ABSTRACT: On the basis of the failure of the "war on drugs", Taradash sets an antiprohibitionist strategy aimed at regulating drugs in the respect of personal liberties, reducing the number of drug users and generally speaking subtracting vaster areas of the world to "narcocracy" against the plain and simple capitulation to the drug traffickers. In reply to the criticism which is normally advanced by prohibitionists against the legalization of drugs, the author underlines that the experience of prohibition on alcoholic beverages in the U.S. is the demonstration of the benefits of a regulated market with respect to the costs of the free criminal market. After having underlined the fact that depenalization alone, while guaranteeing each person's right to use of his body freely without causing damage to others, does not offer a solution to the medical and criminal problem, the author describes the different models of legalization which have emerged from the international debate: the free drug market (Friedman-S

tevenson); the "tax and control" system (Teodori parliamentary bill); the theory of passive trade (Caballero). He then analyses in detail a series of pilot experiences (the Netherlands, Liverpool and Zürich) based on the idea of "harm reduction", and the most significant political turnabouts in the direction of a reform of the prevailing prohibitionist positions (resolutions of the European Parliament and of the Frankfurt Convention). In the conclusive part, the author points to the risk that, in order to confront the threats of the drug trade, the world could once again plunge into the catastrophe of a violent and authoritarian irrationalism.

(LEGALIZZARE LA DROGA - UNA RAGIONEVOLE PROPOSTA DI SPERIMENTAZIONE, a cura di Luigi Manconi, testi di Arnao, Ferrajoli, Manconi, Pisapia, Taradash, Feltrinelli Editore, Milano 1991)

When the war has failed, is capitulating to the enemy the only alternative, or is a peaceful, nonviolent victory possible? The problem the antiprohibitionists want to give an answer to could be formulated as follows: a) given that certain personal behaviours linked to the use of given products can prejudice the physical or mental health of a person, with the relative effects on the social life, b) is it necessary and inevitable to give a free hand to organized crime and jeopardize the security of all citizens, the effectiveness of the public administration, the honesty and transparency of the political life, the certainty of the rule of law, in one word, democracy to c) try - in vain - to eliminate such products from the market? Or is it possible to regulate the substances which can cause toxicomania in the respect of the individual liberties and reform the interests of society? Also: is a liberal policy aimed at the reduction of the number of users of legal and illegal drugs possible? Or, to use a more dram

atic language: is it possible to develop an effective drug policy without endangering democracy and without paving the way - in ever vaster areas of the world - to a regime of "narcocracy"?

1. A few answers to the prohibitionists

The arguments used by the prohibitionists to elude an open discussion on the legalization of drugs are basically four. The first is in defence of prohibition: it hasn't worked because until now there hasn't been the actual will to make it work, and because the necessary cooperation on an international scale has lacked. The argument is fragile. First of all, why should the reasons which have to this moment prevented the "necessary cooperation" suddenly disappear? While the corruption of the governments and of the officials operated by the organizations of drug traffickers is one of the main causes of the problem, an international cooperation is downright impossible: removing corruption is at the same time the premise and the objective of a successful strategy. If, on the other hand, the resistance originates from doubts and contrasts on the effectiveness of the repressive policy, with which weapon or authority will dissenting nations and governments be forced to conform to a unified anti-drug agency? But the

weakest point of the argument lies elsewhere: even if all the states of the world agreed to eliminate the drug traffic, there would be no greater guarantee of success than the one which all the states of the world, which all punish theft and homicide, obtain through the repression of these crimes. A universal resolve is not enough to eliminate the quest for easy money (or to elude the social causes of illegal behaviours).

The second argument advanced by the prohibitionists is directed against the consequences of legalization. They object that the use of drugs would increase drastically, that the harm caused by the increased use of the old drugs and of the new ones which would hit the market would not be outweighed by the greater safeness of the legal use, and that such harm would be immensely greater than the social costs which legalization would cause to drop (organized crime, delinquency, corruption, etc.) Prohibitionists lack any theoretical or practical evidence to support these arguments. On the contrary, today antiprohibitionists can blame the prohibitionist policy for a constant growth in the number of users of illegal drugs, of the number of countries and even of the continents affected, for the return on the market of long since disappeared drugs (such as cocaine), for the introduction of new drugs, more dangerous for the health (such as crack). Though limited, antiprohibitionist-oriented experiences (such as the fre

e sale of hashish and marijuana in the Netherlands or the production for personal use in Alaska) prove that a regulated market expands less than a market void of any control such as the one which develops with the prohibitionist policy.

The prohibitionists' third argument questions the practical feasibility of legalization. They say - and it is true - that the system could work only with an international, or rather planetary agreement, and this is impossible. In fact, a) this applies also to prohibition, and the constant appeals to international cooperation prove the lack of this requirement; b) one thing is "harmonizing" the health policies and another is harmonizing the police forces, the armies, the rules and the repressive apparata; while repression calls for a strict coordination, health strategies on the contrary benefit from the diversity of the approaches and of the experimentation; c) it is easier to reach an agreement involving the EEC and the U.S., through the usual political procedures, than defeating the crime and corruption generated by the drug traffic; d) those who maintain that the international community will never be in able to modify its political choices show scarce confidence in democracy.

The fourth and last argument used by the prohibitionists, their secret weapon, is the ethical one, or rather, the Ethical one. Defeated in terms of rational confrontation and of facts, prohibitionists discover the chart of Values, of Man, of a Healthy Society and of several other capital abstractions. The Absolute cannot accept critical confrontations, it is true, yet its interpreters often miss the target. The objection is easy: if Values are at stake, why prohibit certain drugs and not all of them? Tobacco and alcohol kill a hundred times more than heroin, for example. An odd thing it would be indeed, if an opponent of the death penalty campaigned against guillotine but not against the electric chair. The typical answer is that the legalization of a vice does not justify the attempt to legalize others. This is where Ethics become pragmatic. However at this point the secret weapon has become a dummy pistol. Precisely the example of alcohol (thanks to the disastrous precedent of prohibition on alcohol in the

United States of Al Capone) reveals the benefits of a regulated market compared to the added costs of the free criminal market and of the harm caused by the failure of repression.

2. Scales and small scales

Until not long ago, the opponents of the prohibitionist laws on drugs generally proposed as an alternative the depenalization of the consumption of hard drugs on the one hand, and of the small trade and consumption of cannabis and its derivatives (hashish and marijuana, soft drugs, or, according to the radicals' definition, "non drugs") on the other. Breaking the commercial link between cannabis and heroin in the criminal market, and the sociological one between criminal milieu and cannabis smokers - imposed by laws which bring hundreds and hundreds of youngsters in jail (the University of crime, the only efficient Italian university, it was said) was perceived as a key factor. This would have avoided the passage from one substance to another and a large diffusion of heroin. Marco Pannella, who was the first to introduce the question of drugs in the national political agenda, opposed the bill on drugs under discussion in 1975 (in his own way, letting himself be arrested while smoking a joint), argumenting th

at the ban on the trade of soft substances would have paved the way for heroin (1).

