Italy - Controversy about the anti-drugs ministry

Marco Pannella, Euro-MP, about the Italian government’s proposal of creating a separate anti-drugs ministry: ’Do they really think that nothing less than a full-fledged ministry is needed to rattle on with their collapsing and failed policies, all long since made redundant by history and by the culture of our country? Well, let them do it. Our policies on all forms of prohibitionism, on drugs, science and sexuality, won’t change. We are the only serious sustainers of reason in drug matters, unlike the wishy-washy,hot-cold, on-off, yes-but crew within the Left — all the fireworks they’ve ever set off have been wet squibs. Let’s hope that this brilliant new idea will be another’.

Daniele Capezzone, Secretary of the Radicali Italiani, says that the summer heat must be addling brains — it’s high time to concentrate instead on the thirty years of prohibitionism that have generated ever more drugs, more Mafia and more AIDS.

Marco Cappato, Secretary of the Luca Coscioni Society: ’This is smoke-in-your-eyes propaganda to harvest votes and to shore up the workings of their crumbling policy. The real ministry in charge of drugs is called The Mafia.

Alessandro Caforio, President of www.antiproibizionisti.it suggests a serious appraisal of what is happening in America, where the federal ’Drug Czar’ has announced coram populo the failure of the government’s anti-drug campaigns of the last few years. Prohibitionism has failed.

Giulio Manfredi of the Comitato Nazionale Radicali Italiani: ’Everything is going according to the plans announced by Vice Premier Gianfranco Fini [of the Neo-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale party — translator’s note], but only the Radicali and ’Forum droghe’ have repeatedly called attention to the increasing prohibitionism. The entire Left is just beginning to wake up to that.