The IAL update thread. for those who want their news complete and bitesize. ;p and i'll try to start posting them all in here, and remember to post them. there doenst seem to have been musch of a responce to them so far, but it is important maaaan. ;D Bulletin of the International Antiprohibitionist League on the world campaign for the reform of the UN Conventions on Drugs #.32 - YEAR I - 11 August 2003 Published in NEWS FROM THE IAL : ITALY Re: Singer Vasco Rossi's remarks in favour of marijuana: - Radicali Euro-MP Maurizio Turco: He got away with it -- but in not-so-long-ago times he'd have been roasted. - IAL secretary Marco Perduca: A good occasion for a show of courage by those who call themselves antiprohibitionists, a time for less verbiage and more action. Social results are possible only if what is now punishable becomes legal. UNITED KINGDOM Radicali Euro-MP Marco Cappato and colleague Marco Perduca on Green Party leader Shane Collins' arrest for growing cannabis: a typical injustice inflicted by blind, failed and bankrupt prohibitionism. Collins should now become the living symbol of drug reform politics. NEWS FROM THE WORLD : 3072 04/08/2003 AUSTRALIA CONSUMERS THE AUSTRALIAN The labour unions representing employees of Qantas Airline have come out against the newly-introduced anti-drug tests required of all personnel. All medicinals used by everyone would have to be declared to the company, including anti-HIV pharmaceuticals. This could easily lead to career and workplace discrimination. 3076 01/08/2003 SAUDI ARABIA JUSTICE ASSOCIATED PRESS Public beheading Nr. 28 for 2003 was that of a Pakistani convicted of 'importing drugs'. Half or more of these events, jolly good fun for all the family, were for drug-related 'crimes'. 3078 04/08/2003 PHILIPPINES JUSTICE PHILIPPINE STAR Death row, Section One, Bilibid Prison: the drug trade thrives among the moribund. Puzzle for the cops: how to punish yet more cruelly transgressors already subjected to conditions amounting to perpetual torture whilst awaiting imminent execution. 3070 02/08/2003 UNITED KINGDOM INITIATIVES WALES The British School of Motoring (BSM) feels that licence exams should include questions about the perils of drugs. Chief administrator Paul Atkinson says that all candidates must be told that drugs and petrol mix very badly, often fatally. 3074 05/08/2003 COSTARICA NARCOMAFIAS LA PRENSA The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency says that Costarica has become a world centre for laundering and recycling crime money, especially for the drug industry. Colombian and Mexican interests have set up smoke-screen casinos, real-estate investment firms and construction companies, as well as, most recently, electronic gambling services. 3077 31/07/2003 ITALY OPINIONS QUOTIDIANO NAZIONALE Public Health minister Girolamo Sirchia has declared that 'all drugs lead to addiction'. In a moment of heedless caprice, he says, youths leap onto the long slide down into hell, a hell from which very few ever come back. This has been 'documented incontrovertibly' also for cannabis. 3071 02/08/2003 AUSTRALIA OPINIONS THE AUSTRALIAN To hear Prime Minister John Howard tell it, 'iron fisted anti-drug policies work'. All those who jabber about rethinking prohibitionism and current punishment practices are namby-pambies who think that if you can't fight drugs you ought to go soppy-sweet on the perpetrators and forget about the havoc they wreak. 3067 02/08/2003 U.S.A. ORGANISATIONS THE SEATTLE TIMES Karen Tandy, new U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency head, says that her forces' main aim must be shifted toward the great international networks. The agency has been criticised in recent months by the White House for its lack of strategies and objectives and for its failure to reduce drug sales in the American marketplace.. 3069 31/07/2003 U.S.A. (Florida) POLITICS YAHOO Florida anti-drug chief James McDonough says that the growing number of deaths from abuse of proprietary pharmaceuticals amounts to 'mass murder'. There should be supervision of doctors who prescribe such substances for those who use them, in effect, as drugs. 3068 01/08/2003 UNITED KINGDOM POLITICS YAHOO NEWS Green Party leader Shane Collins has been sentenced to six week in gaol for possession and cultivation of nineteen cannabis plants, found by the police in his home. British Greens are fighting for changes in the laws on cannabis. 3073 04/08/2003 THAILAND RECOVERY BANGKOK POST Determined to arrest and punish also the users of drugs, a policy that has led to enormous overcrowding in the gaols, the clever authorities are now thinking about setting up 'recovery camps' ... to be built by the addicts. 3075 05/08/2003 TAJIKISTAN TRAFFIC INTERFAX U.N. functionaries place Tajikistan on the list of the five top countries for heroin and opium confiscations. Thus far in 2003, 4,379 kg of raw opium have been seized, whilst the figures are a mere 275kg for Kazakhstan, 201 for Uzbekistan, and 87 for Kyrjistan.
