UN WAR ON DRUGS DOOMED TO FAILURE, NGOS SAY

VIENNA, Austria - A group of European policy-makers and nongovernmental
organizations said Thursday the United Nations' war on drugs was doomed to
fail, and called instead for decriminalizing drug use.

They said narcotics should be treated like alcohol and tobacco -- legal,
but under state health controls.

"The war on drugs cannot be won because it is a war on human nature," Sir
Keith Morris, former British Ambassador to Colombia, told a news conference
called during a meeting in Vienna of U.N. anti-drugs agencies.

"History shows that no society ever existed which was 'drug-free."'

Activists at the news conference said the United Nations' hard-line
opposition to liberalizing drug use was too extreme to work.

"Their own numbers are proof of their failure," said Marco Cappato, an
Italian member of the European Parliament and coordinator for
Parliamentarians for Anti-Prohibitionist Action.

"In the five years since the U.N. launched its war on drugs, the numbers
show the use of all the major drugs has increased ... as well as
drug-related deaths from overdose and HIV/AIDS."

Raymond Kendall, honorary secretary-general of the international police
agency Interpol, said the only workable approach was to permit the supply
and distribution of drugs through strictly controlled legal avenues.

Speaking as a retired career policeman with experience in narcotics
control, he said this would protect the users from bad quality drugs and
keep the business out of criminals' hands.

"One extreme is arresting people, the other extreme is legalizing it,"
Kendall said. "The proper route has to be somewhere in the middle."

Cappato said his goal was to remove control of the drug trade from
terrorists and organized criminals, who he said were the real beneficiaries
of the criminalization of drug use.

He said a vote last week in the European Parliament calling for a more
lenient drugs strategy in the European Union lost by only one vote, proving
there was a lot of support for the view.

While the United Nations agrees that the use of drugs is still rising five
years after launching its formal war, Antonio Maria Costa, director of the
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said: "Efforts to reduce abuse of illicit
drugs have shown signs of progress."

The progress Costa outlined in a report to this week's ministerial session
of the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs included a reduction in the areas
cultivating opium poppy for heroin and coca plants for cocaine.

He also noted the adoption of stricter drug control strategies by many
countries.

But not everyone agreed that stricter policies were a sign of progress.

"We're doing a much better job today in managing socially accepted drugs
like tobacco and alcohol than in futile battles against poverty-stricken
farmers in Third World countries and hapless addicts in our cities, where
our only achievement is to increase human suffering," Morris said.