Portugal ‘not a drug haven’ – June 2001 Portugal 'not a drug haven'
By BBC News - Wednesday, 18 July, 2001
Copyright: BBC News
The British Foreign Office is warning young tourists not to treat Portugal as a drug haven.
British Embassy officials in Lisbon have beefed up their travel advice following the recent introduction of a new law aimed at reducing Portugal's 100,000 hard drug users.
The law has decriminalised all recreational drugs including heroin, crack, cocaine, ecstasy, and cannabis.
"It's decriminalisation, not legalisation," said Sandra Tyler Haywood, a spokeswoman for the British Embassy in Lisbon.
"But we are concerned that some people may see the new law as a licence for a free drug holiday."
Party drugs
The embassy has already been taking calls from young Britons asking when they can come to Portugal to shoot up.
The police are particularly concerned that towns in the Algarve, which are magnets for travellers from Northern Europe, may become the new Mecca for techno party drugs like ecstasy.
The word on the street in Albufeira, the most popular destination for British package tourists, is that ecstasy is for sale in the main square.
The square is normally packed with families eating supper. But gypsies dressed in black peddle blocks of cannabis resin in amongst the stalls selling sweets and ice cream.
"Synthetics are a real worry," says Chief Inspector Joao Figueira, of Portugal's Drugs Intelligence Unit. "There is also a risk that the amount of heroin coming to Portugal could increase. Let's hope not."
Publicly at least, the Portuguese police support the government's new radical stand, because they accept the argument that zero tolerance practiced by nations like Britain and America has failed to reduce drug dependency.
The socialist administration in Lisbon has pledged that never again will drug users go to jail.
A "consumer" caught with a 10 day supply of drugs will be forced to face a tribunal of social workers, doctors and psychologists.
Users of softer recreational substances will probably escape with a slap on the wrist.
Persistent offenders could face a fine of no more than £200, as well as other sanctions such as the loss of a drivers licence.
Ironically, the police have more work to do under the new law, because they are required to ensure that drug users obtain treatment and attend counselling sessions.
Critics fear the liberalisation - and the prospect of more paperwork - will encourage the police to simply turn even more of a blind eye than before.
Portugal's 'drug supermarket'
But there is strong support for the new legislation from the army of campaigners trying to clean up Casal Ventoso, a near derelict warren of shacks and squalid smack houses on one of Lisbon's seven hills.
Casal Ventoso's long main winding street - known as Portugal's drugs supermarket - is lined with hundreds of addicts desperate to buy their next fix.
The place is a virtual no go area for police who, despite their new benevolent role, are regarded by the junkies as the enemy, because they scare off the dealers.
It is also avoided by most Portuguese, who are afraid of being mugged by addicts wielding Aids infected syringes.
Cipriani d'Olivera, who runs a special unit in charge of rebuilding Casal Ventoso and helping to wean the addicts off drugs, believes the government has taken the right path.
"If addicts are being treated with methadone [a heroin substitute], they will no longer need to rob people to raise the cash needed for the next fix," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
ECSTASY epidemic – June 2001 Ecstasy epidemic
By RNW.nl - June 2001
Copyright: RNW.nl
Simon sees drug taking as a question of choice. It's quite simple - "a person is entitled to abuse his body in any way he sees fit". He's 30, works in the film industry, and for the last 9 years, ‘a little something for the weekend' has meant taking a couple of ecstasy tablets whenever he goes out clubbing.
He took his first E at a rave in England. He had no idea what it was his friend was giving him. Before that, he'd smoked marijuana, taken speed and experimented with "a natural form of LSD in Zimbabwe", but, he says "that night changed my perceptions on life. It was as if someone had turned on a light in my head - everyone was beautiful. Everything just made sense. I wasn't afraid and got immense pleasure from talking and listening to people. I had time for everyone and everything." Simon enjoyed his night so much that he took another E the next morning "and partied all weekend".
Feels Like Death:
He was 21 then. Now, he says it's "still a fairly regular requirement if you go out - to take a couple of E's," but it's not always been like that first night. He's had "some freaked out experiences - I've woken up in places I don't recognise, lost days at a time." He recalls one particularly bad experience. "One night, I took two E's in one club, was drinking whisky and took a third E in another club. I thought I was dying. I felt like I was leaving my body. It felt like my blood was boiling and I passed out. My friends revived me by throwing water on me, and they looked after me".
For him, ecstasy is integral to the clubbing lifestyle or going out to party. "It's not a way of life, but it is a social activity - like drinking". He says he must have taken well over a hundred E's in his time. The most he's ever taken in one go was seven. "I've taken the odd E during the day, but usually at a festival or a social gathering, then I might take half to get that cool buzz feeling."
Growing Tolerance:
Does he worry about his health? "I worry about my heart, but generally I have a ‘here goes nothing attitude,'" although he was dubious about buying from a guy in a club in Amsterdam once, "but the guy in the club said I could test it. I thought he was joking, but sure enough there was a table in the corner, I paid NLG20, they did a test or something, dropped a chemical on the pill and it came up the right colour…that E sent me flying"!
