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A Drug Trade Primer For The Late 1990s (An Article In 'Current History'
Adapted From The 1997 Report Of The Paris-Based Geopolitical Drug Watch
Gives An Overview Of The World Trade In Prohibited Drugs,
Which Continues To Expand In Response To Increasing Demand
Even As Trafficking Organizations Downsize)

Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 15:52:54 -0700
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
Subject: MN: A Drug Trade Primer for the Late 1990's
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Steve Young
Source: Current History
Contact: chistory@aol.com
Pubdate: April 1998
Author: Geopolitical Drug Watch

Editor's note: A note in this articles states: This article is adapted with
permission from the 1997 report of the Paris-based Geopolitical Drug Watch.
The full report may be found at www.ogd.org/rapport/gb/RPO3_TENDANCES.html

A DRUG TRADE PRIMER FOR THE LATE 1990S

Since the late 1980s, drugs have become public enemy number one in the
West, embodying the "new lack of order" that characterizes the post-cold
war world. By advancing the theory of "the scourge of drugs," Western
nations have above all sought to re-employ the geopolitical tools that had
been rusting under the influence of what was perhaps hastily described as
the "new world order."

The drug system operates on a global scale that recognizes neither
nationality nor borders. It is governed by the rules of supply and demand,
dumping, and even bartering. As with the effective marketing of any product
at the end of the twentieth century; the drug system involves strategies
and tactics that bring radically different civilizations, attitudes, and
principles into contact, affecting them in various ways depending on the
drugs involved. Although an integral part of local and regional history;
the system of producing and marketing drugs is nonetheless very different
from that of any other product, whether legal or not. Everything connected
with drugs is at the same time "modern" and "traditional," "international"
and "local." In short, drugs are the barely distorted reflection of the
problems involved in managing the world at the dawn of the third
millennium.

THE HYDRA EFFECT

The past two years have been a turning point in several respects, first and
foremost because of the changes observed in crime related to drug
trafficking. During the 1980s the manufacture, export, and, to a lesser
extent, distribution of drugs were mainly carried out by major criminal
organizations, some of which had become involved in trafficking on a large
scale in the course of the previous decade. These were the Italian criminal
organizations, the Colombian cartels, the Turkish mafia, and the Chinese
triads. Although the centralized and strictly hierarchical structure of
such organizations has often been mythicized, it is true that they
monopolized a substantial share of the market and maintained business
relations with one another.

In the past two or three years the drug trade has taken on a noticeably
different appearance. Admittedly, some large criminal organizations still
exist (in Mexico and Burma, for example), as well as midsized outfits (in
Colombia, Brazil, and Pakistan), but a massive number of small businesses
have sprung up alongside them. In addition to the multi-ton drug shipments
occasionally seized by the police - often amid a blaze of publicity -
considerable quantities of drugs are transported in tiny batches. Placed
end to end, they would stretch much farther than the large shipments, as
the monthly reports issued by the World Customs Organization demonstrate.

There are several reasons for this change. The first and most obvious is
that international anti-drug organizations and national police forces have
focused on the most visible forms of crime, which have thus become
vulnerable. This is especially true in Colombia and Italy, where major
criminal organizations have overestimated their own strength and openly
attacked the state itself. This has resulted either in the dismantling of
the criminal organizations, as happened with the Medellin car-tel after the
death of drug lord Pablo Escobar in December 1993, or in a withdrawal or
tactical change, as in the case of the Cosa Nostra and the Camorra (early
1990s), the Cali cartel (1995-1996), and the organization in Burma led by
warlord Khun Sa (1995-1996).

The immediate effect of repression was to disorganize the networks. But by
making a virtue of necessity, these large organizations quickly realized
that decentralized structures are much less vulnerable and began the
process of transforming themselves accordingly. In some cases they even
anticipated events. Thus Khun Sa, Burma's "Opium King," gave himself up to
the army without a fight in January 1996 in exchange for sharing the market
with the military and the possibility of investing in other, licit economic
sectors.

Similarly, it is likely that some of the so-called arrests of Cali cartel
leaders by the Colombian government were in fact merely disguised
surrenders fulfilling agreements with the cartels. Their leaders adopted a
strategy of moving into legal business activities after negotiating with
Mexican organizations to hand over parts of their export networks to the
United States. The Colombian criminal organizations have not disappeared,
but they are much more discreet today They have given rise - if one adds
other regional groups, such as the Bogota and Pereira cartels, to the heirs
of the two major car-tels-to 40 midsized organizations.

Meanwhile, the withdrawal of the major cartels has enabled small businesses
to find their place in the sun without taking too many risks. There might
be from 2,000 to 3,000 of these small groups in Colombia, often families or
groups of friends who have a relative or other contact in the United States
or Europe. The Peruvian and Bolivian organizations, which used to be
heavily dependent on their Colombian counterparts, have also taken
advantage of the reshuffle to acquire greater independence and, in the case
of the Bolivians, to work more closely with Brazilian criminal
organizations.

Little is known about the restructuring process involving Cosa
Nostra-although researcher Pino Arlachi speculates that the cupola, its
governing body has not met for several years, but more information is
available about the restructuring of the Camorra. Naples police say that
the success of the struggle against the mafia, which can be attributed to
the use of "turncoats" that has led to the arrest of the main "godfathers,"
has caused a breakup of the organization and an increase in the number of
smaller groups. In 1983, about a dozen Camorra groups were counted in
Naples; there are now believed to be about 100, with a total of some 6,000
members. They are also better equipped, thanks to weapons obtained from the
former Yugoslavia. Other chance factors have contributed to this trend. One
example is the emergence of African network - notably Nigerian - which are
usually based on family or clan structures.

Clearly these new types of organizations make the work of the police much
more difficult, and in any case the dismantling of a network only affects a
tiny part of the quantity of drugs in circulation. But it is not just
police efforts that have triggered the traffickers' reshuffle; other
factors have caused or allowed organizations connected with the drug trade
to undergo major changes.

BOOMING PRODUCTION

In the past 10 years the supply of drugs has seen uninterrupted growth.
Most of the older production zones for coca, opium poppies, and cannabis
have remained stable or have been extended, while new production zones
(poppies in Colombia, coca in Georgia) have been opened and areas
previously cultivated for traditional use have been converted to supply the
international market (Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and Ukraine
for poppies and sub-Saharan Africa for cannabis). One of the reasons for
this is the internationalization of trade, the effect of which is often
augmented by the introduction of structural adjustment programs that have
downplayed the role of agriculture in many economies, especially in Latin
America and Africa.

To the increase in drug plant cultivation must be added the booming market
in synthetic drugs. This growth allows organizations of any size, and even
individuals, to obtain drug supplies of all kinds. However, since demand
for drugs has at the same time grown and diversified, this profusion on the
supply side has not yet resulted in fighting over control of markets.

It was estimated at the end of the 1980s that cocaine hydrochloride
production in Latin America ranged between 500 and 700 tons annually; by
1996 this figure was thought to have risen to between 800 and 1,200 tons.
In 1988, Burma and Afghanistan were each producing between 800 and 1,000
tons of opium; in 1996 the figure reached about 4,500 tons between the two.
Drug production continues to expand in all the countries of Central Asia,
the Caucasus, and the Balkans, as well as in China and Vietnam.

Marijuana production is also booming. The amount of land under cannabis
cultivation in Morocco rose from 30,000 hectares in 1988 to more than
70,000 in 1996, allowing over 2,000 tons of hashish to be produced.
Cultivation in Afghanistan and Pakistan combined yields a similar total
weight. Colombia is once more becoming the major marijuana producer it was
in the 1970s. Since the United States market is saturated with local crops
and imports from Mexico and Jamaica, the Colombians are increasingly
turning toward Europe. Seizures of marijuana from Asia, especially
Cambodia, are becoming more frequent worldwide. South Africa produces tens
of thousands of tons for its own market and is starting to export to
Europe. Production is increasing rapidly throughout sub-Saharan Africa,
especially in Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Ghana, the two Congos, the Ivory
Coast, and Senegal. There are many signs that attempts to grow coca and
opium poppies are also being made in several of these countries.