Bulletin of the International Antiprohibitionist League on the world campaign for the reform of the UN Conventions on Drugs #.34- YEAR I - 28 August 2003 Published in NEWS FROM THE IAL : DRCNet Executive Director and member of the IAL Board of Directors refuses to serve as member of Jury in the District of Columbia criticizing the injustices of the U.S. war on drugs After being summoned to be a juror in a Washington D.C. Court, Mr. David Borden, Executive Director of Drug Reform Coordination Network and member of the IAL Board of Director refused on 22 August to appear before the Court linking its decision to the injustices committed by the U.S. "war on drugs". In a Letter to the Chief Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, the Honourable Rufus G. King, Borden motivates his decision quoting the great American philosopher and abolitionist, Henry David Thoreau's famous essay "Civil Disobedience" stating that "It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of... even the most enormous wrong... but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he give it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support." David Borden further states that his service as a juror in the District of Columbia "would directly or indirectly support injustice, and would help to fuel the illusion that drug prohibition serves the health and safety of the public; when in reality only some form of legalization can adequately address the combined harms of drugs and drug prohibition, which in the currently one-dimensional public dialogue are commonly attributed only to drugs; and when in reality only some form of legalization can satisfy the fundamental obligation of society to respect individual freedom while requiring individual responsibility." The IAL expresses its support to David Borden's decision do disobey his civil duty to be a member of a jury on his philosophical and political conviction that prohibition on drugs is the problem and cannot be solution to "drug control" and welcomes his debut in the field of direct civil disobedience. The IAL knows that David is fully aware that his action can lead to unpleasant consequences; finally the IAL commends his request for no special consideration and is ready to support him in this new endeavour. For the full text of the letter and to know more please email drcnet@drcnet.org NEWS FROM THE WORLD : 3096 17/08/2003 UNITED KINGDOM (Scotland) MEDICINE SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY Within the year a cannabis-base pain-relieving spray called Sativex may become available. Official authorisation is still required. When and if this is granted, Scottish law on cannabis must be changed to allow administration to patients on prescription. These procedures seem, at the moment, to be on track. It is the first permissive cannabis legislation in the U.K. 3094 20/08/2003 UNITED KINGDOM (London) MEDICINE THE DAILY MIRROR Queen Victoria Hospital will administer cannabis in capsules to relieve post-operative pain. Dr. Anita Holdcroft, head of this experimental programme, says that 'We want to know, by means of exhaustive tests, whether cannabis really works as an effective anodyne'. 3097 14/08/2003 NEW ZEALAND OPINIONS N. Z. UNITED FUTURE PARTY PRESS RELEASE Peter Dunne, United Future Party leader and militantly opposed to any change in the existing cannabis laws, has 'shown' by means of 'several studies' that 'cannabis causes schizophrenia, multiplies the cases of chronic depression by a factor of four, and generates genetic mutations'. 3089 18/08/2003 IRAN (Teheran) REHABILITATION ANSA The Public Health Ministry will pass out free syringes to addicts in those districts of Teheran where drug use runs highest. Several 'mobile clinics' are also planned -- they will provide advice, and addicts turning to them for help will not be registered or prosecuted. 3095 20/08/2003 MALAYSIA REHABILITATION NEW STRAITS TIMES In view of 'the good results obtained in Malaysia in the last few years', the Afghan government will send a group of religious leaders to Malaysia to learn how the 'Islamic method' for combating drugs and preventing addiction can be applied back home. 3090 19/08/2003 UNITED KINGDOM SUBSTANCES IC NEWCASTLE Hazel Blears, minister for crime reduction, public order and social security, has admitted to having 'once, and once only, twenty-five years ago, smoked but not inhaled cannabis'. But she says that that sort of trifle is no reason for good people keeping or being kept out of politics. 3092 19/08/2003 U.S.A. STATISTICS ASSOCIATED PRESS A Columbia University study shows that bored and/or stressed youths are fifty per cent more likely to turn to drugs, legal and otherwise. Moreover, the probability of alcohol use doubles for youths who get a dole of more than twenty-five dollars a week. 3098 16/08/2003 AFGHANISTAN THE WAR ON DRUGS HIOPAKISTAN.COM U.S. Defence Minister Donald Rumsfeld admits that since the fall of the Taliban regime, 'Opium production has increased and we don't know what to do'. The alternative crops don't give the peasants anywhere the same yield, even with heavy subsidies. 3091 20/08/2003 AFRICA THE WAR ON DRUGS BBC According to the UN, terrorists and drug-traffickers are recycling money through banks in southern African states. They count on the authorities' ignorance about sophisticated big-time cartels and dirty money generally. 3093 20/08/2003 COLOMBIA THE WAR ON DRUGS CHICAGO TRIBUNE / SEATTLE TIMES U.S. Defence Minister Donald Rumsfeld has come out in favour of 'interception flights' against drug trafficking. These flights were suspended after an aeroplane fill of missionaries was shot down in error over Peru. --------------------------------------------------------------------- is anyone still interested in getting these updates?