Report drafted by Franco Corleone

(continues from text no.ARC-987.ING)

CONTENTS:

6. DRUGS AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON

The Data of the Permanent Observation Office on the Drug Phenomenon

Age

The Dead

The School

Work

AIDS

How Many Are There?

Drugs as a Source of Income and Police Operations

Criminality Among Minors

The Prisons

Are the Communities a Remedy?

7. THE PROPOSALS OF THE RADICALS

The Debate on the Revision of Law no.685 of 1975

8. CONCLUSION

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6. DRUGS AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON

Our purpose has been to report on the ideas that have emerged from the international debate, even if they have prevalently concerned the situation in the United States, because we think that as the analyses of the American system was for some an incentive to propose the bill in question, for others it may serve to avoid errors which are already under discussion in the United States. Furthermore the opinion is widely held that the drug situation in the United States prefigures what is likely to happen in Europe.

Particular consideration must be given to the Italian situation.

The Data of the Permanent Observation Office on the Drug Phenomenon

How many drug addicts are there in Italy? Who are they? It is clear to all that a precise answer cannot be given to these questions. But there is the possibility of an analysis according to the data furnished by the Permanent Observation Office on the Drug Phenomenon established in June 1984 at the Ministry of the Interior.

The data furnished mostly regard the drug addicts - in very large measure heroin addicts - who have been in contact with the various sanitary units, public and private, and with the therapeutic communities. The number of addicts treated in public or private units reached 33,060 in June 1988 growing from 22,856 in June 1984, 23,359 in June 1985, 24,619 in June 1986, 28,009 in June 1987.

Four fifths of these are males and only one fifth are females.

The same trend towards growth, even if the figures are lower, has been manifested in the residential therapeutic communities where the number served has increased from 4,373 in June 1984 to 7,527 in June 1988. Of these six sevenths are men and only one seventh women.

Age

It is extremely interesting to see the data concerning the age of these people. In comparison to some years ago the age of the addicts has increased (one should keep in mind that we are referring to those who have had recourse to the health services): In 1984 7.8% were between 16 and 18 years old; in 1988 this group has fallen to 4.04%; in 1984 again, 36.89% were from 19 to 22 years old; in 1988 this factor has fallen to 23.29%; in 1984 the

group between 23 and 25 years of age accounted for 27.31% while the 26 to 30 years old group accounted for 17.73%; in 1988 the former group were 31.20% and the latter 25.97%. We are therefore observing the users of the health services becoming chronic cases.

The Dead

On can also find these data in the notices of those dead from heroin: in recent years these people are on the average older which may demonstrate how the increase in deaths (803 in 1988 and already 800 at the beginning of September 1989) is in some degree to be attributed to the fact that many subjects who have used heavy drugs for many years have reached the limit. If our interpretation is true, the increase of deaths from drugs is not to be considered a proof that the phenomenon has spread. To avoid misunderstandings we should immediately say however that we too share the belief that there is a worsening of the phenomenon, but it is to be deducted from other things and not from this fact. What we cannot accept is the instrumentalisation of the drug addicts' death notices that often takes place: to be explicit, we would say it shows ignorance and immorality to utilise this fact in order to elicit harsher norms. Even the ex President of the Council Giovanni Goria (DC) seems to share our attitude: in h

is very famous letter to the 128 Christian Democratic senators he maintained, as do we, that even though the deaths from heroin are on the rise, attention to the data indicating a stabilisation of consumption would be merited and the parallel increase of deaths from previously contracted pathologies and from the physical debilitation of those who have been drug addicts for years. Such evaluations are confirmed by the data: the average age of the deceased in 1988 was 27 and 90% were males: From 1984 - 1986 the group most stricken was the  20 - 24 year olds; in 1987 the greatest number of dead were from 25 - 29 years old amounting to 197 cases (or 37.09 %).

The School

Important also are the statistics regarding school children which seem to be essentially stable: they were 15.4% of the addicts who turned for help to the health services (in 1984 15.69%). Those who attended junior high school were 55.60% in 1988 as against 57.63% in 1984. The corresponding percentages for senior high school were 15.65 in 1988 and 18.30 in 1988. University students made up 1.15% in 1988 and 1.65% in 1984. In the light of this data we see how the cultural level creates a barrier against heavy drugs. These levels of study are connected also to situations of being pushed aside or of maladaptation. We thus feel that we can say that the lack of measures to prevent students from abandoning school prematurely, by choice or by circumstances, has involuntarily created an area where the sale of heroin prospers.

Work

A look at the data regarding the professions shows that in 1987 alone 27.13% of the drug addicts analysed (28,009) were permanently employed, whereas 40.92% were unemployed, 10.02% underemployed and 6.75% looking for their first job. These data confirm those of previous years. Referring once again to 1984, which is to the first data collected by the Observation Office on the Drug Phenomenon, we find that 25.49% were employed, 40.59% were unemployed, 9.79% underemployed and 9.40% in search of their first job. The condition of unemployment or underemployment, even if it cannot be considered the only thing that leads to drug addiction, certainly is absolutely influential and in many cases can be the decisive factor.

