Drugpenalty reslove wavering in Latin America

By Katherine EIIison
Miami Herald

SAO PAULO, Brazil Bolivian Presi
lent Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada recently
confided that he would decriminalize drugs
if he could spare himself the international
contrrrversy.
Brazilian President Fernando Henrique
Qardoso last year spoke of the need for a
national debate on decriminalizing marijua
na.
Colombia's Supreme Court, three years
ago, overturned a law calling for prison
terms for possession of small quantities of
drugs although the move later was partly
reversed by thenPresident Cesar Gavina.
As Latin Arnerica's young democracies
explore their new freedoms and as a
growing drugconsumption problem fills
prisons and frustrates attempts at control
many of the region's leaders have begun
debating more permissive policies.
So far, the discussions have been halting
and limited, yet they have worried the U.S.
government, which over the weekend took a
strong stand against drug legalization at a
conference it sponsored for Latin American
mayors.
"This is a struggle for the hearts and
minds of our youth," U.S. Ambassador
Melvyn Levitsky warned.
The response at the Latin American
Cities Against Drugs conference was much
less tlaan had been hoped for, however: Only
45 mayors showed up.
The audience, filled out by antidrug
civic activists, was treated to videos of
junkies shooting up in Zurich's Needle Park,
which the Swiss governrnent closed in 1995,
and expert testimony about the toll of
experiments in leniency in the United States
and Europe.
"Liberalization gained ground much fas
ter than anyone imagined," Swiss psycholo
gist Franziska Hailer said. "Legalizers have
nearly reached their goals. The socalled
Swiss model is being exported around the
world."
In fact, some governments that tried
liberalization recently began to backtrack.
The Netherlands, pressured by Germany
and France, and worried about increasing.
drugrelated crime at home, last year began
drastically cutting the number of coffee
houses where it is legal to buy and smoke
cannabis,
But while the Swiss have closed down
Needle Park, Hailer said officials supply
heroin to 800 addicts in rooms where they
can shoot up with help from a doctor or
nurse. The country also has hemp restau
rants, hemp wine and even hemp sausages,
she complained.
In the 1970s, a softening of penalties for
marijuana use in the United States led to a
huge increase in consumption, with one in
10 highschool students stoned on marijuana
every day by 1980, said Robert Peterson,
Michigan's former drug czar. A crackdown
brought some improvernent, but it has been
followed by a relapse in the past four years,
he said.
Swedish activist Torgny Peterson, director
of European Cities Against Drugs, charac
terized the new enemy" in the fight
against drugs as "socalled intellectuals,
socalled scientists" and the Drug Policy
Foundation, an international proliberaliza
tion group he said had received $6 million
from American philanthropist George Soros.
The foundation has yet to make signi
icant inroads in. Latin America, however,
where advocates of softer penalties for
"hard" drug use are nowhere close to
reaching majorities.
A poll commissioned by the U.S. Information
Agency last year found that only
5 to 6 percent of respondents in six
countries surveyed favored legalizing co..
caine or heroin.