the sense of the current experience in Holland: "The Dutch experience with drugs, in the way that foreign countries understand it, is only one example of a much more general attitude towards certain forms of deviation, particularly in the city of Amsterdam. We could call this attitude social pragmatism", Cohen declared. "As long as the behaviour of a certain group does not particularly damage others in the group it is left to itself and sometimes helped by specialised institutions of assistance (...)
To summarise, the Dutch policy for drugs is only one of the applications of a more general social administration principally characterised by:
1) the maximum possible reduction of penal sanctions;
2) the creation of specialised health institutions accessible to the largest possible number of potential users;
3) the minimum of social ostracism supported by the state towards the deviant group, and
4) an economic basis that is reasonable for all citizens without consideration of their social condition or degree of deviation".
The speeches that made the greatest effect at Brussels were those that dealt specifically with the anti-prohibition prospects and in particular the four theses illustrated by the philosopher Ferdinando Savater, by Prof. Thomas Szasz (psychiatrist, ed.) and the criminologist Marie Andrée Bertrand.
The convictions of the philosopher Savater take their departure from new theses which, even if not entirely shared by all of us, are important points for consideration: all societies have known the use of drugs, which is to say substances or physical practices that alter the usual perception of reality. The history of drugs is as long as that of humanity itself and runs parallel with it. Contemporary society is based on the exalting of the individual and the << juridical right of habeas corpus >> must be extended to all aspects of the individual's right to freely dispose of his own body, to experiment with himself. Life is not and should not be anything but a great experiment including that of one's own destruction. In a democratic society it is unjust to prohibit drugs any more than political or religious heterodoxy, pornography any more than tastes in food. When that happens it is because the welfare state wants to determine what is best for our health since it has lost political, religious and artis
tic control, etc. The danger of drugs lies in their prohibition, in their adulteration, in the lack of information about them, in the anomalous attitudes they arouse in conformists, in the gangsters that flock around them, in the obsession to cure them. The persecution of drugs is a deviation of religious persecution, because today physical health is the lay substitute for spiritual salvation. Society exists to help individuals to realise their desires and to remedy their errors - drug addicts who intend to abandon their mania must be helped in the same way as those want to divorce, to change their sex, etc. - and not to immolate them to the tribal idols as punishment. It is not possible to equate the removal of penalties for drugs with the legalisation of crime because the first objective of the latter is the damaging of others for one's own benefit, whereas no drug is in itself an evil but can become one by its use. The harm to public health is the principle argument against drugs (moral condemnation hav
ing passed into second place). An active political effort by states in a field that enjoys the reputation of unanimity will help nourish demagoguery.
The prohibition is itself the reason so many young people take drugs (naturally unemployment and the abandonment of the young also favour this as they do all other forms of delinquency), but the need to protect adolescents from unprincipled manoeuvring does not justify treating the entire population as if it were in kindergarten. Society believes that no one can be free in the face of drugs and so the way to guarantee the population's moral health is to eliminate the opportunity to sin. This kind of moralising shows contempt for human freedom. Savater's conclusions are simple: "The task of the state cannot be other than to furnish information in the most complete and rational way on each substance, to control its production and quantity and to help those who want it or who see themselves damaged by this social freedom. It will be necessary to publicise internationally the idea of removing penalties and to try to adopt collateral measures."
Thomas Szasz is professor of psychiatry at New York State University and the author of various books including the one much discussed during the 70's entitled << The Myth of Drugs >> (Feltrinelli, 1977). He began his discourse by quoting Thomas Jefferson (1782): "If the government were to prescribe our medicines and our diet, our bodies would be like our souls. Thus in France at one time emetics were prohibited as medicine and the potato as a food". After indicating that drug is a word that pertains to scientific vocabulary and has now been made part of the political vocabulary, Szasz sustained that the drug war was "a new variant of humanity's ancient impulse to purify itself by dramatising the persecutions of scapegoats (...). It would be a serious error to see the present drug controls in the way that many people do and in the way that those who propose them would like us to do - that is like the kind of measures used to avoid fevers. Rather than being like controls based on objective technical/scien
tific considerations, they are like the prohibitions of substances whose control is based on religious or political ones". Szasz thus observes that "the policies of the drug prohibitionists are the origin of a vast series of existential and economic opportunities and options otherwise not available. For the members of the upper and middle classes the drug war offers a chance to win self-esteem, public recognition of their benevolence, the meaning of life, work, money (...). Without doubt drugs influence mind and body in good ways and bad. For this reason we have need of private and voluntary associations, or of the government as some believe, to protect us from the dangers of heroin, salt and fattening diets. (...)
