Pubdate: Thu, 17 Apr 2003
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2003, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  http://www.fyitoronto.com/torsun.shtml
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457
Author: Louis Charbonneau

UN WAR ON DRUGS DOOMED TO FAILURE, NGOS SAY

VIENNA, Austria - A group of European policy-makers and nongovernmental 
organizations said Thursday the United Nations' war on drugs was doomed to 
fail, and called instead for decriminalizing drug use.

They said narcotics should be treated like alcohol and tobacco -- legal, 
but under state health controls.

"The war on drugs cannot be won because it is a war on human nature," Sir 
Keith Morris, former British Ambassador to Colombia, told a news conference 
called during a meeting in Vienna of U.N. anti-drugs agencies.

"History shows that no society ever existed which was 'drug-free."'

Activists at the news conference said the United Nations' hard-line 
opposition to liberalizing drug use was too extreme to work.

"Their own numbers are proof of their failure," said Marco Cappato, an 
Italian member of the European Parliament and coordinator for 
Parliamentarians for Anti-Prohibitionist Action.

"In the five years since the U.N. launched its war on drugs, the numbers 
show the use of all the major drugs has increased ... as well as 
drug-related deaths from overdose and HIV/AIDS."

Raymond Kendall, honorary secretary-general of the international police 
agency Interpol, said the only workable approach was to permit the supply 
and distribution of drugs through strictly controlled legal avenues.

Speaking as a retired career policeman with experience in narcotics 
control, he said this would protect the users from bad quality drugs and 
keep the business out of criminals' hands.

"One extreme is arresting people, the other extreme is legalizing it," 
Kendall said. "The proper route has to be somewhere in the middle."

Cappato said his goal was to remove control of the drug trade from 
terrorists and organized criminals, who he said were the real beneficiaries 
of the criminalization of drug use.

He said a vote last week in the European Parliament calling for a more 
lenient drugs strategy in the European Union lost by only one vote, proving 
there was a lot of support for the view.

While the United Nations agrees that the use of drugs is still rising five 
years after launching its formal war, Antonio Maria Costa, director of the 
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said: "Efforts to reduce abuse of illicit 
drugs have shown signs of progress."

The progress Costa outlined in a report to this week's ministerial session 
of the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs included a reduction in the areas 
cultivating opium poppy for heroin and coca plants for cocaine.

He also noted the adoption of stricter drug control strategies by many 
countries.

But not everyone agreed that stricter policies were a sign of progress.

"We're doing a much better job today in managing socially accepted drugs 
like tobacco and alcohol than in futile battles against poverty-stricken 
farmers in Third World countries and hapless addicts in our cities, where 
our only achievement is to increase human suffering," Morris said.
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