"If you don’t allow drug consumers to be treated, if you treat them like criminals, condemning them to die in the streets, this is a crime, a crime that our institutions should be held accountable for. In fact, this kind of prohibitionism is a crime against humanity." - Marco Cappato

Anti-Prohibitionism -

a Conversation with Marco Cappato

by Preston Peet

posted at DrugWar.com
February 8, 2003

Marco Cappato is not your average politician. European Minister of Parliament for Italy‘s Radical Party (Lista Bonino), winner of the European Voice’s "European of the Year" award for 2002, and tireless campaigner for privacy rights and anti-prohibitionism, the 31 year old Cappato is co-President of the Trans-National Radical Party. He represented the Radical Party at the United Nations in 1998, and is currently working on efforts to reform UN anti-drug conventions with the International Anti-Prohibitionist League. Readers can visit their website to add their names to the growing list of world citizens who are tired of the War on Drugs and want it ended, now. Cappato graciously took some time to sit down to discuss the War- its effects and his efforts to end it- with the editor of DrugWar.com last month.

Preston Peet (Jan 11 , 2003) - Here I am in a tidy, tiny Lower East Side, Manhattan apartment, interviewing Italian Minister of European Parliament Marco Cappato, who has just flown in from Italy, literally just now walking in the door from the airport. How are you Marco? How was the flight?

Marco Cappato- Good.

P- Cool, glad to hear it. Do you have any brothers or sisters?

MC- A brother about 2 years older than me.

P- Where do you live now?

MC- I have a house in Rome and a place in Brussels, where the European Parliament has its quarters.

P- What do you do to earn a living?

MC- I’m a member of the European Parliament. It’s a full paid job. European members of Parliament are paid the same as in their national parliaments.

P- What is an MEP and what are their duties?

MC- Well, there are 626. You have MEPs who are from national states, due to the population of the states. So you have almost 100 from Germany, France, Italy, the UK, while smaller states like Luxembourg have 6 members. The European Parliament is not always a single parliament, in that sometimes we have a simple consultative power, and sometimes we have legislative powers. It depends on the issue to be decided upon. For example, issues that are related to foreign policy are more inter-government business. National government decides and they cooperate together in a body which is called the European Council, the legislative body. On some other issues there is a co-decision power between governments and the European Parliament. The right to legislative initiatives belongs to the European Commission, which is the administrative body, so it is a very complicated institutional framework. Even when we are not acting as legislators, there is a kind of moral authority by the fact that it is a European directly-elected legislative body.

P- So when you issue a report, people notice.

MC- Yes. When we take bold stances on issues, this is news even if there are no legislative powers involved. Talking about drugs policies, they are basically national policies. But there are some specific things about European competence. The first one is the repressive side, police cooperation and judicial cooperation. On that there are bodies, like Europol and Eurojust, which are cooperative bodies. So there are treaties covering for example customs controls and border patrols. Then there are some powers about things like health projects, treatment, drug dependence and prevention which have a European-wide campaign. If you want to decide to criminalize, decriminalize, or legalize, this is national business. But the European business is about cooperation and prevention. Of course, there’re also places where you can exert moral persuasion. For example, the Netherlands are quite progressive with their tolerance policies, but they are always under pressure from France, because there is a sort of drug tourism. Even if the Netherlands are free to decide their own policies, they are still under pressure. Now the European Council is talking about measures against drug trafficking, but it is such a broad definition for drug trafficking that if they go that way, they could probably put an end to the Dutch experience.

P- Do you smoke pot? Do you or have you ever used legal or illegal drugs for recreational purposes?

MC- Yeah, occasionally. I never smoke alone, but occasionally with people I’ll smoke. I’ve tried almost all the illegal drugs, even if I’m not a habitual consumer of any of them. Not even cigarettes or alcohol. I have a good relationship with life and was never too heavily involved with any of that.

P- So, if I whipped out a bag of pot and invited you to smoke, would you?

MC- Well, not now because of the jet lag. I am a little bit tired, but maybe after a good meal I’d do it.

P- Was your arrest in London in support of marijuana your only run-in with the law?

MC- No, I’ve also been arrested in Brussels and in Rome a couple times.

P- Always with some kind of demonstration? You’ve never been in trouble for smoking a joint on the side of the road say?

MC- No.

P- How old were you when first realized that the War on Some Drugs and Users was just prohibition with another name? What brought this about?

MC- Drug prohibition for me was the first political issue in which I was personally involved.

P- And how old were you?

MC- 17 or 18.

P- Were you still in school then?

MC- Yes. I was seeing what was going on with my friends, the problems with police, kids who were not doing any harm, going to school, playing football and living very normal lives that got ruined by some completely purposeless police action. At the same time, my family, my brother and my parents were involved politically with the Radical Party, so I was receiving material at home. I was seeing people getting arrested for making demonstrations on that issue. So at the end of the 80s, I became a member of the CORA, Radical Anti-Prohibitionist Coordination.

