Demonstration in support of the current policies on drugs of the Netherlands' Authorities

The policies on illegal drugs of the Dutch government are not only an example of tolerance, but mainly of effective government protecting its citizen from the blind violence of criminality and from the uncontrolled spread of the AIDS virus.

These policies represent the only serious and successful tentative to deter the damages caused by policies that allow organized crime the monopoly on the production and distribution of drugs. An illegal monopoly where the substances sold cannot be controlled, that makes criminality all over the world increasingly powerful to influence the economy, finances, police forces, justice and the media in our countries.

It is for this that, in modifying the Dutch policies on drugs, we foresee the end of a tolerant approach toward cannabis users.

Following the many foreign pressures, the uncertainties and the growing intolerance, the lessons of the policies implemented up to now, have been forgotten. The restrictions on cannabis distribution are already pushing the users toward illegal means, jeopardizing their integration in society and encouraging discrimination against them. So it seem that the policies of tolerance are giving way to a unanimous European policy...prohibitionism.

For these reasons we urge the Dutch authorities not only to refrain from making any revision to their current policies on drugs, but even more so, to defend and to further advance with greater energy their example of Dutch tolerance and tolerance in absolute.

It is in this spirit that we ask the Netherlands' Authorities to:

- continue in a determinate way their current policies on drugs;

- take the initiative and urge other member countries of the EU to withdraw the current denunciation of the United Nation Conventions on drugs in order to convene as soon as possible an international conference;

- promote research on therapeutical, medical and social uses of cannabis and its derivatives;

- guarantee, within the EU, the rights and well-being of drugs' users.

Therefore, on May 19, at 11:00 am, we will stage a demonstration in Amsterdam and in hundreds of Dutch cities, in front of Dutch embassies and consulates in many capitals and cities of western, central and eastern Europe and the United States.

I.R.D.R.H.R. (Drugs Peace Institute)

Radical Party (Transnational and Transparty)

L.I.A. (International Anti-prohibitionist League)

E.C.C.O. (European Cannabis Users Organization)