Growing global drug production comes in response to booming demand. The
large traditional markets, Western Europe and the United States, are
relatively stable. But new markets are emerging and expanding rapidly. In
the case of cocaine these are Japan and Asia generally South Africa, and
especially Russia and other Eastern European countries. The heroin market
is also expanding in the former communist states. In addition, there has
been a boom in consumption of all kinds of drugs in the producer countries
themselves and, more generally, in the third world. This is especially true
with heroin in Asia (especially Pakistan, India, Thailand, and China) and
cocaine in Latin America (especially Argentina, Brazil, and Chile).
Synthetic drugs are also making major breakthroughs in third world markets
in Asia and Africa.

This diversification of both user markets and production zones provides an
initial explanation for the growing number of small and midsized businesses
- especially given the increasing num-ber of victims of the recession in
both the third world and the major urban centers of developed countries,
where narcotics production and traffick-ing and even "utilitarian" drug use
can be means of survival.

THE INCREASE IN LOCAL CONFLICTS

The growing number of local conflicts, a side effect of the end of the cold
war and the convulsions caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, have
also contributed to the changed nature of the drug system. The major
powers, prevented from engaging in direct clashes by nuclear deterrence,
previously came into conflict through their allies in the third world. The
end of the cold war, far from bringing these local conflicts to a halt,
merely high-lighted the lack of any true ideological reasons behind them
and unleashed forces based on ethnic, religious, and national factors.

The warring factions, no longer able to count on their powerful protectors
to finance their causes, have been forced to seek alternative sources of
income in trafficking, including drug trafficking. Some of these conflicts,
such as those in Colombia, Afghanistan, and Angola, were in progress before
the end of the cold war, but the withdrawal of the superpowers means they
have acquired a new character, gradually drifting into predatory behavior
in the case of the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colom-bia (FARC), or
ethnic and religious antagonism manipulated by regional forces in the case
of the Afghan civil war. In most instances the end of the superpower
struggle revealed dissension that the leaden weight of communist regimes
had helped to mask; this is what happened in the Yugoslav, Chechen, and
Azerbaijani-Armenian conflicts, and in the civil wars in Georgia and
Albania. The protagonists in these clashes were thorough in their search
for financial support, trafficking in a host of commodities that included
oil, drugs, and strategic metals. Typically they used their diaspora
communities and migrants in West-ern Europe as bridgeheads, with the
players setting up networks to earn cash for the cause or sometimes acting
autonomously Secret agents in many countries (Russia, Pakistan, and South
Africa, for example) who in earlier times had used the drug trade to
finance unofficial operations have often switched to activities with purely
criminal ends.

These developments, coupled with the factors mentioned above, have led to
an increase in what Geopolitical Drug Watch describes as "short" or
"fragmented" networks. The people involved are not trafficking
"professionals" and do not specialize in a single product. They work only
sporadically and drop their criminal activities once they have achieved
their political or economic goals.

EASTERN EUROPE AND SYNTHETIC DRUGS

In another striking development, the mid-1990s saw the countries of the
former Soviet bloc enter the drug trade. The main target for these new
producers is Western Europe, but there are many signs that they are also
taking an interest in more distant markets such as North America, South
Africa, and Australia.

To enter the drug trade, local criminal organizations can usually choose to
cultivate drug plants or use a deserted chemical factory to make synthetic
drugs. In Eastern Europe the latter choice is favored since the basic
chemical ingredients are not subjected to close scrutiny; highly qualified
and under-paid chemists are in plentiful supply; and drug users in the
region (at least in urban areas) have little experience with natural drugs
and therefore have no objection to replacements.

In the past few years it appears that synthetic drug production has begun
on a large scale in Eastern Europe. German police estimate that between 20
and 25 percent of the amphetamines seized in the country in 1994 came from
Poland, while Warsaw authorities estimate that Polish production sup-plies
roughly 10 percent of the European market. University laboratories are
suspected of producing drugs and huge numbers of couriers have been
arrested at the German and Swedish borders. The Czech Republic vies with
Poland for the title of second-largest European producer of psychotropic
drugs (after the Netherlands), especially ephedrine, the main precursor
chemical in the manufacture of methamphetamines. In 1994, the UN condemned
an incident in which 50 tons of Czech ephedrine was sent to clandestine
Mexican laboratories by way of Switzerland. The finished product was
apparently intended for the United States market.

Various scandals since 1992 have shown that Latvia and Hungary are favored
by notably Dutch and Scandinavian investors, who finance the production of
Ecstasy for European Union countries, as well as the manufacture of
amphetamine derivatives in liquid, injectable form. In 1993 the
International Narcotics Control Board expressed concern about the existence
in Bulgaria of state enterprises manu-facturing phenethylamines under the
brand name Captagon for export without permission to Nigeria and the
Arabian peninsula, by way of Turkey.

Among the former Soviet republics, Azerbaijan has specialized in
manufacturing synthetic opiates (methadone, normorphine, 3-methylfentanyl)
and methamphetamines in the cities of Gyandzha and Baku. In other parts of
the former Soviet Union syn-thetic ephedrine is extracted from
pharmaceutical ingredients and converted into ephedrone (an amphetamine
derivative known in the United States as methcathinone). Ephedra vulgaris,
which is cultivated in Azerbaijan, grows wild in Kyrgyzstan and
Kazakhstan's Almaty region.

China also makes the most of its Ephedra resources. Clandestine
methamphetamine labora-tories, supplied with ephedrine appropriated from
the pharmaceutical industry have sprung up in Guangdong and Fujian
provinces, for the moment almost exclusively for the Southeast Asian and
former Soviet republic markets. In many cases it is the Taiwanese triads,
whose members come from southern China, that are behind this production.

A NEW GLOBAL DIVIDE

At the start of the third millennium, synthetic drugs will probably have
the dubious merit of standardizing the various divides in drug use: between
the better-off and the disadvantaged in rich countries; and between
developed countries and the developing world. As with other drugs, the only
difference will lie in the quality of the product. But it is also likely
that this large-scale drug abuse affecting tens of millions of individuals
will merely coexist alongside the "classic" use of drugs derived from
plants.

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New Drugs, New Responses - Lessons From Europe ('Current History'
Says That In The Past, Europe Has Often Looked To The United States
For Advice On Drug Control, But Drug Experts In The United States
Can Now Look To Europe For Clues About New Drugs Making Their Way
To American Consumers, New Producers Aiming At United States Markets,
And Fresh Ways Of Thinking About Drug Control)

From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US: OPED: New Drugs, New Responses:
Lessons from Europe
Date: Mon, 01 Jun 1998 22:48:53 -0700
Lines: 444
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Steve Young
Pubdate: April 1998
Source: Current History
Contact: chistory@aol.com

Author: ELIZABETH JOYCE is a visiting researcher in the department of
government at Georgetown University Her most recent book, coedited with
Carlos MaLamud, is "Latin America and the Multinational Drug Trade" (New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1998).

NEW DRUGS, NEW RESPONSES: LESSONS FROM EUROPE

Europe has often looked to the United States for advice on drug control.
The United States puts more resources into gathering intelligence on global
trends, collects better data on domestic consumption patterns, and believes
its methods of policing drug consumption and trafficking should serve as
models for the rest of the world. But the new drugs and trafficking trends
emerging in Europe might soon make the United States war on cocaine
producers in Latin America seem as antiquated as a battle fought with
muskets. Drug experts in the United States can now look to Europe for clues
about new drugs making their way to American consumers, new producers
aiming at United States markets, and fresh ways of thinking about drug
control.

Europe does not have a drug war like the one the United States is engaged
in because Europeans would find it hard to agree on an enemy, let alone a
response. Europe, for example, is itself a major producer of synthetic
drugs. Synthetics represent a new way to produce and traffic drugs. One of
these, MDMA (3, 4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine, commonly known as
Ecstasy), has the effect of a hallucinogen with an amphetamine-like
stimulant. In 1995 police in Europe seized 396 mil-lion Ecstasy tablets. A
cheap and readily available drug (an evening's supply costs between $10 and
$25), Ecstasy has been an integral part of younger Europeans' nightlife for
more than 10 years.

It is also easy to produce; recipes are available on the Internet.
European traffickers in synthetic drugs do not have to deal with unwieldy
opium, coca, and marijuana crops in remote rural areas, nor with truculent
farmers and producers; they can make the drugs themselves and control the
entire process. Synthetic drug production is as appealing to small criminal
groups as to large organizations.