P- What is that?

MC- This is an organization within the Radical Party which is specifically dedicated to anti-drug prohibition. Now this organization has merged with the International Anti-Prohibitionist League. The prohibition issue would be better taken at the transnational level, so we focus on this.

P- What is the “Club Pannella Movement”?

MC- Marco Pannella is the Radical leader. He is the man who in the first years in the 70s, performed with some other people in the first civil disobedience action against Italy’s drugs laws. He got arrested for several things in Rome. This is very important. We obtained the first reform of drugs laws thanks to this action. Because as a consequence we obtained decriminalization of personal consumption of drugs, all drugs, from the mid-70s which lasted more than 10 years, until 1988 or ‘89. When there was the first War on Drugs from Nancy and Ronald Reagan, Italy, because of the relationship with the Reagans, shifted to a prohibitionist stance. This lasted until 1993 when we won a referendum on that. In Italy if you collect 500,000 signatures, authenticated by a public officer, you can ask the people to repeal a law. Not propose a new law, but abolish an old law. This is the way in which the Radical Party won legalization of divorce, abortion, and the civil alternative to military service. Strong reforms of civil rights movements were obtained by the Radical Party by direct votes of the people. The active political system didn’t want the know about those, they were people issues. We did the same in the 1990s with drugs. We were asking for two things. Don’t put people in prison for drugs, and to allow doctors to prescribe medicines they deem appropriate to that person. There were very strong restrictions on methadone, almost prohibited there being such very strict rules. The referendum opened the way to a more free and personalized way of treating heroin and other addicts. After that, in 1995, and in '97-'98, we collected signatures for another referendum, this one for the legalization of drugs.

P- Is this still the Club Pannella movement?

MC- Now it is called the Italian Radicals, but it’s always the same political family. There is the Trans-National Radical Party, which is an NGO with consultative status with the United Nations. I was here in NYC working with Marco Perduca. I participated in several meetings in Vienna at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, and we took the floor in the UN meeting General Assembly meeting in 1998 when working on the new UN War on Drugs Convention. The Italian Radicals is more a national organization. What is important is that on this referendum we collected 750,000 signatures to fully legalize drugs, cannabis basically but also allowing medical prescription, two times, in 1995 and 1997. The trouble is that before having the people vote, the Constitutional Court, with 15 judges who are supposed to insure respect of the Italian Constitution- it is very politically corrupted and maybe not just politically- decided that because the Constitution says you cannot put up [for vote] a referendum about international treaties, like on European membership. The judges considered the provisions of the law, the Constitution, in a very broad and extensive way, saying we were trying to modify a law which was respecting international conventions of the UN on drugs. They said no, we could not repeal the law, because if we did that, in a way we were trying to repeal an international treaty.

P- The US has said the same thing to Canada, telling Canada if they reform their anti-marijuana laws, they’ll be violating international treaties.

MC- It is one thing to say you are violating part of a treaty. It’s another to say we were abolishing a treaty through a referendum. We were not doing that. We were trying to change the law, so the citizens should have taken the responsibility to go against some provisions of an international treaty. With this mechanism, they’ve ordered that people cannot vote on this referendum. This is why the Radicals are so sensitive about UN conventions on drugs. Because in fact the Italian regime used this convention to defeat national reform.

P- To defeat the people’s will.

MC- I can’t say we would have won, but we would have tried, and maybe had a big debate, because formally speaking, no one has as strong a stance as we have on this issue. Some are for harm reduction, or tolerance, or personal consumption of cannabis, but no one from the political side is for full legalization of drugs but us. We were confident that if full and strong debate could take place, we could have won.

P- Why do you suppose so many countries in Europe and even now Canada are experimenting with decriminalization and/or legalization of drugs, in particular cannabis, but not the US?

MC- It’s hard to say why.

P- Is it that there are more people seeking social control, or profits maybe? I mean, with your knowledge of economics, do you think the outrageous illegal drug profits and money spent waging the war are the reasons the War continues despite the obviousness of its failures?

MC- Well, I think that in the US there is in a way a very strong, direct way of treating issues and problems. It’s a very complex society with tens of millions of immigrants coming every year, with a high violence and crime rate, with a very high percentage of people in prison. It’s a country where dealing with crime and violence is a very strong issue. Usually from the political point of view to be strong on crime it is sort of a must for votes. I think that the second thing you say is true. Now there is a strong power of prohibition money that is corrupting society and also strong anti-drug bureaucracy. This is an obstacle to overcoming prohibition. I would not say this is the cause of prohibition. I think that this is still in a way democratically decided. Which doesn’t mean we can’t change the system.

