Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: ANTIPROHIBITIONIST LEAGUE NEWSLETTER
Message-ID: <1993Dec16.011410.16092@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1993 01:14:10 GMT

/** gen.newsletter: 172.0 **/
** Topic: INT'L ANTIPROHIBITIONIST LEAGUE **
** Written  6:55 pm  Dec  3, 1993 by ial in cdp:gen.newsletter **
IALFax is the weekly newsletter of The INTERNATIONAL ANTIPROHIBITIONIST LEAGUE (IAL). A collection of short news about International drug policies, IALFax is regularly sent to more than 300 journalists in Europe as well as several groups and organizations worldwide. The electronic version of IALFax is posted on Agor (agora.stm.it) and now also on Peacenet (december 1993). 
For more information on the IAL activities, email: ial@igc.apc.org
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IAL-Fax, Year II N. 22, December 3,1993 - Contents:
 
UNITED STATES: A MORIBUND SYSTEM
Le Monde des Dbats, November 1993
 
THE WAR ON DRUGS
El Pais, 11.19.93
 
C.I.A. DRUG STING THAT NEVER WAS
The Independent, 11.22.93
 
COLOMBIAN ATTORNEY GENERAL CALLS LEGALIZATION "THE ONLY 
SOLUTION"
 
BALTIMORE REPORT
Statement of the First Conference of the INCDP (November 16-17, 1993)
 
 
-----------------------------------------------------
UNITED STATES: A MORIBUND SYSTEM
Le Monde des Dbats, November 1993
 
Mr Peter Reuter is head of the Rand Corporation Center for Drugs Policy, 
a private foundation which carries out economic and sociological studies 
on drugs. The following is an extract from an article published in "Le 
Monde des Dbats".
 
"Are there less Draconian ways of fighting drugs? Methods which would 
protect the community against acts of violence related to the sale of 
drugs, which would take account of the reprobation of society but 
without producing these undesirable effects? What we need to do is to 
worry not about the spread of drug use, the first concern of American 
strategies, but about the harm which drugs cause, and which sanctions 
can exacerbate. This perspective has emerged in Western Europe, where 
drug  addiction is also one of the great social problems, but where drug-
related crime and violence have not reached the redoubtable level that 
we see in the United States. In fact the Europeans are more inclined to 
worry about the health consequences of drug use, relegating penal 
sanctions to a marginal role. Preference is given to measures likely to 
increase use but to reduce the effect of diseases such as Aids. The 
distribution of syringes, rarely allowed in the United States, even on an 
experimental basis, has become common practice in Great Britain, the 
Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland.
The Europeans (except for the Scandinavians) opt for less coercive 
penalties. The markets which create violence are subject to heavy 
penalties directed against this violence. More peaceful markets are not 
disturbed; they are used, instead, to work on detoxification and the 
prevention of Aids. As long as drug use is considered a synonym of 
crime in the minds of the Americans, this pragmatic approach, which is 
a lesser evil, has little chance of being adopted in the country. The 
success of the "hawks" is partly related to the way in which the problem 
is presented in the media. America doesn't like moral ambiguity, and 
the war on drugs, as it is played out in front of the TV cameras, points 
clearly to the culprits.
The Clinton administration seems to have little sympathy for strong, 
institutionalized methods in the fight against drugs, at both federal and 
state level. But the other half of the task - to set up an effective 
treatment system - is more arduous. The current system doesn't have 
the slightest link with the medical and social services that involve the 
same clientele. In the last few years there has been a tendency to 
increase the number of people in care rather than improve the quality 
of treatment. It is not surprising, therefore, that we have a system that 
seems, when examined closely, to be moribund. The detoxification 
centres have a clientele which causes many problems for society, and 
people are not inclined to provide high-quality services to such an 
unappealing population. But, at the stage we have now reached, what is 
considered a national problem is a matter more for a good system of 
detoxification than an increase in prison sentences. Coercion may serve, 
first of all, to introduce such necessary forms of treatment into the 
system.
 
