SUMMARY: Prohibitionists and anti-prohibitionists have a common goal: fight the drug traffic and reduce the consumption of drugs. But the first, with the war against drugs, have missed all their objectives. Why then persist in this error? The only explanation is a totalitarian temptation.

("CAMBIO 16", 9 April 1990)

I think by now everything has been said in favour of and against prohibitionism concerning drugs.

Leaving strictly utilitarian and demagogic positions aside, I think both "prohibitionists" and "anti-prohibitionists" have common aims, they want the reduction of the use of drugs, they want to fight the drug traffic and the crime that is produced by the drug traffic. On the other hand, the means with which they want to achieve these goals are different.

In order to avoid repeating things that have been said over and over, I will use a far simpler example to explain why I believe that the anti-prohibitionist policy is more effective in order to achieve those results. Tobacco has devastating effects on human health, it produces addiction and it causes tremendous social damage. Mortality throughout the world directly or indirectly related to tobacco smoking can in no way be compared to that related to drugs. In the USA alone, 320 thousand people die each year because of tobacco smoking, whereas just less than 4,000 die because of drugs.

On the basis of the same, identical considerations that induce to prohibit drugs, it would not only be legitimate, but even extremely urgent to ban the trade and the use of tobacco. Immediately after, estimating as above the level of social damage, it would be necessary to ban the trade and the use of alcohol. Only at the end of the list of social danger would the question of drugs come.

But we are all aware that banning tobacco smoking or alcohol would not make these two "bad habits" disappear, but would add the damage due to illegal traffic, which would immediately arise, to the damage already produced on health. Along with drug-dealers we would have tobacco-dealers and alcohol-dealers. Smokers, whether occasional smokers or addicted smokers, alcohol consumers, whether occasional drinkers or alcoholics, instead of going to the tobacconist or to the liquor store to satisfy their "bad habit", would have to go to the black market. Costs would go up, and to buy tobacco and alcohol many would be forced to commit robberies or to push tobacco or alcohol as well as to proselytize. I think nobody could question the fact that this picture, apart from the details, would correspond to reality in a perfect way.

Nobody today is so crazy as to suggest the banning of tobacco or alcohol. All governments are trying to reach this result with more effective means: by means of informative campaigns, by inducing people toward different patterns of behaviour, by banning publicity, by setting limits to the public use of these drugs.

Why, then, are these same considerations not good for other drugs, for narcotics?

Why isn't the "bad habit" of drugs made legal immediately, as with all other drugs? To legalize, I wish to underline, not to liberalize. The question is not, as some people say to discredit anti-prohibitionist positions, to make drugs available in super-markets. To legalize means to regulate and not, as is the case today, to transform the drug market into a jungle. Today drugs are almost liberalized: they are sold at the corner of every street, all it takes is the money to buy it.

Legalizing means, on the contrary, controlling, it means separating the drug-addict's social and health problem from the legal or criminal problem. To legalize means to find, for each country, according to the situation of its market and the different types of drug consumers, the proper balance between disincentivation of drugs and availability. In certain cases it will simply be a question of controlled distribution from the medical structures, of selling them with a prescription, or other forms of control. Moreover the price of drugs must be higher than its production cost. Thus, it will be possible to use the profits made with the sale for the rehabilitation of drug-addicts and for informative campaigns.

But in any case, this balance between the cost of drugs and its availability will have to prevent the illegal trade from being profitable, prevent the necessity to commit criminal acts or to proselytize in order to buy drugs.

It is therefore impossible to understand, from a theoretical point of view, and given the disastrous results of the "drug war", the persistence in this mistake, why the illegal drug-traffic is being consciously boosted, why the diffusion of drugs among the most fragile individuals is being incentivated, why the diffusion of drugs is being made easier, why the police and the magistrates are being allowed to remain paralysed, the latter forced, at this stage, to deal exclusively with drug problems.

There are, of course, difficulties of a psychological and political nature to completely alter a position that is adopted by all governments. On this subject the words of John Golibert, senator of West Bronx for 21 years, sound extremely convincing. "It's not easy, after having spent billions and billions od dollars, after having insisted and insisted for years, to admit that the path we had taken was all wrong. It's not easy to admit failure, to admit that the king is naked and to face crude reality". But this justification alone is not enough. Why, one wonders, expose yourself to a sure defeat, and continue to spend billions and billions?

There are only two possible solutions:

Prohibitionism is the new name for totalitarianism. Behind the will to safeguard people's health there is a secret temptation, unfortunately more and more real and present, to limit individual freedom. This has been done in the name of religion, in the name of class, in the name of the State, of the father-land, of revolution. Nowadays these myths follow a negative trend. And the demon of drugs is therefore perfectly suitable to achieve the same result.

Prohibitionism is a new alibi for imperialism. After the traditional enemy - communism - dissolved by itself, a new enemy was needed in order to enable armies to justify their existence, to enable the policy of the defence of democratic order to practise in the military "liberation" of other countries. The drug war, the "fraternal" military aid to countries afflicted by the drug traffic, is the proper alibi to persevere in the old habit of imperialism.

For both these aims drugs, drug-addicts and drug traffickers are needed.

Who, then, is against drugs?