The legislators of 1975 attached little importance to this forecast, and shortly after the heroin market had become the most important factor of the criminal activity. Throughout the years, it radically transformed even the nature of the traditional criminal organizations, such as the mafia, the camorra and the 'ndrangheta, raising their social dangerousness and their corrupting influence on the democratic system to unforeseeable levels. Following the widening of the range of products on the market, it was noted that the separation of the markets - for all the advantages it could bring about - would have curbed neither the profits not the violence linked to the trading of more potent and profitable drugs; once the heroin market consolidated itself, criminal marketing introduced on the market a "slumbering" substance, cocaine, targeting especially the middle and upper classes; when it appeared possible to open a new market in the ghettoes and the underprivileged classes, the criminal chemical industry produce

d crack. The global business has risen to such a point that the U.N. classifies drugs as second among all wares on the market, immediately after weapons and immediately before oil.

The exacerbation of the drug problem has thus convinced the majority of reformist movements of the world to relinquish the original position and to propose the legalization of all the principal drugs in circulation, regardless of the toxicologic consequences of their use or abuse (Marco Pannella and the Radical Party have been proposing this solution at least since 1984). Each drug, no matter what damage to the health its use or abuse may involve, can be more easily controlled in a legal market, whereas the only, constant result of the law that prohibits its trade is fueling an uncontrollable spiral of money, corruption and violence.

The legalization of "soft drugs", therefore, makes sense only if it is meant as a first step toward a generalized abolition of prohibition.

If perceived as a point of arrival, the effect of this policy is doubly harmful, because it links repression to the noxiousness of the substance, as if repression were more effective than other forms of social control, and because it in no way affects the most destructive aspects of the drug problem. The link between marijuana, hashish and the principal organizations of organized crime is not significant, whereas the one with petty crime or the diffusion of AIDS is totally nonexistent. The drug problem lies elsewhere, not in the substances, but in the laws. If our objective is modifying this situation, "it makes more sense to legalize heroin and cocaine and leave marijuana in a state of illegality", says David Boaz, vice president of the Washington Cato Institute (2). Even the legalization of the trade of coca leaves (which for centuries has been considered a nourishment, not a drug), requested by the Andean "cocaleros" to create a legal economic alternative to the production of cocaine, while it would dimin

ish illegality and corruption in many South American countries, in itself would change very little or nothing of the situation of the cocaine traffic in Los Angeles, Naples or Medellin.

On the other hand, it is true that one of the typical distortions of almost all Western prohibitionist regimes is the fact that repression is more efficient with "grass" smokers than with heroin or cocaine addicts: in France in 1990, 65% of trials were relative to cannabis, 30% to heroin and 5% to cocaine; in Italy 5 out of 10 people arrested with hashish or marijuana end up in jail, whereas for heroin this occurs only once in ten cases. As far as the United States is concerned, figures speak for themselves: in 1988 327.000 people were arrested for possession of marijuana (3).

As to the depenalization of the consumption of hard drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, experience shows that this is not enough. Depenalization would not eliminate the tremendous problems which prohibition causes, because it would leave a market of several thousands of billions of Lire in Italy alone to the criminal organizations, whereas drug users would continue to commit crimes against property or the individual and to clog the judicial and prison system. This is why it is just as well that the Italian drug law of 1975 and the concept of "moderate quantity" have been done away with. Nonetheless there is no end to the prohibitionist folly, as proven by the unconstitutional and artificial criterion of the "daily average dose", introduced in the Italian legislation to make a distinction between the consumer (caught with less than the daily average dose and brought before the prefect) and the dealer (in possession of a dose higher than the daily average dose and introduced into the penal circuit). Scarcely co

nfident in the scales of the justice system, legislators relied on the even more unreliable scales of the chemist, to legitimate more flexible and reasonable interpretations of the law which nonetheless betray the letter and the spirit of the law and confuse the public opinion.

3. Experiences in depenalization

Starting from the early seventies, depenalization has been or is still in force in a number of countries, de facto or de jure. The theoretical premises of the principal experiences of depenalization date back to the end of the sixties, when, following the diffusion of the consumption of cannabis, LSD and other drugs as part of young people's culture, some governments created official committees to receive indications on possible solutions. The first of such was the Shafer committee in the U.S., the Le Dain committee in Canada and the Baan committee in the Netherlands. The reports were published between 1972 and 1973, and suggested a pragmatic policy, based more on education than on repression, and careful not to favour the passage from practically harmless substances such as marijuana to other, far more dangerous ones which had started to circulate at the time, such as heroin. The Netherlands was the only country to take into account such suggestions, without nonetheless breaking - with a wide-angle pragmati

sm - the links with the prohibitionist International. A law of 1976 confirmed the illegality of soft and hard drugs, but established that the possession of a quantity of cannabis not exceeding 30 grams was simply a violation, to be punished with a penalty of up to one month of imprisonment or with a fine of 10.000 guilders. However, this partial de jure decriminalization was completed with a total de facto depenalization: not only the marijuana or hashish consumer is not prosecuted penally, but the trading of cannabis for personal use (in coffeeshops) is liberalized. Soft drugs remain illegal but the authorities handle them as if they were legal. The unwritten rules for the management of coffeeshops are the following: 1) no hard drugs; 2) no violence; 3) no receiving or sale of stolen goods; 4) intervention of the police if these rules are violated (4). Laws and penalties are activated only against international traffic, or when cannabis suppliers carry out an activity of proselytism and publicity.

Also with regards to the simple consumer of heroin, repression is almost totally absent; however, the State has organized a widespread network of services which enable a very strong and far-reaching non-penal social control.

There was much talk about decriminalizing drug use in the early seventies in the U.S., when 11 States modified their laws on marijuana: the latter remained illegal both for the federal law and for the State law, but whoever was found in possession of it risked a fine, not being arrested nor a permanent mark on their record. The first State to abolish penalties for consumption of marijuana was Oregon, in 1973, whereas only Alaska, with a decision of the Supreme Court in 1975, had asserted adults' right to grow and consume marijuana in the privacy of their homes (rule which was abolished in November 1990 through a referendum).

Something of the kind occurred also in Italy, with the regulation provided for by the old law of 1975 - concerning the "moderate quantity", which avoided penal consequences to the simple consumer of drugs, soft or hard. Even today, in the context of law No. 162, a relative form of decriminalization is represented by the norm on the "daily average dose", which exposes the culprit to an administrative and not penal sanction for the first two times. Far more extended - and unchallenged in Europe - is the decriminalization and the depenalization provided for by the Spanish legislation of 1983, which excludes the possession of drugs, soft or hard, for personal use from the list of behaviours which can be punished by the law. Today this rule is being questioned: it is very likely that in the near future, persons who consume drugs in public will be declared punishable with a fine.

The overall outcome of the Dutch and American experiences on the depenalization of marijuana has been satisfactory: the consumption of such products has not increased, a fact which further proves that the free availability of drugs is not, in itself, a factor of unlimited extension of the consumption. In other words, it is not drugs that produce drug addicts (I am deliberately using the prohibitionist semantics): consumption is induced or discouraged by a series of economic, social and cultural factors which should be investigated. The Dutch government has periodically provided the international control agencies with reports showing that cannabis consumption has gradually dropped throughout the years. In the United States, comparative analyses have been made between the States that applied depenalization and the other States. The National Academy of Sciences pointed out in 1982, at the conclusion of a survey in the federation, that "probably the important fact is that in places where this policy has been app

lied it has not lead to noticeable levels of greater consumption with respect to the ones that would have existed if the use had been prohibited": If, therefore, the size of the consumption were in itself a decisive element in the evaluation of the various strategies (regardless of the risks and of the quality of life linked to the consumption), the Dutch and American experiences on marijuana would score a very important point against prohibition.

