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Control Issues (Emboldened By First Baby Boomer Bill Clinton, Who Has Endorsed
Daytime Curfews, Smoking Bans And School Uniforms, 'Los Angeles Times' Says
Adults Across The United States Are Experimenting With Unprecedented Controls
In An Effort To Both Protect And Punish The Young, Especially Teenagers)
Subj: US: Control Issues
From: John W.Black
Date: Sat, 03 Jan 1998 07:34:20 -0500
Source: Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Pubdate: 1 Jan 1997
Section: Life&Style, page 1
Author: Lynn Smith - Times Staff Writer
Note: This article ties with, and was printed on the same page as, The
Criminalization Of Youth Culture by D. James Romero, previously posted.
CONTROL ISSUES
With all the curfews, dress codes and other restrictions being imposed on
kids, are we raising a generation of upstanding citizens-or future leaders
of a police state?
For Nicole Eklund,a 16-year-old cheerleader from Simi Valley, coming of age
has meant getting used to police dogs sniffing for drugs at her school
locker, dress codes proscribing bare midriffs, and an official 10 p.m. curfew
seven days a week.
Leaders in her community-a suburb so benign she calls it "Anytown, USA" -
have expelled a kindergartner for bringing a pink squirt gun to school and
are considering, as state legislators plan to, a daytime curfew for people
under age 18.
What's more, living in California, she now is subject to a $75 fine and
community service if she ever smokes a cigarette, even if her parents give
it to her. Friends applying for their first driver's licenses this year
likely will be restricted from driving late at night or with other kids.
Those who engage in vandalism or graffiti may not be able to obtain
licenses at all and may have to stay home looking at blank TV screens-if
their parents can program a V-chip.
In Nicole's opinion, some of these efforts miss the mark. She thinks adults
should be preparing their children for the real world instead of
overprotecting them. "People learn by experience and mistakes," Nicole says.
Nevertheless, emboldened by First Baby Boomer Bill Clinton-who has endorsed
daytime curfews, smoking bans and school uniforms-adults across the country
are experimenting with unprecedented controls in an effort to both protect
and punish the young, especially teenagers.
Only a few years ago, it was fashionable to talk bout children's rights,
one of Hillary Clinton's original passions. We're not talking about
children's rights today," says William Strauss, a political commentator in
Washington, D.C. "We're talking about the right of the principal to probe
into their lockers and the duty of the child not to put anything in that
locker."
High courts already have ruled that some efforts have gone too far in
restricting liberties, but in general the controls are being met with open
arms.
"The thing that's remarkable is that there's no single ideological group
you can point the finger at for this renaissance of enthusiasm for
authority," says UC Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring, whose book on
juvenile crime will be published this have discovered family values,' a
little bit 'the terror of youth violence' and a little bit of people now
interested in making laws for other people's kids."
"The public perception is that it isn't like it used to be, that kids are
doing more and more bad things at a younger and younger age, and the things
they are doing are worse than ever before," adds professor Thomas Nazario
of San Francisco, a specialist in children's law. "It is worse," Nazario
believes. "The only question is how much worse."
Zimring disagrees. He contends that fear of youth violence-often the
genesis of curfews and dress codes-has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Most of the "increase" in youth violence since the mid-1980s, Zimring says,
can be attributed to a reclassification of minor attacks as more serious
ones. While still disturbing, even those figures have been declining in
recent years.
However, in a recent survey of American cities, many officials attributed
dramatic decreases in juvenile crime precisely to an increase in
restrictions on children, namely daytime and nighttime curfews.
An estimated 35 regional jurisdictions, including the city and county of
Los Angeles, have daytime curfews, also known as antitruancy laws,
requiring children to stay off the streets during school hours. The
majority of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District have
implemented policies requiring students to wear uniforms. New laws, rules
and policies are gaining steam almost everywhere.
In Long Beach, parents' enthusiasm for school uniforms, required at every
elementary and middle school for the past three years, spread this fall to
a high school where freshmen will begin a four-year phase-in.
At the nation's largest mall, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.,
teenagers under 16 must have chaperons after 6 p.m.
This summer in King's County, Wash., law enforcement officials used a
helicopter to find and arrest underage drinkers partying in secluded areas.
One of the most puzzling and ironic aspects of the new wave of controls is
that they are being proposed and enforced by the Summer of Love generation,
one of the most pampered and individualistic groups of children ever raised
(see accompanying story). Some suggest the controls may be a reaction to
the disarray in the boomers' own lives.
When social problems appear overwhelming, adults historically have grasped
at whatever controls are handy, says psychologist Lawrence Steinberg of
Philadelphia, who is studying national juvenile justice reform. Steinberg
notes that clothing is a frequent target.
One of the problems with the current wave, Steinberg says, is that some
adults fail to distinguish between things that need adult control and
things that don't. In some cases, he argues, kids are given too much
freedom by the very same adults who are overly controlling in other areas.
"Censoring the kind of information that kids have access to over the
Internet is probably a lot less important than monitoring kids' whereabouts
in the after-school hours," Steinberg says.
As much or more than teenage crime or baby boomer hypocrisy, some
researchers suspect the new restrictions stem from fundamental changes in
adult attitudes toward teenagers.
Strauss theorizes that the shift is based on generational patterns that
alternate between over-and under-protection of children. "Parents tend to
raise children to become more like their own parents were than they
themselves were," Strauss says. "This is because of a self-correcting
mechanism in the way a society raises children."
The baby boomers were raised indulgently, but Generation Xers grew up in an
era when society had relaxed its grip on children, says Strauss. "'Now,
boomers are looking for their children to become like the World War II
generation: civic-minded, virtuous and stalwart, says Strauss. Over the next
few years, he predicts, we will see magazine covers praising youths, and
youths themselves returning to singable songs, teamwork and community
service. A return to wholesomeness already is evident from the popularity
of such your, clean-cut singing groups as Hanson, Strauss adds.
"Our advice to government is: Don't overbuild prisons. This is not a
generation you're going to want to stuff in prison. Our society will love
them."
According to another theory, the new crackdown represents a historical
pattern in which adults tend to view young people differently depending on
economic and political circumstances.
When they are needed to serve in wars, for instance, they are considered
capable and responsible, says social psychologist Robert Enright, a
researcher at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. But in economically
insecure eras when they might be rivals for jobs, they tend to be viewed as
immature, disruptive and needing guidance for a longer developmental period.
The new "zero tolerance" and other policies represent "the first wave of a
new social experiment" to legislate social norms, says Enright. Asking for
moral improvement is not such a bad idea, he adds. "But it's a tightrope.