But, the initial high has faded for Simon. "The hype has gone, it's like cannabis now - just an accessory, part of the paraphernalia of clubbing and going out. One E used to last me 14 hours, now I can go to sleep on one. But I can feel empty, disillusioned and depressed if I do a lot of E's on a weekend. It takes me 3 or 4 days to recover. Now that I'm getting older it takes longer to deal with it, so I do it less." But he's not ready to give it all up just yet. "Talking about that first night, it gives me a buzz just thinking about it. I couldn't imagine taking my last E just yet."
http://www.rnw.nl/
International criticism of Dutch drug policy regarding ECSTASY – June 2001 International criticism of Dutch drug policy regarding Ecstasy
By RNW.nl - June 2001
Copyright: RNW.nl
International criticism of Dutch drug really hit new highs again in the early 1990's. At that time it became apparent that The Netherlands was the largest producer and exporter of ecstasy.
A couple of years earlier this new synthetic drug appeared in Europe and the United States and took youth culture by storm. It comes in the shape of a pill and after taking the right dose users feel a sense of euphoria, emotional closeness to others and are overwhelmed with positive feelings and extreme relaxation (hence the nickname ‘hug drug'). It also has a stimulant effect. On the crest of the wave of house parties and so-called raves ecstasy became a household name for partygoers everywhere, who danced all night long on a couple of pills. It is not a drug suitable for everyday use and the majority of users limits taking ecstasy to weekends. Unlike amphetamine it is not physically addictive.
Testing pills:
Ecstasy was classed as a hard drug in The Netherlands in 1988, but proved to be very easy to produce in illegal laboratories. Soon the market was flooded with pills that contained impure or addictive substances or were outright fakes. Sometimes caffeine is used to substitute the real thing, MDMA, but also related substances like MDA, MDBD, MDEA or amphetamine. In a typically Dutch move provisions were made so that partygoers could have their pills tested on purity before taking them. That measure was criticised as it seemed to condone the use of ecstasy, but it is the logical consequence of the principles of Dutch drug policy (to reduce potential harm to users). However, as acid-house, raves and techno music seem to be a fading trend, the use of ecstasy may very well be past its highpoint.
Exports:
France, Britain and Germany all complained that they were flooded with ecstasy from The Netherlands. So why did The Netherlands become such a large producer of ecstasy? The answer should be found in a combination of factors: the tolerant drug policy, relatively low prison sentences and The Netherlands' geographical position and traditional dominant role in transport and distribution. The pills are easy and relatively cheap to make. All it takes is a couple of vats of chemicals, an industrial foodmixer, a machine to stamp tablets and the ‘lab' is there. A small investment, but with an enormous potential for vast profits.
In 1996 the Dutch government made clamping down on the production and trafficking of ecstasy a priority. A special interregional police unit was set up, the Synthetic Drugs Unit (USD). Since then, dozens of ecstasy labs have been busted, but as the investment is small, new ones spring up very quickly.
http://www.rnw.nl/
European policy – June 2001 European policy
By RNW.nl - June 2001
Copyright: RNW.nl
In recent years national drug policies of other European countries have shifted considerably and on a European level the emphasis of policy has changed as well. In general, priority has shifted from repressive policies towards prevention, care and harm reduction. Not surprisingly then, many elements of this new approach are reminiscent of what has been put into practice in The Netherlands for decades.
Although coffee shops will forever stay a unique Dutch phenomenon, possession of cannabis for personal use has been depenalised in countries like Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Elsewhere it is low on the list of priorities for the Public Prosecutor. The case for cannabis on medical prescription is being studied everywhere.
Wind of Change:
Most European countries now make a distinction between hard and soft drugs, not only in enforcement of the law, but also in policy. Syringe exchange programmes have become accepted in nearly all EU member states, low-threshold services to addicts are on the increase, as are substitution treatment programmes. Experiments with user rooms (where hard drugs can be consumed under hygienic and supervised conditions) are underway in Germany, Spain, Luxembourg and Austria. They have been common practice in The Netherlands for years. Treatment for addicted offenders as an alternative to punishment is widely accepted throughout the European Union.
On a European level the adoption of the European Union Drugs Strategy (2000-04) marked a change as well. It put public health concerns and prevention first, where formerly combating drug trafficking was the overall priority.
Aids:
What prompted this change of heart in the European capitals? First and foremost it is because of the aids epidemic that public health arguments found their way into European drug policies. The threat of the spread of the HIV-virus through intravenous drug use defined drugs not just as a criminal issue but also as a public health problem.
This new approach was strengthened when in the second half of the nineties social democratic parties came to power in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy, four major EU members. They are more open to pragmatic and liberal approaches to the drug problem.
Also, because drug use increased sharply in the eighties and nineties it became clear that repressive policy had failed. Politicians gradually got round to the idea that experimental drug use is inevitable in modern society.
And last but not least, the example of the Dutch experience and of small-scale innovative experiments elsewhere (for example Switzerland) contributed to a more balanced approach.