As far as cocaine and heroin are concerned, the comparison between the Dutch and the Spanish experiences is significant. From a general point of view, the benefits have been rather questionable in both cases: the drug traffic has remained unscathed, and so has urban crime, with the difference that while in the Netherlands the situation has stabilized, in Spain things have gotten worse year after year, and the country is now facing a massive threat on the part of organized crime and of the relative corruption, comparable to the Italian situation. From the point of view of the consumers, the differences between the two systems is clear-cut: while the Netherlands has been capable and willing to create an extensive and efficient protective network around the drug users, which has contributed to stabilizing their number and drastically reducing the diffusion of AIDS, the Spanish government has not sided the depenalization bill of 1983 with a harm reduction health policy. This has created a situation in which whil

e the marketing strategies of the criminal organizations spread, and new products were marketed, the demand encountered no limits. The Spanish police forces' offensive against the drug traffic, very similar to the Italian one - corroborated by a bill of 1988 introducing new offences and toughening penalties - has scarcely affected the supply and has left the growth of consumers untouched. The lack of an integrated health policy has caused Spain to side Italy (and some cities of the U.S., such as New York) at the highest levels of diffusion of AIDS and of the HIV virus among drug users.

The Spanish case is the further demonstration of the fact that depenalization and decriminalization, while safeguarding each individual's right to use his body and his mind freely without harming others, do not reduce the health problem; also, they confirm that uncodified "tax on non-consumers" (first mentioned by Milton Friedman) which demands exorbitant contributions in terms of security and legality. It is no chance that in Spain, according to opinion polls conducted before the administrative elections of May 1991, the drug issue is the first reason of concern for society. Instead of wondering how to offer adequate medical and social services, the Spanish political parties compete in devising more refined instruments of repression. On the other hand, a vast part of the Spanish academic and intellectual world, dissatisfied with simple depenalization, but aware of the greater damages of repression, has proposed the antiprohibitionist solution (5).

4. Models of legalization

To the prohibitionist ideology, which pursues the objective of eradicating by hook or by crook the absolute evil of drugs from the earth or - as a feasible alternative - of striking fear and inflicting penalties on those who accept or promote this evil, the antiprohibitionists want to oppose not another ideology, but a different formulation of the problem, and new regulations, prescriptions, services. Our point of view is not that of the morale of the State nor that of the consumers of prohibited drugs. It is the point of view of the citizen, that is, of a community (formed for the vast majority by non-consumers and non-drug users) which no longer wishes to passively suffer the misdeeds of prohibition. All the models hereinafter analysed are made to work, and to make up for the damage historically produced by the ideology and the practice of prohibitionist laws. Many supporters of legalization would not have questioned the laws in force had they proven effective, and find it reasonable for the value and the

appropriateness of a law to be tested in the light of its costs and benefits. A "good" law is a law that is effective.

Clearly, there is more than one antiprohibitionist policy. If it is true that a great part of Western countries has legalized divorce, it is difficult to find two juridical systems that do not differ on crucial issues such as the period of time that must elapse between separation and divorce, the consensual nature of the divorce, alimony for the weaker spouse, etc. The same thing applies to the laws on abortion: by which month should it be performed? Only in public hospitals or also in private clinics? With the consent of the spouse or not? Only in cases in which the life of the baby is in danger or also in relation to the mental sanity of the mother? The laws of the single states offer varying answers to such questions. The same can be said for the legal regulation of drugs, since the range of proposals is very wide, already today. First of all, is there an alternative with regard to the consumer's statute, that is, to the conditions of legal access: should the buyer be provided with a medical prescription

or not? If so, will all the drugs that are currently illegal be subjected to medicalization or only some? Medicalization is generally presented as a stage of transition from the prohibitionist system to a system based on legalization, a period of information and prevention, the length of which may vary according to the degree of awareness achieved by society on the risks of the new legally accessible drugs.

The alternative is even more drastic with regard to the statute of trade: should it be entrusted to the market, and to its self-regulating capacities, or should it be subjected to some restrictive form of State control, with or without monopoly? On the one side there is the libertarian position, shared by the advocates of the free market and those who view individual freedom as the only source of legality for behaviours that do not cause damage to others. Such category supports the positions of John Stuart Mill in his "Essay on freedom": "On himself, on his mind and on his body, the individual is sovereign" (6). On the opposite side there is the total control on the part of the State on the production and the sale of all drugs, accompanied by selective criteria as to the circulation of this or that substance.

It is somewhere between these two extreme positions that the best legislative solution should be found to reduce the personal harm caused by the use or abuse of drugs and to avoid the social consequences of prohibition, making most of the drugs that are presently illegal legally available to all (with the exception of minors of age). Any solution in terms of legalization of the market would probably have the same effect on the front of the supply, causing the price of the drugs to drop drastically, with the immediate expulsion of the criminal organizations and the disappearance of induced delinquency. The quality of the products would largely improve, thanks - to the controls of the State or to competitive mechanisms, according to the different theses. The repercussion of one choice or the other on the diffusion of drugs in society and on the quality of life (first of all the health) of the consumers would be far more significant.

5. The thesis of the free market

The first and principal theorist of this solution is the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, who started his long campaign for the legalization of illegal drugs with an article against the "drug war" launched by President Richard Nixon, published on "Newsweek" of 1 May 1972. Friedman returned on the subject in his book, written together with his wife Rose, "The dictatorship of the status quo" of 1975, and has since updated his theory, confirmed by the practical, not just theoretical, failure of prohibition. In an article published on the "Wall Street Journal", when the "war on drugs" of George Bush and of his antidrug tzar William Bennet had reached its peak, Friedman summarized his position as follows: "The solution you are proposing - more police, more years of prison, military actions in foreign countries, imprisonment for drug consumers and a whole series of repressive measures - can only exacerbate an already deteriorated situation. It is impossible to win the war on drugs with this type of s

trategies without jeopardizing that human and individual freedom which you and I cherish. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a plague which is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are destroying our social background, ruining the life of so many youngsters and imposing a high price on some of the most underprivileged among us. You are not mistaken in assuming that the majority of people share your concerns. In brief, you are not mistaken in the objective you intend to reach. Your mistake lies in the fact of not acknowledging that the measures you propose are the principal cause of the evils you deplore" (7).

Almost all of Friedman's works could easily be adopted by any advocate of legalization, even by the most convinced supporter of State control. Friedman never analysed the details of a law, also because he simply proposes to apply the regulating criteria that are valid for alcohol to heroin, cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs. In an article published by the American magazine "Reason" in 1989, he thus summarized his proposal:

"Once legalized, drugs could be put on sale through the normal circuits of retail sale. For example, in drugstores. There should be no tax or other controls on drugs. Nontheless, there should be restrictions for sale to minors. As far as limitations on adverstisement are concerned, I am embarrassed on both positions. The idea of an attractive girl on TV telling me "my stuff will give you an ecstasy you've never experienced before" sends a shiver down my spine. However, apart from my hesitations, I have no doubts that legalization will not be possible without considerable restrictions in advertisement".

Recently a British economist belonging to Friedman school of thought, Richard Stevenson, formulated the most elaborate free-market proposal to date (8): "In a free market, the drug trade should be free of special restrictions, and it should be possible to freely buy drugs. From the point of view of the distribution, drugs should be sold in supermarkets, pharmacies, specialized shops, or in any other store. Profit would determine the dominant marketing system. A range of products that vary in quality and potency would be offered on sale, and drug consumers would make their choice in the same way as drinkers choose between beer, wine or various spirits".

Stevenson is convinced that in a market with hardly any rules (for example, the prohibition to sell to minors, and a warning on the damage for the health on each package) it would be both in the consumers' and in the producers' best interest to minimize the undesirable consequences of the use of drugs: and he is also convinced that independent forms of control would develop through "a parallel information market". This would favour the marketing of new drugs, precisely as in the black market, but in a direction which is totally opposite to the current one: instead of more harmful and profitable drugs, which enable to make easy money but limit the number of consumers (such as crack), new products would be created, capable of guaranteeing the results asked for by the buyers, only safer. "Companies could not remain in business, and even less get richer, if they seriously damaged the health of their clients".

The supporters of the thesis of the "free market" (rules reduced to minimum) do not oppose education and prevention;, on the contrary, the resources used to this moment for repression could be employed to achieve this objective. Stevenson has great confidence in the effectiveness of the self-regulating mechanisms of the market, even in such a delicate sector, because he believes individuals would develop a greater sense of responsibility. He has much less confidence in the officials' capacity to resist the pressures of groups requesting restrictions and State controls on the doses and on the purity of the products. He reluctantly admits that more or less incisive forms of State controls, at least comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco, are inevitable. And he warns:

"The danger is that bureaucrats and politicians fill the drug market with such and so many restrictions as to make it unprofitable for law-abiding companies. Unless there is a self-limitation of the limits, the objectives of legalization could be endangered. In the best of hypotheses, companies would ultimately lack incentive toward innovation; in the worst one, the criminal market could re-emerge". It is a warning which should be taken into account also by those who, like us, favour a legalization accompanied by a wide range of State interventions.

6. The "tax and controls" system

All advocates of legalization believe that prevention and deterrence are best achieved through education than through repression. The free market is perceived as a means to eliminate in particular the violence and the crime related to prohibition, and in the second place to disengage resources to be used for educational programmes. One of the advantages of this position is that of not subjecting society to a given strategy, which may reveal scarcely effective, and to the bureaucracy which would immediately ensue. However, the model which the advocates of the free market refer to, that of the wine and spirits industry, is not very attractive. True that Al Capone has been replaced by harmless Mr. Gancia or Folonari, and than no form of crime today can be connected to alcoholic products. Nonetheless, consumption in itself produces costs for society and for persons, which might be reduced if profit were not the principal regulating criterion of this trade. Also in the field of psychotropic drugs and of prescript

ion drugs generally, the market rules are not enough, in themselves, to promote a responsible use and to curb abuse of such substances. A more cautious version of the free market, the "tax and controls" scheme, proposes to gradually create a legal market which the black market could not compete with. The State is charged with the task of discouraging consumption of "harder" drugs and of guaranteeing medical assistance to problematic addicts (including alcohol and tobacco addicts), without making society pay an excessive social cost. The criteria of the proposal may be summarized as follows: legalizing and taxing the substances which are now illegal according to their harmfulness and/or to the demand; applying the same criteria to drugs which are now legal; use taxes to educate against drugs and to cover the social and medical costs of drug abuse. This would call for a revision of the tax system in force for alcohol and tobacco, the introduction of a tax on caffeine and other substances which are currently no

t controlled, and in practice a reconsideration of the entire health policy, with the aim of replacing the juridical discrimination between legal and illegal drugs with a fiscal distinction based on the personal damage caused by an excessive or incautious use of the various substances.

Today the only economic profits brought about by repression originate from the seizure of traffickers' goods. Even law No. 162/90, conforming to the prevailing model on an international scale, lays down that these goods be re-used for repression or allotted to therapeutic communities. The "tax and controls" mechanism creates a different cycle of revenues, thanks to which society can cover the costs of drug abuse by taking the funds from the consumers in proportion to the degree of their contribution to the problem (9). Clearly, it is extremely difficult to calculate the amount of the tax which should be imposed on each substance to obtain the twofold result of reducing consumption without favouring the onset of a black market, and cover at least part of its social cost. Experience shows that in a regime of illegality, each rise in the price of heroin has not corresponded to a significant drop in consumption: drug users adjust their habits (delinquency, prostitution or pushing) to the back market price, and p

ay their "crime fee" without complaining (10). On the contrary, researches conducted in the U.S. prove that for each 10% rise in the price of cigarettes, there has been a 4% drop in consumption, given that nicotine is one of the substances that create more dependency. As the authors of the proposal themselves admit, it may be that the problem is practically unsolvable, if the objective is that of having consumers pay for the entire amount of the social and medical costs of drug use. On the other hand, it would be illogical to represent the black-or-white approach of the prohibitionists in an antiprohibitionist shape. There are no doubts about one thing: this system, as any other legalization project, would enable to save on all expenses related to repression and to the administration of justice, corruption, the high number of deaths for overdose and for AIDS, the economic consequences of delinquency. Furthermore, it would offer government officials a more flexible mechanism to act on consumption, and would d

ivert the profits related to the drug market to the advantage of the underprivileged part of the consumers.

A Radical parliamentary bill in this sense, introduced at the Chamber of Deputies on 15 December 1988, provided for a higher taxation on the more toxic products (including alcohol) to the detriment of higher revenues. The bill preferred a deterring taxation to another one studied in function of the income. This bill, the first attempt to translate the antiprohibitionist strategy into concrete regulations, pursued "a number of well-defined objectives: a) radically destroying the drug traffic and the criminal organization that thrives on it; b) create conditions which for which acts of violence on the population to find money become unnecessary; c) drastically reduce the deaths for drug abuse and tackle the situation of isolation and alienation of drug addicts forced to conduct illegal existences under the control of crime; d) seriously tackle the diffusion of AIDS, which in Italy affects drug addicted risk categories for 2/3 of cases (11).

7. The theory of passive trade

Is it possible to eliminate from the drug market not only illegal profits but also legal ones, and as a consequence have good reasons to believe that in the absence of incentives to supply, consumption will tend not to spread but to stabilize if not to diminish? The scenario of "passive trade" outlined by the French jurist Francis Caballero, offers a series of solutions to this problem (12). The new legal drug market should not operate on the basis of the traditional principles of trade, which impose to create a market and to stir consumers' demand to generate ever new profits. Even if each drug has peculiar characteristics which call for a specific regulation, passive trade is based on a few common principles: discretion in use, prohibition of propaganda, strictly controlled production and distribution. This implies the suppression of any direct or indirect advertisement for products and places of sale, the introduction of taxes according to the "tax and controls" model, so as to make consumers themselves c

over the social costs deriving from drug abuse, a regulation relative to controls on the quality, the price and the distribution, clear warnings on the dangerousness of the product. Drug consumption in public places should be punished, as an indirect form of propaganda, but with a simple pecuniary fine. As regards the production and distribution, this should be run in each country by the State in a regime of monopoly. Some of the reasons: because a competitive regime always tends to promote consumption; because it is necessary to avoid the creation of forms of economic imperialism between multinationals and producing countries; because only a nonprofit agency can be asked to pursue the objectives of passive trade, in other words, not encouraging, or rather, discouraging the consumption of drugs and achieve a certain form of social control on drug abuse.

In the intentions of its mastermind, the theory of passive trade lies on the closest border with prohibition: "The theory does not aspire at being suddenly applied to all illegal drugs. It can only be conceived in the event that the prohibitionist system has given show of its failure. Passive trade follows prohibition, does not precede it. In other words, the perverse effects of the drug laws must be socially more harmful than those of the drugs themselves" (13). In the two years following the publication of the book in France, Caballero has become convinced that there is no time to waste. In his report at the 1st Convention of the Cora in Brussels (15-19 January 1991), he states "it is necessary to acknowledge that all moral prohibitions have failed, one after the other. This is true for gambling as for pornography, and all the systems for the legalization of gambling and pornography have proven better than prohibition. The law's task is not that of enforcing morality".

