EUROPEANS JUST SAY 'MAYBE'

Rejecting The War On Drugs, Some Countries Are Looking For A Truce With
Users. U.S. Officials Think That's A Big Mistake.

Bill Nelles doesn't look like a drug addict. A 44-year-old graduate of the
London School of Economics, he works as a senior manager in Britain's
National Health Service and sings madrigals in two choirs. But as a
schoolboy in Canada, he started dabbling with LSD, then moved on to
morphine and became addicted to opiates by the age of 23. Detox programs
didn't take, and the few times he scored heroin on the street, the
experience terrified him. So in 1977, he moved to London, where sympathetic
doctors could give him what he needs. He now takes 40 methadone tablets a
day, prescribed by his doctor and bought at the local pharmacy. His drug
habit, says Nelles, is simply a chronic medical condition--albeit one he
caused himself. "I don't want to be judged because of a medication I take,"
he says. "One can have a normal life and take drugs."

That idea is beginning to gain acceptance in Europe. While the United
States wages its war on drugs, some Europeans are quietly negotiating an
informal truce. Governments and courts are loosening up on drug
prosecutions. Users and social workers are cooperating to develop a "safe
drugs culture." Not everyone agrees with this approach. Last month British
Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters he was "petrified" at the thought
of his children getting involved with drugs. Later he announced strong
measures to fight drug-related crime. Sweden takes an even tougher line on
narcotics, and polls show Europeans in general still oppose the
legalization of hard drugs.

But in many countries, soft drugs like marijuana are increasingly
tolerated, and even users of heroin or other hard drugs are less likely to
be treated as criminals. To some Europeans, the "just say no" approach
seems as outdated as the American temperance movement of the early 1900s.
"Prohibition didn't reduce the number of alcoholics, and lifting it didn't
increase them," says Dierk-Henning Schnitzler, Bonn, Germany's police
chief. "Only the Mafia got big. The same is true with drugs today."

Supporters of the new approach argue that efforts to stamp out illicit
drugs in Europe have failed. The use of heroin, cocaine and amphetamines
continues to grow in many countries, while marijuana and ecstasy remain
widely popular. Strong economies, porous borders and a nightclub culture
fueled by pills have produced a flood of drugs that are cheaper and purer
than ever.

Critics of the European trend say a tougher stance has paid off in America.
The latest report from the federal government shows that overall drug use
is no longer increasing in the United States and has even declined a bit
among 12- to 17-year-olds. Ironically, America's modest success has helped
to make Europe a more important market for international drug dealers.
"We've got a terrible problem that's getting better," Gen. Barry McCaffrey,
the White House's drug-policy director, told NEWSWEEK. "[The Europeans]
have a terrible problem that's getting worse." This week McCaffrey visits
Europe for a series of meetings. Among other things, he will lobby for
European help in the fight against drugs in Latin America.

But Europeans have other strategies in mind. One favorite catch phrase is
"harm reduction"--coping pragmatically with the social and medical fallout
of drug use, rather than trying to eradicate it. "Sure, a society without
drugs would be wonderful," says Nicole Maestracci, director of France's
Interministerial Mission Against Drugs and Addiction. "But nobody believes
such a society can exist anymore." When German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder
took office last year, he switched his government's drugs commissioner from
the Interior Ministry, which deals with law enforcement, to the Health
Ministry. The new commissioner, Christa Nickels, announced: "Consumers of
drugs are not criminals and should be exempt from criminal prosecution.
Addiction is a disease and not a crime."

A 1994 law allows Germany's local governments to permit drug possession for
"personal use." What that might be varies from one place to another. In
law-and-order Bavaria, the possession of any amount of marijuana is a
crime, while in Schleswig-Holstein, police can't prosecute for possession
of anything less than a whole ounce of pot.

In France, policymakers have advised judges not to imprison users who don't
deal. Last June a Swiss court overturned a prison sentence given to a man
convicted of selling 1,000 ecstasy pills. The court ruled that this "soft
drug" is used mostly by "socially integrated people" and "doesn't lead to
criminal behavior."

Some governments also are funding efforts to make drug use safer by passing
out information on illicit substances. In France, a self-help group for
users puts out pamphlets featuring Bloodi, a cartoon junkie in a yellow
Mohawk who dispenses advice on how to inject drugs hygienically. On
weekends counselors from Unity, an Amsterdam-based drug-education project
partly financed by the European Commission, head out to raves, the dance
parties held in fields or abandoned buildings. Working under the motto
"just say know," they are equipped with glow-in-the-dark pamphlet racks and
psychedelic cushions for "chill out" areas, where they answer questions
about uppers, downers and wideners.

Drug users are increasingly welcome when they try to work within the
political system. Britain's top drug official, Keith Hellawell, encourages
former users to work with addicts in prisons--"something that, merely a few
years ago, would have been unthinkable," he says. In Denmark, Joergen
Kjaer, a middle-aged heroin addict, runs the Drug Users Union, which is
funded partly by the city of Copenhagen. He also serves, along with cabinet
ministers, on the national Narcotics Council. When he puts on a jacket and
tie for meetings, some are shocked. "They expect me to be skinny and look
like a thief, because that's the stereotype of a junkie," he says. Kjaer
and his fellow activists want drugs to be legalized. Europe isn't ready for
that. But it is testing the proposition that waging war may not be the only
way to deal with drugs.