Europe:
In the next few years the European Union will work towards a common drug policy. The Netherlands will no longer be the odd one out as its European partners have gradually shifted to a harm-reduction policy. The price The Netherlands will have to pay for this rapprochement is that it can no longer go it alone on drug policy. In the near future it will have to revise essential elements of its policy and bring it in line with the rest of the European Union.
http://www.rnw.nl/
Pinned
Medical MARIJUANA in the Netherlands – June 2001 Medical marijuana
By RNW.nl - June 2001
Copyright: RNW.nl
Paul's last visit to Amsterdam was to say his "farewell to marijuana". He's 43, a musician and a producer, and lives with his wife in Minnesota, in the USA. He's been smoking marijuana for 27 years. "Like many of my peers in the 1970's, I began smoking marijuana socially. I found that I enjoyed the effects of marijuana over those of alcohol".
But Paul's story is very different to most of the other tourists you'll meet in Amsterdam's coffeeshops. Paul is going blind. "I am losing my eyesight to a combination of retinitis pigmentosa and cataracts. I also suffer from nystagmus, a condition which causes the eyes to tremble rapidly. This causes a stroboscopic effect in my vision". He's been told that people who have this disorder typically lose their reading vision somewhere between the ages of 25 and 30, and that within another 10 years, somewhere between 35 and 40, the vision is reduced further and you are left only being able to see light. But Paul appears to have defied these predictions, and he's convinced it has something to do with the fact that he smokes marijuana. "There appears to be a strong correlation between the fact that I have been a steady, but moderate cannabis user, and the fact that I retained my reading vision until about 6 months ago". In his opinion, "Marijuana use may have added between 5 and 15 additional years of usable vision to me".
Easing Discomfort:
In addition to apparently slowing down his loss of vision, Paul says the use of cannabis helps ease the discomfort caused by the condition. "Rather than treating the tremors of the eyes with diazepam or a muscle relaxant, I choose to self-medicate with marijuana". Some people might say it was just a coincidence, and that the marijuana doesn't have anything to do with it? But Paul says "five different doctors have agreed, at least in principle, that marijuana may have contributed to the preservation of my eyesight.
The effectiveness of marijuana in treating my eye disorders may be a matter of faith, or of pharmacology. Sadly, in the U.S. I may never really get to find out which".
The U.S. government only rarely allows medical research into the uses of marijuana, and of course, in the USA anyone caught using or in possession of cannabis faces prosecution.
Forced to Choose:
So why is Paul turning his back on the very thing he thinks is helping him? "In the USA, I am forced to choose between breaking the law, endangering our livelihood and placing my wife's career in jeopardy, or to abstain from marijuana, thus avoiding prosecution, but losing the benefits of cannabis for my eyes and health. In light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, [a ruling that "medical necessity" is no defence for marijuana use], and the current political situation here, and considering the cost and difficulty in obtaining cannabis, I have decided to cease using weed. It's a difficult decision; I believe I should have the right to treat my health with whatever I choose". Paul's decision is made, but his eyesight continues to deteriorate, and his search for treatment goes on. "I would invite any eye doctors, neuropharmacologists or other experts to contact me. I will gladly come back to Holland for a consultation with scientists".
http://www.rnw.nl/
Drug use in the Netherlands – June 2001 Drug use in the Netherlands
By RNW.nl - June 2001
Copyright: RNW.nl
Dutch law evidently allows for a large degree of tolerance towards drug use. How has this affected drug use and addiction in The Netherlands? Has tolerance led to indulgence? How does The Netherlands compare to other European countries and to the champion of the ‘War on Drugs', the United States?
In the past decade drug use increased in every country of the industrialised world, and The Netherlands proved no exception. The latest extensive survey of drug use in The Netherlands, conducted by the Centre for Drug Research at the University of Amsterdam in 1997, confirmed the trend towards the increasing popularity of drugs. The most surprising outcome, however, was that the current number of cannabis users in The Netherlands is approximately 320,000 or about 2.5%, half of what was assumed. For the United States that percentage is more than double. And in most European countries the percentage of the population that has ever taken cannabis or is a current user is also higher than in The Netherlands. For all different types of hard drugs, the picture is much the same: The Netherlands ranks somewhere in the middle and compares favourably to the United States.
Normal:
So why does the Dutch tolerance towards drugs not lead to excessive use? One possible explanation is that exactly because drugs are to a degree tolerated, they are viewed as no more exciting than tobacco or alcohol. Drugs are used out in the open, in coffee shops, and are not part of any mysterious subculture. Many Dutch youngsters experiment with cannabis (but still a lot lessthan in many other European countries) but once curiosity has been satisfied the majority stop taking it. And not many graduate to hard drugs either (the solaced stepping stone theory). Maybe it is just part of the Dutch psyche: people don't easily indulge. Also, it is often the poor and down and out that revert to hard drug use. The Netherlands is a well-organised welfare state, with relatively little poverty.
Many experts and politicians have come to believe that drug use is more determined by youth culture and international trends, rather than the actual law, policy and law enforcement measures.