We might choke off their liberties, and have to be careful."
Complaints have begun to surface. Some fear that blanket policies such as
curfew allow too much discretion for officials who enforce them, opening up
the door for racial discrimination. Others say good kids get swept up in
the net.
Parents in central Los Angeles, for instance, were shocked in June when
13-year-old students on an errand for their teacher were handcuffed in the
hall by armed police looking for miscreants.
Even in family-friendly Monrovia, a group of parents is suing the city over
its award-winning anti-truancy ordinance. Rosemary Harrahill, a
home-schooling mother who has joined the litigation, says two of her
children have been stopped a total of 22 times by police. Like others, they
have been issued fluorescent identity cards to show police. Harrahill
likens the principle to Nazi restrictions in prewar Poland. "They've
targeted a class of people and they're children."
"The real question," says Mayor Robert T. Bartlett, "is do you adapt the
community to one or two families' concerns, or do you try to do the most
good you can for the most number of people in the community?" Citing
truants-and fining parents-often inspires parents to become more involved,
Bartlett says. "The gift we're giving them is, we're letting them know we
care."
Even Harrahill admits she feels safe in the "charming, little, wonderful
city" but questions the price: Children becoming accustomed to a society
where they routinely are stopped and questioned by police during the day.
Last year, an appellate court struck down San Diego's nighttime curfew
ordinance as being unconstitutionally vague. The city consequently revamped
its law, which still allows police to arrest teens in public after 10 p.m.
Some students say locker searches, for example, lead to drugs being carried
in pockets or backpacks.
Nazario calls the controls a "quick fix."
"What we really need to do something about juvenile crime in America, is a
lot more resources being poured into education and into opportunity for
kids," he says. "Something has to be done for kids with no access to
after-school programs and the number of kids who live in poverty and
families who don't care or who are not there for them.
"Those are tough issues and cost money and time and are overwhelming for
people. Instead, we go to the law and try to spank kids for getting out of
line."
Some officials who have implemented new restrictions are trying to temper
them with softer interventions as well. For instance, at the Mall of
America-where officials say as many as 4,000 kids used to gather on weekend
evenings-family activities such as basketball and choral singing have been
introduced on the weekends, along with the chaperon policy. Parents have
been recruited and paid $20 and hour to walk side by side with security
officers on patrol.
"If a security officer says, 'You need to stop that,' a young kid might
say, 'No, I don't.' With a mother, it's a lot harder to do that," says mall
spokeswoman Teresa McFarland. "In some cases, these mothers might even know
[the kid's] parents."
In the year before the new policies were enacted, McFarland says, there
were 394 arrests of youngsters under 17 for disorderly conduct at the mall.
In the year since the changes, there has been one.
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Commonsense Drug Policy (Ethan Nadelmann Of The Lindesmith Center
In 'Foreign Affairs' Contrasts Harm Reduction Policies In Europe
With US Policy, Which 'Has Failed Persistently Over The Decades
Because It Has Preferred Such Rhetoric To Reality,
And Moralism To Pragmatism')
Newshawk: Ethan Nadelmann http://www.lindesmith.org/
Source: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77 No.1.
Author: Ethan A. Nadelmann
Pubdate: January-February, 1998
Contact: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/
Editor's note: Our newshawk writes: "Commonsense Drug Policy" as published
in Foreign Affairs contained only one footnote. But over the next few weeks,
we'll be adding dozens of footnotes & links to this article [at]:
http://www.lindesmith.org/library/foreigna.html
COMMONSENSE DRUG POLICY
FIRST, REDUCE HARM
In 1988 Congress passed a resolution proclaiming its goal of "a drug-free
America by 1995." U.S. drug policy has failed persistently over the decades
because it has preferred such rhetoric to reality, and moralism to pragmatism.
Politicians confess their youthful indiscretions, then call for tougher drug laws.
Drug control officials make assertions with no basis in fact or science. Police
officers, generals, politicians, and guardians of public morals qualify as drug
czars-but not, to date, a single doctor or public health figure. Independent
commissions are appointed to evaluate drug policies, only to see their
recommendations ignored as politically risky. And drug policies are designed,
implemented, and enforced with virtually no input from the millions of
Americans they affect most: drug users. Drug abuse is a serious problem, both
for individual citizens and society at large, but the "war on drugs" has made
matters worse, not better.
Drug warriors often point to the 1980s as a time in which the drug war really
worked. Illicit drug use by teenagers peaked around 1980, then fell more than
50 percent over the next 12 years. During the 1996 presidential campaign,
Republican challenger Bob Dole made much of the recent rise in teenagers' use
of illicit drugs, contrasting it with the sharp drop during the Reagan and Bush
administrations. President Clinton's response was tepid, in part because he
accepted the notion that teen drug use is the principal measure of drug policy's
success or failure; at best, he could point out that the level was still barely half
what it had been in 1980.
In 1980, however, no one had ever heard of the cheap, smokable form of
cocaine called crack, or drug-related HIV infection or aids. By the 1990s, both
had reached epidemic proportions in American cities, largely driven by
prohibitionist economics and morals indifferent to the human consequences of
the drug war. In 1980, the federal budget for drug control was about $1 billion,
and state and local budgets were perhaps two or three times that. By 1997, the
federal drug control budget had ballooned to $16 billion, two-thirds of it for
law enforcement agencies, and state and local funding to at least that. On any
day in 1980, approximately 50,000 people were behind bars for violating a
drug law. By 1997, the number had increased eightfold, to about 400,000.
These are the results of a drug policy over-reliant on criminal justice
"solutions," ideologically wedded to abstinence-only treatment, and insulated
from cost-benefit analysis.
Imagine instead a policy that starts by acknowledging that drugs are here to
stay, and that we have no choice but to learn how to live with them so that they
cause the least possible harm. Imagine a policy that focuses on reducing not
illicit drug use per se but the crime and misery caused by both drug abuse and
prohibitionist policies. And imagine a drug policy based not on the fear,
prejudice, and ignorance that drive America's current approach but rather on
common sense, science, public health concerns, and human rights. Such a
policy is possible in the United States, especially if Americans are willing to
learn from the experiences of other countries where such policies are emerging.
ATTITUDES ABROAD
Americans are not averse to looking abroad for solutions to the nation's drug
problems. Unfortunately, they have been looking in the wrong places: Asia and
Latin America, where much of the world's heroin and cocaine originates.
Decades of U.S. efforts to keep drugs from being produced abroad and
exported to American markets have failed. Illicit drug production is bigger
business than ever before. The opium poppy, source of morphine and heroin,
and cannabis sativa, from which marijuana and hashish are prepared, grow
readily around the world; the coca plant, from whose leaves cocaine is
extracted, can be cultivated far from its native environment in the Andes. Crop
substitution programs designed to persuade Third World peasants to grow legal
crops cannot compete with the profits that drug prohibition makes inevitable.
Crop eradication campaigns occasionally reduce production in one country, but
new suppliers pop up elsewhere. International law enforcement efforts can
disrupt drug trafficking organizations and routes, but they rarely have much
impact on U.S. drug markets.
Even if foreign supplies could be cut off, the drug abuse problem in the United
States would scarcely abate. Most of America's drug-related problems are
associated with domestically produced alcohol and tobacco. Much if not most
of the marijuana, amphetamine, hallucinogens, and illicitly diverted
pharmaceutical drugs consumed in the country are made in the U.S.A. The same
is true of the glue, gasoline, and other solvents used by kids too young or too
poor to obtain other psychoactive substances. No doubt such drugs, as well as
new products, would quickly substitute for imported heroin and cocaine if the
flow from abroad dried up.
While looking to Latin America and Asia for supply-reduction solutions to
America's drug problems is futile, the harm-reduction approaches spreading
throughout Europe and Australia and even into corners of North America show
promise. These approaches start by acknowledging that supply-reduction
initiatives are inherently limited, that criminal justice responses can be costly
and counterproductive, and that single-minded pursuit of a "drug-free society"
is dangerously quixotic. Demand-reduction efforts to prevent drug abuse
among children and adults are important, but so are harm-reduction efforts to
lessen the damage to those unable or unwilling to stop using drugs
immediately, and to those around them.
Most proponents of harm reduction do not favor legalization. They recognize
that prohibition has failed to curtail drug abuse, that it is responsible for much
of the crime, corruption, disease, and death associated with drugs, and that its
costs mount every year. But they also see legalization as politically unwise and
as risking increased drug use. The challenge is thus making drug prohibition
work better, but with a focus on reducing the negative consequences of both
drug use and prohibitionist policies.
Countries that have turned to harm-reduction strategies for help in alleviating
their drug woes are not so different from the United States. Drugs, crime, and
race problems, and other socioeconomic problems are inextricably linked. As in
America, criminal justice authorities still prosecute and imprison major drug
traffickers as well as petty dealers who create public nuisances. Parents worry
that their children might get involved with drugs. Politicians remain fond of
drug war rhetoric. But by contrast with U.S. drug policy, public health goals
have priority, and public health authorities have substantial influence. Doctors
have far more latitude in treating addiction and associated problems. Police
view the sale and use of illicit drugs as similar to prostitution-vice activities
that cannot be stamped out but can be effectively regulated. Moralists focus
less on any inherent evils of drugs than on the need to deal with drug use and
addiction pragmatically and humanely. And more politicians dare to speak out
in favor of alternatives to punitive prohibitionist policies.
Harm-reduction innovations include efforts to stem the spread of HIV by
making sterile syringes readily available and collecting used syringes; allowing
doctors to prescribe oral methadone for heroin addiction treatment, as well as
heroin and other drugs for addicts who would otherwise buy them on the black
market; establishing "safe injection rooms" so addicts do not congregate in
public places or dangerous "shooting galleries"; employing drug analysis units
at the large dance parties called raves to test the quality and potency of MDMA,
known as Ecstasy, and other drugs that patrons buy and consume there;
decriminalizing (but not legalizing) possession and retail sale of cannabis and,
in some cases, possession of small amounts of "hard" drugs; and integrating
harm-reduction policies and principles into community policing strategies.
Some of these measures are under way or under consideration in parts of the
United States, but rarely to the extent found in growing numbers of foreign
countries.
STOPPING HIV WITH STERILE SYRINGES
The spread of HIV, the virus that causes aids, among people who inject drugs
illegally was what prompted governments in Europe and Australia to
experiment with harm-reduction policies. During the early 1980s public health
officials realized that infected users were spreading HIV by sharing needles.
Having already experienced a hepatitis epidemic attributed to the same mode of
transmission, the Dutch were the first to tell drug users about the risks of
needle sharing and to make sterile syringes available and collect dirty needles
through pharmacies, needle exchange and methadone programs, and public
health services. Governments elsewhere in Europe and in Australia soon
followed suit. The few countries in which a prescription was necessary to
obtain a syringe dropped the requirement. Local authorities in Germany,
Switzerland, and other European countries authorized needle exchange
machines to ensure 24-hour access. In some European cities, addicts can
exchange used syringes for clean ones at local police stations without fear of
prosecution or harassment. Prisons are instituting similar policies to help
discourage the spread of HIV among inmates, recognizing that illegal drug
injecting cannot be eliminated even behind bars.
These initiatives were not adopted without controversy. Conservative
politicians argued that needle exchange programs condoned illicit and immoral
behavior and that government policies should focus on punishing drug users or
making them drug-free. But by the late 1980s, the consensus in most of
Western Europe, Oceania, and Canada was that while drug abuse was a serious
problem, aids was worse. Slowing the spread of a fatal disease for which no
cure exists was the greater moral imperative. There was also a fiscal
imperative. Needle exchange programs' costs are minuscule compared with
those of treating people who would otherwise become infected with HIV.
Only in the United States has this logic not prevailed, even though aids was the
leading killer of Americans ages 25 to 44 for most of the 1990s and is now No.
2. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that half of new HIV
infections in the country stem from injection drug use. Yet both the White
House and Congress block allocation of aids or drug-abuse prevention funds
for needle exchange, and virtually all state governments retain drug
paraphernalia laws, pharmacy regulations, and other restrictions on access to
sterile syringes. During the 1980s, aids activists engaging in civil disobedience
set up more syringe exchange programs than state and local governments. There
are now more than 100 such programs in 28 states, Washington, D.C., and
Puerto Rico, but they reach only an estimated 10 percent of injection drug
users.
Governments at all levels in the United States refuse to fund needle exchange
for political reasons, even though dozens of scientific studies, domestic and
foreign, have found that needle exchange and other distribution programs
reduce needle sharing, bring hard-to-reach drug users into contact with health
care systems, and inform addicts about treatment programs, yet do not increase
illegal drug use. In 1991 the National aids Commission appointed by President
Bush called the lack of federal support for such programs "bewildering and
tragic." In 1993 a CDC-sponsored review of research on needle exchange
recommended federal funding, but top officials in the Clinton administration
suppressed a favorable evaluation of the report within the Department of
Health and Human Services. In July 1996 President Clinton's Advisory Council
on HIV/aids criticized the administration for its failure to heed the National
Academy of Sciences' recommendation that it authorize the use of federal
money to support needle exchange programs. An independent panel convened
by the National Institute of Health reached the same conclusion in February
1997. Last summer, the American Medical Association, the American Bar
Association, and even the politicized U.S. Conference of Mayors endorsed the
concept of needle exchange. In the fall, an endorsement followed from the
World Bank.
