Source: San Jose Mercury News
 http://www.sjmercury.com/news/breaking/docs/063484.htm
Contact:  Latin America explores leniency on drug use

 BY KATHERINE ELLISON
 KnightRidder Newspapers 

 SAO PAULO, Brazil  Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada
 recently confided that he would decriminalize drugs if he could spare
 himself the international controversy.

 Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso last year spoke of the need
 for a national debate on decriminalizing marijuana.

 Colombia's Supreme Court, three years ago, actually overturned a law
 calling for prison terms for possession of small quantities of drugs 
 although the move was later partly reversed by thenPresident Cesar
 Gaviria.

 As Latin America's young democracies explore their new freedoms  and
 as a growing drugconsumption problem fills prisons and frustrates
 attempts at control  many of the region's leaders have begun debating
 more permissive policies.

 So far, the discussions have been halting and limited, yet they have worried
 the U.S. government, which over the weekend took a strong stand against
 drug legalization at a conference it sponsored for Latin American mayors.

 ``This is a struggle for the hearts and minds of our youth,'' U.S.
 Ambassador Melvyn Levitsky warned.

 The response at the Latin American Cities Against Drugs conference was
 much less than had been hoped for, however: Only 45 mayors showed up.

 The audience, filled out by antidrug civic activists, was treated to videos
 of junkies shooting up in Zurich's Needle Park, which the Swiss
 government closed in 1995, and expert testimony about the toll of
 experiments in leniency in the United States and Europe.

 ``Liberalization gained ground much faster than anyone imagined,'' Swiss
 psychologist Franziska Haller said. ``Legalizers have nearly reached their
 goals. The socalled Swiss model is being exported around the world.''

 In fact, some governments that have tried liberalization have recently
 begun to backtrack.

 The Netherlands, pressured by Germany and France and also worried about
 increasing drugrelated crime at home, last year began drastically cutting
 the number of coffee houses where it is legal to buy and smoke cannabis.

 But while the Swiss have closed down Needle Park, Haller said officials
 now supply heroin to 800 addicts, in rooms where they can shoot up with
 help from a doctor or nurse. The country also has hemp restaurants, hemp
 wine and even hemp sausages, she complained.

 In the 1970s, a softening of penalties for marijuana use in the United States
 led to a huge increase in consumption, with one out of 10 highschool
 students stoned on marijuana every day by 1980, said Robert Peterson,
 Michigan's former drug czar. A crackdown brought some improvement,
 but it has been followed by a relapse in the past four years, he said.

 Swedish activist Torgny Peterson, the director of European Cities Against
 Drugs, characterized ``the new enemy'' in the fight against drugs as
 ``socalled intellectuals, socalled scientists'' and the Drug Policy
 Foundation, an international proliberalization group he said had received
 $6 million from American philanthropist George Soros.

 The foundation has yet to make significant inroads in Latin America,
 however, where advocates of softer penalties for ``hard'' drug use are
 nowhere close to reaching majorities.

 A poll commissioned by the U.S. Information Agency last year found that
 only 5 to 6 percent of respondents in six countries surveyed favored
 legalizing cocaine or heroin. (The number jumped to 11 percent in
 Colombia.)

 But it's a different story when it comes to marijuana, at least in Brazil. A
 poll last year by the Brazilian news weekly Isto E found that nearly 42
 percent said penalties should be eliminated for consumption of that drug.

 ``The marijuana cigarette is rolled with tranquillity on the beaches, in the
 plazas and at parties,'' an accompanying article said, describing a new
 tolerance that would have been ``unimaginable'' during the 1970s, when
 Brazil was ruled by a military junta.

 Also in Brazil, the Senate is now considering a bill that would eliminate
 jail terms for drug consumption, motivated by concern that prison hardens
 smalltime users into bigtime criminals.

 ``This is not legalization,'' said the bill's author, Sen. Jose Elias Murad.
 ``It's a middle ground. Right now, we have minimum sixmonth jail terms
 for drug consumers. This approach would still carry penalties, but would
 substitute fines and community work.''

 The U.S. sponsorship of the weekend conference fits into a new emphasis
 on international demand reduction in President Clinton's overall drug
 strategy announced in February, according to assistant U.S. drug czar
 Hoover Adger.

 It may also be an effort to reassure Latin leaders that the United States isn't
 giving up the drug fight.

 In the USIA poll, 50 percent or more of those surveyed in Brazil, Chile,
 Colombia and Mexico described the U.S. effort to deal with the drug
 problem in their nations as ``fairly bad'' or ``very bad.''