More generally, the ambition of the theory of passive trade is that of replacing the armed war on drugs with a "civil struggle against drug abuse". This involves a special regulation for each product and the application of passive trade to legal drugs as well, which include prescription drugs, tobacco and alcohol. One objection that might be raised against this theory is that it is so restrictive that it appears to be a liberalizing variation of prohibition. But there is no Single Text of legalization, just as there is more than one prohibitionist policy. Even certain penalizations in which compulsive smokers (found smoking in public places) may be the object of appear to be to some degree shaped on the model of the war on drugs, and not always and not everywhere the penal punishment is the last possible resource (14).

8. The Dutch "normalization"

We know it is not always easy to integrate the protection of civil rights and the promotion of public health. On the other hand, the political class and the mass media have not given a great contribution to research until now, underlining the spectacular aspects of the war on drugs and instruments such as therapeutical communities, accepted by a very limited portion of drug users. The problem now, considering the results of that strategy, is choosing peaceful interventions for the promotion of health in the respect of individual rights. Fortunately, something has already been done in this sense, as proven by the Harm Reduction experiences.

The Harm Reduction strategy is a part of the health policy. It is not a form of legalization or depenalization, even if it calls for a coordination between health forces and police forces. In the areas where it has been applied, the Netherlands and the Liverpool region in particular, written laws prohibit consumption of heroin and cocaine and, though repression on consumers is not a political priority, the police may change attitude (and they do, especially in Amsterdam) if petty crime or the pressure of the public opinion exceed the "danger level". The traffic of illegal drugs remains in the hands of the criminal organizations, and the level of urban crime - through below average - remains high (15). The Dutch example, like the Liverpool one, is not that of a policy to be copied, but a series of concepts, instruments and practices which must necessarily be part of the health policy on drugs in the hypothesis of a legalization.

Already in the mid seventies, it had become clear that repression did not interrupt the marketing of soft drugs, and even less of hard drugs. Year after year, the figures of illegal drugs outlined a new international market with economic and commercial potentialities comparable to those of oil and weapons. The reaction of the governments and of the international agencies such as the United Nations to this situation was and remains a simple non-reaction, the confirmation and the reorganization of the whole repressive apparatus in the name of that utopia which is the basis of prohibition - abstinence. The medical aspect, despite all the talk on TV, remains in the background; the problem to be solved is a moral one, and medicine is reduced to an assistant of virtue. The alternative, today as then, is clear-cut: either disease (drugs) or recovery (no more drugs). However, the end of the seventies saw the beginning of a number of experiments based on a different starting point: if it is not yet possible to "cure"

a drug user (that is, eradicate his habit), then attempts must be made to minimize the harm he causes to himself and to his habitat. The expression "harm reduction" was created in Liverpool, in England, but the best know example of a similar policy is the Dutch one.

Amsterdam was the first European capital to adopt a global health policy as the necessary complement of the Dutch government's decision to depenalize heroin consumption. According to this policy, the objective of a world completely free of drugs is a utopia: society must learn how to come to terms with a certain quantity of drug consumption. This is proven by the consumption of tobacco, alcohol and psychotropic drugs: their status as legal drugs does not change the nature of the problems caused by such substances, and the reality of the motivations which lead people to use them, just as the illegality of other products does not change them. The concept of "normalization", developed in the Netherlands between the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, means precisely this: that society has to accept the drug problem as a normal problem, not as an abnormal phenomenon which must be repressed (16). The success of the Liverpool experience lead the Dutch health authorities to change the various pr

ograms according to the criteria of Harm Reduction, which is a strategy based on a more coherent and comprehensive social intervention. The fundamental elements of the Dutch drug policy were defined between 1979 and 1984, with the following objectives:

- acquire a clear picture of the reasons and of the nature of the drug problem, getting in touch with the greatest possible number of heroin addicts and creating a registration system;

- reduce the risks linked to the use of hard drugs for all consumers who are not (yet) capable or willing to give up their habit;

- motivate heroin users to enter drug free treatment and/or resocialization programs;

- find forms of cooperation between the police, the outreach workers and the populations of the areas most affected by the drug problem (17).

A group of about 30 outreach workers who reach the drug users in their habitat; regular visits on the part of doctors and workers of the drug dependency units in police stations (about 2.000 drug addicts are contacted there every year); a mobile service for the supply of methadone to registered drug users, achieved with the use of mobile units that stop every day in six different points of the city, are part of this project. In 1984, when the spread of AIDS became the most serious threat to drug users' health (with 30% of them with HIV), new measures were introduced in the drug policy with the twofold objective of preventing a further spread of the HIV virus among users of syringes and achieving a good system for the treatment of AIDS sufferers. The instruments of this AIDS policy are:

- availability of condoms;

- drug free detoxication treatment for anyone wishing to stop without long waiting lists;

- supply of methadone to heroin injectors who wish to reduce or interrupt their habit, but are not yet able to give up their dependency from opiates;

- distribution of clean injecting equipment in exchange for dirty one (in 1989 in Amsterdam about 800.000 syringes were distributed in 11 distributing points, while there are 125 different syringe-exchange schemes in the whole of the Netherlands).

The basic objectives have been achieved: the number of drug users has stabilized, whereas it has largely grown in all European countries, and the AIDS epidemic has been checked. In 1989 in Amsterdam the number of drug users has been estimated to be between 5.000 and 7.000 (of whom 3.500 are Dutch and 1.500 of ethnical origin - Guyana, Antilles, Morocco - and 2.000 come from other European countries) compared to the 9.000 of 1984; contacts cover 60% of Amsterdam's drug users, and 75% of the 22-25.000 on a national scale; one fourth of the users is on detoxication programs, and 75% on maintenance programs based on methadone; the number of overdose victims in the Netherlands is one of the lowest in Europe (in 1989 in Amsterdam 14 Dutch citizens and 28 foreigners coming for the most part from Germany died of overdose), and the figures have been dropping since 1985; the average age of the consumers under 22 had dropped from 14.4% to 4.8%; the percentage of drug users with HIV has remained stable at 30% in Amsterd

am, whereas on a national scale the percentage of drug users among AIDS sufferers is a scarce 9% (compared to 67.6% in Italy). In particular, studies on syringe-exchange schemes have revealed that this did not involve an increase in the use of heroin, and that the habit of sharing the same syringe had dropped (18).

9. Harm Reduction

Since the beginning of the seventies, the Mersey region, together with the areas surrounding London (Thames) is the part of England with the highest number of drug users. In 1989 this was the ratio of drug users per million inhabitants: NE Thames 394, Mersey 375, NW Thames 287, SE Thames 244. Starting from 1986, the regional health authority of Mersey, the area of which Liverpool is the most important city, in cooperation with the police forces and part of the local boards, defined and developed the harm reduction strategy toward drug consumers. This way, the health policy completed and largely replaced the criminal policy. The precedents are the Dutch normalization practice, which we have already analysed, and similar experiments conducted in San Francisco, U.S. The motivations and the guidelines of this program are:

- the diffusion of HIV and of AIDS is a greater threat to public health than drug use itself, and priority must therefore be given to services aimed at minimizing behaviours which can favour the spread of the virus;

- services must maximize contacts with those people that continue to use drugs, show them less dangerous ways of using drugs, with the following hierarchy of objectives:

1) stopping the sharing of syringes and needles;

2) the passage from injectable drugs to non-injectable drugs;

3) diminution in the use of drugs;

4) abstinence;

- it is necessary to encourage changes in the attitude of workers and people generally toward drug use, to reduce the condition of alienation of the consumers, favouring their contact with the services and the passage to less dangerous practices;

- services should experiment a wide range of approaches and solutions, and test their effectiveness.