To date, America's failure in this regard is conservatively estimated to have
resulted in the infection of up to 10,000 people with HIV. Mounting scientific
evidence and the stark reality of the continuing aids crisis have convinced the
public, if not politicians, that needle exchange saves lives; polls consistently
find that a majority of Americans support needle exchange, with approval
highest among those most familiar with the notion. Prejudice and political
cowardice are poor excuses for allowing more citizens to suffer from and die
of aids, especially when effective interventions are cheap, safe, and easy.
METHADONE AND OTHER ALTERNATIVES
The United States pioneered the use of the synthetic opiate methadone to treat
heroin addiction in the 1960s and 1970s, but now lags behind much of Europe
and Australia in making methadone accessible and effective. Methadone is the
best available treatment in terms of reducing illicit heroin use and associated
crime, disease, and death. In the early 1990s the National Academy of Sciences'
Institute of Medicine stated that of all forms of drug treatment, "methadone
maintenance has been the most rigorously studied modality and has yielded the
most incontrovertibly positive results . . . Consumption of all illicit drugs,
especially heroin, declines. Crime is reduced, fewer individuals become HIV
positive, and individual functioning is improved." However, the institute went
on to declare, "Current policy . . . puts too much emphasis on protecting society
from methadone, and not enough on protecting society from the epidemics of
addiction, violence, and infectious diseases that methadone can help reduce."
Methadone is to street heroin what nicotine skin patches and chewing gum are
to cigarettes-with the added benefit of legality. Taken orally, methadone has
little of injected heroin's effect on mood or cognition. It can be consumed for
decades with few if any negative health consequences, and its purity and
concentration, unlike street heroin's, are assured. Like other opiates, it can
create physical dependence if taken regularly, but the "addiction" is more like a
diabetic's "addiction" to insulin than a heroin addict's to product bought on the
street. Methadone patients can and do drive safely, hold good jobs, and care for
their children. When prescribed adequate doses, they can be indistinguishable
from people who have never used heroin or methadone.
Popular misconceptions and prejudice, however, have all but prevented any
expansion of methadone treatment in the United States. The 115,000
Americans receiving methadone today represent only a small increase over the
number 20 years ago. For every ten heroin addicts, there are only one or two
methadone treatment slots. Methadone is the most tightly controlled drug in the
pharmacopoeia, subject to unique federal and state restrictions. Doctors cannot
prescribe it for addiction treatment outside designated programs. Regulations
dictate not only security, documentation, and staffing requirements but
maximum doses, admission criteria, time spent in the program, and a host of
other specifics, none of which has much to do with quality of treatment.
Moreover, the regulations do not prevent poor treatment; many clinics provide
insufficient doses, prematurely detoxify clients, expel clients for offensive
behavior, and engage in other practices that would be regarded as unethical in
any other field of medicine. Attempts to open new clinics tend to be blocked by
residents who don't want addicts in their neighborhood.
In much of Europe and Australia, methadone treatment was at first even more
controversial than in the United States; some countries, including Germany,
France, and Greece, prohibited it well into the 1980s and 1990s. But where
methadone has been accepted, doctors have substantial latitude in deciding how
and when to prescribe it so as to maximize its efficacy. There are methadone
treatment programs for addicts looking for rehabilitation and programs for
those simply trying to reduce their heroin consumption. Doctors in regular
medical practice can prescribe the drug, and patients fill their prescriptions at
local pharmacies. Thousands of general practitioners throughout Europe,
Australia, New Zealand, and Canada (notably in Ontario and British Columbia)
are now involved in methadone maintenance. In Belgium, Germany, and
Australia this is the principal means of distribution. Integrating methadone with
mainstream medicine makes treatment more accessible, improves its quality,
and allocates ancillary services more efficiently. It also helps reduce the stigma
of methadone programs and community resistance to them.
Many factors prevent American doctors from experimenting with the more
flexible treatment programs of their European counterparts. The Drug
Enforcement Administration contends that looser regulations would fuel the
illicit market in diverted methadone. But the black market, in which virtually
all buyers are heroin addicts who cannot or will not enroll in methadone
programs, is primarily a product of the inadequate legal availability of
methadone. Some conventional providers do not want to cede their
near-monopoly over methadone treatment and are reluctant to take on addicts
who can't or won't commit to quitting heroin. And all efforts to make
methadone more available in the United States run up against the many
Americans who dismiss methadone treatment as substituting one addictive drug
for another and are wary of any treatment that does not leave the patient "drug
free."
Oral methadone works best for hundreds of thousands of heroin addicts, but
some fare better with other opiate substitutes. In England, doctors prescribe
injectable methadone for about 10 percent of recovering patients, who may like
the modest "rush" upon injection or the ritual of injecting. Doctors in Austria,
Switzerland, and Australia are experimenting with prescribing oral morphine to
determine whether it works better than oral methadone for some users. Several
treatment programs in the Netherlands have conducted trials with oral
morphine and palfium. In Germany, where methadone treatment was initially
shunned, thousands of addicts have been maintained on codeine, which many
doctors and patients still prefer to methadone. The same is true of
buprenorphine in France.
In England, doctors have broad discretion to prescribe whatever drugs help
addicted patients manage their lives and stay away from illegal drugs and their
dealers. Beginning in the 1920s, thousands of English addicts were maintained
on legal prescriptions of heroin, morphine, amphetamine, cocaine, and other
pharmaceutical drugs. This tradition flourished until the 1960s, and has
reemerged in response to aids and to growing disappointment with the
Americanization of British prescribing practices during the 1970s and 1980s,
when illicit heroin use in Britain increased almost tenfold. Doctors in other
European countries and Australia are also trying heroin prescription.