AIDS

Prof. Ferdinando Aiuti, our "ally" in many battles, can certainly not be considered close to our anti-prohibitionist positions. Prof. Aiuti recently asked a very simple question from the pages of <> (November 8, 1989) which no politician of the majority coalition has yet answered: "Where are they going to put all the sero-positive people and drug addicts who will be sentenced for possessing drugs?". On this point the position of the noted immunologist is absolutely clear: "It is not possible for the law to change the habits of drug addicts in a few months nor that the infection from HIV can disappear in so short a time. If one wants to proceed along the road of the punishment and rehabilitation of the drug addict, from the point of view of hygiene it will be necessary to organise centres of rehabilitation for those ill with HIV that cannot be only the traditional kind (...). Despite the fact that no one is saying or writing it, almost all the existing communities, lay or or religious, and

the residences and institutes for AIDS victims as well, practice a selection based on two or three parameters: a fixed number of sero-positives, a fixed number of ex convicts or persons under house arrest, the exclusion of occasional prostitutes or unmarried mothers with children".

On reading these words and thinking about the law in question, it appears evident how inadequate the stated proposals are, even for realising the intentions of its proponents.

According to some data provided again by Prof. Aiuti, half of the drug addicts who use heroin are sero-positive and in the big cities this figure can reach 70%. Of these sero-positive people about 70% have another clinical condition and an associated chronic immunity deficiency. The estimates are that the sero-positive people in the ARC stage - that is just preceding AIDS itself - amount to no less than 25,000!

The most recent data coming from High Institute of Health state that at the moment in our country there are more than 3,000 AIDS cases.

We are firmly convinced that if the new law under consideration were to be approved the growth of AIDS would be unarrestable. This for a simple but strongly felt reason. It is clear that anyone who drugs himself, if he were to become pursued by the law, would avoid all situations where he could be identified as a drug addict. The first among such places would be the pharmacy. He would not buy syringes anymore but would exchange more often the available ones or perhaps that others procure. The consequences of such a situation must be clear to everyone.

How Many Are There?

From the data above one cannot establish the number of drug addicts in Italy. Workers in the field estimate, however, that only about 10% of these ask for help from the health services or the communities for addicts. Thus, considering only the consumers of heavy drugs and calculating that in a year at least 25% of these make use of at least two services, the drug addicts and the drug users (who are not addicted but occasionally take heavy drugs) would come to at least 300,000. Even if the process by which this figure is deduced is open to discussion, we are convinced that it is an extremely realistic estimate.

Much harder to calculate is the number of people who use the so-called light drugs. Giancarlo Arnao - one of the biggest experts in the field and the author of numerous publications, among them the famous <>, Feltrinelli 1978 - believes that an idea can be had from the quantity of drugs confiscated. Calculating that the police manage to lay hands on 10% of the drugs in circulation, and dividing the quantity in minimum doses, the users of so-called light drugs in Italy would be 1,600,000. If, as is much more probable, the anti-drug operations only succeed in stopping about 5.8 % of the substances in circulation, the figures would be doubled and the number of hashish and marijuana users would be 3,200,000.

It is not necessary to say what a rigid application of the law under consideration would mean.

Drugs As A Source Of Income And Police Operations

In view of this social situation it is clear that drugs are not only a means of escape, a detour, something that makes one feel like the others in a group, but it can be a source of profit. For most people it is a way of surviving, seeing that this is necessary to live and to have it one must push it. It is impossible to say how much can be earned with drugs. The levels of this market are much too differentiated and depend on numerous external variables. For example, the price of cocaine has dropped notably in recent years because of a large demand that has motivated its production. In New York, before the Bush plan, a kilogram of cocaine cost 12,000 dollars, but there you could also get it for 8,000 if a great quantity had arrived in town. At the beginning of the 80's, in New York again, you needed 60,000 dollars to buy a kilogram. In our country, according to a CENSIS study (<>) it was estimated that 100 lire invested in raw opium, the raw material for the production

of heroin, brought a return of 170,000 lire, or the multiplication of the capital layout by 1,700.

Gen. Soggiu, head of the Central Anti-Drug Service, estimates the value of drug traffic in our country at about 30,000 billion lire annually.

It is estimated that in the first half of 1988 the police forces charged 14,307 people with violating Law 685/75. Of these 11,933 were arrested. In the first half of 1987 11,271 people were charged with the same offence and 9,438 arrested. In the same way, the amount of hard drugs confiscated has increased without this causing a significant decrease in the sales or consumption of the substances: 355,572 kilograms of heroin in the first half of 1988 as against 143,374 kilograms in the first half of 1987 and 435,068 kilograms of cocaine in the first half of 1988 as against 111,654 kilograms in the first half of 1977.