Small producers can develop their business discreetly without confronting
larger traffickers, which is not the case with cocaine and heroin, where
new businesses frequently have to compete with established traffickers for
control of raw materials and routes.

Laboratories can produce as many as 12 million Ecstasy tablets daily and
are even portable. In 1992 Dutch police seized a fully operational Ecstasy
lab-oratory housed inside a shipping container that had been mounted on a
flatbed truck and hauled throughout the Netherlands to avoid detection.
Synthetic variants that are not yet illegal are also

easy to develop; such is the concern in Europe about these variants that
the European Union (EU) has introduced Union-wide measures to improve
reporting on and accelerate the banning of new synthetic drugs to
circumvent the two years it takes to get a narcotic banned by the UN.

The Netherlands is the world's largest producer of Ecstasy, although police
have also uncovered laboratories in other European countries, including
Poland and the Czech Republic. Until recently it had not been produced in
any quantity in the United States, where supplies still tend to be imported
from Europe. But the new popularity of Ecstasy and amphetamines in Europe
is echoed in the resurgence in the popularity of methamphetamines in the
United States, especially the southwest. The United States Office of
National Drug Control Policy estimates that 4.7 million Americans have used
methamphetamines recently Ecstasy and its variants could easily be produced
in vast quantities in the United States, as they are in Europe; no one has
ever accused American entrepreneurs of being slow to recognize an
attractive new product.

THE EUROPEAN MARKET CONTRASTED Proportionally fewer Europeans than
Americans use drugs. Yet, because both are Western and industrialized, the
United States and European markets for illicit drugs are often assumed to
be about equal, with regional variations in preferences for particular
types of drugs. But Americans appear to be far more likely than Europeans
to try illicit drugs, and this willingness makes them open to new products.
According to a 1993 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 37.2 percent
of Americans have tried illicit drugs. The proportion of Europeans who have
tried illicit drugs, according to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs
and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), is only 5 to 16 percent, depending on the
country surveyed.

The United States also has more hard drug users proportionally Americans
use more heroin than Europeans, although traditionally it was believed that
European hard drug users preferred heroin and their American counterparts
cocaine. While it is true that heroin has long been and remains the hard
drug of choice in Europe, prevalence of use is no higher than in the United
States. Indeed, the EMCDDA claims that the European prevalence of heroin
use might be as low as half that of the United States. Nor has cocaine has
become as popular in Europe as it is in the United States: official
estimates put the percentage of Americans who have tried cocaine at 11.3
percent, compared with a European range from 1 percent (Germany France, and
Belgium) to 4 percent (Spain). Cocaine costs more in Europe than in the
United States, and there are other, cheaper local drugs from more reliable
sources that compete with it, including European-produced methamphetamines.

Lacking a serious cocaine demand problem, European governments do not focus
special atten-tion on Latin America when they consider external illicit
drug sources. In contrast, stopping the flow of cocaine is the main United
States international drug control priority United States

drugs have always been imported from other parts of the world, but Latin
America has supplied almost all the cocaine, much of the marijuana, and a
rising proportion of the heroin that United States drug users have
consumed. Foreign drug policy has therefore been intensively focused on a
small number of Andean countries, the Caribbean islands that serves as
transit and money-laundering centers (Jamaica, Aruba, Antigua, Trinidad and
Tobago, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico), and Mexico.

Europe has not had such a sharply defined front on which to wage a war on
drugs. Drugs pour in overland through the Balkans and North Africa; by sea
to isolated coves on the coasts of Italy Spain, Scotland, Ireland, and
Greece, and the major ports of Rotterdam and London; and by air through
every major airport on the continent. Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, the Czech
Republic, Austria, Britain, France, Germany Italy Spain, the Netherlands,
and Belgium are all major transit countries.

The drug traffickers' map of Europe also reflects every major political
change that has taken place over the last decade, from the war in Bosnia to
the cease-fire in Northern Ireland. When war raged in the Balkans,
traffickers opened up Hungary and Czechoslovakia as routes to Western
Europe. After conditions improved and the old Balkan trails were reopened,
the new routes remained in place. Simi-larly the withdrawal of hundreds of
British troops from Belfast in the mid-1990s allowed drugs to enter what
had been one of the few relatively drug-free urban centers in Europe.

THE NEW MENACE FROM THE EAST The most important political change in Europe
- the collapse of communism - has also been the greatest boost to the
global drug trade in the last decade. Communism's end has given both
trafficking and consumption a stimulus comparable only to that created by
the Vietnam War. Eastern Europe has become the main source of drugs
entering Western Europe, and drugs produced in the east are also finding
their way to North America. The triangular trade involving traffickers in
Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Western European countries like Italy is
no longer a nascent threat but an established reality. Every shipment of
cocaine to Europe locks Latin American traffickers more tightly into this
burgeoning market, which in turn protects them against the vicissitudes of
their battle with United States law enforcement.

The speed with which the drug trade in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
states has developed is astonishing. According to the research group Oxford
Analytica, the Russian narcotics business alone is worth an estimated $6
billion annually and proceeds from drugs are believed to have allowed
organized crime to gain control of at least a quarter of Russia's banks,
more than half the country's capital, and some 80 percent of all shares
sold on the Russian stock exchange. Russia is also now a producer of
synthetic drugs; St. Petersburg is the production center and acts as a
magnet for unemployed chemists and pharmacists from the rest of Russia and
other former Soviet republics, especially Latvia. The former Central Asian
republics of Kyrgyzstan

and Kazakhstan produce both opium poppy and marijuana, and Central Asia
itself is a transit route for heroin being smuggled to Europe from
Afghanistan and Pakistan. A 1997 report from the London-based International
Insti-tute for Strategic Studies said that Kyrgyzstan alone was exporting
more drugs than Burma or Thailand.

Poland has become Europe's largest producer of amphetamines. The country's
law enforcement agencies lack the capacity to control Poland's thriving
band of illicit entrepreneurs. Polish drug producers also manufacture a
domestic opiate called "kompot", derived from poppies grown in the "Polish
Triangle" between Miechow, Proszowice, and Krakow. Poland, like the Czech
Republic and Russia, also produces a variety of other illicit synthetic
drugs, and its central location on the European mainland makes it an
important transit country: Warsaw, Gdynia, and Gdansk are key
transshipment points. In addition, Poland has a burgeoning consumption
problem not entirely unrelated to its dual status as a producer and transit
country: from 1990 to 1996, the number of registered Polish drug addicts
rose by almost 50 percent to more than 20,000.

Policies to respond to this increased drug activity are not in place.

When European law enforcement officials began cooperating with Poland in
the early 1990s, they found a yawning chasm between drug control there and
in Western Europe. In all of 1996, police and customs officials detected
only 97 cases of border trafficking. And not until 1997 did Polish police
set up a narcotics unit to coordinate law enforcement operations. Police
powers were curbed after the end of communism in Poland, but this process
of liberalization, which did so much to enhance civil liberties, prohibited
some of the stan-dard weapons that the police could use against the drug
trade. Until recently undercover and sting operations were not allowed, nor
were "controlled deliveries," police operations in which officers follow a
drug courier on a trail to what they hope will be a trafficker of greater
importance. Countries such as Poland pose a particular problem for Western
Europe because they will soon become part of the EU; the Western European
countries must race to ensure that drug control is at least marginally
effective before their borders are opened even further to new members in
the east.

EUROPEAN RESPONSES The drug war as a moral call to arms has always lacked
resonance in Europe. Expectations about what drug policy can do are lower
than in the United States; the possibility of victory over drugs - the
elimination of drug abuse - is seldom raised, even rhetorically. Nor is
drug policy conflated with military goals and security In the United
States, the drug war has been both a metaphor and a literal description of
policy since the Department of Defense overcame its reluctance in the 1980s
to play an ever greater role in drug control. In Europe, drug control
remains a civilian affair.

There is, nevertheless, a high degree of concern about drugs in Europe.
Most European countries are signatories to the three UN conventions on
drugs.[1] Many European governments have emulated

aspects of the United States drug strategy because they believe it produces
a clearer, more direct approach to the problem; the British appointment of
a United States-style drug czar in 1997 is a case in point. That the
famously liberal Dutch policy on drugs disturbs rather than outrages its
neighbors is largely thanks to the fact that the Netherlands has never
actually legalized drugs but, as a matter of policy opts not to prosecute
most drug users.

