Source: Le Monde (France) Contact: Website: http://www.lemonde.fr/ Pubdate: Thursday, 18 June 1998 Section: Editorial Editors Note: This is a babelfish translation - with little corrections. While we received the French version, due to the damage caused to text with non-US keyboard letters by our system, it is not really readable. Our newshawk hawked this about the best way we have at this point, running it thru babelfish first, then making minor adjustments. Perhaps an expert human translator would have done better, but when one is not available, this at least imparts a good idea that the major newspaper in a country where debating the laws against drugs is more than politically incorrect has taken a stand! DRUGS: THE TRUE DEBATE The report about the "problems caused by drugs harm", revealed in our editions of June 17 had to be mark with a white stone. For the first time in France, this debate with high ideologic gravity will be able to begin on bases as objective as the current state of the progresses of science allows it. We argue, at last, on the pharmacology of the substances and not on the preconceived views, social, cultural and policies they convey. This new approach, which allows particularly to put in perspective the real harm of alcohol and cannabis, clarifies the incoherences of the current, medical and repressive legislative system fighting against the consumption of drug. It underlines has which point the distinction which is made between licit and illicit drugs does not rest on scientific bases. How can anyone reasonably maintain that it is legal to consume the quantity of alcohol which one wishes and that it is forbidden to smoke cannabis, even few grams? But pharmacology cannot, alone, summarize the whole problems linked to the consumption of drugs. The harm of a product also holds has the way in which it is introduced in the body : from this point of view, the injection remains the mode of the most dangerous administration. It is also important to take account of the economic and sociocultural context. What of commun run between the adult ease and socially which smokes a " spliff " or "sniffe" cocaine and a young person marginalise which seeks for any price to consume crack ? In his report, Bernard-Pierre Roques recalls the ethical principle states by Spinoza: " the effort to preserve itself is the first and single base of the virtue". To be exerted, this vital force must be based on a satisfaction to be. However, recalls the report, "the fast development of the industrial companies broke balance, lauding as virtue individualism and the performance like obligatory passport of the social recognition". How to be astonished, consequently, that amplifying the social, family and school situations conflict, more disabled people psychologically loses the regard of themselves? Shouldn't the debate be reconsidered on this point by being appropriate that it is on such a ground that could prosperer the providers and the drug traffickers? Politically symbolic system, the question of the depenalisation of the consumption of the "soft drugs" is additional from the point of view of the public health. Otherwise more frightening for the public authorities is to know how to fight effectively against polyaddictions and these evils endemic which are alcoholism and the nicotinism while taking care to distinguish between a "recreative" use, even cultural being the wine, and the abuse which generates states of dependance. Despite it would dislike the lobbies which will appear without delay, it is an essential debate. - --- Checked-by: Richard Lake