Criminality Among Minors

In the light of the above facts, one conclusion presents itself spontaneously: considering that the application of the new law cannot be expected to stop the drugs traffic, there will be an increase in the tendency - already rather widespread - to use minors under 14 for direct sales who cannot be punished even by being sent to reformatories. The logical consequence of this choice will be to bind these minors to the organisation, which is to turn them into addicts. In the report of the Ministry of Justice on juvenile crime and delinquency we find the data that reveal this tendency: in the three-year period 1983-85 as against 1980-82 the number of minors convicted for drug pushing increased by 295%. One should consider that those convicted for theft decreased by 40% and by 60% for smuggling. And if one further considers the territorial statistics, it will be seen that we are watching a true recruiting of children for small crimes favouring the sale of drugs: two out of three persons convicted were charge

d with crimes taking place in one of the regions of the South; for the sale of drugs alone, 54.1% of the children convicted were from the South, 16.2% from Central Italy, and 29.7% from the North. Crimes of other kinds remain highly concentrated (e.g. in the South 63.48% of thefts, 11.3% in Central Italy, and 13.4% in the North). Once they have reached the age of 14, these children are no longer "usable" and are thus dismissed from pushing, but being by now highly addicted they become customers and remain in close contact with the drug traffic.

We find indirect confirmation of these data in the fact that the minors convicted are concentrated in the metropolitan areas of the South where the proportional quota is three times the average for the area: for example, 9.3% of the total of all convicted criminals in the South are children, but in Naples they are 28.98%. This phenomenon, furthermore, is beginning to involve with particular force the minors immigrated from North Africa. In the prison for minors of Casal del Marmo in Rome, more than 50% of those imprisoned last year were of foreign origin and almost all of them were convicted of selling drugs.

The Prisons

As of June 15, 1989, there were 34,565 convicts in Italian prisons. Of these 8,790 were considered to be drug addicts. As we know, the sero-positive test is not obligatory and so the data relating to it cannot refer to all the convicts. As of June 15 again, 2,115 convicts were sero-positive, 838 of them in the LAS stage, 142 in the ARC stage, whereas the number of actual AIDS cases was 49.

These statistics are absolutely alarming because in recent years there has been an increase of drug addicts in the penitentiaries: as of January 31, 1984 there were 4,044 of them in 41,686 (9.70%); as of March 30, 1985 there were 4,301 of them in 42.738 (10.06%); as of December 3, 1987 there were 5,221 in 30,555 (17.09%). In this case too, 90% of the drug addicts are males.

In the prison sector, keeping to the data furnished by the General Direction, for three years the drug addict problem has remained fairly stable. As of December 31, 1988, in a prison population of 31,077, 7,500 were drug addicts, 2,804 were sero-positive, 592 in the LAS stage, 172 in the ARC stage, 36 infected with AIDS. As of December 31, 1987, among 30,555 convicts there were 5,221 drug addicts, 3,014 were sero-positive, 564 in the LAS stage, 82 in the ARC stage and 26 had contracted AIDS.

As we have seen previously, in the United States it has been necessary to earmark conspicuous funds to bring the prison system up to satisfying what we could improperly call the new demand. It is clear that a new law to repress what was a previously tolerated and widespread practice will create, if it intends to be credible, the need for structures suitable to handle what the law calls for. With a wisecrack we could sum up the problem saying that we are entering a new golden age of prisons.

Are The Communities A Remedy?

Luigi Cancrini, professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University La Sapienza of Rome, in the Venice Conference of May 1988 on the prevention of drug addiction said that without wanting to set up rigid classifications drug addicts could be divided into four groups. The first group varies between 5% and 10% and is composed of those with reasonable mental balance who begin to drug themselves because of a sudden difficulty (typical might be a death that they could not bring themselves to accept). In this case it is a question of post-traumatic neuroses that cause a depression where the encounter with drugs leads to rapid addiction. The second group, a much wider one, is composed primarily of adolescents who are going through a family crisis. The addicts of this group are not particularly serious and do not use large quantities of drugs, but are anxious to exhibit their addiction. The third group is much more seriously disturbed psychologically and manifests a depressive pathology with strong shif

ts of mood. The fourth group is the most disturbed of all and Prof. Cancrini called them "sociopaths" - that is, people socio-culturally deprived in an important way with serious family disorganisation and a dangerous kind of addiction because it corresponds to an indifference in regard to their bodies and their lives. Cancrini's observations are very important because they clarify what is in danger of becoming a sort of prejudice in favour of a solution which is expected to liquidate the problem: the unfailing efficacy of therapeutic communities. The rehabilitation of the drug addict depends on the scientific selection of one of these four types, because specific therapies and treatments are needed. For the second type a family-oriented therapy, for the third a psychotherapy supported by medicines, and only for the fourth type is a community specifically indicated (<>, June 30, 1988).

Common sense alone tells us that Prof. Cancrini is right, and so to provide essentially undifferentiated treatments for drug addicts as foreseen in the law under consideration is very wrong. We wonder what kind of cure will be provided for those who are accused of smoking hemp.

The Proposals of the Radicals

Already back in 1979 when the Teodori bill was presented (Chamber Act 1077), the Radicals had expressed their opinions with regard to the drug problem.

The approach of this legislative initiative takes its point of departure from Law 685/75 that had been in effect for four years.

The intention was to clarify that mixed approach that wanted to be repressive, paternalistic and offer assistance all at the same time.

Many of the points under discussion at that time can still be considered valid today.

Taking up again the analysis of the Teodori bill, the question was posed of the liberalisation of cannabis consumption indicated as one of the motivating factors for the policy of removing penalties. This is based on several incontrovertible principles:

1) there is no cause and effect relation between the smoking of cannabis and criminal behaviour;

2) there is no cause and effect relation between the smoking of cannabis and mental illness;

3) there is no cause and effect relation between the use of cannabis and the consumption of dangerous drugs;

4) cannabis causes no physical addiction unlike legal substances (alcohol and tobacco); there is no cannabis drug addiction;

5) the acute toxic effect of cannabis is extremely low (international scientific literature has until now only one case of death definitely due to cannabis poisoning);

6) the chronic toxicity of cannabis is low (research on the effect of its heavy and prolonged use revealed no significant pathologies in the consumers);

7) in toto, the toxic effect of cannabis is distinctly inferior to those of alcohol and tobacco. The proposed law of 1979 also wanted a reclassification of narcotic substances and the elimination of "non-drugs".

It was thus proposed to eliminate cannabis and its derivatives from table II of art.12 of Law 685/75.

From table I of the same law it was then proposed again to eliminate the hallucinogens as a category apart from the pain-killers, while the amphetamine type of substances that excite were to be transferred to table II in order to leave only the addictive opiates in table I.

It did not seem scientifically and juridically correct to continue to equate coca leaves and the alkaloids extracted from them or the pain-killing type of hallucinogens with the opiates since it is known that the former are not addictive and there is no need to take them daily as opiate addicts must certainly do.

In table II the barbiturates are listed whose extremely serious effects are noted world-wide in scientific literature and which justifies their being included in the legislative regulations.

As a result of this remodelling of the tables there was a proposal for a new regulation for the sales of narcotic substances which tended to modify art.45 of the law in effect.

The accent was also put on the controlled distribution of narcotic substances that was to have two stages: one in which the addict's situation was verified and the other in which a document was issued certifying the existence of the condition.

Once in possession of the above-mentioned document, the person involved could obtain on his explicit request a card giving him the right to buy the substance directly from a pharmacy. Penal regulations were also entirely modified.

Lighter penalties were provided for so-called "small dealings".

There was a lightening of the penalties for the possession for sale of coca and hallucinogens in view of their being less dangerous and not under controlled distribution.

The lighter punishment for this last case was based on the fact that here there were in all probability users or user/small dealers since there was no alternative distribution foreseen as for opiates.

The adulteration of drugs, which is known to be a frequent cause of death from overdose, was made a specific aggravating circumstance.

As for information and education on drug addiction, it is maintained that these initiatives are incorrect when not part of a wider program for reform and education on health in general. To limit such actions to the "drug problem" means either to fall into disinformation or to induce involuntarily the need of a drug. From this point of view the social, public or cultural type of action should be directed not so much towards preventing drug addiction which is an effect, but the situation of personal, family or social distress that are its cause.

In 1980 the Radical Party had called a referendum to decide to overcome all the institutional obstacles and open a public debate on light drugs on which issue public opinion, above all, ought to be followed. Thus they presented a referendum proposal aimed at the liberalisation of hashish and marijuana to which 700,000 citizens adhered. The referendum asked for the abrogation of several norms contained in Law 685/75, in particular the following:

Art. 12 - Letter f) and no.2 (exclude cannabis and its derivatives from the tables of narcotics);

Art. 26 - Suppress the prohibition of the cultivation of cannabis;

Art. 27 - With regard to imported cannabis, suppress the obligation of samplings being taken by the customs.

In August 1988 a new bill was presented in the Chamber (Chamber Act no. 1077) designed primarily by Teodori which once again proposed the legalisation of Indian cannabis. The Federalist Group presented an analogous proposal in the Senate. Our purpose has been to criticise another incongruity in Law 685/75 where the prohibition of the cultivation and sale of Indian hemp and its derivatives is decreed - a prohibition which could only make sense in the attempt to stop its use but which is without any justification in a system that does not punish personal use.

Another Radical initiative is the bill to "legally regulate psychoactive substances in order to take the drug traffic away from criminal organisations" which was presented in the Senate in December 1988 and in the Chamber a week earlier (Senate Act 1484 and Chamber Act 3461). We mentioned this initiative in the introduction.

The Debate On The Revision Of Law 685 of 1975

"Muccioli is quite right to worry about the insistent talk of liberalising drugs" said Giuliano Amato (<>, July 17, 1988). "If we were to declare the use of drugs to be free, we would be saying that it is normal to use them and therefore normal to remain alone, to seek the help of others without finding it, to take refuge in our own depression which is often true isolation, caring for ourselves alone with drugs. (...) To liberalise drugs would be the last and most disastrous monument that the mistaken individualism we have fallen into in recent years has erected to the solitude of us all". The National Secretary of the Young Socialists Federation, Michele Svideroschi, replied to Amato (<> July 12, 1988): "If on the one hand I appreciate the efforts of Muccioli at San Patrignano and the many communities concerning themselves with the rehabilitation of young drug addicts, I yet believe that this work cannot resolve the failure all over the world of the prohibitionist policies in the

fight against drugs which do not and have not stopped criminal trafficking. If one replies to the worsening of the situation with a hardening of prohibition, with repressive violence or military force, it could result in an ineffective remedy worse than the disease and turn the war against drugs into a war against drug users, against those who are weakest and suffer most". A year later Svideroschi seemed to be more in line with his party: "The work of opposition to the exponential spread of drugs today demands a test of great responsibility and understanding in launching an articulated strategy by means of the new norms (...). In question are the future and the liberty of the national and international communities, emancipation from dependence and isolation (...)." (<>, September 9, 1989).