-----------------------------------------------------
THE WAR ON DRUGS
El Pais, 11.19.93
 
In the fight against drugs, countries frequently win important battles, 
but this does not mean that the drug-traffickers are losing the war. The 
discovery by Spanish police of a money-laundering network belonging 
to the powerful Cali cartel is one of these victories. Another, barely a 
year ago, was the dismantling of a similar network, belonging to the 
same Colombian cartel, during the so-called Operation Green Ice. It is 
worrying that, in the time that has passed between one police operation 
and the next, the drug-traffickers have not lost their ability to launder 
large quantities of money in Spain, and will presumably continue to do 
so until the next police strike.
Does this mean that the war on drugs is futile, and that the  drug-
traffickers will continue to prosper despite the success of police 
operations? It is clear that the prohibitionist strategy on which the fight 
against drugs is based causes the drugs trade, with the prospect of the 
considerable profits it generates, to reproduce itself whatever the blows 
it receives. This also explains why it is difficult for the battle against the 
drugs trade to be anything more than a continuous struggle which will 
never completely eradicate the phenomenon. Thus the immediate 
efficacy of police operations - arrests, seizures of drugs, the destruction 
of money-laundering networks - is accompanied by limited effects on 
the profits of drug-trafficking.
Operations such as Green Ice and the latest one, which led to the arrest 
of thirty people in various cities around Spain (including a number of 
industrialists and four lawyers, alleged to be part of a network which 
has laundered between 3,000 and 4,000 million pesetas) sometimes 
allow the police to identify more clearly the means of transfering funds 
and the laundering mechanisms used by the drug-traffickers. This 
naturally makes the response of the law to drug-trafficking more 
efficient, and at the same time more costly and risky. This is the 
purpose of laws such as that for the prevention of the laundering of 
drug profits which is being discussed in parliament, the reflection of 
international directives and conventions. But, however difficult it may 
be to follow the administrative and financial impediments which are 
opposed to drugs, the basic question remains the same: will countries be 
capable of creating a legal and financial network so extensive that it will 
not be pierced by the drug-traffickers and their new systems of 
commercialization and laundering of its profits in the banking system?
The laundering network that has been exposed brings two things to 
light: the incapacity of the international financial system to detect the 
drug profits which enter its circuits (profits from the sale of cocaine in 
Spain have turned up in Colombia and in other countries through the 
corresponding bank operations) and the great power of contamination 
of drugs - in this case contamination of the business and legal worlds. 
The fact that a number of industrialists are alleged to have been part of 
the network dismantled recently shows that their business activities 
were simply a cover for drug-dealing, or that they allowed themselves 
to be seduced by the speed and quantity of profits. In either case, the 
fatal attraction of legitimate businesses for drug-dealing is extremely 
worrying. As is the corruption of certain members of the legal 
profession who turn from defending and counselling to complicity and 
concealment of the activities of their clients.
 
-----------------------------------------------------
C.I.A. DRUG STING THAT NEVER WAS
The Independent, 11.22.93
 
It was meant to be a classic sting operation against the drug runners - 
only they left out the sting. Instead, the US government approved the 
import of a ton of almost pure South American cocaine into its domestic 
market - funded by the American taxpayer and courtesy of the Central 
Intelligence Agency. The bungle happened in 1990, but only became 
public last night, when the CBS investigative programme "60 minutes"  
told the sorry tale of how an effort to infiltrate the Colombian cocaine-
trafficking cartels ended up as a bonanza for US drug dealers. The idea 
was to set up a CIA-run smuggling operation in Venezuela, out of the 
agency's own anti-narcotics offices in Caracas. A joint US-Venezuelan 
team bought up 3,000lb of Colombian cocaine for clandestine delivery to 
the US market. In this way, it was argued, the Colombian suppliers of 
the drug would be lured into a trap. Alas the trap was never sprung. 
Despite the objections of the Drug Enforcement Agency, another arm of 
US government, deliveries took place under the formula of 
"uncontrolled shipments" whereby the cocaine would be delivered 
without interference, to remove all suspicions. The scheme only stopped 
when over-zealous US customs officials, who evidently had not been 
informed in advance, inconveniently seized a final shipment of 1,000lb 
at Miami Airport in late 1990. But some 2,000lb, with a street value of 
$80m or more, had already gone through, to be lost without trace. It 
was, a CIA statement acknowledges, "a most regrettable incident". The 
head of one agency officer has already rolled, and another has been 
reprimanded. Admittedly there is the consolation that, as far as can be 
established, nobody in the CIA made money from the affair. But that 
alone will do nothing to deflect growing congressional demands for 
closer scrutiny of CIA operations, notably of its drug-fighting activities. 
Just last week, it emerged that a Haitian intelligence agency created by 
the CIA under the very same programme that produced the Venezuelan 
fiasco had itself gone heavily into the drugs and terrorism businesses.
 
-----------------------------------------------------
COLOMBIAN ATTORNEY GENERAL CALLS LEGALIZATION "THE ONLY 
SOLUTION"
 
For the first time in his political career, Colombian Attorney General 
Gustavo de Grieff Restreppo publicly supported drug legalization in his 
speech during the panel on the Latin American drug issue at the 
International Cities on Drug Policy Network Conference (Baltimore, 
Maryland, November 16/17).
 