Crime:
That does not mean, however, that The Netherlands is without its share of drug related problems: street crime, drug tourism and organised drug dealing syndicates. In the major cities especially, some impoverished areas are plagued by drug dealers. Residents move away in despair. A number of towns along the Dutch-German border are swamped by hundreds of drug tourists each day.
In its 1995 policy review the Dutch government sought to remedy these problems: it put priority on combating large scale drug trafficking and introduced new measures to fight drug related crime and drug tourism.
http://www.rnw.nl/
The fashion of addiction – June 2001 The fashion of addiction
By RNW.nl - June 2001
Copyright: RNW.nl
"Heroin has had it's day," says to Roel Kerssemakers from the Jellinek Centre - a drug and alcohol treatment and prevention centre based in Amsterdam. "But," he adds, "we have to be careful. That can change any minute."
The Jellinek Centre, has it's roots in an institution which began in 1909. The current organisation is named after Professor Jellinek, famed for his research into alcoholism in the 60's. Funded by the government, the City of Amsterdam and the Ministry of Justice, Jellinek provides outpatient programmes, clinics, support and information to people with drug, alcohol and gambling problems.
Negative Attitude:
There are currently about 25,000 heroin addicts in the Netherlands. 700-800 of whom come to the Jellinek Centre for treatment every year. Their average age, according to Roel, is around 39 or 40 years old. "The general attitude among young people about heroin is very negative. They see heroin as a drug for old people."
Traditionally, as in many other countries, Dutch heroin addicts looking for help would be treated with methadone – a heroin substitute. "We wanted to make people drug free," says Roel. "People came to us, we gave them methadone, but we tried to reduce the dose immediately, so in 6 weeks people didn't get any methadone anymore."
Not For Everyone:
In fact, this ‘reduction scheme' was only successful in a very small group. The situation with the rest of the addicts deteriorated very rapidly. In 1980 programmes for more chronic users were developed. This saw the introduction of the ‘methadone maintenance' scheme. The idea was to prevent drug users getting worse and worse, and to minimise the risks of their lifestyle. "People still get addicted to methadone, that's true," Roel admits, "but on the other hand, they don't need to have heroin all day. Their life stabilises; they can do other things; take can take care of themselves. Their quality of life improves."
But even with these maintenance schemes, there are still people for whom all attempts at treatment have been unsuccessful. And it's this group that are being targeted in The Netherlands' current ‘prescribed heroin' trials. Trials which the Jellinek Centre and some of its clients are closely involved with. But Roel is keen to point out that prescription heroin is only viable for a very small group of addicts - only those who don't benefit from methadone and who are chronically addicted.
Future Problems:
He is, however, optimistic that a carefully regulated supply of heroin will help those who couldn't benefit from other schemes. The theory being that they no longer have to indulge in their daily search for the next fix. "The chronic group of heroin users, who didn't improve with the methadone maintenance, will pay more attention to their physical health, live in an independent way and take care of themselves."
So if heroin has had it's day, what are the problem drugs facing The Netherlands in the future? According to Roel the biggest problem is alcohol, and of course tobacco. But Roel is worried by young people's use of ecstasy. "The problem with ecstasy is not addiction, but that it can be neurotoxic, which means certain nerves can be damaged, and that is underestimated I think." He adds that cocaine is also becoming more popular. "The problem with cocaine of course it that it is really addictive – and these will be the problems of the future."
http://www.rnw.nl/
Clubbed by the drug ECSTASY – June 2001 Clubbed by the drug
By RNW.nl - June 2001
Copyright: RNW.nl
Since Ecstasy emerged as the popular party drug of choice during the 1980s, it's been swallowed by untold numbers of people. And it seems that there's no sign of a decrease in the use of these illicit tablets. But what about the long-term effects? This is still a relatively small field of research, but the number of scientists getting involved has increased in recent years. Some of the most recent findings come from Amsterdam.
‘Nathalie' (not her real name) was curious about the effects of all the Ecstasy she had taken over the years, so when she heard about research going on in Amsterdam, she jumped at the chance to take part. At the Department of Nuclear Medicine in the Academic Medical Centre, she and 68 other people underwent tests to assess their memories and certain kinds of cells in their brains.
Dr Liesbeth Reneman explains why she did the research: "We're concerned about the effects of Ecstasy in people, because there have been a number of studies in animals which have shown that Ecstasy or ‘MDMA' causes selective damage to serotonergic brain cells - cells that communicate through a neurotransmitter called serotonin. The doses used to induce these neurotoxic changes in animals approach those used by humans, so the data is very relevant."
Testing Time:
Dr. Reneman and her colleagues divided the test subjects into four groups - non-users, moderate-users with a lifetime exposure of less than 55 tablets, heavy-users, and ex-users who indicated using their last tablet more than a year earlier. They used a brain scanning technique called SPECT (single photon emission tomography) to measure the number of serotonergic brain cells present. And they assessed memory performance, for example by testing how many of fifteen spoken words the volunteers could remember.
Future Problems?
The results were published recently in the Lancet and the Archives of General Psychiatry. The SPECT studies showed that female Ecstasy users are particularly vulnerable to damaging their serotonergic system, with heavy users showing the greatest loss of cells. However in people like ‘Nathalie' who had stopped taking the drug at least a year before, the number of serotonergic cells appeared to have recovered in many areas of the brain.
The memory studies revealed less encouraging news. Unlike people who had never taken the drug, all Ecstasy users showed signs of memory loss - to an extent that Liesbeth Reneman says is clinically significant. Unlike the SPECT results, there was no difference found between men and women and there was no sign of any memory improvement in those people who had already given up. Dr. Reneman is worried that, while these subjects are not currently noticing these effects, the memory loss could become more apparent and more significant in the longer term, as the number of serotonergic cells decreases naturally as a result of ageing.
Study Limitations:
Certain aspects of Dr. Reneman's research are controversial. Sixty-nine subjects is not a large number on which to base statistical evidence. Some of her techniques have also been criticised by other researchers in the field. However, her results fit well in the larger picture of what is known about Ecstasy - according to Dr. Alex Gamma of the Psychiatric Department at Zurich University Hospital in Switzerland.
But he, like a number of other scientists, is also concerned about the future of Ecstasy itself - or rather, it's main ingredient ‘MDMA'. He thinks that while Ecstasy abuse may cause long-lasting damage, this should not obscure the fact that MDMA itself is a drug with considerable potential benefits.
Baby and Bathwater:
"What people may not realize is that before MDMA became a recreational drug it was used for many years in psychotherapy in the USA. The reputation it has gained as a recreational drug has certainly prevented efforts to use it in this way. There have been struggles going on to get official permission to use MDMA as a therapeutic agent, which have now proven successful. For example, in Spain a study is going on and in the USA the Federal Drug Administration has recently approved a similar study where the drug is to be used for the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder."
With evidence on one side of the harm that Ecstasy seems to cause, Dr. Gamma is keen to point out that therapeutic MDMA would be given under very different circumstances. "It would be given only once or twice in a place where the well-being of the patient was being monitored all the time. We have conducted many studies in which MDMA was given in a single dose and we didn't find any evidence for lasting psychological, psychiatric or cognitive consequences - nor that single doses cause any toxic changes in the brain."
http://www.rnw.nl/
EU Countries soften CANNABIS policy – June 2001 EU Countries soften cannabis policy
By RNW.nl - June 2001
Copyright: RNW.nl
National drugs policies within the European Union do not differ as much as you might think - at least not in implementation. This past week, experts and officials from around the EU met in the central Dutch city of Utrecht to exchange views at the European City Conference on Cannabis policy. The main conclusion: all European cities are having to contend with similar problems.
It was only natural to hold the conference in the Netherlands, one would have thought. After all, the Netherlands has passed legislation aimed at decriminalizing soft drugs such as hashish and marijuana. But The Netherlands is no longer leading the way when it comes to legalising drugs. It's having to deal with the downside of its liberal policies, as Steven van Hoogstraten, the Director of Drugs policy at the Dutch Justice Ministry, pointed out.
"There are risks involved in the use of cannabis, even though we do not know precisely what these risks are. Cannabis is still an illegal substance in The Netherlands and we have obligations in the shape of international conventions in this respect."
Coffeeshops:
Nevertheless, the use of cannabis is allowed in the Netherlands. Coffeeshops are permitted to sell soft drugs, but only under strict conditions. And there's the rub: the shops are allowed to sell cannabis, but purchasing soft drugs is still illegal and trading or growing cannabis remains a punishable offence. Steven van Hoogstraten acknowledges there are ambiguities.
"The results of our policy can be called acceptable. But from a government perspective, the situation is simply not satisfactory. On the one hand, we forbid something, on the other we tolerate it. This is difficult to explain to people."
The Netherlands is still a frontrunner in Europe. But other European countries are catching up. Belgium's federal government is preparing legislation aimed at legalizing soft drugs. It's an indirect effect of the liberal policies of its northern neighbour: many Belgian youths buy their dope across the Dutch border but cause problems in their own country.
Health Issue:
France used to be vehemently opposed to the Dutch liberal approach, but it's now relaxing its tough drugs laws, too. In recent years, the French government has treated drugs-related problems as "health matters", with the emphasis on prevention and the treatment of addicts.
Portugal is about to go a step further than the Netherlands: in July, it passed a law decriminalising the use of all drugs and it's now turning a blind eye to the limited use of soft and hard drugs. Danila Ballota of the European Drugs Monitoring Centre in Lisbon, explains the new Portuguese law.
"A person who is caught in possession of a limited amount of drugs will not be treated as a criminal but will be dealt with in an administrative way."
This applies to both cannabis and heroin, where limited users will get off with a reprimand.
Drugs-Related Problems:
Official policies may differ among EU member states, but in practice these countries often act in the same way. All have to deal with drugs-related problems such as rising crime rates. This has led to a plethora of aid programmes ranging from the free distribution of drugs to tolerating cannabis abuse. There's only one EU country that doesn't believe in legalisation: it's Sweden and Malou Lindholm, representing the city of Goethenborg, explains why.