P- Wait a minute. It is, or isn’t democratically decided?

MC- Nowadays it is democratically decided. If you ask people if they agree with legalization, I think most people would say no. I think that at the root of the strong political stance, there is in a way the will to please people on this issue. Having said that, I don’t think that this situation is something you cannot change, starting from the US. For example, we use a lot the word 'anti-prohibitionism'. This brings up in everyone’s mind the experience of alcohol prohibition in the US. That experience shows that the US is a country that can decide a thing, then change it. In Europe, we have more tolerance of drugs, but at the same time there is a trend to de-politicize it. A lot of people from the political side are saying to us, listen, you are going in an ideological angle, that yes we should treat people but be strong with the big criminals. Even if I prefer tolerance, that users are not put in prison, at the same time even if this is better there is a danger from this attitude too, which is to loose the political confrontation, to loose the consciousness that even the Netherlands is a prohibitionist country. You cannot remove the crime profit if you are just tolerant. I think the US system is strong and presented in black and white, without gray areas, still I think there is still a possibility of radical change. The political system is made is such a way that it can be changed.

P- Why do you think that so many prohibitionists disregard or maybe even pretend that the artificially inflated prices and profits from drugs created by prohibition don’t have something to do with why peasants in other countries are planting drug crops in the first place? I watched Rep. Dan Burton bring it up at some Colombian heroin hearings recently, that politicians are afraid to ask what would happen if we removed the profits from the trade, even bringing up a comparison to Al Capone.

MC- The basic argument for prohibitionists is a moral, or I would say a moralistic argument, saying the state cannot sell drugs, that the state cannot allow drugs to circulate. Ok, we can answer about alcohol and tobacco, but they don’t want to listen to that. I think this is the basic thing, to coincide with what they consider immoral and what we should consider illegal. Some from the prohibitionist side are ready to discuss figures, statistics and so on, but in the end the moralistic argument is the end one. For example, I was in San Diego with a delegation with the European Parliament. We were having a discussion with our US Congressional counterparts, and I remember there was a Rep. Ben Gilman, a good guy on a lot of the issues. We organized something with him on the International Criminal Court. We were talking about drugs in the official meeting. He was saying that now with the War on Terrorism, the War on Drugs is becoming even more important. I took the floor to say, wait a minute. We are having since 1996 or 1997 a project by which we were funding the Taliban for the War on Drugs, so now how can you say the two things go together? Yes, they go together, but the other way around. If you want to fight terrorism, you have to legalize drugs. It’s like Mo Mowlam, the former British Drug Czar for Tony Blair, who wrote a couple of anti-prohibitionism articles, one in which she said the same thing. When we think about what happened in Afghanistan with the Taliban, we really have two strong arguments, and there are no answers to this. The UN policy on drugs, under the leadership of Pino Arlacchi, was a policy of cooperation with the worst dictators in the world. He was going all over the place, to Iran, to China, Burma, and praising them for their anti-drug efforts. The only places which were criticized within the UN Forum were the Netherlands, Switzerland, even Italy, Spain and Portugal, the countries which have decriminalized consumption. So, we come to this paradoxical situation where democracies, when they try to exert some tolerance on the issue, they are internationally speaking strongly criticized. This is a good card in the hand of dictators. Because they can justify some internal repression under the flag of the fight against drugs.

P- Tell me about the upcoming 'Out From the Shadows- Ending Drug Prohibition in the 21st Century' convention in Merida, Mexico please.

MC- This meeting, the leading organizers of which are DRCNet and David Borden, is linking us to the very delicate situation for South and Central American countries because of the War on Drugs. I know that David Borden and his friends have been working very strongly on the preparations for this meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to involve as much as possible, starting from civil society to governments and institutions, these countries and these societies in the anti-prohibitionist movement. I don’t have now all the names of the participants, but I think it can be a very good occasion to link European reformers with American reformers and Central and South American reformers, in the process leading us to the Vienna Conference.

P- Do you yourself see a lot of pressure from the US towards those countries which have made moves towards reforming their own drug laws?

MC- Yes, the US is for sure the most active player on the world-wide prohibitionist regime model. At the same time, I think that everybody should take their responsibility, and this is true for Europe. I understand too that the people getting it the worst from the US are those in South and Central America. Those countries are depending in a lot of ways, economic and trade, on the US. I think with public opinion in Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Guatemala, they would be ready for a change. Politicians very often in an informal way criticize the War on Drugs, but publicly they are afraid to.

P- That was also mentioned by Rep. Burton during the Colombian Heroin hearings.