We wanted to report on this difference of positions that emerged among the Socialists (and then was patched up) because we have reason to believe that many, not only Socialists but of the majority in general, have participated in the debate on the new law by giving in to the temptation of self-censorship. If this were not the case the many critical voices, which certainly have not been heard only in the ranks of the left, would not have been sold so short by as variegated a political group as composes our majority. This is a truth that is susceptible to a few exceptions. Aside from the by now famous remark of Giovanni Goria (DC) ("I think that the DC is mistaken about drugs... if you want everyone to accept the conclusions of a debate, you must allow everyone to take part in it", in <>, October 20, 1989; and "In the party there has not been enough discussion about it", in <>, October 21, 1989) we would like to recall Tina Anselmi's undisguised position declared in <sto>>, September 30, 1989: "I will not accept party discipline. (...) I am also against the administrative solutions provided for in the bill such as revoking drivers' licences, passports and the obligation of appearing every evening at the police station. They will not serve to dissuade the consumer. All of this will only helps to widen the clandestine area". The DC Senator Domenico Rosati has declared in favour of Anselmi's position. Senator Paolo Cabras is the one who has expressed a more general uneasiness among the DC in calling this "a law whose paternity I leave to others, it is not our kind of thing. It only marks up a point for Craxi. But can one sell a law only out of respect for a pact?" (<>; October 20, 1989).

Among the positions that should have given the majority food for thought we can, for example, cite that of Raffaele Bertoni, President of the National Association of Judges, who has very clearly declared the project under discussion to be unworkable: "As it now stands, if the new law on drugs were to go into effect it would create disastrous effects on the judicial and the prison system which are already in great difficulty. It would risk not being applied because it provides for disproportionally harsh penalties that no judge would feel like adopting. (...) The number of cases would increase very greatly. Unfortunately in Italy laws are made which are highly dubious to say the least..."

The words of Amato Lamberti too, the director of the Permanent Observation Office on the Camorra, ought to throw into some doubt those of the majority who say they are undecided: "Today the availability of drugs, of all drugs, on the market is excessive, much superior to the actual demand as we can see from the fact that the increased confiscation has had no effect on prices nor on the quantities... There are no filters, no controls, no waiting: it is enough to have the cash in hand, no matter how you got it, to buy drugs at any of the thousands of sales points open night and day... The cause of this de facto free circulation of drugs is prohibition which put the drug market into the hands of organised crime. In no other way would it have been possible to achieve the same result - that is to make drugs a mass consumption product available to all in greatly excessive quantities... Prohibition thus generates a series of perverse results connected to each other that turn drugs not only into a factor of di

sintegration but also of social destruction and thus of the alteration of economic dynamics. One must start to think of different and differentiated strategies to confront with different kinds of logic too the various aspects of the phenomenon".

The opinion of Giuseppe Di Gennaro (the assistant to the secretary of the UNO's Agency for the Fight Against Drugs), even if in our opinion not entirely consistent, deserves consideration: "I am against penal sanctions. I say that to use punishment is no use. To use other means of dissuasion like revoking the driver's licence strikes me as absolutely ridiculous because if the drug addict reacted positively to the revoking of his driver's licence it would mean that addiction is not compulsive behaviour that cannot be controlled. The whole thing would be too easy".

The debate surrounding this bill up to now has been often polemical in tone. We feel obliged to recall the fact that the government came up with the idea of pronouncing a decree to surmount the conflict in the debate; the idea faded away thanks to the indignation of many members of Parliament from various parties. In an editorial (October 1, 1989), the editor of <>, Giovanni Valentini, had this to say about the affair: "As we know, the knottiest problem regards punishment for drug addicts and their rehabilitation. In the grip of a repressive rapture which, under the influence of the American crusade, contradicts their official position of the recent past, the PSI has launched an ultimatum to the majority: either the law is passed as it is or it all goes up in smoke. And faced with the resistance of the opposition, in particular that of the Communists and the Radicals together with the reservations of the DC left and a large part of the Catholic sphere, the government has not hesitated to go

as far as putting together a decree in order to cut through the log-jam of amendments and leap over the barriers of obstructionism".

Reservations in regard to the law have been expressed not only by newspapers well known to be on the left. Highly eloquent was an article by Lisa Tornabuoni in <> of September 24, 1989 entitled "Promise Pushers": "In this way a devastating tragedy of contemporary civilisation is insulted, banalised, and minimised by petty exploitation; it is simplified and schematised by conflicting and similarly elementary solutions. The situation is confused by blind solutions: the supporters of the idea that liberalisation of drugs is dangerous want to ignore the fact that the trade in drugs is already free in Italy, that anyone who wants them can find them easily, can buy them when and where he wants, that he rarely encounters risks and dangers, that the only obstacle may be the lack of money. The drug tragedy is turned into a hoax by unfounded certainties (...) Italy's police, judicial system and prisons are not at all adequate for the goals; if today they cannot handle even the simplest common crimes s

uch as theft and robbery they will hardly be able to cope efficiently with the new widespread ones".

Another famous editorial writer, Antonio Gambino, proposed in the columns of <> (a weekly magazine, ed.) an analysis that ran parallel with another situation which, however "strange", we consider noteworthy: "Twenty two years ago, when Che Guevara went into the Andes to test his desperate revolutionary projects, the Americans proposed to the La Paz government to ship them a certain number of helicopters. Bolivian President Ovando replied: "tenemos que hacerlo a piè" - we have to do it on foot. Because he guessed, and quite rightly, that the way to defeat someone who had come to arouse the disinherited was not to fight him with methods that would have to appear hostile to the campesinos, being capitalist ones, but to isolate him progressively by exploiting his extraneousness to the local situation. Leaving aside all questions of merit, it is this same method and not the one of flamethrowers that should be used in the war against drugs. Unfortunately however, even many European and Italian poli

tical leaders, contrary to the old Bolivian general, now seem ready to follow the Americans on the road of demagoguery and crusading". Like Don Ciotti, cited at the beginning of this report, Don Mario Picchi has also worked for many years for the rehabilitation of drug addicts. His opinion on the direction taken in America and in Italy by the drug war is as clear as that of Don Ciotti: "I have many doubts about the sanctions and the punishments foreseen for the drug addicts, because punishment cannot make a sick person well and because I think a democracy has other alternatives for dealing with drug addicts than building more prisons and paramilitary camps. In any case, the idea may make sense in the United States, but that doesn't at all mean it makes sense in Italy too". (<>, September 29, 1989). On this issue Don Picchi also spoke out in <>, No.40/1989, (a Catholic periodical, ed.): "Certainly a man who drugs himself is not a free man, but will a strong law be of any use? I

am afraid not".

The same opinion is held by Mons. Bruno Frediani, vice president of Caritas (the Catholic assistance agency, ed.): The new bill on drugs, in its punishing of the consumer, is a step backwards: in fact, it seems to have a stronger desire to answer the needs of the well-off and the righteous thinkers to have physical and moral protection than to cope with the real consequences of the drug drama for everyone". (<>, October 13, 1989). Also the ACLI (Christian Association of Italian Workers) has taken a critical position. In an open letter to Gennaro Acquaviva (who had made an appeal to Catholics against drugs) published in <> on October 14, 1989, ACLI's president, Giovanni Bianchi, wrote: "(...) we do not believe that the illicit has to be punished when we are faced with the drama of drug addiction. Punishment spreads and worsens the isolation without, furthermore, furthering the awareness of illicitness".

In the Catholic sphere another important voice raised was that of the AGESCI, better known as the boy scouts, whose president, Titta Righetti, said: "The law we are fighting is based on a behavioural philosophy of discipline-punishment, whereas to educate means to deal with the need of a sense of values that comes from the young people".

A strong critical note was also struck by Father Ernesto Balducci who, while not close to our position, said: "And so there are law bills in the works that aim at making the drug addict a criminal too. I too am against the liberalisation solution for the simple fact that the drug addict is, by definition, the citizen who is most lacking in the essential psychic conditions needed for exercising liberty. Deep within in himself he is asking society for help. I consider that juridical expedients would be opportune that place the addict in the moral position of having to opt for a place in a therapeutic community. But one should be aware that harsher penalties will not help to defeat the evil if only because of the simple fact that the drug addict is only the weak link in a chain that winds through all of national and international society". (<>, September 15, 1989).

We maintain that this law leaves little room for good intentions and that those therefore who believe that it particularly aims at rehabilitation and not at repression are deceiving themselves. Sen. Libero Gualtieri wrote in <> of September 19, 1989: "Between prison (which nobody advocates) and a reprimand by the judge, there is room for intermediate sanctions capable of dissuading those who are just setting out on the drug adventure and who must be absolutely pushed back. We must work within this area". These positions of entirely good faith are today absolutely dangerous because they run the risk of supporting a political design which, being unmanageable, no will then be able to control. Our hope is that the opinions reported here can help to supplement the reflections that can bring logic back to a debate that has largely lost track of it.

Conclusions

For the purpose of a minority report that has examined so many and such complex questions, one cannot refrain from analysing the text article by article on a single premise: the tenacity of the opposition has had the merit of bringing to the surface the differences of opinion within the majority, and in particular within the DC. But it has also forced the modification of many points of the government's and the limited committee's original text. This result of ours thus keeps us from commenting on several legislative and conceptual "pearls" which were opposed during the debate.

Many contested points have thus lost their specific points of reference, but this is not to be ascribed to the merits of the majority which for a long time took the attitude of the "stone guest", as if it had the custody of silence, but to the determination with which we have forced a confrontation with all those who have been subjected to a veritable diktat.

The first nine articles are on the whole a bureaucratic weighing down of the anti-drug apparatus. The only positive norms are the ones we proposed and which were accepted due to their indisputable validity: for example, art.I, par.7 that foresees the establishment of a National Co-ordinating Committee for Anti-Drug Action. It establishes that every year, by January 31, the President of the Council of Ministers shall report to Parliament the data relating to the state of drug addiction in Italy, on the strategies that have been adopted, on the objectives that have been reached and on the directions that will be followed.

Every year, therefore, the moment comes for discussing the results and, in the face of certain failure, to propose anew a different course of action. We will have to keep watch to make sure that this norm is not overlooked as was the last paragraph of art.1 of Law 685.

