Correspondents' Correspondence Fighting Drugs
LAND, THOMAS
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Fighting Drugs Geneva-worried about the widening social...
...Thomas Land...
...Other European countries may follow suit...
...Not surprisingly, however, the flexible international crime syndicates soon looked elsewhere to satisfy the Western market for heroin...
...the figure is around 600,000...
...Education, treatment and rehabilitation," she explains, " are key elements in t he prevention and reduction of drug abuse...
...The operation seemed to be effective for a time because the notorious French Connection supplying Asian heroin to the West had just been dismantled...
...Consequently, the new anti-drug offensive, with the support of the Nordic Council, will attack the heroin trade both on the production and on the consumption fronts...
...for the U.S...
...Attempts will also be made to persuade several Western governments to reconsider their present spending policies in this area...
...Meanwhile, the underground market for drugs has widened in the West...
...In fact, Pakistani opium growers, benefiting from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the war between Iran and Iraq, have emerged as the leading exporters of inexpensive, high-quality heroin...
...They found ideal conditions for their trade in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan...
...The UN project, being worked out in detail after a series of specialist meetings in Vienna, coincides with a decision announced by Britain to invest roughly $12 million in a program to help drug addicts...
...Thus the coordinated effort, undertaken at the urging of Tamar Oppenheimer, the Canadian official recently appointed director of the UN Division of Narcotic Drugs...
...The UN's new action-oriented scheme, endorsed by the Economic and Social Council and approved by the General Assembly, actually widens a six-year-old campaign launched in Nordic Europe to fight drug distribution at the source...
...The three-the World Health Organization, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the International Labor Office-are funded largely by Western development aid...
...The Nordic initiative led to vast and temporarily successful projectsinThailand, Burma and elsewhere designed to persuade local peasants to switch from opium poppies to alternative crops such as coffee and kidney beans...
...They have hitherto concentrated their energies in the poorest regions of the world...
...The number of addicts in the 10-nation European Community, mostly young people, is now estimated at 200,000...
...The Scandinavians were alarmed that their own combined population of addicts exceeded 10,000...
...Many experts blame increasing drug use on declining job opportunities for young people, as well as cuts in governmental welfare budgets...
...Oppenheimer isoptimistic...
...Even the weather was helpful, ruining several successive opium crops in the Golden Triangle of Asia, the world's principal source of illicit supplies...
...Many other countries, including Britain, Canada and theU.S., joined in...
...The three participating UN organizations will contribute some funds and much knowledge in the very areas where help is most needed by Western addicts...
...One of the largest rival smuggling groups that filled the vacuum left by the French Connection has recently been broken, after many arrests in Britain, Canada, France, and theUnited States...
...But specialists here foresee no slackening in the trade, especially now that recurring favorable weather conditions have again led to a series of bumper crops in the Golden Triangle...
...Oppenheimer, who was a key figure at the third UN Congress on the prevention of crime and the treatment of drug offenders in Stockholm, explains this expansion of focus that will encompass more than simply the supply of drugs: "Demand is an important aspect of the complex problem of drug abuse...
...But the current explosion of drug addiction among the Western young has created a major problem closer to home...
...Fighting Drugs Geneva-worried about the widening social effects of unemployment among the young in Western Europe and North America, three agencies of the United Nations are joining forces in a rescue strategy for drug addicts in the industrial world...
...Unless illicit demand is reduced, efforts to reduce illicit supply will be frustrated...
...When it entered the picture in 1977, the Nordic Council-representing Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland-declared that it would release development capital to finance crop substitution in opium-growing Asian nations...
Vol. 66 • October 1983 • No. 20