Unfortunately the war against drugs has offered and continues to offer modern man something that he seems to desire ardently: false compassion and true coercion, pseudo-science and real paternalism, imaginary maladies and metaphorical treatments, opportunistic policies and false hypocrisies. It is sad to see how a person who knows history, pharmacology, man's struggle for self-discipline and the human need to reject it - to see that person substitute these things for submission to paternalistic coercion, ignoring the conclusion that the war against drugs is just another chapter in the natural history of human stupidity".
Marie Andrée Bertrand, professor of criminology at the University of Montreal and Canadian government consultant, bases her anti-prohibition convictions on a thesis she developed in many years of research: "The use of penal law in cases of crimes without victims is ineffectual, involves procedures contrary to individual rights (inspections, searches without warrants, informers, spies) and it is always arbitrary inasmuch as the habitual instruments of information are never adequate and only an ingenuous or stupid marginal group is ever subjected to repression".
Prof. Bertrand is convinced that "the cost, or more precisely the costs, of prohibition are enormous: the social, moral and economic costs. States dissipate on it their honour and public funds - and such funds are out of proportion to the improbable and minimal effects the law obtains (...) The pedagogical function of penal law, that must remind the citizen of the most important values for the social community, ends up deviated from this purpose by the coincidental inclusion in the same law of substances of highly varying degrees of harmfulness and behaviour of very different degrees of seriousness. In many countries the penalties are still so severe as to impose detention for acts which are really not harmful to others (...)". These choices, according to the Canadian criminologist, have created the very high costs of applying the law and have involved the "creation of special police squads, have overburdened the courts, the prisons and the health services". Hence it is necessary to substitute the proh
ibition that has brought about such inefficiency and perverse effects with a statistical system, according to quantity and quality, on the supplies of the drugs that are prohibited today. It is the task of the social community to occupy itself with correct information on drugs, to stop the dissemination of wrong information, to create the controls it considers adequate as it does for cigarettes and alcohol, and to keep control of it rather than leave such power in the hands of international officials or police corps."
THE COMMENT OF << IL POPOLO >>
Faced with so rich and stimulating a debate, one cannot remain indifferent, but there are those who have resolved the question without further ado. This is the case of "Il Popolo" (the official Christian Democratic newspaper, ed.) that very drily wrote on July 12, 1988: "Now that << The Economist >> and a certain international financial establishment whose business has been disturbed have been converted to liberalisation, nothing will stop them anymore. Convinced that they are more libertarian and European than anyone, they will settle down on this last, arid beach, empty of cries and strewn with refuse, like the end of one of (Marco) Ferreri's films".
LEGISLATION IN THE UNITED STATES
A large part of our government's anti-drug programme has been "imported" from the United States who have declared that they intend to defeat the drug problem on their territory by 1993. Like with its politics, the majority's bill has tried to take valid hints for our country from overseas.
While not sharing either its spirit or its direction, we would like to briefly summarise the American law to emphasise its extreme coherence and to demonstrate, quite aside from all political convictions, how essential it is in the case of a provision of this kind to provide adequate appropriations and decision-making centres that will reduce to a minimum the conflict of prerogatives and avoid as much as possible bureaucratic dispersion. We believe that no one has made exact actuarial cost estimates for the law under discussion. "It is astonishing that in discussing the new drug law in Italy" Guido Neppi Modona wrote in "La Repubblica" on September 21, 1989, "the financial and organisational aspects are not given the slightest consideration which in America were put in first place in the negative evaluation made on the strategy of the Bush administration. One has the impression that in Italy an abstract and ideological debate is taking place, the discussion of principles that have no chance of ever bein
g applied, without worrying about costs and the effects on the administration of justice."
On October 22, 1988 the Congress of the United States of America approved a law against drugs that, in synthesis, provides for what follows.
CO-ORDINATION OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-DRUG POLICY
There is established under the President's Special Agency, an Agency for National Policy Against Drug Addiction. The president nominates the director and two vice directors who, having been ratified by the Senate, must work out the national strategy against drugs, furnish information for the National Security Council, to instruct the President on the organisation of the federal agencies leading the fight against drugs.