MC- For the Europeans, well, I don’t think we can just blame the US for prohibition in Europe. When we want to take a different line we do it. When we wanted an International Criminal Court, we did it. This is not just true for Europe. All around the world there are plenty of countries which are allied with the US on many issues, but on the Criminal Court, they signed, ratified, and went their own way. To answer your question, yes, the US is exerting a strong influence, but I don’t like when people try to blame just the US, to discharge all the responsibility for their anti-drug policies. We can do it. The Netherlands is a very small country, as is Switzerland. You don’t have to have to be a super-power country to change your drug policies.

P- Are European police as militarized as US police? I’ve seen machinegun toting cops in the EU, but do they act similarly to US prohibitionist enforcers? Do you get raids where doors are kicked in in a real militarized fashion?

MC- No. It’s different. The societies are different. I think the EU is a quieter place, for historical and traditional reasons. The US is a younger nation, a nation made by strong immigration flows, so I think it understandable that there’s a different impact by violence on the societies. In Europe it is less militarized in the war on drugs. It’s not just a problem of the police, but also of the impact of crime and violence on society.

P- Europe has struggled with terrorists and bombers and the like for a long time. Why do you think it’s just been since the September 11 attacks that there have been so many more intrusive, anti-privacy actions have been introduced both in the EU and the US? What’s different now?

MC- I was the drafter to the European Parliament for the new directive on privacy in the electronic communications sectors, the internet or by phone. I saw how the climate changed after Sept. 11. We have two readings in the Parliament before a bill is approved, two votes. The Parliament has to vote, then the Council, then it comes back to the Parliament. In the first readings I succeeded in having my proposal against data gathering excluded from the EU legislation. On the second reading we lost. Now they are trying to introduce a new bill to impose data retention in the EU states. Yes, the situation has changed.

P- Sept 11 was a horrible attack, but not the first terrorist attack ever. Why is this one being capitalized on so much?

MC- There are many reasons. September 11 was different in terms of magnitude. We had terrorism in Italy, and still there is terrorism in the Basque region of Spain and in Northern Ireland, but it’s always with specific political factions and reasons. Not that these attacks weren’t horrible, but Sept. 11 was different. It was against US civilization, an attack on civilians with a huge amounts of deaths. It’s not very different for an Italian citizen. It was NYC, but it could have been London or Paris, so it was directly connected to us and our civilization. It was a turning point. At the same time technology is causing new problems for privacy, so it is not just a reaction to Sept. 11, but also the fact that there’s a new technological landscape which legislators have to cope with. There has also been some political pressure from the US. Paradoxically in the EU, we approved data retention, but in the US you don’t have this.

P- But we do. The Pentagon is right now working on the Total Information Awareness Office, and the Homeland Security Act allows pretty extensive surveillance and more.

MC- Yes, now you do. But still, I'm talking about the possibility of the state to impose rules on the internet service providers to store data and pass it to law enforcement authorities.

P- You mean all across the board, not just one company in a specific case, but everyone has to do this?

MC- Yes. It’s a general surveillance system that is now in place in some European states. You cannot read it as just a US imposition. It’s also European.

P- What would you put in place instead of our current world-wide prohibition?

MC- Anti-prohibitionism, unlike prohibitionism, is not an ideology. So there is not a magic formula that can be applied all over the world. It depends on tradition. I think we should deal with it in a very empirical way, looking at the facts. If I had to decide tomorrow morning what to do, I would legalize cannabis and cannabis derivatives, because from a toxicological view it is much less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco. I would try to have a medically controlled supply of heroin for addicts.

P- Legalize the herbs and medicalize the alkaloids? So would you legalize, say, opium?

MC- I don’t think that with the situation today you can put heroin in supermarkets.

P- Not heroin, opium. Heroin is an alkaloid and should be given under a doctor's supervision for the most part in my opinion, but opium should be legal in other words, with say an 18-year old’s ID.

MC- Yes, the same thing for coca leaves. Maybe in a way we could legalize a lot of natural coca leaf products, but have stricter control on cocaine. Same thing with chemical drugs, make distinctions. There are a lot of things we could do and see the effects on people. We should use age and place limits. You should not do it in a way that it is just prohibition with another name. If you are strict, in the end you create a gray or black market. You have to be careful as to what can happen to children, to younger people. The important thing is to go in the opposite direction, focus the law where there is mafia and criminality, to take the market out of the mafia hands. This is the first thing to do. Then let’s work to see what happens. I don’t think we can have the same policy for coca in Italy that there would be in Peru.

P- Well, it’s very socialized in Peru, isn’t it? They’re raised with it and their social structure incorporates coca in many ways.

MC- Yes, just as we do with wine in Italy.

P- Which to the Indians of Peru is a major problem.

MC- Yes, they loose their minds. It’s a difficult thing, but with difficult things and problems [the answer] is to remove ideology. Prohibition is an ideology, an obstacle to find solutions. Today if you are an alcoholic it is a problem, for yourself, or if you drive, but it’s prohibited to do that. But you aren’t giving money to mafia, or guns and crime linked to alcohol. It’s a personal responsibility issue. There is a possibility for private and public entities to help people, but if you treat them like criminals, you can’t help them.

P- A lawmaker in the state of Maine has recently proposed outlawing drug use, which has not apparently been illegal there, though possession, production and trafficking are. One police official was quoted in a news report saying that one good thing that could come from this new proposal was that people who go to emergency rooms on heroin could be arrested, even if they hadn’t any drugs on them, only in them. How do you feel about that, telling an addict that if they come to the emergency room they run the risk of arrest?

MC- It’s quite evident that it’s a way of telling him or her that they should not show up, so maybe it’s better they die in the streets. This is what does and will happen. I told you before that we are legalizers. Sometimes from a political point of view, the harm reduction stance can be an obstacle to legalization. As I said before, people say you shouldn’t go towards this issue of anti-prohibitionism, just treat and take care of these people, give them medication and so on. This is an obstacle for a clear confrontation on the problem of the mafia and criminal markets. At the same time it would be cynical to, in the name of legalization, not to look at the needs of the people whose lives we need to save. I still prefer prohibitionist tolerance to prohibitionist intolerance. Legalization is an alternative to both, but at the same time if tomorrow morning, a drug addict is alive and not dead, this is already an important thing. This is a basic humanitarian thing. If you don’t allow drug consumers to be treated, if you treat them like criminals, condemning them to die in the streets, this is a crime, a crime that our institutions should be held accountable for. In fact, this kind of prohibitionism is a crime against humanity.

P- Absolutely. Are there many MEPs speaking out for reforms?

MC- There’s a UN meeting in April 2003 in Vienna, where they have to make an assessment of the 1998 General Assembly’s Convention on Drugs. What we in the Transnational Radical Party are trying to do is propose to governments through legislators a reform of UN drugs policy. We start at the European Parliament. We have 109 members of Parliament that have signed a resolution, an official parliamentarian text asking for two things- the legal control of substances which are today illegal, and a revision of current UN policies. The resolution is up on our website.

P- I noticed there aren’t a lot of US signatures on the petition yet. A lot from Finland though I noticed.

MC- For us it was easier to contact our European members, but we hope that with the news spreading we can get more US signatures. 109 legislators taking a strong stand is a lot, because it’s not simply a harm reduction, tolerance approach, it’s a strong resolution asking for legal control. We are starting the work of lobbying governments now.

P- Why are they meeting in Vienna and not NY?

MC- Because the UN Crime organization is there.

P- Do you feel it important, even incumbent on free people to engage in civil disobedience against unjust or unconstitutional laws?

MC- I think civil disobedience is a very powerful tool, and it should be used in a careful way. For people who are organizing and promoting this kind of action, you have to do it in a responsible way, you have to inform people of the dangers and consequences they are facing. You have to do it with publicity, to be sure people know what you are doing. Civil disobedience is not martyrdom or self-punishment or victimization. If you do it that way, I’m not saying it’s wrong but it won’t get you anywhere. You have to do civil disobedient action with institutional action, and do it with the best conditions for publicity. You have to provoke debate. You have to put a scandal under the spotlight, to allow people to think, why are you breaking the law and ready to go into prison. It’s a powerful tool, but you’ve got to use it wisely.

P- What is the “counter-report” you are planning on presenting in Vienna?

MC- Every year the UN prepares a report on the world’s drug situation. We are preparing a counter-report which is underlining the bad effects of prohibition on drug trends. This is important because in 1998, the Arlacchi meeting, a special session of the UN General Assembly, fixed a target for a drug free world, in 10 years.

P- Our politicians always do the same thing here.

MC- Yes. So after 5 years now, maybe the words are without meaning, just empty shells and you can say 10 more years, then another 10 years, and so on. If the words have no meaning, it’s ok. But if you mean what you say, you cannot set a target like this and after 5 years not take into any consideration the concrete results that you’ve obtained (Adobe Acrobat required). Which are the concrete results? There’s been a slight decrease in heroin consumption in the more mature markets? For cannabis and for the new drugs all over the world, and for new markets in Asia, Central America and Eastern Europe, you have an uprising in consumption, production, trafficking, crime, everything. All the indications are that there’s been an increase of drug trends. So the counter report that we’re preparing is to show the effects of the drug laws on the drug situation.

P- Why are countries trying decriminalizing drugs, when it keeps the sales in the hands of criminals? Why would using drugs be ok, but not selling them? Like you said, Amsterdam is tolerant, but they still haven’t removed the drug trade from the hands of the cartels.

MC- Yes, in a way this is a humanitarian policy, but it doesn’t go to the root of the problem. It’s helpful to have a person alive the day after, to limit the damage that drug consumption is taking on the person and society, but at the same time the problem is not solved.

P- Is there a big push for treatment alternatives in Europe? Here there’s a relatively new movement towards drug courts.

MC- In Europe it is maybe a little older, a situation more stabilized.

P- Treatment isn’t necessarily the same thing in Europe that it is here, is it? Here it’s a very moral stance, absolute abstinence is the preferred end result.

MC- There are very different models. Europe has very many different models within it as well. For example, in Italy, you have closed communities for heroin addicts. The addicts go there and cannot leave, and it is very strict. These are closed communities, say in a village up on a hill, and you stay there totally abstinent. Or, you have methadone services, where patients go and drink their methadone then go to work and live their lives. My approach is to say OK, let’s give the physician the responsibility to say what’s right…

P- And the patient.

MC- Yeah, and the patient too of course. The relationship between the doctor and patient to decide what is right for you. There are people who are able to get off heroin in these kinds of situations. There are even people who can do it because of jail. Total abstinence for them can work. There are also people who can have a quite normal relationship with heroin- normal is maybe not quite the right word- for years and years. There are very different types of people and they all need different types of treatments. This is not something the politicians should make their business.

P- What would you say to the US Drug Czar John Walters if you could have just a moment or two face to face?

MC- I don’t think there is much to say to him. His role is obliging him to ask for the wrong things in the wrong way.

P- But how does that relate to what you were saying earlier about people taking responsibility? I mean, it is his job but he still must take responsibility.

MC- Yes, that’s clear. They are scared that they will not have money to fund their anti-drug and terror initiatives. So they’ve combined the two. This is propaganda. They know very well that anti-drug money financed the Taliban.

P- Yes, and Montesinos of Peru.

MC- These are things they know very well. So it’s not political persuasion that can be done with them. If we have to talk before people, then the only thing that I want to talk about are results, which are before the eyes of everyone. They are awful. In the US and in other countries the levels of corruption, violence, terrorism, arms, that the drug monies are financing are enormous. These are the only things with him about which I’d like to discuss.

P- Even in prohibitionist European countries, do drug prisoners get as draconian drug sentences as they do in the US?

MC- Draconian prison sentences are all over Europe, maybe not like in the US, but this is because the justice system is different. In Italy, we have a rate of people in prison which is about one tenth of that in the US. It’s not just a problem with drugs, but also with the prison and criminal justice systems. In Sweden and France you can have very strong sentences. Usually for personal consumption though it’s difficult to be arrested or sentenced for long periods. If you do it many times maybe, but even if it’s not in the law there’s a de facto policy where the police or prosecutors have the material difficulty of having to deal with too many people, which leads them to de facto tolerance which is adding to the legal frame work.

P- Cops have and use their own discretion?

MC- They think for themselves. In Italy, they are obliged to prosecute a crime. The police cannot decide to let a charge drop because it’s not a priority, but that’s in theory. In practice, when you have prosecutors who have 105 cases but only time to take 5 or 10 of them, they are forced to use their own discretion.

P- Are more younger politicians who speak out like yourself becoming more common, and do you think this would be a factor in any possible reforms that are happening or may happen?

MC- No, I don’t think that it’s a big trend of change. At the same time, you have strongly conservative and progressive younger ones, so I don’t see age as a factor of reform or change per se. Yes, maybe talking about drugs sometimes it is more difficult to even know what they are about for a person of an older age, but I don’t see it having a strong impact on political issues.

P- Do you think music and other popular culture have a place in informing people and/or shaping people’s attitudes? I mean, because here in the 1960s, there was a huge anti-war movement amongst the musicians in particular, and even now there seem to be actors coming out against any possible war on Iraq. I just read today that you like rock n’ roll.

MC- Yes. There can be some role. The problem is for example, on [the issue of] drugs, musicians are very cautious because they don’t want to be attacked as drug friends, something like that. So I think the problem is, how can I say this, I don’t find a lot of them having the courage to speak out against prohibition because they don’t want to be perceived as friends of drugs. Because in the 1960s, and the 1970s, there was a linking of music to drugs.

P- So you think it’s a backlash?

MC- Maybe. Sort of, in the way that I don’t hear a lot of artists or musicians saying that with the enormous damages caused by drugs we should go the other way towards legalization, because the real problem is not drugs, but prohibition. I don’t hear this argument made by singers and the like.

P- Yeah, well, we’ve got singers like Justin Timberlake, formerly of the boy-band N’SYNC who took money from the ONDCP to make anti-drug commercials, and yet was spotted recently in a nightclub in NYC smoking pot, with his mother no less. His former group got $800,000 for doing those anti-drug commercials.

MC- I think that if they take an anti-prohibitionist position, they start having problems with producers, police…

P- Like Robert Downey Jr.

MC- Yes, and they start finding all sorts of obstacles to their careers. The anti-prohibitionist movement is still fragile. If you see the resources of our counterparts, the movement is very fragile.

P- Yeah, that’s something that really irritates me, when I see someone like John Walters and other prohibitionists too, when they talk about how so-called outsiders were spending lots of their own money on marijuana reform in places like Nevada during our last election cycle, as though this is a bad thing, often naming George Soros, when US government prohibitionists themselves have been and are spending billions of our tax-dollars waging their own prohibitionist, anti-reform campaigns.

MC- The reform side has very few resources in their hands. It would be tremendously helpful if artists would start making joint initiatives, like there was in the 80s with Live Aid. They should start doing things like this, but still the word ‘drug’ is still something that very many people are afraid of. And they are afraid, which is a real problem.

P- What do you think of politicians who admit to personal use of drugs, or who have family members busted for using drugs and get off, yet still rabidly support prohibition, like Clinton or our own mayor here in NYC, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, or even the Bush family?

MC- It depends on what degree of hypocrisy they put in it.

P- We have lots of politicians here in the US who either admitted drug use or supported prohibition but worked hard to get their busted family member off lightly when busted for drugs. What are you thoughts about that? Does it irritate you?

MC- Yes, it more than irritates me. It is a clear hypocrisy. I had the chance to say this in the European Parliament during debates. There is a tremendous amount of alcoholism in the European Parliament. There are a couple in particular who are really drug warriors, yet they have a big, big problem with alcohol, total alcoholics. It was one month ago that I found one of them in the center of Strasbourg in the middle of the night, and he wasn’t even able to walk he was so totally drunk. It’s sad, but at the same time when you have the same person a month later talking about how cannabis is dangerous for our kids, he is not credible. It is a way of manipulating arguments but I’m manipulating their own history, their own life. I don’t like this as a central argument for anti-prohibitionism or as the central argument for a political debate, but at the same time I think it is fair to use it. If they use lies, hypocrisy and misinformation to keep prohibition going, which they do, I think it is fair to tell them to look at their own business before enforcing how someone else should be. If you want to impose a moral through a law, but you are not even able to impose this moral on yourself or your family, that is weakening your argument.

P- Here in the US we have had the ONDCP paying for anti-drug messages to be placed into entertainment programs, actually vetting scripts, basically by buying lump sums of advertising space, then telling networks they could do away with some of what they owed in advertising space if they allowed the ONDCP to insert their anti-drug messages, without saying where the messages were coming from, into programming as well as into even what were supposed to be “news” stories in some print media. So we do have a system here where they get away with using our media for propaganda purposes. We had Drug Czar John Walters flying around the country during the last election cycle and making sure that there were anti-pot commercials airing in time to influence state elections where reform issues were being decided. We even have a new series of anti-SUV ads out now spoofing the ONDCP drugs-equals terrorism commercials, in which buying gas for gas-guzzling cars helps put money in terrorist pockets. Many networks have refused to air the anti-SUV ads saying they are too controversial, but the ONDCP ads are played without questions.

MC-- Yes, the anti-drug propaganda problem is a very big one. In Italy you have the state paying for anti-drug commercials.

P- With tax money like they do here?

MC- Yes, with tax money. You are right, it is a very big problem that we have to face on the other side, the mass of propaganda or false information and ideology, which is very difficult to counter. We don’t have the money or power. This is why, about the issue you raised before about artists and media people, maybe they could be the people who could put money and communications power to use for a change in policy. I don’t know who else is in a position to do that now.

P- Because no one else is going to get air-play.

MC- If you see a tv debate with a prohibitionist and an anti-prohibitionist, it’s 50-50, because drugs are very dangerous things so people are scared of the issue. But if it was just a debate and then a vote after the debate, I think that anti-prohibition and legalization could be a viable political position. Today though it’s still a taboo or a political pariah.

P- No, people don’t often bring it up during an election. We did actually see a number of people running who brought it up this last cycle.

MC- Libertarians?

P- Yeah, mainly, but not all. In New York, we actually had a number of candidates running for Governor bringing it up prominently, particularly on marijuana and medical marijuana issues, but no one promoting real reforms won. Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson waited until after he was elected to come out strongly in favor of reforms. He didn’t while running so far as I know.

MC- This is one of the missions of our President of the Anti-Prohibitionist League, Professor Arnold Trebach. In a way, the good thing with him is he’s a university professor who is campaigning for anti-prohibitionism with the same image, the same patriotism, as a conservative American but who is still a strong legalizer. If for people like him we could count on more resources and energy, even in the US the situation could change. The system is organized in the US in such as way that as soon as the debate is open, the political system has within itself the rules and the energies to change position.

P- We just had a letter go out to US District Attorneys from US Drug Czar Walters urging them to do everything in their power to fight drug laws reform. In California, the police were saying for years that if people didn’t like anti-pot laws, they should write new ones. As soon as the people did just that, police in some areas of California are saying it isn’t a good enough law, not to mention the feds current warring. In many counties they are still arresting people even though the citizens said no, this isn’t what we want happening. Did we have that problem at the end of prohibition, where police continued arrested people for buying and selling alcohol, saying they’d just let the courts settle it?

MC- In the US, as I understand it, the problem is that it is a fight between the state of California and the federal state.

P- Yes, but you have certain counties in California, like Orange County, where cops are still going gung ho.

MC- Cops that do it against the law…

P- It’s not even that they are breaking the law, they are using excuses to circumvent the law. The federal prohibitionists are a whole other ballgame.

MC- It is a problem, but I don’t think it can be the ultimate obstacle against legalization. If you have a strong political change, sooner or later police should follow. It’s true for example that at the UN level, the international narcotic contravention board is making strong pressure against drug reformers. Their mandate is to say how the conventions are applied, but they are putting into their reports some attacks against us, the parliamentarians for anti prohibitionist action, against legalizers, against even music when the music is giving a sort of pro-drug message. They should be a body entitled to look at the application of the treaties but they do politics and propaganda. They are not doing their business. In France for example, there is a law prohibiting portraying cannabis in a favorable light. Prohibitionism of drugs is also prohibitionism on treatment and even ideas and debate.

P- Yeah, we have a guy in New Jersey, Ed “NJWeedman” Forchion, who is in jail [after nearly 6 months, Forchion was ordered released and back into Intensive Supervision by Federal Judge Ireanas on January 24, 2003] for speaking out for drug law reforms while under correctional supervision. The state is flagrantly being unconstitutional to this guy. They’ve forgotten to file paperwork, taking their sweet time presenting their side of the case, necessitating more continuances of the case until future dates, leaving him in jail with no chance of bail. Ok, just two more questions. What are your thoughts on current US foreign policy, as there seems to be a lot of hypocrisy there too.

MC- Well as I said before, as Radicals we are in favor of international instruments of promotion for rule of law and democracy. At the same time we are not what can be considered, from a European point of view, of the classic anti-American stance. We don’t belong to that. Because we feel that sometimes the anti-American movement is too much on the side of dictators.

P- Almost as though if they are an enemy of the US, they must be ok?

MC- As if the problem now for the world was only Bush, and not Saddam. We think it’s possible to build an alternative, an alternative to dictators and terrorists in favor of democracy and the promotion of democracy, but using different tools than the ones the US is using. Nowadays, technology is allowing what we call information bombs, the power to communicate is an alternative weapon against dictators and totalitarian states. I think we should put more energy and resources and strength into this kind of non-violent approach to promoting and imposing democracy and the rule of law, rather than what the US is now doing. At the same time, the WWII experience was one that when Hitler was starting to rumble around, in the name of peace we didn’t do anything and let him become what he became. It is important to have international action, it is important to avoid war whenever possible but at the same time, in the name of peace I don’t think we can just accept people like Saddam or like in Korea. You’re right, there are errors made, but mistakes are made when you take responsibility. It is less acceptable to not do anything. For example, in Yugoslavia the military action maybe could have been avoided before, but when it occurred it was needed to stop genocide, so it was better that it came.

P- This brings up something else. Isn’t Kosovo another place where there’s basically a heroin funded organization funded primarily with heroin, the KLA or whatever name they're going by now, placed in power through US military action, in similar fashion to what's happened in Afghanistan now?

MC- You know the market power of drugs was also very strong there during the 90s, so the situation is not worse now than before. What has changed is that there was a genocide going on and now there’s not.

P- Is there anything else I’ve not touched on that you’d like to mention?

MC- There are 35 people on trial from the Radicals for civil disobedient actions, some in Italy and some in the UK. As I said before, we obtained though civil disobedience the first drug law reforms in the 1970s, so I think that this along with institutional democratic campaigns are both strong weapons for reforms. The only other thing I want to mention is that we have now with the UN meetings coming up the possibility of raising the legalization issue from the national to the transnational issue. It is very important that reformers all over the world join in the effort to discourse.

P- One last question. Were you surprised when the European Voice named you the Most Influential European of the Year for 2002?

MC- Yes, I was surprised by the nomination, which came about because of my work on the privacy issue, my work on the civil and individual freedoms on the internet. I was very pleased by it. The second phase was an on-line election and on that I campaigned strongly. Yes I was surprised, but I worked for it.