This is the conceptual basis on which a system of drug dependency units has been built, which educate to a safer use of drugs and sex and carry out periodical analyses on HIV, offer specialized treatment, resocialization programs, intervention units in prisons, etc. Two instruments of contact have been devised to achieve a constant relationship with the system's users: 1) the free distribution of clean injecting equipment in exchange for dirty one, in cooperation with the pharmacies, and the free distribution of condoms; 2) the free prescription of drugs, generally drinkable methadone but also, on an experimental basis, smokeable methadone, heroin, cocaine, amphetamines. In particular, maintenance with methadone is used to "stabilize" opiate addicts, that is, keep them away from the black market dealers, reduce their criminal activity and risks of imprisonment, keep them healthier, prevent an increase in consumption.

Does this complex mechanism work? First of all, the phenomenon of the grey market, which nonetheless exists, is scarcely relevant (19). Compared to AIDS prevention the success exceeded every forecast. We say that the Mersey area is the second in England in number of drug users. The classification relative to the diffusion of HIV is completely different. While the three London districts are at the top of the list also in terms of diffusion of HIV, Mersey ranks thirteen over fourteen, before W Midlands, where the proportion of drug users per million inhabitants is much lower, 54 versus 375. Mersey is largely first in the list in terms of proportion between HIV carriers and drug users, with 1:60, whereas the second area in the list, NW Thames, has a 1:17 ratio. In Milan the ratio is 1 HIV carrier every 1.4 drug users. The figures are highly eloquent. Moreover, Mersey is the only area of the country where the number of crimes (thefts, bagsnatching and robberies) related to drug laws has constantly dropped over t

he past four years (20).

A reduced version of the Harm Reduction is the experiment which has been under way for two years, in Zürich, to create a free zone for drug users (Platzspitz), where repression is replaced by basic medical and social services. Confronted with an uncontrollable health emergency (Switzerland has the highest number of deaths for overdose in Europe in proportion to its inhabitants, and a ratio of HIV among heroin users which is one of the highest worldwide), the local council of Zürich decided a drastic change in the Confederation's repressive policy. The emergency suggested a very controversial solution, especially because there is a concentration of all problematic drug users in a same area, instead of services covering the whole territory. This has created a geographic split between the "healthy" part and the "ill" part of the city which in no way corresponds to the social reality. Nonetheless, from a medical point of view, the experiment works, with a significant drop both of overdose deaths and of the preva

lence of HIV among heroin users (officials plan to save a person per day from the infection). Precisely because it has experienced one of the most repressive versions of prohibtion and is paying a tremendous price for this, Switzerland today is a laboratory of some of the most advanced proposals and conceptuals elaborations, and several proposals of legalization and depenalization are under discussion at the cantonal governments.

But it is the European Parliament which gave the most important recognition to the Harm Reduction policy. With a vast majority (259 favourable votes, 14 unfavorable and 5 abstentions), the European Parliament passed all the amendments in this sense to the program "Europe against AIDS 1991-1993)" introduced by the Environment and Education committees (21). At the proposal of the latter, a new action plan was introduced, specifically aimed at prevention, medical assistance and reduction of the spread of HIV among drug users. Following are extracts of the document:

"The program for the distribution of clean, disposable syringes in exchange for dirty ones through urban mobile units, as recommended by the WHO and as experimented for several years in a number of European cities, represents an effective means to contain the spread of HIV and of other diseases among drug users. Moreover, they represent an excellent channel for the diffusion of information, for the promotion of education and for the introduction to social or medical services which are necessary for the rehabilitation and reintegration of drugs users".

"Treatment for drug users through substitute products, such as drinkable methadone, in addition to treating the addiction, also enables to avoid the transmission of HIV through infected syringes. This medical praxis should be seriously considered". "In addition to technically harmonizing the quality requirements of the condoms available in the member States, it is necessary to guarantee maximum availability of these especially among homosexuals, prostitutes, in prisons and - more generally - in society by means of automatic distributing machines accessible 24hours a day. Moreover, information on the subject should be guarantied, considering that for the moment the use of condoms is the only effective means to oppose the spread of HIV through sexual intercourse, unless there is a change in people's life style."

It is worth remembering that all the principal groups of the Left, Centre and Right (with the exception of the extreme Right of Le Pen and of the German Republikaner) voted in favour of the resolution.

10. Important steps in the direction of reform

The first political organization of antiprohibition was created in December 1987 in Italy. The CORA (Radical Anti-Prohibitionist Coordination) is the fruit of a tradition inside the Radical Party and the civil rights movement, which, starting from the end of the sixties, had opposed the injustice and uselessness of a penal repression at the service of a moral campaign. In its statute, the CORA clearly defined the difference of the antiprohibitionist commitment for the eighties compared to the one for the two previous decades: at stake were no longer just individual freedom and the freedom of minority groups: the challenge between prohibition and antiprohibitionism affected the pillars of democratic society itself (22). Reforming the drug policy, in the conflict between international organizations of drug traffickers and repressive apparata less and less subjected to democratic control, had become the condition to reform democratic policy tout court.

The first problem which the CORA set itself was that of gathering in an international organization all those who had expressed, throughout the years, an individual refusal of the prohibitionist policy through articles, books and scientific researches. In October 1988 in Brussels, Belgium, an International Forum on the cost of prohibition was held, promoted by the CORA and the Radical Party, with the presence of experts in economics, law, criminology, medicine, European and North American sociologists. The Forum laid the foundations for the creation of the International Antiprohibitionist League (IAL) on 31 March 1989 in Rome; the league was founded by about fifty personalities from Europe, North America and Latin America. The creation of the IAL was supported also by other movements which propose reforms of the drug policy, such as the Washington Drug Policy Foundation (DPF), which has been organizing, as of November 1988, a yearly meeting in the U.S. capital on the controversial aspects of prohibition in th

e legal, medical and political fields, and which, thanks to the enthusiasm of its creator, Arnold Trebach, has become an essential interlocutor in the American debate on the issue; and the "European movement for the normalisation of drug policy", created in Rotterdam by sociologist Wijnand Sengers, with the objective of promoting a European "normalization" policy of the drug problem, on the model of the Netherlands (23). In Italy, antiprohibitionist lists have participated in the European elections of 1989 (where they received 429.000 votes, electing a deputy at the assembly of Strasbourg) and in the administrative elections of 1990 (with the election of six regional councillors, four provincial ones and six local ones). This has rekindled, also in the institutions, the opposition to the governmental policy which, under the pressure of the Socialist Party, in June 1990 produced the new drug law, a confused combination of American-style prohibition and Italian-style State assistance. The CORA and the antiproh

ibitionist representatives redeveloped the concepts of the Harm Reduction policy, adapting them to the Italian situation, and, often supported by consistent council majorities, have lead to the passage in many Italian cities and regions, of documents for an AIDS and drug policy based on the Dutch and Liverpool experiences (24).