"In the 1960s, Sweden was actually the first country to adopt a drug liberal policy, well before the Netherlands. We didn't single out cannabis, we even allowed prescriptions of hard drugs for addicts. The results were devastating. The number of people starting to abuse drugs or becoming addicts just sky-rocketed."
If it's up to Sweden, there will be no change to its current tough policy on drugs. This puts a major obstacle in the way of a common European policy on drugs. But it also means that there remains a lot to talk about. A follow-up conference is scheduled for February in Brussels.
http://www.rnw.nl/
Drugs and crime in the Netherlands – June 2001 Drugs and crime in the Netherlands
By RNW.nl - June 2001
Copyright: RNW.nl
Drugs and drug use are inevitably linked to crime. Possession of drugs is illegal and dealing and large-scale trafficking are serious offences. The latter is mainly the business of organised crime. Big money is involved and profits are high.
Combating large-scale drug trafficking is top of the list of priorities for the Dutch Public Prosecution Department. New legislation has come into force to counter money laundering and to confiscate financial assets of convicted drug dealers.
Financing the Habit:
Drugs and crime are also linked because a lot of drug addicts need to steal in order to finance their habit. It is this procurement crime that bothers the public most about drugs: the petty crime of street muggings and small thefts. In Amsterdam no bicycle is safe from junkies, who know how to open every lock ever invented. Car radios were popular trade too, until manufacturers equipped them with security devices. A small group of hard core junkies is responsible for the majority of these offences. Dealing with them involves intensive co-operation between the police, the judicial authorities and the addiction care sector. They use theso-called compulsion and dissuasion approach: when arrested some addicts are given the choice between serving time in prison or undergoing treatment. The threat of detention is used as an incentive to treatment. The treatment primarily aims at kicking the habit, and if successful at social reintegration. No details are available yet about the effectiveness of this approach.
Public Order:
It is not only because of crimes against property that drug addicts come into contact with police and judicial authorities. Their maladjusted behaviour causes public order disturbances and creates a nuisance. They often lead a lifestyle of vagrancy and prostitution and tend to hang out round their trade locations, like city centres and train stations, where they make the public feel unsafe. They can be barred from gathering in certain places or areas, only for them to start hanging out somewhere else. Authorities increasingly try to pressure these addicts to undergo treatment, although no one in The Netherlands is forced to kick their habit.
Nuisance caused by coffee shops is comparable to that caused by bars and is therefore left to the municipal authorities to deal with.
Drug Tourism:
A separate issue is drug tourism. Especially drug runners are cause for concern (it is their job to lead likely prospective buyers from the border to the drughouses in the cities). They are particularly active on the Lille-Antwerp-Hazeldonk-Rotterdam route and get rather nasty and violent. Dutch police co-operates closely with their Belgian, French, German and British colleagues to combat drug tourism and drug runners. In recent years a more active deportation policy has been pursued for foreign drug addicts residing illegally in The Netherlands.
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Mo Mowlam: My Iranian drugs mission – March 2001 Mo Mowlam: My Iranian drugs mission
By BBC News - Wednesday, 21 March, 2001
Copyright: BBC News
The drugs trade is a global phenomenon with no respect for national boundaries.
Likewise, the social problems the trade creates are felt keenly across the world.
To fight this lucrative, ruthless business, governments have a duty to tackle both the demand and the supply of drugs.
This was the main reason for my recent visit to Iran.
Drugs route
Although no drugs are produced in Iran, it is a route through which approximately 90% of all heroin that reaches the streets in the UK flows.
It travels over the long common border Iran shares with Afghanistan - which produces 80% of the world's opium supply.
This growing quantity of opium (and its derivatives) in Iran is driven by an ever-increasing demand in Europe and the USA.
War on drugs
For more than a decade, Iran has been fighting a bloody and courageous war against the drugs smugglers.
In the last 20 years some 3,000 police officers have died in the fight against trafficking.
And not without success: last year, Iranian police and customs accounted for more than 88% of worldwide seizures of opium and 44% of heroin and morphine.
UK aid
The UK already does a great deal to promote international co-operation through the efforts of our police and customs.
We are contributing over £2.67m to UN efforts to combat drug trafficking in Iran, providing equipment and training for customs officers including night-vision gear for those patrolling the borders.
But transit of drugs is only half the story. In Iran itself drug addiction is a big problem.
Almost one million of the 60 million or so people in Iran are thought to be drug users and drug-related deaths are rising.
My mission in Iran was twofold. First, to meet those working to combat drug addiction and swap ideas and experience on issues like anti-drug treatment and helping young people stay away from drugs.
On my first day, I opened a seminar on reducing the demand for drugs.
Tackling demand
At the same time, I wanted to talk to the Iranian Government at the highest level about what we can do to cut off the drug supply routes.
To this end, I signed a memorandum of understanding on drugs co-operation with Vice President Akbar Hashemi.
I also met other senior leaders including President Mohammad Khatami.