The President, who by February of every year is bound to give the Congress a report on the national anti-drug strategy, must also appoint an additional director responsible for the state and local affairs of the Office For Substance Abuse Prevention. The director of the Office must draw up a yearly consolidated budget indicating the reasons for the various items. For this reason in 1989 three and a half million dollars were appropriated. The National Drug Enforcement Policy Board, the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System and the White House Drug Abuse Policy Office are all abolished.
PREVENTION AND CURE
For 1989 one and a half billion dollars were appropriated for alcoholism, drug addiction and mental health. This sum was divided among the states on the basis of two factors: the size of the population at risk and the state's fiscal revenues. Only if the state can demonstrate the inadequacies of the pre-existing structures can it be authorised to build new ones or modernise or enlarge old ones. In the context of financing the care of addicts who take drugs intravenously, priority is given to those subjects suffering from AIDS and to courses to prepare medical and paramedical personnel. Funds can be used for distributing sterile syringes to drug addicts.
Ten per cent of the annual funds not specifically earmarked are destined for women with particular regard to those pregnant or with children to maintain.
Anyone who runs therapeutic programmes for drug addicts must communicate to the state when 90 per cent of the programme has been executed in order to allow for the admission of new patients within seven days.
The Secretary of Health can deny financing to those states that do not provide for the necessary loans for finding homes for the rehabilitation of drug addicts or alcoholics.
An Agency for the Prevention of Drug Addiction is established for which 95 million dollars are appropriated. Another 100 million dollars are appropriated to support private non-profit agencies and organisations in order to shorten the waiting list at the centres for the care of drug addicts.
The Secretary of Health has the task of financing educational programmes for the prevention and cure of alcoholism and drug addiction favouring pregnant women and those in confinement.
For the years 1989-1992, 14 million dollars were appropriated to construct or re-construct for hospitality houses or semi-residential structures for young indians. Contracts can be stipulated with indian communities for the setting-up of regional therapeutic centres.
For the years 1989-91, 45 million dollars were appropriated for assistance centres for veterans who abuse the use of alcohol or narcotics.
Three years imprisonment is foreseen for anyone who furnishes any anabolic steroid without a doctor's prescription. In the case such are provided to minors, the sentence foreseen is doubled.
Except for those exceptions foreseen by federal law, butanol nitrite is to be considered a dangerous substance and is prohibited.
Finally, a Federal Operative Unit is established for collecting and disposing of dangerous refuse produced by illegal laboratories.
DRUG ABUSE EDUCATION
For 1989, 350 million dollars were appropriated for the law against drugs in the schools and the community. Another 16 million were appropriated for up-dating the teaching personnel. One million dollars were appropriated for pre-scholastic prevention programmes.
For 1989, 15 million dollars were appropriated for non-profit agencies and organisations that can prevent and limit the grouping of youths into gangs dedicated to drug-correlated activities.
Another 15 million dollars were appropriated for 1989 to finance activities to aid youths who ran away from home and to aid their families. There are provisions for the development of educational activities in the communities that give hospitality to these people.
For 1989, 40 million dollars not specifically earmarked were set aside for the states for the development of youth activity
programmes.
INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF DRUG TRAFFICKING
For 1989, 101 million dollars were appropriated for the control of international drug trafficking.
The US ambassador to the OAS (Organisation of American States) can start up relations for the preparation of international intervention and co-ordination units. The Secretary of State must inform the Congress of such units.
The Attorney General must inform the Congress on the actions necessary for the reduction and repression of the cocaine traffic.
Six and a half million dollars are appropriated for the training of personnel of foreign security agencies involved in anti-drug activities, to arm with defensive weapons the helicopters furnished by the USA to foreign countries fighting the drug war as long as they do not make themselves responsible for violations of human rights.
Fifteen million dollars are appropriated for 1989 to supplement the protection of Colombian magistrates, government officials and journalists ranked against the narcotics traffickers.
If the President is not able to provide the Congress with sufficient guarantees regarding a particular country receiving the aforesaid aid, he must suspend such financing.
The Department of State can determine rewards for information on drug traffic that comes from outside the United States.
The Attorney General must draw up an annual report on the aforementioned activities.
Anyone who has been condemned by a federal or state court for a serious drug offence will have his passport withdrawn.