An important international turnabout has come from the "1st Conference of major European cities at the centre of the illegal drug trade", which took place in Frankfurt in November 1990. For the first time in the history of prohibition on drugs, an international meeting promoted by official authorities no longer focused on a more rigid and coherent application of the repressive regulations laid down by the U.N. conventions and by the bilateral agreements, but an open reflexion on the prohibitionist strategy and on its practical consequences on civil life. At the conclusion of the meeting, four of the most important local administrations (Frankfurt, Hamburg, Amsterdam and Zürich) signed a document, the Frankfurt Resolution, which asks to radically modify the priorities in the strategies relative to drugs, according to the above described conditions of the Harm Reduction policy and in view of a "necessary harmonization of the national legal system with respect to the European unification, on the basis of a decr

iminalization and depenalization policy of drug consumption and of harm reduction" (25).

The Resolution states the following:

"1) The attempt to eliminate drugs and drug consumption from our civilization has failed. Despite all the efforts made, the demand for drugs has not disappeared, and everything points to the fact that we will have to continue to live with drugs and drug consumers also in the future; 2) the origin of the use of drugs lies in the flaws of society, and cannot be prevented by specific drug policies. In the best of hypotheses, these policies can only regulate and limit the consequences of drug consumption. For the majority of its consumers, drugs represent a temporary period of their existence, which may be overcome by means of a process of growth which frees from dependency. Drug laws should not hinder but support this process; 3) a drug policy which fights against drug addiction by resorting only to penal law and the compulsion of abstinence has failed; the demand for drugs still exists, the social and medical inconveniences of consumers grow very quickly, an ever greater number of drug users is infected by HIV

, the number of deaths increases, the drug trade is spreading and making larger profits, in cities people's fear of drug dealing and the crimes related to it increase constantly; 4) the problems linked to drugs are not based only on the way in which drugs operate from a pharmacological point of view: rather, they are the result of of an illegal consumption, which circulates altered, costly drugs and in incalculable doses. Illegal drug consumption is the principal cause of drug users' sufferances, of the deaths and of induced crime. Criminalization today is the opposite of assistance and treatment, and it is a burden which the police and the justice system cannot bear; 5) the majority of drug consumers live in cities or goes to cities because there is drug dealing there, there are drug circuits, there is assistance for drug users. As a consequence, the majority of our large cities is afflicted by drug problems, whereas, on the other hand, the influence of these cities on the political choices regarding drugs

is limited, and inversely proportional with respect to the burdens they must bear" (26).

This text, precisely because of its official nature and for the prospects of cooperation it opens up at the level of the local boards, represents a milestone in the path toward legalization.

Conclusions

The only prohibitionist argument which is not easy to dismantle is that on the possible, major increase in the number of consumers of illegal drugs. It cannot be dismantled because the dogmatic attitude of governments and supranational agencies has not enabled, to this moment, any large-scale experiences in the legalization of such substances. There is no significant counterevidence, in one sense or the other. But while the concern of a flood of drugs should apply also to the prohibitionist system - and there is no reason to doubt it - it is uncontroversial that this should be rapidly relinquished. Unlike ten years ago, there is no country in the world that is immune to this trade, provided its inhabitants are rich enough to offer good profits to the long chain of interests which go from the small-scale dealer to the bank that launders the money. There is no other market that keeps money traveling at the speed in which the illegal drug market does. This is why I believe that legalization will not cause drug

consumption to increase in the countries in which drug traffic is already rooted, and will delay the diffusion of drugs in all those countries which are opening to the metastasis of the mafia. I am referring particularly to the nations of Central Europe, where the international police organs underline the novelty of consistent capital injections in search of laundering. The drugs of the prohibitionist market will follow the money, replacing spirits and the most widely diffused cheap poisons (glue, solvents, the most primitive derivatives of opium).

I am convinced that today, in all the countries where the commercial networks of the drug trade have developed their presence, there is a consumption which largely exceeds the "normal" levels compared to the one that would exist even in conditions of easy acquisition of drugs on a legal basis. In Europe as in the U.S. today there is an extended sales network, which ranges from the clandestine supply in street alleys to a super-efficient door-to-door system for the richer classes. At present, any drug user is involved in dealing and therefore in proselytizing to raise money to support their habit. Today people enter the drug circuit to sell drugs more than to use them, in areas affected by poverty and social backwardness. But let us admit that there may be an increase in the number of consumers. The most important thing are the indicators of the quality of life, which are more significant than numerical data, and apply both to consumers and to society generally speaking. Consuming in conditions of relative me

dical safety a substance which may cause harm to the organism is possible, provided there is a control on the quality of the product, on the quantity of the doses, on the honesty of the producer. Dying of overdose is a possibility intrinsic in the use of heroin, just as dying of accident is a possibility intrinsic in the use of automobiles; however, we would never allow cars to circulate without brakes, without lights, or with flat tires. Even the best driver would hit a tree or run down pedestrians. If there are limits and controls for coffee, wine, tea, and tobacco, then it is fair to request them also for heroin and cocaine, without forgetting that certain forms of consumption often prescind from purely logical or recreational factors, and that each person should be helped to make less mistakes and in any case pay less dearly for his mistakes.

Morality coincides with responsibility. Today the responsible consumption of drugs, especially of certain types of drugs - in Southern Europe heroin and tobacco, in Northern Europe heroin and alcohol - is overwhelmed by a consumption subjected to the rules of the legal or illegal market. However, if this phenomenon of irresponsibility were related only to an irresponsible use of one's freedom of choice, it would not have stopped being simply a social problem and become a political priority.

If it has been such in the sixties and seventies it is because - to the benefit of none - people felt that a sacred sphere of the rights of conscience, in which other forms of private or public influences can be used (school, family, TV spots, the influence of example or even violence, for those who believe in it) was threatened by the invasiveness of the State. All perfectly legitimate, provided they do not directly sanction the individual's freedom of choice. It is not the State's task to become the watchman of morals, also because it cannot manage it.

If today, in the nineties, antiprohibitionism is a fully political fact, it is because that violent mechanism of intrusion of the State authority in the private sphere has produced precisely those effects which some had foreseen, speaking the language of a culture of freedom which was mistaken by bigots and hypocrites as a culture of drugs. If today the issue of drugs, that is, of prohibition on drugs, has become a general and absolute political priority, it is because, as all prohibitionists repeat when they ask for more money, more penalties, more weapons (varying the order of the second and third term, never of the first, according to the circumstances) "the intensification and the diffusion which characterize the production, the traffic and the consumption of illegal drugs starting from the early eighties, endanger both the socio-economic systems and the juridical-political structures of the developing countries and of the industrialized ones", and because the "occult nature and the efficient organizatio

n of the international traffic, and the role it plays in world economics are such that the objective to destroy them remains uncertain and distant", as contained in a recent EEC report. That future is so uncertain and remote that on the front of the State - the front of money, penalties and weapons - the abuse of authority, the appearance of State ethics in a religious or lay capacity, and demagogy could plunge us once again in the catastrophe of violent and authoritarian irrationalism. Unless - this is the prohibitionist alternative - prohibition is really effective in eliminating drugs, drug dealers, drug consumers. If it were not so, however, the problem we are debating with passion and reason would not exist.