Frank talks
We discussed issues frankly: the Iranians emphasised what they see as double standards in the West where the bulk of world demand for heroin comes from.
They consider themselves victims of that demand.
I raised the issue of human rights directly in all of my meetings. As coverage in much of the Iranian press showed, I was heard; but the Iranian government expressed the view that it is not for other countries to interfere in their domestic political affairs.
Although I had a lot of good meetings I learned most from talking to two groups of young people.
Listening to addicts
One was a group of addicts in a treatment centre in Esfahan, Iran's second city.
They taught me the power of their Muslim faith in helping them break their addiction.
This strongly echoes my discussions with recovering addicts in the UK who cling to strong beliefs in their families, children or religion to get them through.
Clarity
The second was a group of teenage boys that I stopped to talk to in the square in Esfahan.
Impressively, they spoke in English with a clear intellectual clarity which reminded me of conversations with my 17-year-old stepdaughter and her friends.
These young Iranians talked about the problems of heroin addiction, what the government should be doing, and of their hopes for the future.
Downward trend
Although the United Nations estimates that 180 million people are consuming illegal drugs worldwide, the trend in the use of opiates like heroin in Western Europe appears to be downwards.
This, at least in part, is due to the efforts of countries like Iran.
I am left with some enduring impressions of Iran: deserts and snow-capped peaks; architecture ancient and modern; warm people and cold air-conditioning.
Co-operation between the UK and Iran sits comfortably in this context: distinct cultures and traditions with a common threat - drugs. Only through effective co-operation can we find a common solution. Let's hope we can achieve this sooner rather than later.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Irresistible rise of drug culture – August 2000 Irresistible rise of drug culture
By thisislondon - 21 August 2000
Copyright: thisislondon
More people are taking drugs in London than ever before.
Scientific estimates suggest 600,000 regular drug users in the capital.
Professor Mike Hough, a criminologist at South Bank University, says that of these, some 8,000 have a major problem associated with addiction to heroin or crack cocaine.
Evidence from club-goers suggests cocaine is now replacing ecstasy as the most favoured recreational drug associated with clubs and bars, although ecstasy continues to be one of the most popular drugs around with huge seizures recorded by police and Customs. In one recent raid the Met recovered six million tablets.
The irresistible rise of drug taking was a major reason why the Government set up the Runciman Inquiry which has been collecting evidence for the past two and half years.
The figures for drug-taking continue to rise despite a more balanced approach by the police. The ecstasy drugs scene thrives mainly on the clubs circuit policed by Scotland Yard's Clubs and Vice Unit. It operates a dual policy of enforcement and education about drugs in clubs. On the one hand they send in covert snatch squads to take out dealers but on the other accept that drug-taking exists and work with managers and bouncers to clean up drugs, or at least educate users about the dangers with "chill-out" zones and paramedics in clubs to help users.
Senior sources say the main drugs in use remain ecstasy, amphetamines and cocaine, and different clubs cater for different types of drug. Licensed clubs in the West End are closely monitored and the drug problem is worse in the suburbs or outside the centre.
In the case of cannabis, London figures show that in 1998 nearly 18,000 people were cautioned by police over cannabis. While that figure has nearly tripled in 10 years, it reflects a rise in the number of cannabis users rather than an increasing tendency for police to caution offenders. Both the Met and Customs operate a virtual tolerance policy towards soft drugs.
Heroin is also on the increase: some intelligence reports suggest around 1,000 kilos of heroin is flowing into London, every month. Overall, the drug figures for the capital over the last decade make plain reading.
Since 1987 the number of seizures has more than quadrupled. The most recent Home Office statistic relates to the year 1998 and shows a 10 per cent increase on the previous year.
The number of heroin seizures increased by 28 per cent and ecstasy was up five per cent. Cocaine seizures were up 40 per cent but the biggest rise was in crack cocaine, up 48 per cent.
The increase in drug use is also reflected in the number of people convicted or cautioned for drug offences. In 1998, a total of 29,385 people were found guilty or cautioned in connection with drugs offences in London compared with 8,456 10 years earlier.
Police estimate there are five million drug deals in London every year. Nationally, the cost of drugs crime is estimated at £1.6 billion. A recent report by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders showed one-third of all thefts, burglaries and muggings are committed to pay for drug-taking while a study by the National Criminal Intelligence Service linked drugs to 80 per cent of all organised gangland crime in London.
The underworld drugs culture in London is reflected in the number of murders investigated last year by officers from the Operation Trident team which tackles drug related violent crime. Across the capital last year there were 25 murders which had connections in one way or another with drug-dealing, and also 23 attempted murders.
The unusual surge in gun crime was successfully tackled by the Operation Trident team but senior officers believe such epidemics of gun crime and murder will only become a real issue when an innocent bystander is killed in the crossfire.
However, there is evidence elsewhere that the use of drugs may be declining among the young. One recent study by Exeter University showed drug use among under-16s apparently tailing off. The study of drug habits among 500,000 young people showed use declining for the third successive year.
