BI-MONTHLY AGENCY OF ANTIPROHIBITIONIST RADICAL ACTION - 1

EDITORIAL: Radical antiprohibitionism in Europe

Prohibitionism on drugs is a combination of social conventions and ethical and religious moralism which has had to bend the laws of science in order to create itself and, subsequently, to preserve itself. The confusion, even the semantic confusion, which we find in the UN Conventions and in the documents of the WHO and the hundreds of international organizations (documents whose costs are unfortunately impossible to discover) is a sign of the poverty and the folly to which the prohibitionists are forced.

That prohibitionism on drugs is folly is clear from the figures, the inaccessible statistics that demonstrate its impotence and its failure: the number of deaths caused by the uncontrolled use of a number of substances, due to the fact that these substances are illegal and therefore not subject to any form of control, in terms of both quality and quantity; the number of deaths among the criminal gangs to which the state has given a free monopoly over the illegal drugs market; the millions of thefts, muggings, and robberies committed to procure substances which actually cost very little to produce, but which the illegality tax makes unavailable; the years of prison, and Aids; and then the police and the justice officials, thousands of people who are flogging a dead horse and who are diverted from their duties, and the forsaken cities, and justice which is inevitably diverted from its original significance.

Everything is turned upside- down: the legal system and statistics, medicine which no longer serves to alleviate suffering but to increase it, and the lies about a war which cannot be won, which costs a fortune and which causes disasters in human, social, and health terms.

We are not interested here in writing that which history will inevitably have to write, what it has already written on the prohibition of alcohol in America and every other occasion on which things have been prohibited.

We have organized ourselves politically to defeat this folly, to appeal to the governments of our countries and of the world not to give in, to assume what should be their responsibility: to deal with the problems of their age and to find solutions. And to do this it must be clear that the scourge of drugs is not the drugs themselves, but misinformation, the distorted use made of drugs, the result of negative publicity rather than serious information which would allow each individual to exercise responsible choice, which is always personal.

We have organized ourselves politically because we know that it is only by means of a new law that we can change the daily defeat, ever more tragic, which forces the prohibitionists to commit error after error, to seek after futile instruments.

We have organized ourselves politically to change the law in our own countries, to urge our governments to do that which they were elected to do. There is a need for new laws to prevent the spread of Aids, laws which restore the right and the duty of doctors to act according to science and conscience by using the medicines they believe to be most suitable, laws which prevent the use of prisons as a means of detoxification: in short, laws which are more humane, more respectful of the individual, of justice and of science. We will not stop at the de factu depenalization of the use of drugs if it is not backed by law: it would be paradoxical to be able to consume a product that cannot be produced and sold. But as well as being paradoxical, depenalization alone would leave the foundations of the prohibitionist regime intact, with all its social and economic consequences in terms of justice and the denial of freedom and personal choice.

We have organized ourselves politically, therefore, to bring about new laws, a project centred on a re- examination of the international conventions that are the basis of the prohibitionist policies in our countries.

Using Brussels as a base, a few of us have decided to promote the Radical Antiprohibitionist Committee (CORA) in Europe. An association which has widespread support and long experience in Italy, where it sponsored and won a referendum against imprisonment for users of any illegal substances (only two years ago, it was still possible to be sent to prison in Italy for a few grams of marijuana); which has succeeded in bringing about a debate in the Chamber of Deputies (still in progress) on a proposal for the legalization of soft drugs and for the distribution of heroin; which has succeeded in presenting a parliamentray document for the denouncement of the international conventions on drugs.An association which is already taking shape in France, Belgium, Spain and the Ukraine.

An association which is linked to the (transnational and transdivisional) Radical Party, and which anyone can join or support whether or not they belong to the party. Within six months we will hold our constitutive Congress (an annual meeting), open to all members and supporters, which decides on initiatives and elects the executive organs. Our ambition (which may seem to be folly) is to create an international militant movement capable of instilling a few crumbs of reason into the leaders of the world.

We hope we will be able to count on your attention and readiness to help, and we invite you to become an active member of the antiprohibitionist fight, to assume personal responsibility, to help to change these harmful laws, for each of us, for everyone.

Maurizio TURCO (I)

Patrice AUDIBERT (F)

Michel HANCISSE (B)

Begona RODRIGUEZ- ANTEGUEDAD (E)

Alexander KOSTRISKIY (U)