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NOTES

(1) Marco Pannella, in an interview with the weekly magazine "Oggi", in July 1975: "Every generation has its symbols of more or less prohibited pleasure: today's generation has hashish. The fact that this is stupid is another pair of shoes. There is only one reality and we know it. How does a prohibitionist society like ours react? By criminalizing dozens of thousands of youngsters. The latter, persecuted by the law for a crime which is no greater than drinking alcohol or smoking three packs of 'Celtique' per day (as I do), become punishable as soon as they buy hashish for the first time. They must beware the policeman and they end up in the arms of the dealers. They can be blackmailed. They are subjected to the dealer who, among other things, "sells" more because each smoker, instead of buying the quantity he needs for a joint, tends to accumulate. The market expands, as in the United States, and the dealer, instead of giving the youngster hashish, gives him heroin. For the first few times he gives it to h

im for free. He says "look, today I'm out of hashish, but try this, it's even better". Obviously, some may react by refusing, but it's very rare. First of all because they ignore the mortal difference between hashish and heroin; and then because, as far as the law is concerned, they know they are committing an offence which is considered of equal gravity; lastly, because they can be blackmailed. From the dealer's point of view, there is no comparison between the interest in dealing heroin and that of dealing a bit of hashish, were it not because the drug addicted youngster, before dying, if a profitable slave, he becomes dealer and propagandist of heroin".

(2) David Boaz, "The consequences of Proihibition", in "The crisis in drug prohibition", Washington, the Cato Institute, 1990.

(3) This refers "only" to 28,3% out of 1.155.200 arrests for violation of the drug laws carried out throughout the year.

(4) Henk Jan Van Vliet, "The uneasy decriminalisation", in "Hofstra Law Review", vol. 18, n. 3, 1990.

(5) In the Malaga Manifesto, passed on 2 December 1989 and transformed in April 1991 in a parliamentary bill. See "Antiprohibitionist News" IAL, Brussels, n. 2, July 1990.

(6) In "Essay on freedom" (il Saggiatore, Milano 1981, p. 33) Mill deals with the specific problem of alcohol and opium consumption.

(7) Milton Friedman, "An open Letter to Bill Bennet", "The Wall Street Journal", 7 September 1989.

(8) Richard Stevenson, "Can markets cope with drugs?", "The Journal of drug issues", pp. 659 666, 1990.

(9) Lester Grinspoon "The tax on harmfulness", in "The cost of prohibition on drugs", Roma, Edizioni Cora 1989, p. 236

"I propose to legalize and tax the substances that are currently controlled. Taxes would be used to educate against drugs and to cover the social and medical costs of drug abuse. A committee should be established, with the tax of fixing these costs separately for each drug, and the percentage of taxation should be periodically updated to reflect such data". Refer also to J. Bakalar e L. Grinspoon, "Drug control in a free society", 1984.

(10) Ibidem.

(11) Parliamentary bill introduced by members of Parliament Massimo Teodori and others: "Legal regulation of psychoactive substances to subtract the drug traffic to the criminal organizations". The accompanying report thus resumes the key points of the proposal:

1 - the legal regulation of all psychoactive substances (an expression which is scientifically more accurate that the commonly used one, referring to "narcotic and psychotropic substances", that is, of so-called "drugs";

2 - the reclassification of psychoactive substances with the inclusion in last three regulated charts (in decreasing order of risk and dangerousness) of alcoholic beverages exceeding 20·, of tobacco and Indian cannabis;

3 - the inclusion of heroin and of cocaine and their subjection to the regime of monopoly in the official pharmacopoeia;

4 - the legalization of Indian cannabis;

5 - a taxation such as to determine a retail price progressively proportional to the risk: Indian cannabis at the same price as tobacco; heroin at a price ten times greater and cocaine at a price twenty times greater than spirits;

6 - the prohibition of advertisement, as well as negative propaganda on the risks for all substances, including alcohol and tobacco;

7 - the distribution of all psychoactive substances (including heroin and cocaine and excluding alcohol, tobacco and Indian cannabis) only in pharmacies with a prescription issued by a physician;

8 - the possibility for each physician to issue prescriptions for the substances (for a maximum of one daily dose multiplied by three), with the duty to inform the patient on the characteristics of the substances, on its ascertained effects and on the risks linked to its assumption ("informed consent");

9 - the possibility of guaranteeing a controlled and protracted distribution to drug users who ask for it, by means of a card which guaranties the substance they are addicted to for 90 days;

10 - the strict repression, through a system of severe penalties, of all activities of production, manufacture, sale, distribution, purchase, import/export of psychoactive substances (drugs) and outside of the above mentioned legal procedures.

(12) Francis Caballero, "Droit de la drogue", Paris, Précis Dalloz 1989.

(13)" ibidem, p. 136.

(14) Lina Beauchesne, "Health promotion and protection of civil rights of drug users", in "The great issues of drug policy", DPF, Washington 1990.

(15) As Hank Van Vliet writes, director of the Metropolmk centre of social researches "nowadays the Netherlands represents the only relative experiment of drug policy on a national scale, and this is an important political fact, investigated by researchers, operators, politicians of many countries that want to enjoy the benefits of the Dutch experimentalism. They should not, however, copy our political choices because they have been defined specifically for the Dutch situation, and even under this profile are not perfect" (The Dutch example, report at the 2nd meeting of the CORA, Brussels, 15 19 January 1991). In the Netherlands in 1990, one fourth of drug users on treatment was in prison.

(16) Henk Van Vliet, "The Dutch example", cit.

(17) "Drugs and Aids The Amsterdam situation", Municipal Health

Service, Amsterdam 1990.

(18) Drugs and Aids, cit., Staatscourant 1991, n. 38, 22 February 1991.

(19) "Yes, there is a form of sale on the black market. Nonetheless, I believe this should not distract us from the objectives we are pursuing. The sale in the streets is of very small proportions compared to the quantity of substances which are prescribed to the drug users. Obviously, it is a source of concern for us, and a thing we monitor constantly, but I don't believe there is a situation that calls for a radical change in the prescription policy." Derek O'Connel, head of Drug Squad, Liverpool, papers of the Frankfurt Convention of European cities at the centre of the drug trade, November 1990.

(20) Pat O' Hare, "The Liverpool experience", report at the 2nd Congress of the Cora, Brussels, 15-19 January 1991.

(21) Relator for the Environment committee, the French socialist Leon Schwartzenberg, relator at the Education committee, the antiprohibitionist Marco Taradash.

(22) "The Cora (Radical Anti-Prohibitionist Coordination) aims at promoting the reform of drug policies that are currently based on legislative instruments shaped on prohibition. Such methods have historically proven their ineffectiveness with respect to the objective of reducing the diffusion and the abuse of drugs. On the contrary, they have produced a series of terrible medical, political, juridical, social, economic, institutional problems as well as problems in the field of public order, with serious risks for the rule of law and democracy in all countries of the world". The CORA was created at the initiative of Giancarlo Arnao, Luigi Del Gatto and Marco Taradash. The Cora is an open association: at 31 May 1991 it included 32 parliamentarians from different political groups.

(23) The Canadian criminologist Marie Andrée Bertrand was elected president of the IAL.

(24) The first large city to pass a syringe-exchange scheme by means of mobile units and automatic distributors was Milan, where a motion, introduced by the antiprohibitionist councillor Tiziana Maiolo, was passed in December 1990.

(25) A precedent can be found in the request to start an open debate on the legalization of drugs advanced by the mayor of Baltimore, the black democrat Kurt Schmoke, at the assembly of the mayors of American cities in 2989, and to date has remained an isolated example

(26) The Frankfurt resolution, in "CORA News" No. 1, Rome, March 1991.