Yet even within individual countries there is often little consensus on
drug control. This range of opinion has produced vigorous debate about the
allocation of resources for demand reduction programs, the policing of drug
trafficking, and legalization and decriminalization.

Strong opposition to drugs is always tempered or hampered, depending on
one's point of view, by dissent.

France takes a strong anti-drug stance and for years has been the most
vocal European critic of the more permissive drug laws of neighboring
Netherlands. French President Jacques Chirac has ruled out any drug
liberalization, and has insisted that France retain border checks on its
northeastern frontiers to protect itself from Dutch drug

trafficking and from "drug tourism" (French and German drug users taking
advantage of more liberal Dutch policies by crossing the border to buy
drugs). France's insistence on the dangers of the Dutch drug trade blocked
full implementation of the EU's Schengen "Open Borders" agreement, which,
in the interest of greater European integration, seeks to eliminate
passport controls and customs checks among some EU member states.

Yet members of the French government voice dissent from the status quo even
while their government commits itself to maintaining it. In the campaign
preceding France's June 1997 parliamentary elections, now Prime Minister
Lionel Jospin admitted to smoking marijuana and hinted that he favored
decriminalization. Such an admission at election time suggests that he
calculated that it might win him votes, or at least not lose him support.
Environment Minister Dominique Voynet has said that she favors the
legalization of cannabis, and readily admits to hav-ing smoked it herself.

Those who openly support decriminalization are backed by a vocal minority A
vigorous decriminalization campaign emerged after the 1997 British
parliamentary elections to oppose the new Labour government's hard line on
drug control; several hundred campaigners openly smoked cannabis in front
of police in Hyde Park to protest drug laws. Earnest British students have
made a folk hero of Howard Marks, a recently released British drug
trafficker. Known in the drug trade as "Mr. Nice" (the title of his
autobiography), Oxford-educated Marks was one of the most successful
European drug traffickers of the 1970s and 1980s, responsible for importing
millions of dollars worth of cannabis. Now, with a cottage industry of
books, public appearances, television interviews, and web pages, he has
popularized himself as a peculiarly British type of trafficker: a decent
iconoclast with impeccable manners.

While attitudes toward the principle of illicit drug use vary, attitudes
toward drug users also differ. Many approaches that might be considered
radical elsewhere in the world have been in use for decades. The so-called
British system, whereby doctors can supply drugs to registered addicts, has
been in existence since 1934.

Europeans are generally amenable to the treatment of addiction with the
reg-ulated prescription of otherwise illicit drugs by the medical
profession. In a September 1997 national referendum, 70 percent of Swiss
voters approved a government plan to give regular doses of heroin to
addicts after it was shown that Swiss addicts par-ticipating in an existing
scheme committed 60 percent less crime.

Many of the more innovative approaches to drug abuse have been introduced
at the substate level. City governments have often produced alternative and
experimental approaches to drug control. A transnational movement of
European cities including Frankfurt, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Zurich
produced the Frankfurt Resolution, which supports the principles of "harm
reduction." The resolution amounts to the decrim-inalization of drugs:
under certain regulated conditions, users will not be prosecuted for drug
consumption.

In the Netherlands, where the national approach is more liberal than in
most countries, city governments' alternative policies have often been
toward greater strictness. In the northern Dutch town of Kampen, the mayor
threatened to resign last year if the council passed a motion approving the
opening of a coffee shop within municipal boundaries, and in the town of
Groningen, tougher regulations have reduced the number of coffee shops from
35 to 14 (the Dutch government has a famously liberal policy on drugs that
permits the sale of cannabis in coffee shops). The Frankfurt approach also
has opposition among city governments: the April 1994 Stockholm Resolution,
entitled European Cities against Drugs and signed by the mayors of 21
European capitals, is an anti-drug response to the decriminalization that
the Frankfurt Resolution proposes.

THE DUTCH "SOLUTION" The Dutch policy allowing the sale of cannabis in
coffee shops, which has been in place for more than 20 years, attempts to
separate the markets for hard drugs (heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines) and
soft drugs (cannabis products). The intention is to prevent users from
progressing from soft drug use to hard drug use when exposed to a criminal
underground marketing both. Coffee shops in the Netherlands are allowed to
sell small amounts of cannabis openly without fear of prosecution. Until
recently users could possess up to 0.5 grams of hard drugs or 30 grams of
cannabis and not face arrest, unless the offender was also suspected of
trafficking or another drug-related crime.

In the context of varying responses to illicit drugs throughout Europe,
particularly in cities like Frankfurt and Zurich, the Netherlands does not
regard its drug policy as especially radical. The Dutch government has said
that its drug policy is little more than an attempt to formalize and
regulate a type of decriminalization that is

already de facto in force in Britain, France, Germany and even the United
States, where users possessing small quantities of soft drugs are rarely
prosecuted. Implicit in this view is the sense that the Dutch government
considers its neighbors to be hypocritical in their condemnation of its
approach to drugs.

Other European countries have ruled that possession of soft drugs need not
be an indictable offense. The German federal Constitutional Court in
Karlsruhe ruled in March 1994 that an individ-ual should no longer be
prosecuted if found in posession of cannabis deemed to be for personal use.
The Netherlands argues that Dutch policy takes this approach one step
further by reasoning that if drug use cannot be eliminated, it is prudent
to regulate its use.

In claiming success for the policy, the Dutch point out that the
Netherlands has far fewer hard drug addicts (approximately 180 per 100,000
of the population) than neighboring France (280 per 100,000),

and that in the last 20 years the number of Dutch cannabis users has
remained stable, at around 600,000. They note that most Dutch heroin
addicts are over 30, and that fewer younger people are taking up the habit.
The Netherlands also claims success in certain public health matters: the
government estimates that the number of deaths resulting from overdose, for
example, is less than half that of most European countries.

Yet the Netherlands has, under duress, changed its liberal policy on
illicit drugs. In 1995 a policy review recommended reducing the
availability of soft drugs by limiting the number of retail outlets (some
1,200 coffee shops and an estimated 900 other unregulated points of sale).
Serious drug users were required to undergo compulsory rehabilitation. Most
dramatic of all, the amount of cannabis individuals could buy in coffee
shops was reduced from 30 grams to

5. The pressure for change came not from within the Netherlands but from
its disgruntled neighbors, France and Germany which objected to their own
citizens crossing the Dutch border to buy drugs. The Netherlands had agreed
to ensure that its neighbors were not inconvenienced by its drug policy
which was interpreted to mean surveillance of points of sale, especially in
border regions. Coop-eration with neighbors also meant large-scale police
deployment to apprehend drug runners at borders and ports. In 1994 the
Dutch police arrested more than 800 people at the frontiers for drug
offenses. Greatly increased policing at the borders, however, did not
satisfy French and German concerns, and their dissatisfaction led directly
to the change in Dutch policy BEYOND RHETORIC: EUROPE AND MULTILATERAL
COOPERATION Some European countries are dearly disturbed by their
neighbors' drug policies.

However, the paradox of European drug policy is that, although European
countries differ widely in their policies, they engage in far more
multilateral drug cooperation than any other region in the world. In
comparison with the Europeans, not a single country in the Western
Hemisphere has displayed more than a rhetorical commitment to multilateral
cooperation. The Organization of American States

Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission has at times almost withered
away for lack of attention and funding. When the commission wanted to set
up a hemispheric network of drug information centers in the late 1980s, it
turned to the EU for initial funding because it could not raise sufficient
interest among its own member states. The United States spends little more
than $5 million a year for multilateral cooperation, which is loose change
in a federal drug budget of $16 billion in 1997. Although the United States
has spent millions on drug control in Latin America, the funding is
bilateral.

The nations of Latin America might have supported United Nations
International Drug Control Program (UNDGP) projects in their own countries,
but otherwise have seldom looked beyond their own borders except to
complain, albeit with some justification, about the catalyzing effects of
the voracious American demand for drugs.