Art.2 defines new prerogatives for the Minister of Health and establishes a Central Service for Addiction to Alcohol, Narcotics and Psychotropic Drugs. This article contains regulations on the sale and advertising of strong alcoholic drinks and, even if indirectly, the concept of equalising legal and illegal drugs. There are provisions for the processing of data relating to the number of public and private services active in the alcohol and drugs sector, to the financing each of them receives, as well as to the number of persons receiving assistance and the results obtained by the work in rehabilitation and prevention. At last it will be possible to compare figures rather than good intentions.

Anyone wanting to evaluate our findings can compare the present complete re-writing of the article dealing with the Central Service for Addiction Alcohol, Narcotics and Psychotropic drugs with the preceding version of the limited committee.

Articles 3 and 4 contain precise details proposed by us. Art.5 cannot help but cause worry in regard to new prerogatives granted to the Ministry of the Interior which will tend to concern itself with both international agreements and with the entire range of drug-repression activity, and with regard to the establishment of anti-drug agencies abroad whose tasks are vague and certainly dangerous.

Articles 6,7 and 8 contain nothing particularly noteworthy except perhaps for a worsening of the bureaucracy. Art.9 refers to so-called chemical precursors...

Articles 10 and 12 regard the re-cycling of "dirty" money deriving from the drug traffic, the investment of illicit proceeds and the extension of anti-mafia laws to associations operating in the illegal drug trade. Our objections to these norms are based on doubts of their effectiveness and fears that inadequate measures will be here applied with the single aim of reassuring a disoriented public opinion.

Art.11 has already been discussed in the introduction. Perhaps the only thing to add is that declarations of principle and prohibitions are contrary to the respect for personal responsibility and substitute the commitment for the solution of social problems.

Article 12 is the "triumph of severe penalties" for the drug traffickers. The proposed measures are so untenable that even the most ferocious supporters of punishment have been obliged to accept for the less serious cases a reduction of the penalties to "one to six years" and "six months to four years" for "light" and "heavy" drugs offences respectively.

Even those writing the majority report expressed a favourable opinion on the elimination of life in prison which had been proposed by the limited committee. One should emphasise however the symbolic value inherent in the expectation that a penalty would be condemned by a vote of the Chamber of Deputies because of its juridical incivility.

But the greatest incongruity is that the distinction among the penalties is based on "the means, the way or the circumstances of the action as well as on any other circumstance pertaining to the person of the condemned party". Obviously there is being taken into account the "quality and quantity of the substances" without meaning to cast aspersions on the coherence of the position of those who so hotly fought against the concept of the moderate quantity.

Another serious thing, however, is the reduction of punishment for a new kind of penitent. The citation of complicity has been attenuated in the text, but in practice extremely serious mechanisms of involvement or blackmail may be produced.

Article 13 provides for administrative sanctions for those possessing narcotic or psychotropic drugs in quantities not exceeding average daily doses. There has still not been found anyone able to explain and define the difference between the average daily dose and the "moderate quantity".

Administrative sanctions consist in the suspension of driver's licences, passports, gun licenses, confinement to the community of residence. The prefect has the authority to impose sanctions. These sanctions can be imposed at most twice. If the facts concern the use of cannabis derivatives and "there exist factors leading to the supposition that the subject will in the future abstain of repeating the offence, the magistrate will on one occasion and one occasion only substitute the sanctions with a warning not to use the substances again and explaining the damaging consequences that will otherwise result and put the case in the files.

In the preceding text these acts were the prerogative of a lower magistrate. But a question remains: what happens if the prefect is not convinced that cannabis are harmful? Will he be moved to a different post?

Article 14 provides penal sanctions that coincide with the administrative ones beyond the duration of which there can be added the obligation of presenting oneself at least twice a week at a police or Carabinieri station. Foreseen in the same article is a new category of crime denominated "the abandoning of syringes" with arrest of up to six months. It is not so much the imprecision of the category which we contest as the inability to learn from the experiences of other places such as Amsterdam where syringes are distributed gratis just in order to avoid the spreading of AIDS.

This article also provides for imprisonment of up to three months for anyone violating the prescriptions deriving from the penal or administrative sanctions that we have described. (This suffices to give the lie to those who maintain that there is no prison for drugs users.)

Article 15 , which regards aiding and abetting the use of narcotic and psychotropic drugs, confirms the line of harshening of the penalties.

Article 16 regards specific aggravating circumstances.

Article 17 regards the aid to be given in the case of death

or injuries to the drug user.

Article 18 regards instigation and proselytising.

Article 19 regards the ban on advertising. This provision arouses significant concern for the possibility that it may establish a new crime of opinion.

Article 20 regards accessory penalties.

Article 21 regards the suspension of sentences of imprisonment.

Article 22 provides for the simulated purchase of drugs, delays or omissions in issuing arrest warrants, or warrants for confiscation, the seizure of ships and aircraft suspected of carrying drugs and the disposition of goods confiscated during anti-drug operations. All of these measures, which are being employed in other countries and which have certainly not weakened the drug traffic, carry the risk of further corrupting the police organisations.