The annual Exeter study had showed a steady increase in abuse until 1996. The most recent report, published earlier this month, said anti-drug campaigns appear particularly effective in reducing the attractions of ecstasy. The idea that the rave drug may be falling in popularity is also supported by a survey for the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence.
It claims many recreational users may be being put off by the adverse publicity over the drug. However, instead of abstaining completely, they are merely switching to cocaine which is increasingly seen as a more fashionable and safer alternative.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/
Drugs: A global business – June 2000 Drugs: A global business
By BBC News - Friday, 9 June, 2000
Copyright: BBC News
Cupping a match in his hands, Sergeant Joe Ferrera of the Trinidadian police stoops to light the base of an unconventional bonfire.
The kindling takes, and after a few seconds he steps back - a broad grin on his face - to admire his work.
With impressive nonchalance, he has just set alight about $1m worth of finest Trinidadian marijiuana crop.
'Yes, it feels a little strange' he says, 'but at least this way the drug dealers won't get the money'.
Ferrera and his team spend much of their week on eradication missions like this.
Clad in US army fatigues and body armour, they hop between remote plantations - sharpened machetes and kerosene cans in hand - doing their best to stem a constant but illegal tide of drugs.
A darker shadow
For many in the Caribbean, drugs have become a way of life.
While a culture of relatively benign Rastafarianism has encouraged the local growth and consumption of marijuana - something some in the region feel should be tolerated - the drugs trade generally has in recent years started to cast a darker shadow.
The Caribbean is one of the principal smuggling routes for cocaine from the Andes region of South America towards North America and Europe.
Under the scrutiny of Colombian gangs, small-time Caribbean gangsters have been moving large quantities of cocaine by boat, air and person through the region.
The trade has a profoundly negative effect on the area.
Smugglers are paid in cocaine rather than cash and have created local 'addict' markets to offload their merchandise.
Gangsters have sought to influence local governments using dollars and bullets.
Single mothers with hungry children to feed have been imprisoned for trying to traffic drugs into Europe.
All because drug users in London or New York are prepared to pay so much for their 'fix'.
A global business
Drugs are big business. The United Nations estimates there are more than 50 million regular users of heroin, cocaine and synthetic drugs like 'ecstasy' world-wide.
The global illegal trade could be worth as much as $400 billion dollars a year - almost as much as the international tourist trade - creating employment for tens of thousands of people both legally and illegally.
Farmers, security guards, chemists, accountants, pilots, lawyers, bankers, dealers, policemen and health-workers are all kept busy supporting or combating the trade.
The economics of the drugs business function like any other industry.
If there's a shortage of raw material, be it coca leaf or opium, the price of the drug goes up. If there's too much, the price goes down.
Just as any self-respecting multinational corporation has marketing departments or strategic think-tanks to plan for the future, so international drug gangs do too.
South American drug cartels have, for years, been using highly qualified marketing and economic graduates to maximise their 'industrial output'.
European-educated whizzkids now sit in plush offices, scratching their heads and wondering how best to 'market' their product internationally.
Market research
One of the most frightening 'marketing exercises' was that conducted in Puerto Rico about a decade ago.
Keen to move into the lucrative US heroin supply business, which until the late 1980s had been cornered by the Thais and Burmese, Colombian gangs began producing high quality heroin on home soil.
Before moving into the US market they wanted a 'guinea pig' to test their product - to make sure it would sell.
Using their established distribution network they started shipping heroin to Puerto Rico, an island with heavy American cultural influence, which the Colombian cartels felt provided a market representative of the US.
The idea was to 'test the water' - if Colombian heroin sold well in Puerto Rico, the cartels would expand into the heroin business in North America.
Street dealers were given samples of heroin to give away whenever they sold any cocaine. Free 'taster' packs for potential users - the ultimate marketing ploy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Lessons from Europe – April 1998 Lessons from Europe
By MAP - Monday, 14 April 1998
Copyright: MAP
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.
http://www.mapinc.org/
World: Thai drug war toll nears 2000 – Q2 2003 Thai drug war toll nears 2000
Published by BBC News - Monday 21 April, 2003
Copyright: BBC News
Thai police have said that 1,897 people have been killed since a controversial crackdown on drugs was launched on 1 February.
Officials said 42 of the total had been shot by police acting in self defence.
The remainder were killed as a result of in-fighting between drug gang members, Thai authorities said.
The campaign's high death toll has prompted international criticism and allegations from human rights groups that the government has encouraged the police to operate a "shoot-to-kill" policy.
But Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said he was pleased with the crackdown's success.
Police have arrested over 42,000 suspects, confiscated 12.4 million methamphetamine tablets and seized over $12m of suspects' assets.
Speaking to the BBC's Tony Cheng, Mr Thaksin vowed to continue the campaign and rid Thailand of drugs by the end of April.
"We are quite positive that we can eliminate drugs from Thai soil," he said.
Critics of the government have said that the campaign is little more than a public relations exercise. They fear that once the crackdown ends, the supply of drugs will start up again.
Drug agencies estimate that more than one billion methamphetamine pills are smuggled into the country each year, and that up to 5% of the 63 million population are addicted to the drug.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
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