The Swiss government began a nationwide trial in 1994 to determine whether
prescribing heroin, morphine, or injectable methadone could reduce crime,
disease, and other drug-related ills. Some 1,000 volunteers-only heroin addicts
with at least two unsuccessful experiences in methadone or other conventional
treatment programs were considered-took part in the experiment. The trial
quickly determined that virtually all participants preferred heroin, and doctors
subsequently prescribed it for them. Last July the government reported the
results so far: criminal offenses and the number of criminal offenders dropped
60 percent, the percentage of income from illegal and semi-legal activities fell
from 69 to 10 percent, illegal heroin and cocaine use declined dramatically
(although use of alcohol, cannabis, and tranquilizers like Valium remained
fairly constant), stable employment increased from 14 to 32 percent, physical
health improved enormously, and most participants greatly reduced their
contact with the drug scene. There were no deaths from overdoses, and no
prescribed drugs were diverted to the black market. More than half those who
dropped out of the study switched to another form of drug treatment, including
83 who began abstinence therapy. A cost-benefit analysis of the program found
a net economic benefit of $30 per patient per day, mostly because of reduced
criminal justice and health care costs.
The Swiss study has undermined several myths about heroin and its habitual
users. The results to date demonstrate that, given relatively unlimited
availability, heroin users will voluntarily stabilize or reduce their dosage and
some will even choose abstinence; that long-addicted users can lead relatively
normal, stable lives if provided legal access to their drug of choice; and that
ordinary citizens will support such initiatives. In recent referendums in Zurich,
Basel, and Zug, substantial majorities voted to continue funding local arms of
the experiment. And last September, a nationwide referendum to end the
government's heroin maintenance and other harm-reduction initiatives was
rejected by 71 percent of Swiss voters, including majorities in all 26 cantons.
The Netherlands plans its own heroin prescription study in 1998, and similar
trials are under consideration elsewhere in Europe, including Luxembourg and
Spain, as well as Canada. In Germany, the federal government has opposed
heroin prescription trials and other harm-reduction innovations, but the League
of Cities has petitioned it for permission to undertake them; a survey early last
year found that police chiefs in 10 of the country's 12 largest cities favored
letting states implement controlled heroin distribution programs. In Australia
last summer, a majority of state health ministers approved a heroin prescription
trial, but Prime Minister John Howard blocked it. And in Denmark, a
September 1996 poll found that 66 percent of voters supported an experiment
that would provide registered addicts with free heroin to be consumed in
centers set up for the purpose.
Switzerland, attempting to reduce overdoses, dangerous injecting practices, and
shooting up in public places, has also taken the lead in establishing "safe
injection rooms" where users can inject their drugs under secure, sanitary
conditions. There are now about a dozen such rooms in the country, and initial
evaluations are positive. In Germany, Frankfurt has set up three, and there are
also officially sanctioned facilities in Hamburg and Saarbrucken. Cities
elsewhere in Europe and in Australia are expected to open safe injection rooms
soon.
REEFER SANITY
Cannabis, in the form of marijuana and hashish, is by far the most popular
illicit drug in the United States. More than a quarter of Americans admit to
having tried it. Marijuana's popularity peaked in 1980, dropped steadily until
the early 1990s, and is now on the rise again. Although it is not entirely safe,
especially when consumed by children, smoked heavily, or used when driving,
it is clearly among the least dangerous psychoactive drugs in common use. In
1988 the administrative law judge for the Drug Enforcement Administration,
Francis Young, reviewed the evidence and concluded that "marihuana, in its
natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to
man."
As with needle exchange and methadone treatment, American politicians have
ignored or spurned the findings of government commissions and scientific
organizations concerning marijuana policy. In 1972 the National Commission
on Marihuana and Drug Abuse-created by President Nixon and chaired by a
former Republican governor, Raymond Shafer-recommended that possession
of up to one ounce of marijuana be decriminalized. Nixon rejected the
recommendation. In 1982 a panel appointed by the National Academy of
Sciences reached the same conclusion as the Shafer Commission.
Between 1973 and 1978, with attitudes changing, 11 states approved
decriminalization statutes that reclassified marijuana possession as a
misdemeanor, petty offense, or civil violation punishable by no more than a
$100 fine. Consumption trends in those states and in states that retained stricter
sanctions were indistinguishable. A 1988 scholarly evaluation of the Moscone
Act, California's 1976 decriminalization law, estimated that the state had saved
half a billion dollars in arrest costs since the law's passage. Nonetheless, public
opinion began to shift in 1978. No other states decriminalized marijuana, and
some eventually recriminalized it.
Between 1973 and 1989, annual arrests on marijuana charges by state and local
police ranged between 360,000 and 460,000. The annual total fell to 283,700
in 1991, but has since more than doubled. In 1996, 641,642 people were
arrested for marijuana, 85 percent of them for possession, not sale, of the drug.
Prompted by concern over rising marijuana use among adolescents and fears of
being labeled soft on drugs, the Clinton administration launched its own
anti-marijuana campaign in 1995. But the administration's claims to have
identified new risks of marijuana consumption-including a purported link
between marijuana and violent behavior-have not withstood scrutiny.(1)
Neither Congress nor the White House seems likely to put the issue of
marijuana policy before a truly independent advisory commission, given the
consistency with which such commissions have reached politically
unacceptable conclusions.
In contrast, governments in Europe and Australia, notably in the Netherlands,
have reconsidered their cannabis policies. In 1976 the Baan Commission in the
Netherlands recommended, and the Dutch government adopted, a policy of
separating the "soft" and "hard" drug markets. Criminal penalties for and police
efforts against heroin trafficking were increased, while those against cannabis
were relaxed. Marijuana and hashish can now be bought in hundreds of
"coffeeshops" throughout the country. Advertising, open displays, and sales to
minors are prohibited. Police quickly close coffeeshops caught selling hard
drugs. Almost no one is arrested or even fined for cannabis possession, and the
government collects taxes on the gray market sales.
In the Netherlands today, cannabis consumption for most age groups is similar
to that in the United States. Young Dutch teenagers, however, are less likely to
sample marijuana than their American peers; from 1992 to 1994, only 7.2
percent of Dutch youths between the ages of 12 and 15 reported having tried
marijuana, compared to 13.5 percent of Americans in that age bracket. Far
fewer Dutch youths, moreover, experiment with cocaine, buttressing officials'
claims of success in separating the markets for hard and soft drugs. Most Dutch
parents regard the "reefer madness" anti-marijuana campaigns of the United
States as silly.
Dutch coffeeshops have not been problem free. Many citizens have complained
about the proliferation of coffeeshops, as well as nuisances created by foreign
youth flocking to party in Dutch border cities. Organized crime involvement in
the growing domestic cannabis industry is of increasing concern. The Dutch
government's efforts to address the problem by more openly and systematically
regulating supplies to coffeeshops, along with some of its other drug policy
initiatives, have run up against pressure from abroad, notably from Paris,
Stockholm, Bonn, and Washington. In late 1995 French President Jacques
Chirac began publicly berating The Hague for its drug policies, even
threatening to suspend implementation of the Schengen Agreement allowing
the free movement of people across borders of European Union (EU)
countries. Some of Chirac's political allies called the Netherlands a narco-state.
