Pubdate: Fri, 07 Mar 2003
Source: The Week Online with DRCNet (US Web)
Contact:  http://www.drcnet.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2514
Author: Phillip S. Smith, Editor

"SEEDS OF PEACE" RELEASED IN BRUSSELS AS PRELUDE TO VIENNA UN CONFERENCE

With the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS)
Vienna midterm review of international drug strategy now just six
weeks away, the International Coalition of NGOs for Just and Effective
Drug Policies (ICN) has stepped up its efforts to wrest changes in the
UN's current prohibitionist consensus. The coalition's "Another Drug
Policy is Possible" campaign took off Monday in Brussels, as
demonstrators at the Place de la Monnaie launched hundreds of balloons
filled with cannabis seeds to "spread seeds of peace" instead of drug
war violence.

The following day, the coalition organized a public hearing on reform
of the UN drug conventions at the Brussels headquarters of the
European Parliament. Approximately 120 politicians, experts, and drug
policy reform activists participated, reported Joep Oomen of the
European NGO Council for Drugs and Development (ENCOD), which was
named the European chapter of the international coalition in a meeting
in Antwerp on Wednesday.

While speaker after speaker detailed the harms of prohibitionist
policies on drug users and the broader community alike, Andria
Mordaunt of England's John Mordaunt Trust, succinctly summed up the
central theme of the conference. "There is ample evidence across the
entire planet, (and in greater degrees within countries that are
resourced well enough to carry out the research), that
non-criminalizing drug policies -- for the most part -- work better
for the individual drug user, their significant others and their wider
community," said Mordaunt, adding "what I mean by 'work' is reducing
the deaths, disease and crime that are so often associated with
addictive drug use."

The answer, said Mordaunt, is obvious: end drug prohibition. "Global
drug prohibition seems to be a failure," she said. "In our lives and
in our communities it is and has been an abject disaster and a war on
all of us."

This week's Belgian events are part of the run-up to Vienna that also
includes an ongoing campaign by the Transnational Radical Party
(http://www.radicalparty.org) and Parliamentarians for
Antiprohibitionist Action (PAA) to encourage national governments to
call for review of the UN drug conventions, the legal backbone of the
global prohibition regime. The TRP announced Monday that efforts are
now underway in three national legislative bodies -- Canada, Colombia,
and Greece -- as well as the European Parliament in Brussels.

In Brussels, Kathalijne Buitenweg, MEP from the Netherlands, presented
a resolution calling for "a detailed evaluation of the effectiveness
of the implementation of the UN Conventions." That resolution, which
calls for a possible "procedure for the amending of the 1961 and 1971
Conventions and for the repeal of the 1988 Convention," should be
considered within two weeks, according to ENCOD's Oomen.

And while the parliamentary track unfolds, the International Coalition
of NGOs has announced plans for a demonstration in Vienna on April 12,
where "thousands of people, while crossing the bridge over the Danube,
will again spread the seeds for drug policy reform" before marching on
the UN conference. Similarly, an alternative conference is scheduled
to take place in Vienna April 10-13. Oomen reports that among
participants will be the Italian MDMA network, which will lead chants
of "no war, no war on drugs."

The road to Vienna is starting to get crowded.

Visit http://www.antiprohibitionist.org to read the text of the
International Appeal for the Reform the UN Conventions on Drugs and
view the list of signatories.

Visit http://www.vienna2003.org for further information about the NGO
coalition campaign.

And for German speakers, http://www.u-n-o.org provides information
about the alternative conference set for Vienna. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake