SUGGESTIONS FOR A 'SOCIAL HEALTH' POLICY ON DRUGS

Almost everyone agrees that in Italy, as in the rest of the world, there is a serious drug problem. The differences in opinion start immediately after. What are 'drugs'? How can the problem be defined? Does the problem lie in drugs themselves, or in the pathology and in the noxious behaviour for the consumer and for others that the use of drugs can imply? Is it a moral problem, a legal problem, a problem concerning the battle against crime or the limitation of individual freedom? Is it a medical, biological or genetic fact? Or is it a combination of all these?

The public opinion reflects the divisions that exist throughout the world on the 'true causes' of the diffusion of drugs. Strictly speaking in fact, the discussion focuses on certain drugs, that is illegal drugs. The ideological debate - recently rekindled by the polemics on the so-called Montalcini case - may arouse passion, but it makes the institutional intervention approximate and ideological.

A few international experiences, such as the one conducted in Liverpool, successfully operating since years, could take the shape, in our country as well, of proposals of concrete intervention based on the following practical assumptions:

1. Things that are wrong in the repressive policy on drugs:

a) it does not solve the problem of the consumption of prohibited drugs and it does not solve the problem of the drug traffic;

b) it creates an artificial discrepancy between good drugs (legal drugs) and bad drugs (prohibited drugs), which is void of any scientific base;

c) it makes any campaign for the reduction of the consumption of alcohol and tobacco difficult, whereas these substances are the most harmful for public health;

d) it mixes the problem of drug addiction with that of the battle against crime, which is largely related to the repressive policy in force;

2. Things to be done:

a) A global Social Health system is needed, aimed at the reduction of the consumption of drugs and of their harmful effects on the individual life, on families and society.

b) This programme must be activated also in view of a legalization of those drugs that are currently prohibited. The legal regulation, while eliminating all the collateral effects of prohibition, which are tragically undermining the bases of social life, cannot solve the health problems linked to the use of drugs, caused for the most part by tobacco and alcohol.

3. A possible Social Health program would have these components:

a) a single sanitary policy, based on epidemiological, toxicologic and pharmacological factors for all drugs, regardless of their status of legality.

b) The aim of this policy would be that of reducing the damage and achieving a security of use. The different substances would be classified anew, not on the basis of criteria founded on ideology and prejudice, but on the basis of their potential harmfulness both for the consumer and for other people, on the potential of addiction, on the short-term sanitary risks, on the long-term risks, on the personal benefits (if there are any).

c) A firm attack against the culture of legal drugs. Advertisement on alcohol, at least in television, must be banned, and any form of advertisement must be adequately taxed. Specific campaigns must be activated for the reduction of the consumption of tobacco, and social interventions must be programmed to the advantage of the tobacco producers, who are thousand and thousands in the EEC.

d) Establish intervention programmes on the political, social and economic causes that favour the diffusion of prohibited drugs, identifying the different social contexts (areas of Southern Italy controlled by the mafia, ghettoes in large cities, for example) and facing the negative results produced by the repressive policy and by the new law on drugs.

e) Seriously tackle the AIDS epidemic among drug addicts, developing the Active Service on Drug Addictions suggested by the CoRa to all the elected candidates in the regional and local organs, for the distribution, by means of mobile units and automatic distributors, of sterile syringes in exchange for used ones, of substitute substances and of condoms.