108 EURO-PARLIAMENTARIANS CALL FOR LEGAL, REGULATED DRUG TRADE, REFORM OF
UN CONVENTIONS

Nearly one out of six Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are
now calling for an end to drug prohibition and the revision of United
Nations (UN) treaties that block the way. Some 108 MEPs (out of 624)
from seven political parties or groups and 13 European Union countries
have agreed on a draft resolution urging the UN and its member states
to establish a "system for the legal control and regulation of the
production, sale and consumption of substances which are currently
illegal."

This initiative -- headed in the European Parliament by MEPs Marco
Cappato (Radicals, Italy), Chris Davies (Liberals, UK), Daniel
Cohn-Bendit (Greens, France/Germany), Jose Mendiluce Pereiro
(Socialists, Spain) and Pernille Frahm (Communists, Denmark) -- was
born out of October's "Out from the Shadows" anti-prohibition
conference at the European Parliament in Brussels. That conference,
which also marked the revival of the Radical-affiliated International
Antiprohibitionist League (IAL), focused not only on calls to end drug
prohibition, but also on proposals for efforts to reform the UN
Conventions of 1961, 1971 and 1988 that provide the legal framework
for global prohibition. The UN drug bureaucracy is set to review the
organization's 10-year plan to eradicate all drugs by 2008 in April in
Vienna.

But the effort in the European Parliament is not aimed directly at the
UN, Cappato told DRCNet. "This is a resolution we will bring before
the European Parliament. We will use it to bring pressure on European
governments to make them raise their voices on reforming the UN
conventions, since the EU doesn't have a mandate on drug policy," he
explained. "What we want to happen in Vienna is to have governments
speaking out against the 10-year plan launched by the UN. They need to
speak out for reform, for change, and especially for change in the
international conventions," he said.

Neither should anyone expect changes at the meeting next spring. "This
is only a step, but it is an important step, these are representatives
of the EU speaking," said Cappato. "This will put pressure on European
governments so that one or more of them will start raising doubts in
Vienna, start breaking the prohibitionist consensus. We tried to do
something like this four years ago and we had 60 MEPs. Now we have 108
MEPS. Our numbers are growing."

Still, the resolution approved by the 108 MEPs for presentation to the
European Parliament is a sweeping condemnation of the last century's
prohibitionist impulse as embodied in the UN conventions. Given "the
massive amount of police power and other resources devoted to the
application of such UN Conventions, the production, consumption and
trafficking of prohibited substances have increased exponentially over
the last 30 years, which constitutes a genuine failure," wrote the
signatories. "The long history of prohibition has conclusively
demonstrated that reliance primarily on governmental action, through
the criminal law and the police, has only marginal effect on the
control of drug abuse." Fingering prohibition itself as the culprit
behind huge black market profits, the resolution adds that "the
profitability of the trade in illegal substances can only lead to an
increase in the number of countries involved in drug production and
generate massive investment in research into, and the production of,
new chemical drugs."

Prohibition is also harmful for drug consumers, agreed the MEPs. "The
clandestine nature of the consumption of illegal substances is an
often insurmountable obstacle to prevention work as well as to the
provision of assistance by public authorities and private
organizations; current policies therefore condemn consumers to live at
the edge of society, in permanent contact with the criminal
underworld," they wrote. And a threat to all citizens of democratic
societies: "The implementation of current drugs policies leads to the
introduction into national law of rules that restrict individual
freedom and civil liberties," reads the resolution.

Thus wrote the MEPs, "the drug prohibition policy stemming from the UN
Conventions of 1961, 1971 and 1988 is the actual cause of the
increasing damage which the production, trafficking, sale and
consumption of illegal substances inflict on entire sections of
society, the economy as well as public institutions, thus undermining
health, freedom and individuals' lives."

"We cannot forget that drug policies are national," said Cappato. "We
are not attempting global drug legalization through the UN. That is
not the UN's mandate. But at the international level, there are
institutional structures and bureaucracies of cooperation on
prohibition -- funding, repressive structures and institutions that
have grown over decades. Reforming the UN conventions is not the end
of the process, but a means of allowing countries to try new models,"
he argued. "The nations of the world need to raise their voices and
say 'we no longer accept that we have to follow a failed model.'"

European NGOs, working through the International Coalition of NGOs for
Just and Effective Drug Policies (ICN), are also taking aim at the
drug conventions. Working through the European NGO Council on Drugs,
ICN is organizing a lobby campaign directed at national governments
and have issued a public call asking drug reformers to come to Vienna
in April to help influence the UN.

The global prohibition consensus is cracking, and the reverberations
will be heard around the globe.

For further information, visit
http://coranet.radicalparty.org/pressreleases/press_release.php?func=detail&par=2954

Visit http://www.encod.org to learn more about the ICN
campaign.

Read "Breaking the Impasse: Polarisation & Paralysis in UN Drug Control,"
Drugs & Conflict Debate Paper No. 5, from the Transnational Institute, July
2002, at http://www.tni.org/drugs/reports/debate5.htm

Visit http://www.incb.org/e/ind_conv.htm for the drug war
bureaucracy's information on the drug conventions.