Dutch officials responded with evidence of the relative success of their
policies, while pointing out that most cannabis seized in France originates in
Morocco (which Chirac has refrained from criticizing because of his
government's close relations with King Hassan). The Hague, however, did
announce reductions in the number of coffeeshops and the amount of cannabis
customers can buy there. But it still sanctions the coffeeshops, and a few
municipalities actually operate them.
Notwithstanding the attacks, in the 1990s the trend toward decriminalization of
cannabis has accelerated in Europe. Across much of Western Europe,
possession and even minor sales of the drug are effectively decriminalized.
Spain decriminalized private use of cannabis in 1983. In Germany, the Federal
Constitutional Court effectively sanctioned a cautious liberalization of
cannabis policy in a widely publicized 1994 decision. German states vary
considerably in their attitude; some, like Bavaria, persist in a highly punitive
policy, but most now favor the Dutch approach. So far the Kohl administration
has refused to approve state proposals to legalize and regulate cannabis sales,
but it appears aware of the rising support in the country for Dutch and Swiss
approaches to local drug problems.
In June 1996 Luxembourg's parliament voted to decriminalize cannabis and
push for standardization of drug laws in the Benelux countries. The Belgian
government is now considering a more modest decriminalization of cannabis
combined with tougher measures against organized crime and heroin
traffickers. In Australia, cannabis has been decriminalized in South Australia,
the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra), and the Northern Territory, and
other states are considering the step. Even in France, Chirac's outburst
followed recommendations of cannabis decriminalization by three
distinguished national commissions. Chirac must now contend with a new
prime minister, Lionel Jospin, who declared himself in favor of
decriminalization before his Socialist Party won the 1997 parliamentary
elections. Public opinion is clearly shifting. A recent poll found that 51 percent
of Canadians favor decriminalizing marijuana.
WILL IT WORK?
Both at home and abroad, the U.S. government has attempted to block
resolutions supporting harm reduction, suppress scientific studies that reached
politically inconvenient conclusions, and silence critics of official drug policy.
In May 1994 the State Department forced the last-minute cancellation of a
World Bank conference on drug trafficking to which critics of U.S. drug policy
had been invited. That December the U.S. delegation to an international
meeting of the U.N. Drug Control Program refused to sign any statement
incorporating the phrase "harm reduction." In early 1995 the State Department
successfully pressured the World Health Organization to scuttle the release of a
report it had commissioned from a panel that included many of the world's
leading experts on cocaine because it included the scientifically
incontrovertible observations that traditional use of coca leaf in the Andes
causes little harm to users and that most consumers of cocaine use the drug in
moderation with few detrimental effects. Hundreds of congressional hearings
have addressed multitudinous aspects of the drug problem, but few have
inquired into the European harm-reduction policies described above. When
former Secretary of State George Shultz, then -Surgeon General M. Joycelyn
Elders, and Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke pointed to the failure of current
policies and called for new approaches, they were mocked, fired, and ignored,
respectively-and thereafter mischaracterized as advocating the outright
legalization of drugs.
In Europe, in contrast, informed, public debate about drug policy is
increasingly common in government, even at the EU level. In June 1995 the
European Parliament issued a report acknowledging that "there will always be a
demand for drugs in our societies . . . the policies followed so far have not been
able to prevent the illegal drug trade from flourishing." The EU called for
serious consideration of the Frankfurt Resolution, a statement of
harm-reduction principles supported by a transnational coalition of 31 cities
and regions. In October 1996 Emma Bonino, the European commissioner for
consumer policy, advocated decriminalizing soft drugs and initiating a broad
prescription program for hard drugs. Greece's minister for European affairs,
George Papandreou, seconded her. Last February the monarch of Liechtenstein,
Prince Hans Adam, spoke out in favor of controlled drug legalization. Even
Raymond Kendall, secretary general of Interpol, was quoted in the August 20,
1994, Guardian as saying, "The prosecution of thousands of otherwise
law-abiding citizens every year is both hypocritical and an affront to individual,
civil and human rights . . . Drug use should no longer be a criminal offense. I
am totally against legalization, but in favor of decriminalization for the user."
One can, of course, exaggerate the differences between attitudes in the United
States and those in Europe and Australia. Many European leaders still echo
Chirac's U.S.-style antidrug pronouncements. Most capital cities endorse the
Stockholm Resolution, a statement backing punitive prohibitionist policies that
was drafted in response to the Frankfurt Resolution. And the Dutch have had to
struggle against French and other efforts to standardize more punitive drug
laws and policies within the EU.
Conversely, support for harm-reduction approaches is growing in the United
States, notably and vocally among public health professionals but also, more
discreetly, among urban politicians and police officials. Some of the world's
most innovative needle exchange and other harm-reduction programs can be
found in America. The 1996 victories at the polls for California's Proposition
215, which legalizes the medicinal use of marijuana, and Arizona's Proposition
200, which allows doctors to prescribe any drug they deem appropriate and
mandates treatment rather than jail for those arrested for possession, suggest
that Americans are more receptive to drug policy reform than politicians
acknowledge.
But Europe and Australia are generally ahead of the United States in their
willingness to discuss openly and experiment pragmatically with alternative
policies that might reduce the harm to both addicts and society. Public health
officials in many European cities work closely with police, politicians, private
physicians, and others to coordinate efforts. Community policing treats drug
dealers and users as elements of the community that need not be expelled but
can be made less trouble some. Such efforts, including crackdowns on open
drug scenes in Zurich, Bern, and Frankfurt, are devised and implemented in
tandem with initiatives to address health and housing problems. In the United
States, in contrast, politicians presented with new approaches do not ask, "Will
they work?" but only, "Are they tough enough?" Many legislators are reluctant
to support drug treatment programs that are not punitive, coercive, and
prison-based, and many criminal justice officials still view prison as a quick
and easy solution for drug problems.
The lessons from Europe and Australia are compelling. Drug control policies
should focus on reducing drug-related crime, disease, and death, not the
number of casual drug users. Stopping the spread of HIV by and among drug
users by making sterile syringes and methadone readily available must be the
first priority. American politicians need to explore, not ignore or automatically
condemn, promising policy options such as cannabis decriminalization, heroin
prescription, and the integration of harm-reduction principles into community
policing strategies. Central governments must back, or at least not hinder, the
efforts of municipal officials and citizens to devise pragmatic approaches to
local drug problems. Like citizens in Europe, the American public has
supported such innovations when they are adequately explained and allowed to
prove themselves. As the evidence comes in, what works is increasingly
apparent. All that remains is mustering the political courage.
