BERTRAND MARIE ANDREE

Organisation: University of Montreal

Titre: The Anti-prohibitionist viewpoint legal an political arguments in favour of an international strategy

The arguments against prohibition in matter of drugs have by now been amply exposed by distinguished scholars and statesmen: economists (Milton Friedman, 1990, Reuter, 1986; Stevenson, 1988); jurists: Apap (1989, Castrillo, 1989; Ripolles, 1989 and 1990, Rico, 1984); psychiatrists (Grinspoon, 1988; Szasb, 1974 and 1988); physicians (Del Gatto, 1987, Arnao, 1985, 1988, 1989); Roelandt, 1988); philosophers (Savater, 1988, 1989 and others); statesmen like George Schulz, etc. What has not been clearly exposed are the alternatives to prohibition: decriminalization of some or all drugs; depenalization; legalization by stages, i.e. of some drugs (the grinspoon model) or of all presently illegal drugs. My contention is that the only realistic and criminologically valid alternative to the present drug policies is the last one: legalization of all psychotropic substances and their regulation under the alcohol model (Bertrand, 1973, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990). Moreover, for any policy to be efficient in this regard, it mu

st have international recognition and application.. Hence we have to undo the effects of the international conventions in matter of narcotics and psychotropic drugs (1961, 1972, 1973) - which structure national policies and bind the signatories to these conventions.

In the course of our international meetings of these last years (1988, 1989, 1990) we also have come to recognize additional pernicious effects to the present international conventions and, more generally, to the drug policies. Our colleagues from South America have exposed at lenght the economic, diplomatic, cultural and moral consequences of the militarization of conflict between the North and the South in matter of drugs (del Olmo, 1988, Henman, 1987, 1988, 1989; Garcia Sayan, 1989). Other consequences are being felt by the East European countries now that their borders are more open: a displacement of the drug market is feared or already felt by some of them (Jon Bok, Tchecoslovaquia).

The limitations of local or national alternative to prohibition (in the Netherlands, in Spain) have by now been recognized, thus adding to the rationality of an international strategy.