For more than a decade, the UNDCP has been mainly a conduit for European
antinarcotics funding. Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and, in
particular, Italy have all financed major UNDCP projects in alternative
development (such as crop replacement, where farmers of coca and opium
poppy crops are given assistance to allow them to produce licit crops
instead), judicial assistance, and treatment, education, and rehabilitation
programs. Without Italian support in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the
UNDCP would not have been able to initiate projects in Latin America or
even sustain them.

European countries have undertaken these tasks without sacrificing the
integrity of their own foreign interests and responsibilities. The EU is
far from being a unitary actor on the world stage, and in their external
relations on drugs the countries of Western Europe do not necessarily have
the same priorities. Britain, France, and the Netherlands have dependent
territories and former colonies in the Caribbean that make drug trafficking
and money laundering there a special responsibility Spain is concerned
about cannabis trafficking from North Africa and complains that Gibraltar,
an adjacent British territory is a transshipment point for drugs. Germany
is less concerned about Gibraltar than about amphetamine trafficking from
Poland and the Netherlands, and marijuana and heroin production in Central
Asia. Multilateral cooperation only enhances their commitment to these
individual priorities.

Inside the EU, countries are also risking the surrender of considerable
sovereignty over law enforcement to facilitate multilateral cooperation on
transnational crime. When EU member states committed themselves in the late
1980s to a Single European Market, they were voting for the free movement
of goods, capital, and people throughout Western Europe. Most countries -
only Britain, Denmark, and Ireland firmly refused - wanted to see open
borders between EU members. Open borders, however, facilitate transnational
crime as well as transnational trade, and a complex network of law
enforcement measures to deal with the consequences of open borders, such as
hot

pursuit, cross-border surveillance, and refugee status, has gradually been
put in place. The Europeans have also set up Europol. Formally proposed in
June 1991, Europol was a German initiative originally envisaged as a
European police force, but its inter-governmental status makes it far from
a European version of the FBI. Instead, it remains an intelligence-sharing
agency with no executive or investigative powers, a focal point for
multilateral cooperation on drugs.


No one believes multilateral cooperation is easy. There are many
difficulties in exchanging intelligence quickly and effectively among 15
(and soon to be more) countries with different languages and legal
institutions. After several years of wrangling the Europol convention has
still not been fully ratified. There is resistance to the agency based on
profound misgivings about the ceding of sovereignty on law enforcement to
the EU, and on the potential threat to civil liberties involved in the
widening of police powers at the supranational level.

The new drugs and traffickers emerging from Europe are reason enough for
the United States to analyze the drug situation in Europe closely.

But the fact that the challenges of multilateral drug cooperation are being
so directly and urgently addressed in Europe just as the Western Hemisphere
countries are considering multilateral cooperation themselves means that
they should also be looking toward Europe for an intimation of how truly
regional drug cooperation might function.

[1]The three are the 1988 UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic
Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, also known as the Vienna Convention; the
1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances; and the 1961 Single Convention
on Narcotic Drugs.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Pot Club Ready To Roll Even Without Outlet ('London Free Press'
Quotes Multiple Sclerosis Patient Lynn Harichy
Saying The Civilly Disobedient Medical Marijuana Dispensary
In London, Ontario, Could Be 'Fully Operational' By Friday,
But Will Not Have An Official Location)

Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 11:45:14 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Olafur Brentmar 
Subject: MN: Canada: Pot Club Ready To Roll Even Without Outlet
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: creator@mapinc.org
Pubdate: April 1, 1998
Source: London Free Press (Canada)
Contact: letters@lfpress.com
Website: http://www.canoe.ca/LondonFreePress/home.html
Author: John Hamilton -- Free Press Reporter

POT CLUB READY TO ROLL EVEN WITHOUT AN OUTLET

Lynn Harichy says her medicinal marijuana buyer's club in London could
start swinging into action as early as today.

"It could well be we'll be making our first pot delivery,'' she said Tuesday.

Harichy said plans to start the proposed club have been delayed and plans
to open an outlet put on hold but she and supporters are still proceeding.

"We've decided to scratch the planned outlet because we don't want buyers
scared by police,'' she said.

Harichy, who has multiple sclerosis, said she hopes the club will be "fully
operational'' by Friday without an official outlet.

Earlier, supporters said the likely location for the outlet would have been
in the same building as the Organic Traveller, a downtown hemp shop on
Richmond Street.

Harichy said part of the delay in getting the club off the ground is that
applications for membership won't start to be delivered until today. "It
was an organizational problem,'' she said.

DOCTORS' LETTERS

Club membership will be restricted to people with doctors' letters
confirming they have diseases alleviated by pot intake.

"If we get a correctly completed application returned tomorrow we can
deliver,'' Harichy said.

She said supporters are still organizing their supplies of marijuana.

"I just want to help people who have problems like mine,'' said the
pot-smoking Harichy.

She said supporters have gathered about 70 names of potential club members
since an announcement Feb. 13 that the club was planned.

Harichy said she's tired of waiting for federal authorities, including
Health Minister Allan Rock, to make medical marijuana available.

"We intend to supply the medical need,'' she said. "If the police want to
act they can come and bust me.'' Police have said they will keep an eye on
the club's activities.

Copyright (c) 1998 The London Free Press a division of Sun Media Corporation.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

London Marijuana Club Starts Distribution Amid Controversy
(Version In The Kitchener-Waterloo 'Record')

From: "Starr" 
To: "maptalk" (maptalk@mapinc.org)
Subject: London marijuana club starts....
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 16:43:56 -0500
Source: The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo)
recordletters@southam.ca
Date: April 1, 1998
By: Jean Goddu

LONDON MARIJUANA CLUB STARTS DISTRIBUTION AMID CONTROVERSY

She knows firsthand the devastating effects of having her home raided by
police searching for pot.

That's why Lynn harichy is willing to risk going through it again. She's
started a medical marijuana club that begins distributing pot today, to
provide a service she hopes will stop anyone enduring what she did.

"We don't want to be criminals but there is a necessity for it," Harichy,
who suffers from multiple sclerosis and smokes pot to ease her symptoms,
said in a telephone interview from her home in London, Ont.

Harichy is scheduled to appear in court later this month on a charge of pot
possession, but lawyers were headed to court today to postpone the
appearance until the fall.

Harichy, 37, is well aware she's breaking the law again by distributing
weed to members of her club but she says it's a price she's willing to pay.

Helping people reduce their pain is her reward.

"It's nice to see people not have to suffer so much," she said. "We're not
making any money off it...this is just for compassion reasons.

"You have to be sympathetic to these people that are suffering. It's not
right to have people suffer, especially if there's something out there that
can help them."

There are about 70 members of the London club. All clients submit letters
from their doctors stating their medical condition before marijuana is
provided for them by the club. The drug is considered effective in
alleviating symptoms of multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, cancer and AIDS.

Members are given a quater ounce of organically grown marijuana a week or
one ounce a month, said Harichy.

She says she's met both health Minister Allan Rock and Prime Minister Jean
Chretien and she believes medical marijuana will soon be available.

Derek Kent, a spokesperson for Rock, declined comment on Harichy's club.
But he noted that Rock has already said the government is "examining the
issue of using marijuana for medical purposes."

Buyers' clubs are already up and running in Toronto and Vancouver. In
California and Arizona, state laws have been reformed to allow the medical
use of marijuana. More Ontario clubs are in the works.

"Nobody's had any problems to the best of my knowledge," said Alan Young,
the lawyer who sought government authorization for the Ontario clubs.

"Police are very noncommittal on the issue," he said. "They'll probably
wait until there are complaints or the buyers' clubs become a nuisance in
the community."

Harichy and other club owners are commiting acts of civil disobedience to
push the government into making reforms, Young said

"We can't wait. There's too many people who are suffering now. We have to
go ahead with it," said Harichy.

But Terry Parker, an epileptic who supports medical marijuana, says buyers'
clubs aren't the solution.

"These people would be much better off if they got more public support for
legalization," he said.

Parker uses pot--"it's the best drug in theworld"-- to control his
seizures. In December, cultivation and possession charges against him were
stayed by an Ontario court. The ruling is being appealed by the federal
government.

"It's not a great idea to (open the centres) and get busted. I've been
through this rigmarole and it's pain," he said. "I'm not trying to deter
these people. Their heart's in the right place but their brain's not."

