KOUCHER OPPOSES DRUGS LAW

FRANCE'S Socialist Health Minister, Bernard Kouchner, has backed calls for
the decriminalisation of all drugs.

His comments have revived a debate among a political class divided between
Roman Catholic conservatives and urban liberals and are likely to embarrass
Lionel Jospin, the Prime Minister, who is far more cautious on the subject.

M Kouchner was speaking a week after the French National Aids Council --
including scientists, jurists and doctors -- said that French legislation
banning drug-taking gave rise to a "policy that hesitates between treatment
and repression and constitutes a handicap to developing the strategy of
reducing Aids risks". M Kouchner has long shared this view, but had not
hitherto expressed it so clearly while in his ministerial post.