The reasons:

1. The banned drugs are widely available on an ever-growing black market.

2. The prohibition policy has proved a failure. This failure has not been recognized by a change in the legislation of individual countries, neither by the international bodies - like the United Nations - which formulate policies on drugs.

3. Prohibition has created the black market for drugs and, consequently, the criminal organizations that profit from it.

4. Drug-trafficking is a multinational racket that extends from North America to Europe, the Middle East, Asia, North Africa and, above all, Latin America.

5. The criminal organizations which control the drugs business - the various syndicates, Triads, mafias and families - are a threat to the general public and also to political stability. The repressive action taken by government agencies only aggravates the situation.

6. Prohibition has transformed what was a personal choice and question of health into a worldwide problem of dramatic proportions. The crime it engenders constitutes a threat to the safety, the freedom and the lives of public citizens.

7. Bad laws, even if made with good intentions, have never had such a disastrous effect since Prohibition was introduced in the United States in 1919.

8. The latter-day prohibitionism has turned our cities into battlegrounds, and is unable to save those it sought to protect. Usersof hard drugs aredriven to crime and are prey to many diseases, the worst of which is AIDS. Occasional drug-users risk going to prison. Drug addicts have to resort to crime to pay for their habit. And the lives of ordinary citizens are constantly endangered.

9. The entire world has to pay the inestimable price of banning certain drugs, while the advertising and sale of other drugs such as tobacco and alcohol is permitted. Laws banning drugs are of no benefit either to society or the individual, and they actually threaten our freedom.

The aims:

We, the undersigned, present at the founding of the International Anti-Prohibitionist League, hereby commit ourselves to the following objectives:

A. To set up an organization comprising scientific, social and political bodies and individuals from these fields, with the same objectives as the International Anti-Prohibitionist League.

B. To inform people about the drug laws, of the damage the current prohibition policy has done and the effect it has had on crime.

C. To oppose the prohibitionist drugs policy currently adopted by the United Nations and its various agencies, and also the legislation in international agreements.

D. To undertake, both nationally and internationally, the necessary action to abolish the prohibition policy, and support all other action to this end.

The founder members:

Marie Andrée Bertrand, president, member of the Radical Party, professor of Criminology at Montreal University (Canada); Rosa Del Olmo, vice-president, professor of Criminology at Caracas University (Venezuela); José Luis Diez Ripollez, vice-president, professor of Criminal Law and Dean of the Faculty of Law at Malaga University (Spain); Remo Di Natale, vice-president, professor of Political and Juridical Sciences at the University of San Andres de la Paz (Bolivia); Lester Grinspoon, vice-president, professor of Psychiatry at Harvard University, Boston (USA); Marco Pannella, vice-president, member of the European Parliament, member of the Radical Party (Italy); Ralph F. Salerno, vice-president, former Head of the Anti-Drug Squad of the New York Police Department (USA); Peter Cohen, executive secretary, sociologist, director of the research programme on drug addiction in Amsterdam (Holland); Anthony Henman, executive secretary, ethnologist, member of the State Council on Drugs (Great Britain); Marco Taradash,

executive secretary, member of the European Parliament and member of the Radical Party (Italy); Georg Thamm, executive secretary, journalist, founder of the German Association for Research into the treatment of drug addiction (Germany); Kevin Zeese, executive secretary, lawyer, vice-president of the Drug Police Foundation (USA); Bruce Alexander, psychologist at Burnaby University (Canada); Georges Apap, Public Prosecutor in Valence (France); Giancarlo Arnao, doctor (Italy); Manuela Carmena Castrillo, magistrate, founder of the "Alternative Platform on Drugs" (Spain); Luigi Del Gatto, doctor (Italy); Juan Fernandez Carasquilla, magistrate and member of the State Council (Columbia); Carlos Gonzales Zorilla, professor of Criminal Law at Barcelona University (Spain); Nick Harman, chief editor of "The Economist" (Great Britain); Pierre Joset, lawyer, leader of the "European Movement for the Normalization of Drug Policies" (Switzerland); Amato Lamberti, sociologist at Naples University and director of the "Observ

atory on the Camorra" (Italy); Roger Lewis, sociologist, external member of the Anti-Mafia Commission of the Italian government (Great Britain); Luigi Manconi, sociologist at Palermo University (Italy); Antonio Martino, economist at Rome University (Italy); José Mirtenbaum, anthropologist, member of the National Commission for the substitution of coca plantations (Bolivia); Ethan Nadelmann, historian at Princeton University, New Jersey (USA); Eric Picard, psychiatrist (Belgium); Westey Pomeroy, police official, director of the Miami Drugs Research Center (USA); Robert Randall, writer, secretary of the "Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics" (USA); Micheline Roelandt, psychiatrist (Belgium); José Manuel Sanchez Garcia, police official (Spain); Wijnand Sengers, psychiatrist at Rotterdam University (Holland); Richard Stevenson, economist at Liverpool University (Great Britain); Massimo Teodori, former member of the Italian Parliament, member of the Radical Party (Italy); Jef Ulburghs, priest, member of the Europea

n Parliament (Belgium); Ambrogio Viviani, member of the Italian Parliament (Italy); Henk Jan Van Vliet, lawyer, director of the "Metropolink" Study and Research Centre (Holland); Govert Van De Wijngaart, director of the project for alcohol and drug prevention in the City of Utrecht (Holland); Jacob Winslow, sociologist at Copenhagen University (Denmark).