Parker is critical of the federal government's decision to legalize hemp
production while it continues to oppose medical use of marijuana.

"I find it kind of off the wall that we put material purposes over the
sanctity of human life," he said.

"If you want to grow it for greed, that's OK. But if you want to grow it
for need...you're going to jail."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Waging War On Drugs Does Not Pay ('Toronto Star' Columnist Rosie DiManno
Says Drugs, In All Their Insidious Forms, Should Be Decriminalized
So That We Finally Might Have A Chance To Beat Them Back)

Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 11:45:14 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Olafur Brentmar 
Subject: MN: Canada: Waging War On Drugs Does Not Pay
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Dave Haans (haans@chass.utoronto.ca)
Pubdate: Wed, 1 Apr 1998
Source: Toronto Star (Canada)
Page: B1
Contact: lettertoed@thestar.com
Website: http://www.thestar.com/
Author: Rosie DiManno

WAGING WAR ON DRUGS DOES NOT PAY

AN UNDERCOVER COP miraculously survives a close quarters shooting in
Toronto and the emphasis - understandably - was on the bad guy who pulled
the trigger.

Get him. He shot a cop.

But notwithstanding the profession of the victim, a police officer, this
was just another bang-bang night in the big city.

A drug deal had gone bad. A sting had stung. The outcome - blood on the
ground - was all too familiar.

Drugs propel crime. Whether on an international scale, with cocaine
kingpins from South America, or in the local microcosm of territorial
management, the result is always violence and a repugnant disrespect for
life.

In Toronto, murder and mayhem evolve from domestic disputes, twisted
passions, the occasional business disagreement and young men dissin' each
other. But, over and above all else, it's the drugs: production,
distribution, and the terrible hunger for a high.

Any honest cop will tell you the same thing: This is not a war we can win
by law enforcement.

Despite the billions of dollars thrown at policing drugs in North America,
despite the lucrative recovery industry drug addiction has created, despite
all the lives lost, there has not been a significant dent in stopping the
flow of drugs and the flow of blood.

We really can't expect the police to openly declare what must be said - not
when their own jobs would be put at risk. And we can't expect politicians
to make the bold moves required. And we can't expect the ``care-givers'' -
the detox agencies and clinics - to befriend the enemy.

But there is only one answer: Decriminalizing drugs. All of them.

Not just cannabis, which is heading in that direction, despite recent
efforts by the World Health Organization to squelch the results of their
own study that showed cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco.
(This, the same increasingly politicized WHO that all but quashed the
results of a long-anticipated seven-year study, which it had commissioned,
that showed absolutely no link between lung cancer and second-hand smoke.)

Politically speaking, these dual findings were not in synch with the moral
tone of Western countries, especially the U.S., where zero tolerance on
drugs has created draconian third-strike laws.

Drugs, in all their insidious forms, should be decriminalized so that we
finally might have a chance to beat them back.

Remove the criminality and what you have left is a major health problem.
But we can deal with health issues without getting hysterical. All that
money saved from law enforcement can be directed toward health promotion
and treatment. And if those same drugs were available legally on the
streets, surely we would at least cut down on the gunmen and the gunplay
and the innocent victims and the clumsy robberies which occur simply to
support those drug habits.

It's taken us a hundred years of inappropriate treatment to realize that
perhaps depression is physiological in nature for many people, and that new
anti-depressants can almost immediately accomplish what therapy could not.

Is there any chance that such a drug can be developed for those people who
are predisposed to drug addiction? Do we want to put research dollars into
this?

That's not so outrageous, really. It's a question that was posited in a
recent issue of The New Yorker, which looked at the high cost (and
profitability) of private drug treatment facilities.

Would it not make more sense to siphon off money for research into a
quasi-Prozac pill for drug addicts, just as there are anti-psychotic drugs
for schizophrenics?

A drug that cures the urge for drugs.

Just imagine.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Re - Waging War On Drugs Does Not Pay (Letter Sent To Editor
Of 'Toronto Star' Praises Columnist's Conclusion, But Criticizes Her Wish
For A Pill To 'Cure' Addiction)

Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 15:34:07 -0500 (EST)
From: "Kelly T. Conlon" 
To: LettertoEd@thestar.com
Subject: Re: Waging war on drugs does not pay

To the editors,

I applaud Rosie DiManno for having the guts to tell it like it is; I
agree that the War on Unpopular Drugs is unwinnible, unworkable, and that
its about time we change the course of our policy, preferably through
decriminalization or depenalization. However, I have fears that her policy
cure may be as bad (or worse) than the so-called disease.

She suggests that we redirect our efforts towards finding a cure for
addiction, perhaps in the form of a pill. This suggests that every single
person who smokes pot, snorts cocaine and injects heroin is "sick". It
also suggests that all drug users desire to be "cured". In the absence of
criminal sanctions, would the state feel obliged to force recalcitrant
drug users into treatment for their own good, or would we simply provide
drug users with whatever quantity of drugs they can afford to buy? It is a
question left unanswered by Ms. DiManno.

In that respect, I am inclined to agree with the views of the American
psychologist Thomas Szasz, as expressed in his seminal work "Ceremonial
Chemistry". We must recognize the modern drug war for what it is; a moral
crusade to purify the soul of the country.

Kelly T. Conlon
196 Glen Rd.
Hamilton ON.
L8S 3N4
(905) 577-1170

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Couple Faces Drug Trial In June ('London Free Press'
Says A Couple In Parkhill, Ontario, Who Won $22.5 Million In The Lottery
Will Go On Trial June 10 For Marijuana Cultivation And Trafficking)

From: creator@islandnet.com (Matt Elrod)
To: mattalk@listserv.islandnet.com
Subject: COUPLE FACES DRUG TRIAL IN JUNE
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 08:27:03 -0800
Source: London Free Press
Contact: letters@lfpress.com

April 1, 1998

COUPLE FACES DRUG TRIAL IN JUNE

CREDIT: By Don Murray -- Free Press Court Reporter

The Parkhill couple who won $22.5 million in the Super 7 lottery is
scheduled to appear in a London courtroom June 10 for trial on three
drug charges.

Bernard (Bernie) Nauss, 60, and his 36-year-old wife Krista (Kris),
were jointly charged with cultivation of marijuana, possession for the
purpose of trafficking and possession.

The charges were laid after an OPP raid on a residence, just west of
Parkhill in February 1997, uncovered a hydroponic cannabis growing
operation. Police said the marijuana seized had a street value of
$125,000 and the equipment $10,000.

The couple also faced a series of weapons and stolen property
charges. In December, Bernie Nauss was fined $200 for unsafe storage
of firearms. Fourteen other firearms charges against him and 15
charges against Kris Nauss were withdrawn.

Also withdrawn were several stolen property counts relating to
motorcycles and a semi trailer.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Do We Need Any More Drugs? (Staff Editorial In Britain's 'Daily Mail'
Says Cannabis Should Remain Illegal - The Ban On Cannabis
May Indeed Be Ineffective, But Then, So Are The Bans On Harder Drugs
Such As Heroin And Cocaine - There Were Just 333 Registered Addicts
In 1958 - Today The Number Hooked Runs Into Tens Of Thousands)

Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 17:35:30 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: UK: Editorial: Do We Need Any More Drugs?
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: webbooks@paston.co.uk (CLCIA)
Source: Daily Mail UK
Contact: letters@dailymail.co.uk
Pubdate: Wed, 1 Apr 1998
Editor note: At the end, this editorial makes an interesting shift in stance.

DO WE NEED ANY MORE DRUGS?

One deeply-felt conviction unites the thousands of demonstrators who will
be marching though the streets of London today: that the law banning
cannabis is an absolute ass.

It may not be a view shared by the Government, but it cannot simply be
brushed aside. The protest will show that the campaign to legalise the
drug now reaches far beyond the ranks of the young and rebellious.

The marchers will be led by the Labour MP Paul Flynn, supported by a number
of prominent European MPs. A liberal broadsheet is giving the campaign its
backing. And it is not just the fashionable bien-pensants who think the
present law is unworkable. The Mail's Ann Leslie has argued powerfully in
this newspaper that cannabis should be decriminalised.

