Fifteen battles but no drugs war

Date: 11/09/1997

ALTHOUGH politicians across the Union are continually proclaiming their commitment to the so-called fight against drugs, widely differing national policies have made it notoriously difficult to come up with a truly European approach to the problem.

One of the few common endeavours which the Union has managed to get off the ground, however, is the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) which opened in Lisbon two years ago this month.

The basic aim of the centre is to compile reliable information on drug use across the European Union as opposed to data which deals with national trends. Almost all current statistics fall into this second category.

“Information on drug use in member states is very different and comparability is actually very low,” explains EMCDDA Director Georges Estievenart.

Last year the centre produced its first extensive report on the state of the drugs problem in the EU, based on 1995 data, and it intends to publish similar studies annually. The second is due out some time next month.

Estievenart claims the results to date are encouraging. “We are very happy with the work we have done so far and the second report is already showing serious improvements on the first. We have included a full new chapter on the use of synthetic drugs for example,” he says.

Critics of the EMCDDA argue that while collating information is all very well, ultimately what is needed is more political cooperation between the EU's national governments over the drugs problem.

They maintain that there will be no real change in the current situation while member states continue to criticise each other's strategies for dealing with drug use. The classic example used to illustrate this point is France's insistence on maintaining frontier checks at its borders with Belgium and Luxembourg despite the fact that all three countries are members of the Schengen free movement agreement which was designed to abolish such controls.

Paris justifies its behaviour by saying it does not approve of the Netherlands' famously liberal drugs policy. “France is retaining these controls in direct violation of Schengen,” says one expert on drugs policy.

Estievenart does not dispute the fact that any decisions to move towards a more harmonised approach to drugs policy must be taken by politicians, but disagrees with the argument that the EMCDDA is simply generating pages of ultimately useless statistics.

“It is not for us to oblige member states to adopt harmonised laws. We are here to help prepare for the approximation of legislation and what is needed first of all is reliable information,” he argues.

The EMCDDA director, in any case, questions the logic of drawing up a set of 'monolithic' rules for dealing with drugs policy within the Union. He says the picture which emerged from the 1995 drug use report showed that different countries have different situations to deal with.

He points to the example of the southern European states - Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece - where there are particular problems with the spread of AIDS and hepatitis linked to intravenous drug use.

This phenomenon is currently less severe in the Union's northern countries.

There are some common trends however. The centre has recently noted a rise in the prevalence of synthetic drugs, the most famous of these being MDMA or Ecstasy - a substance particularly popular with aficionados of dance music.

In June this year, Europe's justice and home affairs ministers were so concerned about the increase that they agreed to set up an early-warning system to track the appearance of new 'designer' drugs and asses their possible harmful effects.

The EMCDDA has been charged with coordinating the scheme, which is based on a proposal put forward by Anita Gradin, the European Commissioner responsible for justice and home affairs policy in the EU.

“Misuse of these modern narcotics is becoming part of a youth trend seriously threatening our teenagers. These drugs are easy to make, easy to sell and easy to consume. They are hard to discover and hard to control. It is difficult to convince the young of the danger of these 'clean-looking' drugs,” Gradin warned when she originally put forward her plan.

But while civil servant Estievenart is careful not to stray into the territory of his political counterparts, he is nevertheless wary of supporters of extremely conservative approaches to drugs policy.

“If you pursue a very conservative line, you cannot even admit that drug addiction exists, and it does exist. It is important to take the problems faced by the drug addict in his or her environment seriously,” he argues.

The EMCDDA director says countries with traditionally tough drugs policies do not necessarily have fewer drug addicts or better levels of general health amongst users. He cites significant improvements in addicts' medical, social and environmental conditions in the liberally-minded Netherlands as evidence for this.

On the thorny question of the link between drug use and crime, Estievenart believes the statistics speak for themselves.

“About 30-40&percent; of people in Europe's prisons are there for drug-related reasons, but they are usually drug users rather than traffickers. Traffickers rarely take drugs themselves,” he explains.

Estievenart argues that most of those who end up in jail have turned to crime to finance their habit. He also points out that far from giving addicts a chance to break free, prisons often exacerbate drug problems, with most illegal substances fairly easy to get hold of.

More vehement critics have gone so far as to argue that drug users are often in more danger inside than on the outside. Many governments continue to deny the existence of drugs in prisons and consequently refuse to supply addicts with clean syringes with which to inject themselves. This means it can be easier to obtain the substances themselves than the equipment with which to take them, leading to dangerous and unhealthy practices such as needle sharing.

The drugs trade is a global phenomenon which pays equally scant regard to the EU's internal and external boundaries and if the 15 do ever manage to agree on a harmonised approach to drugs policy, its success will depend to a significant extent on agreements reached with third countries.

The EMCDDA already has links with a variety of international bodies including the United Nations International Drug Control Programme, the World Health Organisation and the World Customs Organisation. In conjunction with the European Commission's Phare programme, it is currently working hard on building relations with similar organisations in the central and eastern European countries which are lining up to join the Union.

But Estievenart is at pains to point out that while he and his staff will continue to carry out their task of preparing the groundwork for all aspects of a more harmonised approach to the drugs issue, the decision to implement any sort of EU-wide policy must come from the national governments. “The main aim over the next three years must be to come up with some concrete agreements on how to proceed,” he stresses.

If the 15 member states continue to be as critical of each other's approaches as they are at the moment, however, it is hard to see where any real changes will come from.