INTERVENTIONS IN THE INTERNATIONAL BANKING SYSTEM
The Secretary of the Treasury, by means of negotiations with the finance ministers of other countries, must set up an international agency for currency control which will try to harmonise the various laws regarding cash operations and to repress recycling. The Secretary must also work with foreign banks to obtain proofs of large financial movements originating in the United States. If serious infringements were found to have been committed by any country, the President's office could impose sanctions.
Foreign trade banks are authorised to supply financing for the sale of services and military wares whenever the President deems it necessary for the fight against drugs being conducted in that country.
CONSUMER RESTRICTIONS
The tenant of any public lodging who commits drug-connected crimes in or near said lodging will be evicted. Any tenant will also be evicted who gives shelter to a person subject to his responsibility who commits the acts mentioned above.
Eight million 200,000 dollars were appropriated for 1989 to combat crimes in the area of public building.
All those who receive federal services for a value in excess of 25,000 dollars must declare their readiness to create a working environment free of drugs and must inform their employees that it is forbidden to use or to offer substances subject to controls on the work premises. Any violations of this prohibition will result in losing the job.
Any companies not adhering to these activities will not receive their contract payments. If this situation should be protracted for five years the company will not be eligible for any federal contracts.
Employers can require that their employees who use narcotics undergo treatment for cure and rehabilitation.
Federal benefits (subsidies, loans, professional or commercial licenses, etc.) can be denied by the courts to those who are convicted of selling narcotics. The suspension is for five years for the first offence, ten years for the second, and permanent after the third.
The sanctions may be suspended if the convicted person completes a controlled programme of rehabilitation.
IMPROPER USE AND TRAFFICKING IN CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES
The Secretary of Justice has the power to control the registers of chemical companies which must be conserved for five years in the case of operations with primary chemicals and for two years in the case of essential chemicals. The Secretary may prohibit anyone from importing or exporting a chemical substance if it is suspected that this is destined for the production of substances subject to control.
Violations of the above regulations are punishable with up to ten years in prison.
CONFISCATION
A special fund is established under the Secretary of the Treasury for expenses necessary for the custody of wares confiscated during the anti-drug activities of the Justice Department. This fund can also be used to pay rewards to anyone offering information useful in the fight against drugs. The fund will be replenished from the proceeds of the sale of confiscated goods.
STATE AND LOCAL DRUG CONTROL
The Justice Department will establish an office for legal assistance regarding the concentration of resources used in the fight against drugs and to improve the functioning of the judicial apparatus. For this purpose 275 million dollars are appropriated for 1989, 350 million dollars for 1990, and 400 million dollars for 1991.
SUPPLEMENTARY FINANCING FOR ANTI-DRUG MEASURES
Twelve million 300,000 dollars are appropriated for the Citizenship and Immigration Service; 10 million 700,000 dollars for the Office of Alcoholics, Tobaccos and Fire-arms with the aim of increasing the personnel by 244 units to intensify the fight against crime; 60 million for strengthening the Anti-Drug Agency (DEA); 30 million for the FBI; 21.5 million for seizure and confiscation of wares and for the protection of the federal judiciary structures; 52 million 400,000 for the expenses of Justice Department prosecutors and for border police; 200 million dollars for the construction fund of the federal penitentiary system; 21.5 million for convicts; 440 million for customs officials and 200 million for the Coast Guard.
RECYCLING OF MONEY
Financing institutions are prohibited from issuing or selling personal cheques, cashier's cheques, travellers cheques or money orders for a value in excess of 3,000 dollars to anyone (except to their own clients).
The Treasury Department can require any institution to preserve any document necessary to prevent evasion by financing institutions.
The insured institutions that transgress a Department disposition are punishable by a fine which is not to exceed 10,000 dollars.
PROHIBITION OF FIRE-ARMS
Anyone providing a fire-arm knowing that it will be used to commit an act of violence or for the narcotics traffic is punishable with imprisonment for up to ten years.
The Justice Department will work out a system for identifying ex convicts who acquire arms and will put the system at the disposition of arms merchants too in order for them to see if the potential customer has been convicted for a serious crime.
Anyone who keeps or brings a fire-arm into a federal building will be punished with one year in prison and/or a fine.
NATIONAL FORESTRY SYSTEM SAFETY MEASURES
An appropriation is foreseen for 10 million dollars for training Forestry Service personnel in order to strengthen the repression of the consumption and production of narcotics.