Note
Lynn Zimmer and John P. Morgan, Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A
Review of the Scientific Evidence, New York: Lindesmith Center, 1997.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Antiprohibitionist Action Report, Year 4, Number 1 (Monthly Roundup
For Activists Of International Drug Policy Reform News, From CORA In Italy)
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 11:08:26 EST
Sender: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: Cora.Belgique@agora.stm.it
Subject: ANTIPROHIBITIONISTS OF THE ENTIRE WORLD...#1
Antiprohibitionist action report
January 1, 1998 - (Year 4) #1
***
CO.R.A.
Radical | Association federated with Antiprohibitionist | the Transnational
Coordination | Radical Party
***
OLD - Observatory of laws on drugs
***
PAA - PARLAMENTARIANS FOR
ANTIPROHIBITIONIST ACTION
European campaign for the revision
of international conventions
***
CORA-ITALY
Via di Torre Argentina 76
00186 ROME
Tel:+39-6-68.97.91
Fax:+39-6-68.80.53.96
E-mail: cora.italia@agora.stm.it
***
CORA-BELGIUM
Rue Belliard 97
c/o European Parliament
Rem 5.08
1040 BRUSSELS
Tel:+32-2-230.41.21 - 646.26.31
Fax:+32-2-230.36.70
E-mail: cora.belgique@agora.stm.it
***
*CORAnet http://www.agora.stm.it/coranet (in Italian)
***
Director: Vincenzo Donvito
All rights reserved
***
NEWS FROM CORA
***
SWEDISH NEWSPAPER ACCUSES CORA OF BEING A MAFIA ASSOCIATION AND
PUBLISHES THE IDENTITY PHOTOS OF MEPS WHO ADHERE TO THE CORA-PAA
Stockholm, 9.1.98 - The biggest Scandinavian newspaper Aftonbladet
published two pages about CORA, defined as a mafia association. The article
is completed by 17 identity photos: these of MEPs who adhere to CORA-PAA:
Parliamentarians for Antiprohibitionist Action, the campaign led by CORA
for the revision of the international conventions on drugs.
Strasbourg, 14.1.98 - The MEPs who featured in the Swedish newspaper
Aftonbladet made a demand to the hierarchy of the European Parliament at
the plenary session as to whether elements for a trial exist. The President
of the EP will formally protest to the Swedish authorities when he visits
Sweden in the coming weeks.
***
A MAFIA DELEGATION VISITS THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: WE ARE AGAINST THE
DANCONA REPORT
Strasbourg, 14.1.98 - A delegation of the Mafia Incorporated met
journalists, MEPs and the public in order to express their worries about
the dAncona report, whose objective is the decriminalization of soft drugs
and therapeutic freedom. The two mafia leaders Frank DellAlbone and Olivier
Dups, escorted by two bodyguards with machine-guns, explained that
legalization of drugs would cause enormous damage to the drug mafia who
earns its money through the prohibitionist regime.
At the end of the press conference, the two drug barons revealed their real
identities: taking off the sunglasses and borsalino hats, Gianfranco
DellAlba and Olivier Dupuis, MEPs for the Lista Pannella, declared to have
set up this scenario with the aim of drawing public attention to the
dramatic effects of prohibitionism and, in particular to the economic
interests of organized crime, who would of course vote no to the dAncona
report.
***
STRASBOURG: THE DANCONA REPORT IS SENT BACK TO COMMITTEE
Strasbourg, 15.1.98 - The European Parliament decided to send back the
dAncona report to committee for further examination. The rapporteur, Hedy
dAncona (Dutch Socialist, President of the Committee for Civil Liberties
and Internal Affairs and former Health Minister), has expressed hope that
the referral of the report back to committee - due to the large amount of
amendments by both prohibitionists and antiprohibitionists - would permit
the finding of a compromise and a stronger support for the proposal towards
a resolution so that it could be voted at the plenary.
The report - approved in committee with 17 votes in favour, 11 against and
4 abstentions - had found firm opposition from the conservative and
prohibitionist MEPs, allied to British Labour and Scandinavian MEPs (their
refusal to support the rapporteur of their own political group caused great
disconcert amongst their colleagues). In contrast, Radical and Green MEPs
(except Scandinavians) were ready to vote in favour of the report.
***
ITALY - THE GENERAL PROCURATOR OF THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEAL FAVORS THE
CONTROLLED DISTRIBUTION OF HEROIN
For the second year in a row, the General Procurator of the Supreme Court
of Appeal calls for the controlled distribution of heroin in Italy. Judge
Galli Fonseca, has reiterated what common sense suggests, i.e. that
criminality is not produced by drugs, but by prohibitionism, a policy that
denies the right to therapy, treatment and sanitary help to addicts.
Moreover, it leaves the monopoly of substances to organized crime.
Pretending to abolish "evil" prohibition abolishes the right for addicts to
have a life and jeopardize the security of the society.
CORA thinks that the time has now come for the Minister of Health to
"authorize" what the law already set: the right to effective treatments and
the freedom of therapy.
***
EUROPEAN UNION - AT THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT THE CORA PETITION ON FREEDOM
OF TREATMENT AND THE RIGHT TO THERAPY
CORA has presented to the EP a petition that calls for the freedom of
treatment and the right to therapy for physicians and addicts around the
Union an in every Member States. The appeal has been endorsed by dozens of
citizens, physicians, psychologists, University Professors, psychiatrists,
politicians, social operators and parliamentarians. Ensuring the freedom of
therapy to medics means to ensure the right to be cured to drug-addicts,
respecting the free circulation of citizens. Europe cannot ignore the
positive experience of some of its cities any longer. The time is now ripe
for antiprohibition policies on drugs; freedom of treatment could be the
first step.
***
ITALY - A NEW TRIAL FOR MARCO PANNELLA
On January 13, Radical founder and leader, Marco Pannella will be tried for
having delivered 250 grams of hashish during a TV program aired on December
1995. This nonviolent action followed analogous actions organized in
previous months in Piazza Navona and at the Porta Portese market.
Contrarily to precedent cases, the prosecutor initially asked for the
dismissal of the case, now the judge - pushed also by the indicted himself
- has asked for the re-opening of the trial with the imputation of free
delivering, and for instigating people to consume hashish. Mr. Pannella
risks up to 6 years in jail. A next hearing has been scheduled for February
3. Other 25 antiprohibitionist activists, among which many directors of
CORA, the Transnational Radical Party and the Lista Pannella are under
indictment or are being tried for civil disobedience performed in Rome,
Milan and Bologna.
