CANADIANS JOIN WORLD CALL FOR LIBERALIZATION

OTTAWA (CP) -- Days before the United Nations is to announce its most
ambitious anti-drug program ever, hundreds of world leaders, including 80
Canadians, have signed a ground-breaking petition asking the UN to support
the liberalization of drug laws instead.

The petition, a rough draft of which has been obtained by the Citizen, will
be presented to the UN General Assembly when it convenes Monday for what
are expected to be hard-nosed discussions on how to crack down on trade in
illegal drugs.

The goal of the conference is to come up with a plan that will eliminate
the world's production of heroin, cocaine and marijuana within the next 10
years by paying farmers who grow the drugs to switch to legal crops.

The conference is expected to recommend spending an additional $3 billion
to $4 billion to fight drugs.

But the signatories of the petition question the value of such initiatives.

"We believe the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug
abuse itself," says a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan included in
the petition.

"In many parts of the world, drug war politics impede public health efforts
to stem the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases.

"Human rights are violated, environmental assaults perpetrated and prisons
inundated with hundreds of thousands of drug law violators. Scarce
resources better expended on health, education and economic development are
squandered on ever more expensive interdiction efforts."

The petition is intended to promote ways of dealing with drug problems
other than resorting to the expensive and overcrowded criminal justice system.

It includes the signatures of such dignitaries as former UN ecretary
general Javier Perez de Cuellar; former U.S. secretary of state George
Shultz; former U.S. surgeon general Jocelyn Elders; and Edward Ellison,
former head of the Scotland Yard Drug Squad.

Among the prominent Canadians to sign the petition are Senator Sharon
Carstairs, NDP Leader Alexa McDonough, former Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar,
lawyers Clayton Ruby and Edward Greenspan, noted urban-planning author Jane
Jacobs, and a dozen members of Parliament.

The most prominent names on the petition will be featured in a two-page
advertisement in Monday's New York Times.

The protest is the result of work by the Lindesmith Center, a New
York-based think-tank, and drug-policy reform groups from more than 20
countries.

"What we are trying to do is influence the UN and its member countries to
move away from these outrageous drug policies that serve only to congest
the court system and fuel the violence associated with the illegal drug
trade," said Eugene Oscapella, a spokesman for the Canadian Foundation for
Drug Policy, which helped organize the petition.

The petition's backers will also hold a series of conferences to help
promote alternative methods of dealing with drug problems.

Checked-by: Richard Lake