LEADERS ATTACK UN WAR ON DRUGS

Host Of Dignitaries Hope To Nip Campaign In Bud

Days before the United Nations is to announce its most ambitious anti-drug
program ever, hundreds of world leaders, including 80 Canadians, have
signed a ground-breaking petition asking the UN to support the
liberalization of drug laws instead.

The petition, a rough draft of which has been obtained by the Citizen, will
be presented to the UN General Assembly when it convenes Monday for what
are expected to be hard-nosed discussions on how to crack down on trade in
illegal drugs.

The goal of the conference is to come up with a plan that will eliminate
the world's production of heroin, cocaine and marijuana within the next 10
years by paying farmers who grow the drugs to switch to legal crops. Those
who will be speaking at the drug conference include U.S. President Bill
Clinton.

The conference is expected to recommend spending an additional $3 billion
to $4 billion to fight drugs.

But the signatories of the petition question the value of such initiatives.

"We believe the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug
abuse itself," says a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan included in
the petition. "In many parts of the world, drug war politics impede public
health efforts to stem the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other infectious
diseases.

"Human rights are violated, environmental assaults perpetrated and prisons
inundated with hundreds of thousands of drug law violators. Scarce
resources better expended on health, education and economic development are
squandered on ever more expensive interdiction efforts."

The petition includes the signatures of such dignitaries as former UN
secretary general Javier Perez de Cuellar; former U.S. secretary of state
George Shultz; former U.S. surgeon general Jocelyn Elders; and Edward
Ellison, former head of the Scotland Yard Drug Squad.

Among the prominent Canadians to sign the petition are Senator Sharon
Carstairs, NDP Leader Alexa McDonough, former Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar,
lawyers Clayton Ruby and Edward Greenspan, noted urban-planning author Jane
Jacobs, and a dozen members of Parliament.

The most prominent names on the petition will be featured in a two-page
advertisement in Monday's New York Times.

The goal of the petition is to promote other ways of dealing with the drug
problems than resorting to the expensive and overcrowded criminal justice
system.

The protest is the result of work by the Lindesmith Center, a New
York-based think-tank, and drug-policy reform groups from more than 20
countries.

"What we are trying to do is influence the UN and its member countries to
move away from these outrageous drug policies that serve only to congest
the court system and fuel the violence associated with the illegal drug
trade," said Eugene Oscapella, a spokesman for the Canadian Foundation for
Drug Policy, which helped organize the petition.

The petition's backers will also hold a series of conferences to help
promote alternative methods of dealing with drug problems.

The list of people who signed the petition includes several Nobel Peace
Prize winners, high-ranking politicians and judges from dozens of
countries, and members of the academic community. It also includes such
notable business people as Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop, and
George Soros, the billionaire investment king.

The petition is just the latest volley in what has become an increasingly
spectacular debate on whether drugs should be decriminalized. Proponents of
decriminalization point to the excessive costs of policing and punishing
drug offenders, and the crime cartels that thrive on the prohibited drug
trade. Opponents of drug decriminalization argue that easier access to
drugs would lead to greater rates of addiction and to the erosion of
society's morals.

The group's petition concludes:

"Mr. Secretary General, we appeal to you to initiate a truly open and
honest dialogue regarding the failure of global drug control policies --
one in which fear, prejudice and punitive prohibitions yield to common
sense, science, public health and human rights."

Copyright 1998 The Ottawa Citizen

Checked-by: Richard Lake