NEWS FROM THE WORLD
AFGHANISTAN
United Nations Drug Control Programme, (UNDCP) UnderSecretary-General, Pino
Arlacchi, has signed an agreement with the Talibans for the progressive
eradication of crop - opium poppy - and its conversion. The deal was
recently criticized by EuroCommissioner Emma Bonino and by large sectors of
the international public opinion. Critics point out that Mr. Arlacchi is
dealing with an illegitimate regime that denies and violates the most
elementary human rights.
(LA STAMPA, LE MONDE 2/1. LA REPUBBLICA, PANORAMA 15/1)
ITALIA
The proposal of the Mayoralty of Rome and the Region of Lazio regarding the
experimentation of a controlled distribution of heroin to Roman addicts has
finally initiated a political debate: the center-left coalition and the
radicals are in favor, the center right is against.
(IL GIORNALE 31/13)
GREAT BRITAIN
The case of William Straw, 17, Mr. Blair's right arm Jack Straw's son,
recently discovered while dealing, has provoked an earthquake in the
British political and media world. The journalist who bought some cannabis
from the guy has been arrested - a rare case of arrest in investigative
journalism. The case has re-opened a debate on the legalization in the
country. Jack Straw opposes the legalization but favors medical cannabis.
(THE TIMES 30/12, 1-4/1, CORSERA, FRANKFURTER ALLGEMAINE 3/1, LA
REPUBBLICA, IL MESSAGGERO 3-4/1, LA STAMPA 3-5/1, NEUE ZUERCHER ZEITUNG
5/1)
U.S.
After the failure of prohibition, the time has come to change the U.S.
policy on drugs. Two articles - one of which by the Director of the
Lindesmith Center founded by George Soros - advocate the decriminalization
of cannabis and call for the controlled distribution of heroin and harm
reduction policies.
(INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE 4-10/1)
SPAIN
Alfred McCoy, an expert on heroin trafficking, has written a book titled
"CIA's Complicity in the World-wide Drug Trafficking" in which he condemns
the counterproductive effects of the American repressive policies on the
issue.
(CAMBIO 16-29/12)
COLOMBIA
The discovery of 10,000 checks coming from an account operated by the Cali'
cartel, which were probably used to corrupt some influential members of the
Colombian political scene, enlarges the scenario of public corruption
involving journalists, politicians and bankers.
(FINANCIAL TMES 7/1)
MEXICO
The Governor of Chihuahua, Francisco Barrios, estimates that half a billion
dollars per year is used by the Narcos of Juarez City in order to corrupt
journalists, politicians and the police.
(EL PAIS 9/1)
AUSTRIA
Vienna - the local approach to the drug question is based on prevention,
madicare, substitution and public security. The "Vienna Approach" has given
positive results: during the last three years deaths by OD, as well as the
percentage of consumers, has diminished. Since 1996, there are less
youngsters involved in the business and/or in rehab centers. Despite this
success, in the rest of the country the policy remains a mixture of
repression, moderation and toleration.
(FRANFURTER ALLGEMEINE 7/1)
AUSTRIA
In the Voralberg area, deaths by drugs started 20 years ago. Since then 179
people (148 men) have died. Almost half of them died by overdose, the rest
for drug-related questions: AIDS, hepatitis, suicides, incidents, killings.
(DUE PRESSE 8/1)
GERMANY
Hannover - Researchers at a local support center are carrying out tests on
ecstasy outside discos. The initiative is considered with favor by
politicians and the judiciary, with skepticism by the police. The latter
fears that the whole operation can favor dealers and send an assuring
message to young people.
(SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG 8/1)
SWITZERLAND
Bern - On January 7, the "Citro" police operation, which targets drug
trafficking, started. 75 officers out of 575 members of the local police,
will be mobilized in order to make the city less appealing to dealers and
consumers.
(NEUE ZUERCHER ZEITUNG 9/1)
GERMANY
In 1997, in the Bremen Region 46 people died by drugs, 30% less than the
previous year. The city has lost the old appeal to narco-tourism.
Nevertheless, all over Germany there remains an increase in the use of hard
drugs.
(FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE 10/1)
ASIA-EUROPE
The historic "Way of Silk" between Europe and Asia has become the way of
narcotics. The are many couriers and they are all poor, the police is
corrupted, the barons of drugs are a sort of popular heroes. The trip
starts in Afghanistan, which has become the leader of opium production in
the world (2,800 tons a year), at the Afghani border a kilo of opium costs
$50, when it reaches Osch, in central Asia, it is $500, eventually it goes
to Saint Petersburg, where it is refined. When the product called heroin
reaches Germany, costs 80 German marks per gram.
(DER SPIEGEL 12/1)
ALBANIA
In 1992, Agron Musaraj became the Minister of Internal Affairs of the first
democratically elected Government of Premier Berisha. According to some
countrymen Mr. Musuraj used to have strange contacts with Switzerland, and
apparently is the most powerful dealer of Albania. After the last
elections, he moved to Greece where apparently he lives a very wealthy
life.
(NEUE ZUERCHER ZEITUNG 8/1)
ITALY
During the opening of the "Judicial Year", the General Prosecutor of the
Supreme Court of Appeal, Ferdinando Galli Fonseca, has proposed the
controlled distribution of heroin to serious addicts. The statement has
been received with criticism by the center-right coalition and some other
sectors of the public opinion. 47% of Italians recently interviewed for a
survey, oppose the idea. The center-left Government is prudent because it
says that there is no majority on the proposal.
(CORSERA, IL GIORNALE, IL MESSAGERO, IL SOLE 24 ORE, LA REPUBBLICA, LA
STAMPA, 11-12-13-14/1, NEUE ZUERCHER ZEITUNG 12/1)
FRANCE
In November the Minister of Health, Bernard Kouchner, expressed his
personal favorable position on medical cannabis. Mr. Kouchner has recently
received a request to import 10 kilos of marijuana for medical purposes.
The request was filed by the Movement for the Controlled Legalization (MLC)
founded by the French lawyer Francis Caballero.
(LIBERATION 12/1, LE MONDE 13/1)
PARAGUAY
Some Italian missionaries and a journalist have been menaced by the local
drug dealers. According to a denounce by Father Luigi Moretti, in 1997 mobs
have killed at least 70 people in the small missionary community of Capitan
Bano on the Brazilian border.
(CORSERA 14/1)
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[End]
to 1998 Daily News index for January 1-7