The personnel will be given the chance to conduct investigations and apply laws even outside the territory of the National Forestry Service.
OTHER PENAL SANCTIONS
Penal sanctions are foreseen for up to ten years in prison for crimes against human life committed in the manufacture of a substance subject to control; up to twenty years for the detention of crack; life in prison for those convicted three times for crimes connected with the drug traffic; up to twenty years for drug crimes committed in prison; administrative sanctions up to 10,000 dollars for ex convicts who are found in possession of moderate quantities of drugs for personal use.
THE DEATH PENALTY
The death sentence will be imposed on anyone participating in a criminal conspiracy connected to a serious drug-related crime who intentionally kills or instigates, orders or causes the intentional killing of a person. The convicted person will be condemned to at least 20 years in prison, life in prison, or death. The same penalties will be inflicted on anyone who intentionally kills, instigates or causes the killing of a law officer while helping in the commission of the crime or while trying to escape capture. If the guilty person confesses his guilt for the above-mentioned crimes, a special procedure will be adopted to establish the penalty to be imposed. The judge and the jury must weigh all the circumstances that worsen or attenuate the actions: if the former predominate over the latter, the death sentence can be requested. Otherwise the sentence to be imposed will be deliberated. The death sentence is excluded in the case of mental impairment. The decision to apply the death penalty must not be i
nfluenced by considerations of race, religion, colour, national origin or sex. The accused who are not able to pay for defending counsel have the right to a court- appointed counsellor. The judge is authorised to concede to the defense the right to employ investigators and to request expert opinions and to take on the expenses if he considers these further investigations to be necessary. The General Accounting Office is charged with studying the expenses for the application of the death sentence.
MEASURES FAVOURING THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is charged with changing the regulations for the registration of private aircraft to ensure that they are not registered in the names of non-existing persons or persons with false addresses. A system for quick and simple communication must be devised. Violations of the regulations for registration and property rights will be punished with fines up to 15,000 dollars and/or up to three years in prison. If these offences are aggravated by the fact of transporting merchandise subject to control, the fine can be increased to 25,000 dollars and imprisonment up to five years.
JUSTICE AND CRIMINALITY AMONG MINORS
An agency for justice and the protective custody of minors will be established and a co-ordinating committee will examine the reasons for which minors will be accepted into these institutions and will have to study possible internal improvements in them. The government official responsible for justice for minors will present an annual report to Congress on the state of this institution. The responsible official is authorised to stipulate contracts with public or private agencies for aid or protective custody or to promote communities as alternatives to prison.
IMPRISONMENT, PAROLE, PROVISIONAL LIBERTY,
The privileges of parole, and provisional liberty are revoked for anyone found in possession of substances subject to control. For offences committed before January 1, 1989, a clause is introduced which allows release on parole if the convict refrains from the use of all prohibited substances and will present himself for an anti-drug control every 60 days. Congress will examine the report of the Special Committee for the revision of capital sentences according to the norm of habeas corpus. The Chairman of the Senate's Justice Committee must present a habeas corpus amendment within 15 days.
LABELLING OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES AND DRUNKEN DRIVING
Within twelve months of the law's coming into effect, it will be obligatory to indicate on the labels of alcoholic beverages that they are harmful to pregnant women because of malformations they may cause to the foetus and because they compromise the ability to drive. Anyone violating this law will be punishable with fines up to 10,000 dollars. Appropriations amounting to 125 million dollars are made for the years 1989-1991 for a pilot programme on the prevention of drunken driving. Appropriations amounting to 5 million dollars are made for a programme to convince candidates for driver's licenses to undergo an anti-drug test.
SUPPLEMENTARY APPROPRIATIONS
Supplementary appropriations are foreseen in the budget for the financial year ending on September 30, 1989 for 961.4 million dollars in budget authorisations and 500 million dollars in cash disbursements. The disbursements will be divided into the following items: Commerce, Justice and State Departments, 205 million; Labour, Health and Education Departments, 242 million; for the Agricultural Department's fight against drugs, 5 million; Transportation Department, in particular the Coast Guard, 24 million; Treasury Department and Post Office, in particular the customs programmes and the alcoholic beverages, tobacco and fire-arms agency, 20 million dollars. (continues with text no. ARC-987.ING)
