EU AIDE ARGUES FOR LEGALIZING DRUGS

Agence France-Presse

PARIS The European commissioner for consumer policy, Emma Bonino,

called Wednesday for certain drugs to be legalized after an EU

report indicated that up to a million Europeans take heroin.

Mrs. Bonino reiterated her view that banning drugs led only to

black market dealing and that legalizing them along the lines

taken by the Netherlands would lead to a reduction in

drug-related crime.

"If the trade became official, in a form which must be defined,

it would deprive organized crime of an important source of

revenue," she said in an interview in the Paris daily newspaper

Le Parisien.

"And if drugs became available for a reasonable price, it would

decrease violence by drug addicts to fund their habit," added

Mrs. Bonino, a member of the Italian Radical Party.

She was speaking after the first report by the European Drugs

Observatory about drug-taking across the Continent said that up

to one million Europeans use heroin.

The report, published in Brussels on Tuesday, said that about I

percent of the European Union's adult population had used heroin

and that 0.5 percent were addicts.

The proportion of Europe's population that had used illegal

drugs, mainly marijuana, varied from 5 percent to 16 percent in

member states, the report added.

Mrs. Bonino argued that liberal Dutch legislation was a good

example to follow. President Jacques Chirac of France, however,

has objected to the Dutch drugs policy.

"Dutch legislation has produced excellent results," she said.

"There is less crime and less delinquency. Drug addicts are

registered, and there are far fewer people infected with AIDS

than elsewhere in Europe."

She compared opposition to drug liberalization to the fight

against abortion. "Everyone knows that the probibitionists' legal

arsenal is empty, but nobody wants to start the debate and

consider alternative solutions," she said.

Mrs. Bonino insisted that she was against drugs, saying that she

wanted to tackle the problem in a pragmatic way. "We are making

it into a moral question. But I think the state is not there to

save souls."