Article 23 regards educational initiatives in schools and military installations. They also provide for a norm that has caused much discussion - that concerning draftees who are defined as "inclined towards drugs" and who can be considered temporarily unfit for a maximum of three years and also reported to the USL (local health units, ed.) to begin their "voluntary" treatment for social rehabilitation under the public service for drug addiction.

Article 24 provides for preventive action by the regions.

Article 25 regards the initiatives for prevention, cure and rehabilitation. This article not only refers to voluntary cures, whereby the doctor and the judicial authorities are obliged to notify the public service for drug addiction, but also to enforced cures.

The final articles regards all the procedures concerning the therapeutic program and the financing of the law.

If the law is applied indiscriminately we will have tens of thousands of administrative and penal procedures. If, instead, the law is applied selectively and according to class, we will find ourselves once more in an arbitrary situation where the equality of the citizens is violated.

Besides the mediation and the compromise that have been determined, the fact remains that imprisonment is an impending prospect which is accompanied by these new figures of the suspicious trial without guarantees and of the intermittent trial. Not only the prefect but the judge as well is transformed into a figure half way between a policeman and an expert in social rehabilitation. Then too, the criterion of the average daily dose is inapplicable to the derivatives of cannabis, and so, to use the same provisions for substances which cannot be compared will produce, de facto, as we have already maintained, more severe punishments for the consumers of so-called light drugs who obviously will not be able to request rehabilitating treatment and thus will inevitably be incriminated.

The debate which has arisen around this proposal to amend law 685 has also brought very much attention to the anti-prohibition ideas.

It is an important indication that the Communist group has presented amendments to separate "hash" from heroin. This is an attempt to find different ways of social containment of the phenomenon in order to oppose the dangerous juxtaposition that their clandestine use imposes on hashish and heroin. The proposal to remove penalties for small-scale commerce in cannabis is thus considered a practicable way.

We are facing the breakdown of the ideological hypocrisy that had characterised the debate even if such theories as those of Savater and Thomas Szasz are still considered excessive. The anti-prohibition stand that is beginning to be significantly present on the international scene with such organisations as CORA (Radical Anti-Prohibition Coordination) and the International Anti-Prohibition League (IAL) has a very heavy commitment. The road to the legalisation of drugs still requires more confrontations and discussions concerning myths disguised as certainties which assert that drug addiction will stay the same even after legalisation.

We ought to manage to broaden the range of the discussion and deal with problems that are only apparently distant, such as the relationship that many countries have with the production of drugs. There relationships are often determined by our economic choices and so it is necessary to support these countries economically in exchange for the destruction of such crops as coca leaves. On this issue we completely agree with the analysis of Judge Giuseppe Di Lello (in <> of November 18, 1989): "There can be no serious solutions to the problem of drugs that do not take into consideration the deep causes of the disastrous economic and social situation of the Third World (...); it is quite right to assert the urgency of change in the economic relations and, in particular, the protectionist practices of the Western countries that have played such a large part in the drop in prices of products such as coffee or tin with the consequent encouragement of the cultivation of coca." And further: "The

ideological character of Western prohibition and the real economic interests underlying it can be read, specularly, in the clear and progressive growth of "legal drugs" in Third World countries in inverse proportion to what is found in "advanced countries" producing the same substances. Medicines are being dumped on the Third World whose sale is not authorised in the countries that produce them, just as the use of tobacco and alcohol is encouraged by publicity campaigns that are inadmissible in the exporting countries. In Africa tabagism increases at 4% annually while among the youth the mixed use of alcohol and barbiturates "made in Europe or America" is spreading.

But the task we have immediately before us is to repel the challenge of those who want to revert to the past. In fact to impose "only" administrative sanctions or penal ones other than incarceration such as limiting freedom of movement, obligatory residence, to prohibit leaving the country - all of this will have the result of forcing the addict to have daily contact with the pusher in order to keep within the limits of the "average daily dose". The risk of being stopped by the police who the law impels to a generalised repressive action will increase the possibilities of passing from administrative sanctions to penal ones and so to imprisonment.

Furthermore the greater risk that the law creates will increase drug prices and the need of money and this will increase crimes that will produce racist attitudes in the citizens against addicts and lack of confidence in a government incapable of stopping violent actions such as theft, bag-snatching and robbery.

By means of the essential amendments we present, we will appeal to the conscience of every single senator to evaluate the reasons of justice and humanity on the one hand and the claims of arrogance on the other.

In the face of a crisis imposed by reason of party politics that has serious consequences on the rights of citizens, the nature of the state and the guarantees of individual and collective freedom, we feel ourselves to be the bearers of lay values, of tolerance and solidarity. We do not intend to conduct a defensive battle simply to oppose further injustices being done to drug addicts in prison, but to affirm forcefully the claims of legality.

Franco Corleone reporting for the minority.

(*) The responsibility for the text of this report is obviously entirely that of him who has signed it; but it is the fruit of a collaboration of the many who have worked energetically during the debate in the assembled Commissions, and to present and illustrate the hundreds of amendments that have blocked the passage of the bill in a very restricted time span.

Special thanks go to Gaetano Benedetto, parliamentary assistant of the European Federalist Group of the Chamber of Deputies and to the sociologist Guido Blumir.

(The End)