Italy signs up to zero-tolerance drugs crackdown

Italy promised to sign up to a draconian regime of drug prohibition this week, even though many European governments are introducing more relaxed drugs policies.

The Italian position is in keeping with the views of a UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which has concluded with a clarion call to pursue a zero-tolerance drugs policy.

Gianfranco Fini, Italy's "post-Fascist" Deputy Prime Minister, told a commission meeting in Vienna that Italy planned to eliminate the distinction between soft and hard drugs and introduce penalties for possession of illegal drugs for personal use.

Unlike the Netherlands, with its marijuana coffee shops, Italy is not widely perceived as a country that is soft on drugs. But in February, a 17-year-old pupil, who had been arrested on a school trip for possession of 40 hashish joints, was acquitted when he explained that he was planning to share them with fellow students and a teacher.

"The attitude of the state must change," Mr Fini told the commission. "It cannot remain indifferent to illegal drugs, even when they are for personal consumption." His remarks chimed with the conclusion of the commission, meeting five years after a special session of the UN General Assembly swore to achieve the "elimination or significant reduction" of illegal drug production and use within 10 years. Yesterday, representatives of 142 countries agreed to persevere with the prohibition regime.

Antonio Maria Costa, director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, admitted that "a lot of unfinished business" remained, and said it was unclear whether the deadline of 2008 to eliminate drugs could be met.

But many experts maintain that the zero-tolerance stance is counterproductive, hastening the spread of Aids, for example.

At a meeting on the fringe of the commission, Thanasis Apostolou, an advisor to George Papandreou, the Greek Foreign Minister, said: "Europe should dare to question the UN drug treaties. They need to be revised to allow European nations and other countries to pursue their own initiatives."

In Rome, meanwhile, a veteran campaigner for more liberal drug laws, Marco Pannella, leader of the Radical Party, condemned Mr Fini's initiative as "a clerico-Fascist project with the support of the left".