Guido Votano is right. Anything can be a drug: television, gambling, politics and, why not, Agorà. It is necessary therefore to give a more specific definition. Francis Caballero, in his lenghthy "The right of drugs", suggests a more scientific one: drugs are substances that can have an effect on the central nervous system, cause psychological or physical addiction as well as social and physical damage. But even here the list ranges from alcohol to chemical solvents. Francis Caballero then procedes to give 2 definitions, legal drugs and illegal drugs, those of which the consumption (not the abuse) is socially accepted, and those that are on the contrary considered, by international standards, narcotics. It is considered that the use of the lattter substances (derivates of opium, cocaine, and hashish, natural or synthetic hallucinatory substances) "necessarily degenerates into abuse, and that the only means to protect public health is to subject them to a general and total prohibition".

But Guido Votano's question is more precise: can an anti-prohibitionist state he is against a chemical formula, against something that has always existed and that will always exist, against the quest for pleasure? Can one take it to be true that the use of illicit drugs always and necessarily degenates into abuse?

The answer is simple: anti-prohibitionism not only has to do with moral judgement and personal choices but also states that the law should not prohibit the use of just any substance, but only abuse of it, and therefore all those behaviours that can damage other people. The law cannot prohibit the use of a substance that causes damage only to the person consuming it. If a person wants to inject himself two ccs of petrol he certainly won't be punished by the law! Why should it therfore be prohibited to commit suicide with other substances? An entirely different thing is to be free to drive around in a car after having drunk a bottle of gin or sniffed a gram of cocaine.

But it is perfectly legitimate, and I believe Guido Votano hasn't objected to this, for anti-prohibitionism to state that the law should discourage the use of drugs, tobacco, heroin, according to the degree of social and physical dangerousness, that the State should inform citizens on the dangers related to drug abuse, or in certain cases even to simple use of certain drugs. In the latter case a ban on production might even be considered, after having verified if the demand wouldn't create an illegal market. Why is it considered fair to prohibit the use of adulterated foods or of dangerous medicines and not of those drugs, adulterated or not, the simple use of which (not the abuse) causes death or irreversible damage? A prohibition, in this case, of the production and the commercialization, and not of the use. Even drug consumers have a right to be protected! To conclude, I think that declaring that one is generally against drugs is, for an anti-prohibitionist, a dangerous and ambiguous semplification, a pat

ently calculated and therefore foolish attempt to achieve consent among the "right-thinking" people, that could create confusion and a general demonization concerning certain substances and behaviours. On the other hand to declare to be willing to co-operate in the battle drug traffic, for the reduction of the consumption of those drugs that actually produce social and physical damage, starting with tobacco, alcohol and heroin, seems an essential thing to me. The starting point of a similar dissuasion campaign is to get the consumers of illicit drugs out of the illegal market. The only way to achieve this is to eliminate the category of illicit drugs itself. On the rest of Guido Votano's intervention I have nothing much to add, particularly on the subject of the anti-prohibitionist lists, but I would very much like to know what Taradash thinks about this, when he re-emerges from the telematic sleep he seems to be plunged into.