"The war on drugs is a lost battle," Dr. de Grieff told conference 
delegates. "It has been fought on the interdiction level and it has failed. 
The profits are so large that it is a delusion to think that jailing or 
killing major traffickers will result in a smaller amount of drugs on the 
market."
Meanwhile, Dr. de Grieff noted, the drug cartels become more powerful 
by the day, as they can count on steady income from their illicit trade. 
As a result, the high levels of drug-related crime and violence in his 
country and others show no sign of abating. "In the end, the only 
solution is legalization, with regulations to control the market," Dr. de 
Grieff asserted towards the end of his talk.
Despite this bold statement of his belief, Dr. de Grieff made it quite clear 
that for the time being he and his country will not back away from the 
drug war. "We should study the possibility of legalization," said the 
Attorney General, "but in the meantime we should enforce the drug 
laws."
Observers noted that Dr. de Grieff spoke somewhat tentatively, 
frequently approaching a pro-legalization position in his remarks, but 
then stopping short. He had good reason to be  concerned about the 
implications of his remarks. Not only do his statements have the 
potential for creating problems in relations with prohibitionist nations, 
but his views could also further rile the drug traffickers whom he is 
charged with arresting. The cartels, after all, have a lot to fear from 
having the power of the state turned against them, but they would have 
everything to lose under a new drug distribution regime of which they 
would no longer be in charge.
 
-----------------------------------------------------
BALTIMORE REPORT
Statement of the First Conference of the INCDP (November 16-17, 1993)
 
Statement of the First Conference of the International Network of Cities 
on Drug Policy Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.
 
Key points of agreement among conference delegates:
1. The war on drugs has failed to reduce drug-related problems in the 
world's major cities. Meanwhile, the profits from narco-trafficking 
constitute an ongoing threat to the stability of civil societies.
2. Heavy commitment to and enforcement of drug prohibition has 
exacerbated several of the problems of the cities, disproportionately 
affecting children and racial minorities. In particular, drug prohibition 
enriches and empowers criminals far beyond the understanding of most 
of our citizens, making the crime problem seemingly intractable.
3. It is important for drug control policies to distinguish between the 
problems caused by drug use and the problems caused by drug 
prohibition.
4. Cities must be the laboratories of changes in drug policy, because 
national governments worldwide are still dominated by advocates of 
continuing and expanding drug prohibition. New urban drug policies 
modeled after those in place in some European and Australian cities 
hold the best promise for the future.
5. A new network of cities, to be called the International Network of 
Cities on Drug Policy, shall bolster the efforts of city officials worldwide 
to craft new, more effective approaches to the problems presented by 
drugs in our societies.
 
Discussion:
 
