Bi-monthly agency of antiprohibitionist radical action - 2

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EDITORIAL: Prohibited drugs, the Mafia gives thanks...

Giorgio Giacomelli is Director of the UN anti-drugs and anti-crime Programmes. This is what he has to say about the objectives of the war which his office is supposed to be fighting:

CRIME

Organized crime is expanding all over the world and is opening up new markets and new routes in areas and countries which have hitherto been marginal in terms of drug trafficking and consumption: Africa, Pakistan, Mexico and China, for instance. While the annual turnover of the drugs business amounts to 500 billion dollars, there is still no real ethics in the banking sector. Organized crime groups can buy whole portions of countries and continents, as they are already doing, from Austria to the United States, from Eastern Europe to Italy itself, and they are intervening directly in almost all the conflicts currently raging around the world, from Afghanistan to Bosnia.

HEALTH

There is also the threat of a globalization of the social and health consequences of drug addiction: millions of drug users in the former Soviet Union, and the spread of Aids in China. These are completely new situations which are slipping out of control.

THE NEW RUSSIAN FRONT

According to satellite pictures, marijuana and poppy plantations in the Southern regions of the former Soviet Union cover an area twenty-five times as large as those in the rest of the world. The number of plantations has increased fifty-fold in less than eight years. World production of opium has doubled since the fall of the Soviet empire. As in South America, hundreds of thousands of peasants have discovered a new source of business and profit. Those who can deliver one horse-load of opium can earn the equivalent of a year's income. Raw opium costs between 800 and 1,000 dollars a kilo in the bazaars, and its price increases tenfold by the time it reaches the refining laboratories in Moscow. There are estimated to be about eight million drug addicts in the former USSR, six times as many as in 1991, while there are at least 5,700 criminal gangs operating in the territories of the former Soviet Union. 200 of these gangs have financial and military infrastructures: at least 100,000 armed guards, businesses in

thirty or so countries, and control of many of the private banks opened in Russia in the last few years, as well as a myriad of import-export companies with offices all over Europe.

This is the picture sketched by Giorgio Giacomelli, Director of the UN anti-drugs and anti-crime Programmes, of some of the aspects of the scourge of prohibited drugs in some parts of the world.

Giacomelli knows that this war has to be fought for fear that the whole world will become one immense Colombia, where the Medellin cartel (still strong despite the recent highly-publicized arrests, editor's note) controls 30% of fertile land and a large proportion of private property. According to Giacomelli, this fear should be felt in the rich countries, which should do more. We agree with this observation, provided that "rich countries" is replaced by "countries characterized by mature democracy, countries founded on justice and rights" - and "more" does not mean stepping up a war which has been lost, but making NEW LAWS. Not more laws, but different laws.

On one side of this war is an army with unlimited financial resources, profits unequalled in the world economy, great powers of persuasion over its enemies, unrivalled weapons, and thousands of highly motivated soldiers.

On the other side is Giorgio Giacomelli, a general who, compared with the drugs barons, has no troops, no weapons, no funds and no powers, above all no legislative powers. The Director of the UN anti-drugs and anti-crime office must be aware of this. But if he had the courage and the strength to set out alternative strategies, to study them, work out their costs and benefits, and submit them to national parliaments, he would give meaning to his work, rather than the increasing despair he is forced to deal with day by day.

The denouncement of the international conventions is the ultimate weapon, the "invisible plane" which can allow the UN, Giacomelli and the whole world to win this war.

But what is not clear in this war is who is fighting who. For since the war on drugs was begun, in fact, all the problems that its instigators promised to wipe out have grown. Is it possible that nobody is aware that the current strategy not only does not work, but is also counter-productive? What we need is political leaders who are able to put aside their personal ethical and moral values and turn scientific, objective data into legislation. We need political leaders who are able and willing to defeat organized crime on the very ground it has been given to grow on: the illegal drugs market.

Maurizio TURCO (I)

Patrice AUDIBERT (F)

Michel HANCISSE (B)

Begona RODRIGUEZ-ANTEGUEDAD (E)

Alexander KOSTRISKIY (U)

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THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE IN CANNES

Blah-blah-blah...

On 26 and 27 June, the Council of Europe was held in Cannes under the French Presidency of the Union. It was the first time that the heads of state or government of all the fifteen member countries had gathered around the same table. One of the issues covered was the great disaster which the member states, singly and now all together, have created through the decision to hand over the monopoly over the illegal drugs market to organized crime. In the conclusions of the Presidency, there is no sign of a change of heart, or even of doubt about the policies pursued up to the present. All this to the great satisfaction (and probably not only the professional satisfaction) of the EXPERTS called on to draw up a report complete with proposals... blah-blah-blah...

For the moment the leaders of the fifteen member states are light-years away from reforming their current policies on illegal drugs, policies which are a sign of their inability to deal with the great problems of today's world.

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CORA plans new campaign in Italy...

The proceedings of the CORA National Executive were held in Rome on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 July. The Executive decided to hold the 7th Congress in the first week of November. The Congress will be called on to draw up a project for re-organization in order to spread the presence of CORA activists at least to the countries of the European Union. From now until the time of the Congress, the Executive has decided to continue to produce this newsletter and to organize a campaign for the denouncement in the law courts of the institutions. Now that the failure of the current drugs policy is recognized by experts and researchers, the institutions can no longer hide behind ethical principles (rather than lay principles, with which we would like our political leaders to be instilled). By refusing to modify the current laws, and by maintaining the framework of repression and of the illegal market, the relevant institutions are in fact signing an agreement with organized crime, to which they give a free monopoly over

the illegal drugs market. The only alibi is that there are laws to punish those who control this market; as we know, however, the results are negligible even in those countries where drug-trafficking is punishable by the death penalty. CORA has therefore decided to plan a campaign to bring about a debate in the Italian parliament on the revision of the international conventions: the denouncement of the institutions is simply an instrument to make it even more clear that, as well as being incapable of dealing with the problems of our times, they are also deliberately favouring the Mafia.

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Vasco Rossi joins CORA

and the Radical Party

At the conclusion of the proceedings of the CORA Executive, it was announced that Italian pop star Vasco Rossi had joined CORA and the Radical Party. Rossi had on previous occasions expressed moral support for the anti-prohibitionist cause and for Radical leader Marco Pannella: his enrolment is a concrete, public gesture of support which is all the more important due to his great popularity throughout Italy.

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