Their case can seem beguilling. The law in this matter is more honoured in
the breach than the observance. Academic studies suggest that half of all
sixteen-year-olds have experimented with the drug. Millions of adults have
puffed the occasional joint without coming to any noticeable harm. And it
is arguable that cannabis is less injurious to health than either alcohol
or tobacco.

Yet when all that is said, today's demo still does not deserve to succeed.

Yes, the ban on cannabis may indeed be ineffective. But then, so are the
bans on harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine. There were just 333
registered addicts in 1958. Today the number hooked runs into tens of
thousands. Despite police successes - like yesterday's arrest of a Turkish
drugs baron - junkies can all too easily find a fix.

But should the law be changed simply because it isn't always obeyed?

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I've Seen The Future And It Makes Me Smoke (A Sometime Smoker And Columnist
For Britain's 'Independent' Finds California's Anti-Tobacco Groupthink
Just Makes Him Want To Smoke More - The Country That Produced
The Civil Rights Movement And Gay Liberation Once Defined Civil Disobedience
As Part Of Political Activism - Nowadays, Civil Disobedience Has Been Reduced
To Simply Lighting Up In Public - The Political Has Become
Entirely Personalised)

Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 23:48:42 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Olafur Brentmar 
Subject: MN: UK: i've Seen The Future And It Makes Me Smoke
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "(Zosimos) Martin Cooke" 
Pubdate: Wed, 01 Apr 1998
Source: Independent, The (UK)
Contact: letters@independent.co.uk
Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/
Author: Suzanne Moore

I'VE SEEN THE FUTURE AND IT MAKES ME SMOKE

It is true that peer-group pressure encourages smoking. After a lifetime of
resistance, I finally gave in and started smoking at the age of 35. One
drug, as they say, leads to another. Contrary to popular opinion, I believe
that hard drugs lead inevitably to soft drugs. That's my experience anyway.

Even now, though, my habit is not properly formed. I can go for weeks
without a cigarette then smoke millions in a night. My friend Deborah
always complains: "You are the most crap smoker I know". But I maintain
that though I am not a particularly committed smoker, I am committed to the
idea of smoking.

Recent visits to California have greatly increased my commitment. I have
seen the future and it is ghastly. I felt compelled to smoke twice as much
there as usual. The question, "Do you mind if I smoke?" is equivalent to
saying, "May I use your children in a Satanic ritual?" Nipping into the
garden is also out of the question. The great outdoors apparently belongs
to everybody. Except smokers.

I have had the bizarre experience of being seated outside at a restaurant
in order to abuse myself. There were many empty tables around us. Yet,
within minutes other people were seated beside us who proceeded to
complain. This begs the question: who does public space actually belong to?

The arguments about passive smoking have not led, among smokers anyway, to
anything resembling a resistance movement; but non-smokers have become
increasingly aggressive towards anyone who they see as violating their
right to clean, fresh air.

In America, of all places, where the car is king, one might presume there
to be equal concern about pollution; but there isn't. In the land of
individualism, the car continues to rule, because so much social and
economic life is based around car ownership. Smoking, an individual
activity, is regarded as profoundly anti-social.

Such attitudes are crossing the Atlantic. Tower Hamlets Council is to try
to ban its workers from smoking outside its town hall buildings. The new
rules, expected to be approved next year, would mean that employees cannot
smoke, in working time, inside or outside any council building or vehicle.

No one can believe that this will stop those who smoke from smoking. I
suppose it will just add an extra thrill to sneaking off for a quick fag,
the very thrill that gets so many people hooked in the first place.

What is astonishing about California is not that it is run by health freaks
but the passivity of smokers themselves. You can be in a bar full of Hells
Angels who meekly leave the bar if they want a cigarette. On St Patrick's
night, it was still hard to find an Irish bar that allowed smoking. We
eventually reached a compromise, whereby we could smoke but leave no
evidence. "You have to take your butts outside," said the barman menacingly.

It is easy enough, I suppose, to divide and rule. If the world is made up
of smokers (dirty, filthy, selfish types who pour fumes out into the
environment) and non-smokers (clean-living saints who are considerate both
of their own and others health), then it's fine to wage a war on smokers.
The majority of people, when polled, will vote to work in a smoke-free
environment and I don't blame them. They want to be able to use public
transport without having to encounter the stale smell of cigarette smoke.
Far enough. But would the majority of people also vote to ban smoking
altogether?

If smoking were to be presented as a civil liberties issue - the rights of
smokers to self-destruct versus the rights of non-smokers to a smoke-free
environment - surely you would get a more balanced view. This compromise is
one we seemed to have achieved without too fuss much already. There is less
and less smoking in confined public spaces. Outside, however, still means
outside, and is therefore beyond jurisdiction. The Californian situation
seems to redefine public space as only available to certain members of the
public (ie, non-smokers).

Those who are really concerned about smoking - particularly the numbers of
young women smoking - should pay attention. Young women smoke not just to
keep their weight down but because they believe it to be "cool".
Anti-smoking bodies are keen to re-educate these misguided young things so
that they realise that smoking isn't actually cool. It kills you or, worse,
makes you smell so bad so you cannot get a boyfriend.

Yet, the more you drive smoking underground, the cooler you make it. The
coolest man I met in California was full of the joys of extra-wide Camels
and regaling me with tales of how his friend David was being driven out of
California because of the draconian anti smoking legislation. David, a
libertarian, had originally gone to California for the freedom and light it
offered. The David he was talking about was David Hockney.

The country that produced the civil rights movement and gay liberation once
defined civil disobedience as part of political activism. Nowadays civil
disobedience has been reduced to simply lighting-up in public. The
political has become entirely personalised

The deadly problems of American society make many citizens feel personally
powerless. By insisting that others do not blow smoke in their faces, they
desperately exercise control in the tiny space they feel they can. To be
anti-smoking also allows the majority to be victims. You don't have to be
black, poor, gay or female to feel in some way "violated" by the behaviour
of others. Anti-smoking legislation allows people to assert their "rights"
in a way that they rarely do in other areas of their lives.

Smoke itself - vague, cloudy, insidious - comes to represent all kinds of
social evils that leak into our environment. But, unlike racism, poverty or
crime, smoking can simply be banned.

In such an environment it is undoubtedly cool to smoke, to remind others of
human frailty and human failings, to appear publicly fallible. The
anti-smoking lobby has achieved what pathetic smokers themselves never
could. They have given credence to the adolescent idea of smoking as
intrinsically rebellious, as active rather than passive, as meaningful
rather than meaningless.

At last we find ourselves truly rebels without any cause whatsoever. But my
god do we have an effect.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Date-Rape Pills To Be Outlawed (Britain's 'Times' Says Possession
Of Rohypnol, Or Flunitrazepam, Without A Prescription
Will Be Criminalized May 1)

Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 18:45:33 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Olafur Brentmar 
Subject: MN: UK: Date-Rape Pills To Be Outlawed
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "(Zosimos) Martin Cooke" 
Pubdate: Wed, 01 Apr 1998
Source: Times The (UK)
Contact: letters@the-times.co.uk
Website: http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Author: Richard Ford, Home Correspondent

DATE-RAPE PILLS TO BE OUTLAWED

NEW curbs are to be imposed on the "date-rape" drug Rohypnol amid growing
concern that women have been sexually attacked after consuming spiked
drinks.

The tiny diamond-shaped purple tablet is so fast-acting that a woman given
it would rarely remember anything of a subsequent assault.

Until three months ago, Rohypnol was colourless when ground up, but Roche,
the manufacturer, changed its makeup so that it releases a blue dye when
dissolved. Rohypnol, known on the streets as Roofie, can induce a
trance-like state within 15 minutes. It is tasteless and odourless.

>From May 1, it will be a criminal offence to possess flunitrazepam, which
is usually sold under its trade name of Rohypnol. Anyone convicted of
possessing the drug without prescription faces a maximum penalty of two
years' imprisonment, an unlimited fine or both.

Pharmacies and warehouses will be required to store the drug, prescribed as
a sleeping tablet, more securely and import and export licences will be
required.

George Howarth, a Home Office minister, welcomed the decision to
reformulate the drug. "This action, together with tighter statutory
controls, should help reduce its potential for misuse," he said.

Despite concerns about wide use of flunitrazepam in rape cases, there is
little solid evidence. The Forensic Science Service did not find the drug
during tests related to 18 rape cases in England and Wales in 1997.