The purpose of the First Conference of the International Network of 
Cities on Drug Policy has been to provide city representatives from 
around the world a chance to learn about alternative approaches to 
drug policy. Many of the featured speakers have pioneered progressive 
drug control strategies in their cities. These strategies focus on treating 
drug use and chemical dependency as health and social issues, not 
criminal problems, in marked contrast to the law enforcement-oriented 
strategies favored by most urban, national and international 
governments and institutions.
This conference encouraged open discussion, debate and disagreement. 
The spirit of the conference and of the new International Network of 
Cities on Drug Policy is one of seeking effective, politically achievable 
new approaches to  drug control. Delegates to the conference included 
promoters of harm reduction measures such as those in place in many 
European and Australian cities, advocates of outright legalization of 
some drugs for adults and also law enforcement officials concerned 
primarily with preventing and punishing many types of crime. Their 
views were important throughout the conference and they will continue 
to be valued in the new cities network.
There was little disagreement, if any, over the fact that the 
international war on drugs has failed. Delegates favorably discussed the 
main points of the Resolution for a Federal Commission on Drug Policy,1 
which describes the drug war's failures and the threats its prosecution 
presents to society. In light of this failure, the resolution calls for the 
United States government to appoint a special commission of 
distinguished experts to examine alternatives to the war approach at 
the national level.
While expressing support for the Resolution for a Federal Commission 
on Drug Policy, the delegates recognized that the immediate need for 
change in drug policy is at the urban level. Therefore, many will return 
home to their cities and encourage the development of city-level 
commissions to re-examine their drug control policies and to craft new 
approaches. It was a widely shared sentiment that change must happen 
first at the city level if the national debate on drug policy is to change.
$The delegates expressed concern over the effect of international 
treaties on illegal drugs that constrain efforts to implement new policies 
that vary from the conventional efforts at drug suppression. It is 
believed that these treaties must be re-examined to permit harm 
reduction programs and other similar programs sufficient leeway to 
operate.
The delegates made it clear that they recognize the many difficulties 
faced by the world's cities, including crime, violence, racism, poverty, 
lack of education and the spread of deadly disease. Most agree, 
however, that the war on drugs exacerbates these problems and creates 
others, despite its failure to contain drug-related problems.
Delegates expressed concern that insufficient attention is paid to the 
abuse of chemical solvents and inhalants under current strategies.
The delegates do not believe that implementing new drug strategies 
will provide a sweeping solution to the problems of the cities. Despite 
any new, necessary shifts in policies toward drug users, the criminal 
underworld profiting from drug trafficking will continue to grow 
stronger under the framework of drug prohibition. Crime and violence 
will therefore remain major problems. However, the delegates agree 
that moving toward liberalization of previously strict, enforcement-
oriented drug policies can reduce the harms to individuals and society 
caused by the use and abuse of drugs. As a result, the cities will be in a 
substantially better position to deal with the other problems.
The majority of conference delegates see great promise in some 
European and Australian city policies falling under the broad umbrella 
of harm reduction policies. Such policies also include elements of 
medicalization, or giving doctors and the health care system a dominant 
role in drug policy, and placing a lower priority on imposing criminal 
penalties for drug consumption and possession of personal use amounts 
of banned  drugs.
A track record of success has been developed by progressive drug 
policies in key cities in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, England 
and Australia. In addition, cities across the United States have adopted 
elements of harm reduction programs, with New Haven leading the way 
in terms of comprehensive programs. Consistently, the new policies 
have reduced crime by drug users, curbed the spread of disease, 
increased the numbers of drug users seeking treatment and improved 
the quality of life for many residents.
A useful model for urban drug policy within the framework of drug 
prohibition was presented to the delegates. Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke of 
Baltimore, co-host of the conference with the Washington, D.C.-based 
Drug Policy Foundation, unveiled a new drug control plan for his city 
that provides a good example of a new direction for cities now operating 
under the drug war model, both in the United States and in other 
countries. Borrowing from the experiences of other cities, Mayor 
Schmoke, acting on recommendations from the Mayor's Working Group 
on Drug Policy Reform, would implement the following new drug 
policies:
1. Support needle exchange programs.
2. Expand drug treatment and bring doctors and other elements of the 
health care system into the array of treatment providers.
3. Expand drug maintenance options by broadening distribution of 
methadone, while researching the use of other drugs as alternatives to 
black market substances.
4. Review criminal justice priorities to focus on major drug traffickers 
and violent crime, not small-scale drug offenses.
5. Create a Drug Court to divert non-violent drug offenders into drug 
treatment and away from incarceration.
It was the sense of the delegates that these policies proposed by 
Mayor Schmoke represent the right direction for cities moving away 
from traditional war strategies. However, the more comprehensive 
policies already in place in key European and Australian cities present a 
fuller picture of the necessary future of drug policy. Many of these 
cities have crafted policies whose principles are either echoed in or 
derived from the Frankfurt Resolution. This resolution was begun in 
1990 at a conference of European cities afflicted by vast problems 
related to drug trafficking and chemical dependency. The Frankfurt 
Resolution has served as the basis for the activities of a network, the 
European Cities on Drug Policy, which promotes harm reduction and 
helps cities move in that direction. Most delegates to this conference 
agreed that the Frankfurt Resolution illuminates the path to more 
sensible, effective drug strategies for the period in which drug 
prohibition remains the dominant paradigm internationally.
Many of the cities represented at this conference will be charter 
members of the new International Network of Cities on Drug Policy. This 
new network will be built on the experiences of the European Cities on 
Drug Policy, and will include ECDP cities as well as cities in Australia and 
North and South America.
Through a computer network, annual conferences and an exchange 
program of member city officials, the INCDP will help cities devise new 
strategies, share information and advocate  for changes in national and 
international law to accommodate their harm reduction strategies. The 
INCDP plans to attend both the harm reduction conference in Toronto in 
March 1994 and the ECDP conference later that fall. The INCDP will then 
hold its own annual conferences beginning in 1995.
 
1- The Resolution for a Federal Commission on Drug Policy was drafted in February 1993 at a meeting of distinguished citizens at the Hoover 
Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. It has 
subsequently been signed by hundreds of political leaders, academics, 
medical and legal professionals, business leaders and concerned citizens, 
demonstrating the wide recognition of the drug war's failure and the 
need for change.
It is the desire of many of the conference delegates that the Commission 
exist for a limited time to issue recommendations on new directions in 
drug policy.
 
 
 
 
** End of text from cdp:gen.newsletter **


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