1. The prohibition of drugs should be recognized as a violation of human rights. Drug use involves taking real health risks. These risks are of a character that requires a regulatory approach "slightly patronizing." The approach involves a ban unfairly and unnecessarily hard, leaving market regulation in the hands of the mafia.
2. The international drug conventions never had any scientific basis. Its main assumption is that the ban will significantly decrease drug use and trade of "controlled substances".
3. It has become abundantly clear that this assumption is false. Consumption levels and drug addiction have no material relationship with the intensity of repression and government policies in general. The " Report on Illicit Drug Markets 1998 - 2007 "edited by Peter Reuter and Franz Trautmann has shown again.

   This report was published by the European Commission in March 2009. Since then, nothing has been done on this report, except for a public hearing organized by Michail Tremopoulos, Member of Parliament of Greece of the GREENS / EFA, along with Encod.

4. An important conclusion emerges from the report. No need to fear an explosion of drug use after a regulation of drug markets. Experiences in the Netherlands (with access to cannabis decriminalized) and Portugal (with consumption and general decriminalization of possession for personal use) have confirmed this.
5. The drug prohibition caused and continues to cause enormous damage on a global scale, whereas no positive results have been achieved.
6. Efforts to liberalize the national drug laws are being blocked consistently referring to the international drug conventions. The implementation of international drug prohibition is commonly legitimized by a supposed global consensus. However, in recent decades within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, fundamental disagreements have arisen and apparently irresolvables on the nature and direction of drug policy.
7. This situation is becoming impossible for individual countries and groups of countries to develop policies that want to enter on the basis of experience of very long and healthy experimentation.
8. The conclusion is that the rigid interpretation of the drug treaties have become obstacles to progress.
9. International conventions on drugs and can not serve as a basis for national policies, let alone international politics. The "system of drug control" global must be replaced by national drug policy. It is quite likely that these can be developed after a consultation and close cooperation between neighboring countries.
10. DRUG REGULATION must be put into the policy aegnda.

Fredrick Polak

ENCOD President of the European Coalition for Drug Policies Fair and Effective

June 2010