Flunitrazepam is one of a group of sleeping drugs regarded by doctors as
having few adverse effects and being relatively safe in overdose.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gardai In Club Raid Had To Be Rescued From Gay Customers ('Irish Independent'
Says The Alter, Formerly A Gay Nightclub Known As The Shaft,
Failed To Get Its Licence Renewed Yesterday At Dublin District Court
After Gardai Claimed Drug Abuse Was Widespread In The Club -
Including 34 After-Hours Drinking Convictions Over Four Years)

Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 23:30:11 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Olafur Brentmar 
Subject: MN: UK: Gardai In Club Raid Had To Be Rescued From Gay Customers
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: "(Zosimos) Martin Cooke" 
Pubdate: Wed, 01 Apr 1998
Source: Irish Independent
Contact: independent.letters@independent.ie
Website: http://www.independent.ie/

GARDAI IN CLUB RAID HAD TO BE RESCUED FROM GAY CUSTOMERS

UNDERCOVER gardai investigating alleged drug dealing in a Dublin nightclub
had to be rescued when some of its gay patrons "propositioned" them, a
court heard yesterday.

The Alter, formerly a gay haunt known as 'The Shaft', of Ely Place, failed
to have its licence renewed yesterday after gardai claimed drug abuse was
widespread in the club.

Owners Derry O'Sullivan and Noel St John Ryan had failed to co-operate with
gardai in tackling the problem and the club had amassed 34 after-hours
drinking convictions over four years, Dublin District Court heard.

Mr O'Sullivan was particularly obstructive and accused a garda inspector of
being "a pawn of Opus Dei".

The court heard:

* Two undercover gardai investigating drug dealing had to be rescued by
other officers when their cover was blown because they did not respond to
being "propositioned" by some of the gay clientele;

* A disc jockey was caught dealing drugs in the club and later convicted;

* Young men stripped to the waist were frequently found dancing in a
"trance-like state", a symptom of ecstasy use;

* Bottled Volvic water was the main drink sold at the bar at £2 a go;

* Gardai found an ecstasy tablet hidden on a chair, a bag on the floor with
traces of the drug ephedrine in it and one young man openly rolling a joint
during a raid by uniformed officers;

* An empty glass bottle was thrown at a sergeant and wine poured over an
inspector on separate occasions.

MOULDY BURGERS

Gardai also found the premises, which was supposed to operate as a
restaurant, did not serve substantial meals and did not even have a kitchen
capable of preparing them.

Management tried to rectify this by having paper plates at the ready with
burgers and chips on them but Inspector Thomas Murphy said when he examined
them they appeared to be covered in mould.

"This was just a ruse to try to show they were operating as a restaurant it
was ridiculous," he said.

Mr O'Sullivan was particularly bitter towards gardai and objected to claims
of drug dealing. "He resented it and said I was not going to tell him how
to run his premises. He said it was a restaurant, that he was a chef, and
that the food available was fine cuisine."

Gardai denied they had singled out the club, which previously had a large
gay clientele. Inspector Murphy said it was precisely because of this that
gardai were "reluctant" to pay greater attention to these premises.

Mr O'Sullivan did not give evidence but his partner Noel St John Ryan said
he was surprised at the garda claims.

"Both Derry and myself abhor the use of drugs and have no interest in it."
It was they who had reported the disc jockey and they had a strict door
policy.

Judge James McDonnell said he was refusing to renew the licences and would
give his reasons for doing so tomorrow.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Naive Viewpoint On Drinking And Drugs (Letter Sent To Editor
Of 'The Scotsman' Contradicts Earlier Letter That Said Alcohol
Is A Good Drug And Others Are Not, Merely Serving To Make Their Users Stupid
And Unable To Perform, By Noting In Real Life Cannabis Users Find Drinkers
To Be The Buffoons)

Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 14:12:35 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: Olafur Brentmar 
Subject: MN: UK: PUB LTE: Naive Viewpoint On Drinking And Drugs
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: shug@shug.co.uk
Pubdate: Wed, 1 Apr 1998
Source: Scotsman (UK)
Contact: Letters_ts@scotsman.com
Website: http://www.scotsman.com

NAIVE VIEWPOINT ON DRINKING AND DRUGS

Sir, - Tom Morton claims (Opinion, 25 March) that alcohol is a good drug
and others are not, merely serving to make their users stupid and unable to
perform to anywhere near the level which they themselves perceive. Was his
column designed to allow anti-prohibitionists to poke fun at him for his
naive viewpoint, or was he doing it deliberately? Claiming that alcohol "is
subject to rules" sounds to me like an argument in the favour of
legalisation.

The suggestion that cannabis makes you talk rubbish, that even the
"drunkest buffoon would find moronic", needs to be looked at from the other
point of view, where cannabis users interact with others who have been
drinking and are seen as "buffoons", incapable of holding a rational
conversation without arguing ineffectually, shouting, and possibly even
getting violent. Is it any wonder that the cannabis smoker shies away and
becomes nervous?

Tim Hughes Wellington St York

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Action For Legalization Of Drugs - 'Repression Is A Big Mistake'
(Translation Of Item From 'Algemeen Dagblad' In The Netherlands
Notes Drug Policy Reformers Will Sponsor Events June 6-8 In Amsterdam
As Part Of The International 'Global Days Against The Drug War'
Happening In More Than 25 Cities In 16 Countries)

Date: Sat, 04 Apr 1998 20:30:39 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service 
From: Richard Lake 
Subject: MN: The Netherlands: Action For Legalization Of Drugs "Repression
Is A Big Mistake"
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Harry Bego hbego@knoware.nl
Pubdate: Wed, 1 April 1998
Source: Algemeen Dagblad (the Netherlands)
Author: Robert Vinkenborg
Contact: ad@ad.nl

Editors note: Our newshawk writes "The following article appeared in
Algemeen Dagblad, a Dutch national newspaper, April 1st. Interview with
Freek Polak, board member of the Dutch Drug Policy Foundation, a member
organisation of the Global Coalition for Alternatives to the Drug War.
Translated from Dutch." The Media Awareness Project of DrugSense is proud
to participate in the Global Coalition. For more details see:
http://www.legalize.org/

ACTION FOR LEGALIZATION OF DRUGS "REPRESSION IS A BIG MISTAKE"

AMSTERDAM - In over 25 cities in 16 countries, among which Amsterdam, there
will be actions for legalization of drugs on June 6th, 7th and 8th. The
worldwide struggle against the anti-drug war, the "Global Days against the
Drug War", is taking place on the eve of the three-day meeting of the
United Nations about global drug policy. It is a sequel to the
international actions last year during the European Summit in Amsterdam.

The aim is to convince public opinion and authorities of the necessity to
legalize drugs. Originally, the UN was going to take a critical look at
current anti-drug policies. This point has been removed from the agenda,
however. The UN will only discuss the question whether all countries have
in the past years kept to the agreed repression of drugs.

"When proponents of drug legalization realised what the UN wants to talk
about, they have united into an alliance", says F. Polak of the Drug Policy
Foundation in Amsterdam. "It is incredible that in New York there will be
no evaluation of the effectiveness of current policy." Polak is not
unsatisfied with the Dutch policy of tolerance. "Elsewhere, we see a lot of
appreciation for the Dutch system, in health care and at lower levels of
administration, but political authorities are afraid. In fact a few
prominent politicians should have the courage to say that the repression of
drugs has been a big mistake. Then public opinion will be won in no time.
At the moment people are so misinformed. Even the health organisation of
the UN has problems in bringing out that alcohol is much more damaging than
cannabis."

After legalization, the social consequences of drug use would be much
smaller, according to Polak. "Repression of drugs stimulates illegal trade,
crime, and unsafe patterns of use. The profits that go to criminals now,
can be used in much better ways. If the UN realises that a discussion is
needed about policy as carried out so far, we will have reached our goal".

On June 6th there will be a musical parade in the center of Amsterdam, and
a major party at night. A political debate in Krasnapolsky, on June 7th,
will be the culmination of the Dutch actions. The grand final will be a day
later, in New York with a big demonstration at the square in front of the
UN building. There are actions in San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Sidney
and other cities as well.

(c) Algemeen Dagblad, Amsterdam.