LOCAL HEROES LEAD THE WAR ON DRUGS

The Bodega De La Familia is barely a mile away from the United Nations
headquarters in New York, where this week world leaders are meeting to
ponder the scourge of drug abuse and trafficking. In English, it is the
"Family Grocery" and some of the UN delegates might want to pay it a visit.

With its startling front window, decorated with a primary-colour mural in
Latino themes of children and music, this place is in the heart of
Manhattan's Lower East Side - "Loisaida" to Spanish speakers - where gang
violence, intimidation and murder still flourish on the lucrative fuel of
cocaine and heroin.

It was, until a short time ago, a bodega like so many others in the
neighbourhood which traded in drugs under the counter. In 1995 it was the
scene of a police shoot-out which left one person dead and a police officer
paralysed.

But today, the Bodega is a symbol of a new approach to tackling drugs, and
drugs consumption which is the philosophical opposite to punishment,
prosecution and imprisonment. It is, in fact, at the battle front in a war
where the strategy is not punishment but prevention, treatment and education.

The Bodega's specific mission may seem obvious, but it is alone across all
of the United States in practising it. It is to try to help users who have
already fallen foul of the criminal justice system, and probably spent time
in prison, by offering support and counselling to them and to all of their
family.

With as many as 50 families enrolled in its programmes at one time, the
Bodega takes two, overlapping, views. Families of users are victims, too.
Grandsons steal from grandmothers to buy heroin. Husbands beat wives.
Children lose love and even the roofs over their heads. Two-thirds of those
coming to La Bodega live in public housing, from which, under city rules,
anyone found using is instantly evicted.

Second, those families, if they can be given help by places like La Bodega,
can help the user to overcome their habit, to get back on the straight and
narrow and, hopefully, stay out of trouble and prison. One-quarter of those
behind bars in the US are there for drugs-related crimes only and nothing else.

"To me, the fight against drugs is not about border patrols," said La
Bodega's director, Carol Shapiro, who will address a panel at the UN summit
tomorrow. "We're demonising the user, and by extension all of their
families. But the families are a resource and we are trying to use that.

"Conventional drug treatment pulls people away from from their existing
supports. What we believe is that there are lot of strengths in people's
families. Our role is to extract and reinforce those strengths from the
families and not to try to demonise and exacerbate the problem."

Ms Shapiro is far from alone in her feelings. Leading those who will try
this week to impress on delegates at the UN the need for a revolutionary
approach to breaking the drugs cycle will be the New York-based Lindsmith
Center. The foundation, which is funded by the philanthropist and financier
George Soros, advocates approaches such as needle-exchange programmes to
save drug users from infecting themselves, or others, with HIV.

To drive home its point, the Lindsmith yesterday bought double-page spreads
in newspapers such as the New York Times featuring a letter signed by a
array of concerned drugs-policy activists, arguing that the global war on
drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself, precisely because of
its focus largely on criminalisation and punishment.

With signatories who include British MPs, professors, religious leaders and
the former head of the Scotland Yard Drug Squad, Edward Ellison, the letter
stated: "Scarce resources better expended on health, education and economic
development are squandered on ever more expensive interdiction efforts."

There can be few better test-beds for a new approach than the Lower East
Side, where the battles between gangs for supremacy over lucrative territory
spills almost daily onto the streets and the newspaper headlines. In a year,
the New York police have brought charges against 90 members of gangs such as
the now notorious Dead Man Walking gang.

Two weeks ago, the police successfully split open one of the most violent
gangs, the Cut Throat Crew. The breakthrough sprung from an investigation
into two of its members charged with cornering a woman for non-payment for
drugs. They allegedly attempted to rape Evelene Santana, before pushing her
off from a roof to her death.

While many who are dependent on drugs have been in the overwhelmingly
Hispanic neighbourhood for generations, some of the area's customers are not
just outsiders, but also famous. A week ago, Scott Weiland, former lead
singer of the Stone Temple Pilots, an "alternative" rock band, was arrested
coming out of the public housing units in possession of heroin.

The Dead Man Walking gang, which sold own-brand concoctions such as "Red
Rum", briefly achieved notoriety in 1996 when a back-up keyboard player from
the group "Smashing Pumpkins", Jonathan Melvoin, died from a overdose of
heroin that it had supplied to him.

One who has been helped by La Bodega is Santos Poggi, who was recently
incarcerated for drugs crimes for a year in an upstate penitentiary. He
suffered, but so did his wife, Melissa, who tried to visit him regularly.
"You try not to show your anger, because I knew he was going through a lot,"
Melissa said at the Bodega. "Just because you are not behind bars, you still
feel like you're serving the sentence with him."

Santos and Melissa, however, have found sanctuary and peace at La Bodega.
For now, Santos is clean and out of trouble with his parole officer. "All
week, I go through so much and I look forward to coming here," he explained.
"Otherwise, I'd stay home and go crazy because no one is trying to listen to
my problems".

The convicted drugs smuggler Howard Marks, the Labour MP Paul Flynn and
Colin Paisley, a former heroin addict and former mayor, were among those
protesting outside the Foreign Office in Whitehall yesterday against the UN
conference on drugs in New York. The three-day session, starting today, will
be attended by John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister, and the UK drugs tsar
Keith Hellawell. Mr Marks, a campaigner for the legalisation of cannabis,
said the conference would not do anything to stop the gangsters involved in
the illegal drugs industry.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett