Conclusions and Perspectives

On September 8 and 9, 2004, the Second National Conference on Drug Policy was held in the city of Buenos Aires, organized by Intercambios Civil Association with support from the Drug Policy Reform Fund, administered by the Tides Foundation of New York. This conference was held in the Auditorium of the Chamber of Deputies (House of Representatives) of the National Congress. More than 350 participants were present, among them legislators, judges, policy makers, judicial and health system professionals, NGO representatives, and drug users. This conference was declared of interest by the Senate and the House of Representatives and was supported by the National Ministry of Health and Environment, the Secretary for Prevention of Drug Addiction and Control of Drug Trafficking (SEDRONAR), the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), the United Nations AIDS Program (UNAIDS), and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), among other national and international organizations.

Intercambios is an NGO that has been working for nearly a decade on problems related to drugs, and on this opportunity brought the debate to the highest level of the legislative arena.

In the opening panel, the President of Intercambios, Graciela Touzé, stated that “Not only do the policies are applied to this issue not help, in fact they aggravate the problem. Therefore we ask the State and offer to collaborate and form an alliance with civil society to think of and implement new alternatives and to change the norms in order to be able to implement new policies.” “There still is not a clear policy against drugs” said Dr. José Granero, Secretary of State for Prevention of Drug Addiction and Control of Narcotrafficking (SEDRONAR), who added that “since 1989 there has been a presidential decree that orders the creation of a national drug policy plan.” Representatives María Teresa Ferrín and Marta Osorio, President and first Vice-president of the Commission of Addiction Prevention and Control of Drug Trafficking of the House of Representatives, also spoke in the opening panel.

The socio-cultural context of the drug phenomenon was discussed on a panel made up of the sociologist Alberto Calabrese, philosopher Ester Cohen, journalist Pedro Lipcovich, and philosopher León Rozitchner. Mr. Calabrese (Institutional Assessor of the Toxicology Help Fund) affirmed that “the fight against drugs is absurd. We must design a clear and active policy so that people do not take drugs. And when there are people who use drugs despite everything, we must seriously think about harm reduction policies.”

On the panel about national legislation, Senator Diana Conti presented her bill that modifies articles 5, 14, 19, and 20 and countermands articles 17, 18, 21, and 22 of Law 23,737. The bill states that penalization of drug possession is a veiled manner of penalizing drug consumption, therefore violating the reserve principle established by Article 19 of the National Constitution. Later, Dr. Matilde Bruera, public defender of Federal Tribunal Nº 2 in the city of Rosario, emphasized these statements.

Representative Francisco Sellarés also declared his support for the depenalization of drug possession for personal consumption and for projects that include harm reduction policies. The necessity of including this perspective into public policy was also highlighted by Representative Juliana Marino.

The judge from the Federal Appeals Court of Paraná, Dr. Enrique García Vitor, asserted that “the war on drugs is a misguided policy.” He added, “We have to reduce drug consumption through the education system. There are countries that don’t penalize drug possession for personal use, such as Uruguay, and when you go over there you realize that they don’t have more drug use or a bigger drug mafia than we have here. If the penal system has to come to tell me what my child is doing, it’s an embarrassment to my ability as a father.” Representative María Fabiana Ríos stated that “although we may take on the issues of drugs in Argentina, we often forget that behind the drugs there is an individual with their own problems and troubles.” She added, “We cannot lose sight of the matter of legal drugs, those which are sold in every pharmacy.”

Dr. Alain Labrousse, founder of the Geopolitical Drug Observatory and guest speaker from France, closed the first day of the conference. “Geopolitical interests start to conflict and contradict governments’ proclamations of their determination to combat drugs,” said Labrousse and added, “the relationship between power and  drug trafficking cartels is clear in Mexico; in Argentina it’s not much different. The Yabran affair, for example, still is not resolved. Furthermore, if the United States and Europe did not point out the corruption in [former President] Menem’s government, it’s clear that this is due to the implementation of neoliberal policies that benefited their companies.”

In the second day of the conference, Dr. Gerry Stimson (Great Britain), Executive Director of the International Harm Reduction Association, expressed that “harm reduction does not blame people. Perhaps you don’t agree with what they’re doing, but you try to understand the individual’s situation and maintain respect for that person.”

In the panel on drugs in the public policy agenda, the President of the National Drug Coalition of Uruguay, Dr. Leonardo Costa, stated: “Countries sometimes see crime as the central piece of the issue, but I think that drug use is not an issue for the Ministry of the Interior but rather for the Ministry of Health. In my country, possession for [personal] consumption is not considered a crime, but rather a legalized conduct and this allows for health interventions.

Dr. Camilo Verruno, Subsecretary of Prevention and Assistance of SEDRONAR, announced that “because of visits from international experts and the experiences with harm reduction, SEDRONAR will open a forum for discussion where harm reduction discourse with be incorporated. After this happens, an official position will be presented.”

Brazilian Representative Paulo Pimenta, author of bill 7134 that modifies Brazil’s drug law, contextualized the creation of that law under the framework of a project from [President] Lula’s government. “It intensified the discussions to change the legislation from the perspective of inclusion and citizenship.” In this context he recounted that he dedicated himself to “coordinate and unify the bills into a new drug law, containing 73 articles, by means of a debate in society and in seven areas of the government.” The law proposed by Pimenta was approved by the House of Representatives and is awaiting approval from the Senate. He explained: “This law distinguishes between users on the one hand and drug-traffickers on the other, and proposes penalties for users which don’t include prison.”

In the panel “Politics of Control”, Dr. Ricardo Rojas, Judge from the City of Buenos Aires, stated that “the stigmatization of the addict as a delinquent goes against the goals that we try to pursue, which is to rehabilitate that person for society.” Germán Montenegro, Sub-director of the Research Program on the Armed Forces, Security, and Society (National University of Quilmes), asserted that “we are in a historic moment in which the State is beginning to regain the ability to intervene on these issues.”

For the lawyer José Stefanolo, “the attitude that a country takes in relation to drugs demonstrates what kind of country it is. I believe that the issue [about drug use] has to be dealt with in civil justice rather than in the penal system. In the penal system, one does not live in the hell of drugs, but rather in the hell of prison.” In that panel, psychiatrist Alfredo Grande commented, “If someone uses a drug and only puts him or herself at risk, the treatment cannot be worse than the sickness. Stigmatization is an attack on mental health.”

At the end of the second and final day of the conference, Pablo Cymerman, of Intercambios Civil Association, brought the conference to a close stating, “Current drug policies are in need of a major changes; they have demonstrated not only their inability to respond adequately to the multiple needs related to drug use, that have been brought about by changes in the social context, but they have also demonstrated their harm-producing nature.” He continued and insisted on “reflection and action, action that permits us to cut across the discursive plane and put into practice new forms of responding to the problems associated with drugs, without the current practices of criminalization and isolation.”