Kris (Trekt Uw Plant / ENCOD)
*THE ENCOD BULLETIN ON DRUG POLICY IN EUROPE*
*NR. 42 JUNE 2008*
*WHEN ARGUMENTS FAIL, BANS APPEAR*
We are confronting a malicious policy disguised behind a façade of
benign intentions. Public health and safety are invoked as arguments to
maintain policies that result in the increase of harm in these same
areas. Real harm reduction is incompatible with prohibition.
Dutch Public Health Minister Ab Klink realises this. His proposal to ban
168 species of psychoactive mushrooms in the Netherlands was again
postponed on May 29th, after several Dutch Parliament Members,
encouraged by activists
<http://www.encod.org/info/NL
critical questions to the minister that he will need to reply to in the
coming weeks. All expert boards (including the International Narcotics
Control Board, interestingly enough) have advised the minister not to
impose a ban, as this will very likely lead to increased public health
risks
<http://www.encod.org/info
an increase in the number of incidents.
Growing your own cannabis as a way to reduce harm to health and safety
was accepted three years ago by the Belgian parliament. A piece of
legislation was then introduced that would allow each adult citizen to
cultivate one cannabis plant for personal use without aggravating
circumstances. However, Belgian authorities do not respect this
legislation. When the board members of Trekt Uw Plant, a legal
association of cannabis producers and consumers, planted the seed of
their personal plant in public on Worldwide Marijuana March Day on May
3d in Antwerp, they were arrested and accused of “growing cannabis in
the possible presence of minors”
<http://www.encod.org/info/IS
later, when they repeated the action in a public field without any
minors present, the police intervened against what was called the
"privatisation of the public space". In the press, the spokesman of the
Antwerp police stated: "it is not because cannabis cultivation is being
tolerated that we are going to allow people to do it."
Even UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa has now embraced harm
reduction as showed up at the annual International Harm Reduction
Conference that was held from May 10 to 14 in Barcelona. Harm Reduction
is a concept that everyone can agree with as long as certain logical
implications of this policy are ignored. In a manifesto for real policy
of harm reduction
<http://www.encod.org/info
Spanish associations of drug consumers as well as ENCOD tried to raise
this issue at the Barcelona Conference.
As soon as it becomes clear that harm is produced not only by the drugs
themselves, but by the fact that they are illegal, it becomes more
difficult to find any universal agreement. And when proposals to reduce
drug-policy-related harm are made outside the scope of the public and
private health industry, nervousness and embarrassment enter the room.
Suddenly people realise that in the current system, harm reduction is an
act of resistance that may endanger their careers.
The only way forward is to bring this reality into the drug debate. In
fact the experience of ENCOD at the second session of the Civil Society
Forum on EU Drug Policy
<http://www.encod.org/info
20 and 21 showed that sometimes a real discussion can take place with
authorities, even with people representing prohibitionist organisations.
In this forum we may have started to be accepted as a necessary
nuisance, people whose most radical proposals can not be used for
anything without breaking the general framework, but people who do, in
fact, contribute with serious issues.
At the UN level, ENCOD representative Fredrick Polak is playing a
similar role, repeating his question to UNODCs Director Costa
<http://www.drogriporter.hu/en
at the IHRC: how can one explain the relatively low consumption of
cannabis in the Netherlands where this substance is legally available
for adults. Actually, as we wrote before, Costa has now visited the
Netherlands to find an answer to this question. In the days after the
Barcelona Conference, he published a paper on his website
<http://www.encod.org/info
which entitled: Amsterdam, city of tolerance tightening the rules”.
After a few days, it disappeared from the site, apparently after the
Dutch government had refused to accept it. Costa’s paper is merely one
of the endlessly-repeated mantras of prohibitionists, completely
unsupported by any scientific evidence.
The ENCOD General Assembly in Vitoria
<http://www.encod.org/info/20
organised in cooperation with the regional government of the Basque
Country, comes at the right moment to take the next step in the
development of ENCOD as an action network to spread the seed of doubt
among the general population to suggest that maybe prohibition is not
the best answer after all.
It is possible to challenge drug prohibition with few resources but with
a determined attitude and with growing expertise on how to formulate a
message and spread it. The use of mind-altering plants and substances
has always been an essential part of human societies everywhere,
something that cannot be banned by people in black or monopolised by
people in white uniforms. By maintaining the idea of a world in which
people can deal with the production, distribution and consumption of
substances in a responsible way, a collective train of thoughts is set
in motion towards the improvement of the present situation.
In Morocco a citizens platform calling for the legalisation of cannabis
<http://www.encod.org/info/FOR
formed, consisting of university professors and human rights activists.
They have gathered enough evidence to maintain that growing hemp for
industrial and cannabis for medicinal purposes is a sustainable option
to develop the poor areas in the Rif mountains. Current programmes aimed
at the eradication of hemp, carried out under pressure of the European
Union, only contribute to increased poverty and higher revenues for the
criminal organisations.
In Peru, Member of Parliament and former coca leader Elsa Malpartida has
gathered evidence of a large number of human rights violations committed
during erradication operations of coca leaves for the past 8 years, and
denounced the Peruvian government before the Interamerican Human Rights
Commission. For the first time in 30 years, this Commission has accepted
the claims and will investigate them.
Likewise we in Europe should continue to challenge prohibition as a
policy of "criminal negligence" which is causing two main harms to society:
The control of the drugs market by criminal syndicates with all that
follows, including violence between rivalling gangs, corruption of
officials, significant waste of policing and customs efforts and
budgets, banking and currency problems related to money laundering, and
so forth.
The impossibility of quality control, leading to the prevalence of bad
quality products, often laced with substances far more dangerous,
leading to many serious health problems.
By Joep Oomen (with the help of Peter Webster)
EUROPEAN COALITION FOR JUST AND EFFECTIVE DRUG POLICIES
Lange Lozanastraat 14 – 2018 Antwerpen - Belgium
Tel. + 32 (0)3 293 0886 – Mob. + 32 (0)495 122644
E-mail: info@encod.org
<http://www.encod.org>
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