Failure of old policies results in calls for controlled legalisation

Date: 11/09/1997

WITH all the evidence suggesting the EU's ample supplies of cheap and readily available drugs are unlikely to dry up in the foreseeable future, an increasing number of experts are calling on policy-makers to consider the formerly unthinkable option of legalisation.

While current drug prevention approaches differ greatly between the Union's member states, one common theme is that all 15 classify certain substances as illegal.

Critics argue that such policies have spectacularly failed to restrict the drugs supply and have instead contributed to a situation where dangerous and untested substances are now freely available in most European cities.

“Drugs are the only substances available for sale with no checks or controls. People die from overdoses because they don't know what they are taking,” explains Marco Cappato, an official with the European Parliament's European Radical Alliance Group and member of the Radical Anti-prohibitionist Coordination (CORA). CORA is an offshoot of the Transnational Radical Party, which counts European Commissioner Emma Bonino amongst its members.

Cappato is careful to stress that his group is calling for the “controlled legalisation” of prohibited drugs rather than a free-for-all liberalisation of the market allowing anyone to operate as a dealer.

“We want the law and the state to control the production and distribution of these substances,” he says, arguing that this would go a long way to eradicating many of the health problems and much of the criminal activity currently associated with drug use.

Cappato points to two experiments carried out in the Swiss city of Zurich as evidence to support his arguments.

In the first - generally considered to have been a failure - the city authorities designated a park as an area where heroin addicts in particular could go to inject themselves without fear of arrest by the police. The addicts were given clean syringes and other material designed to prevent the spread of diseases often associated with intravenous drug use, such as AIDS and hepatitis.

But crucially the authorities did not supply any actual drugs, with the result that dealers belonging to mafia-type drug gangs moved in to fill the gap in the market.

Cappato argues this approach illustrates the effect that simply liberalising the drugs market would have.

In the second 'successful' experiment - roughly analogous to the controlled legalisation advocated by CORA - heroin addicts were invited to city-run clinics where they were injected with controlled doses by registered doctors.

“This approach showed a lot of improvement. The people who went there did not need to turn to crime or share needles and, for many of them, their health improved dramatically,” explains Cappato.

CORA claims that current EU approaches to drugs policy centre on issues where there is general agreement on how to proceed, such as trying to prevent people from taking illegal substances or monitoring trends in drug use - the basic role of the EMCDDA.

But the organisation complains that member states have tended to shy away from any sort of joint approach to the politically sensitive issue of how to offer the most appropriate health care to drug users.

“Of course, prevention is important, but there are also people in emergency situations who need heroin. There are others who may need methadone. We should not avoid giving people the best treatment they need,” argues Cappato.

The anti-prohibition campaigner concedes it will be a very long time before national governments will even consider the sort of radical moves CORA is proposing, but he claims attitudes are slowly changing.

He points to the fact that last November, 62 MEPs - including two parliamentary vice-presidents and former French Junior Health Minister Bernard Kouchner - signed a proposal for a resolution calling on national governments to decriminalise the consumption of drugs.

He admits that MEPs have no real power to oblige governments to act, but feels that the Parliament could try to use its influence to define the political direction of the legalisation debate.

“Once the first big institution is brave enough to say: 'The king is naked', the whole castle will fall down,” he says.