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Roger Warren Evans
Roger Warren Evans
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You are in the company
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Roger Warren Evans |
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item0032B 622, 623 622 10 February 2003 Betrayal of our children  We
betray our children by allowing the US-led "war on drugs" to
dominate our lives and our laws. The long mischievous arm of the
American religious right dominates this policy sector, just as surely as it
dominates US Middle East policy. Evidence continues to accumulate of
the corrosive consequences of
this historic error, this awesome political misjudgment made by the
UK, giving in to US pressures. It was in 1920, after Versailles, at a time when the great Welshman David Lloyd
George was Prime Minister. It was in that year that the
fatally flawed Dangerous Drugs Act
was passed - the Prohbition measure which has dominated this sector ever
since (now the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971,
but the principles are the same..) And I feel an almost personal
responsibility to put right this awful wrong.
Why, then, are we criminalising our children? Why do we do this to them? The entire drugs trade should be brought out of the shadows, legalised and properly regulated. And we should accord care, and love and treatment to those in need of them. There are now 11 (yes, eleven MPs/MEPs) with the perception and courage to espouse this cause openly -
This is a crucial List, and one to which there should be many more adherents (ask your own MP why he/she has not signed...) These have all signed the anti-Prohibition Declaration now on-line - and you can sign too, on-line, to express your support for this important campaign > The Angel Declaration And whether you can sign the Angel Declaration or not - drop me a line
623 10 February 2003 Private property, public shame The founders of the World Trade Organisation cannot have believed it would be like this. This week, WTO chief Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi warned that a failure to agree a deal on cheap drugs for developing countries could threaten the whole new round of global trade negotiations. All but one of the 144 WTO Member States agree that the pharmaceutical majors must submit to the mandatory licensing of their key drugs (in particular for AIDS), thus permitting the third world to produce cheap unbranded ("generic") alternatives, to combat global disease. Yet the United States, home to all the world's biggest drugs companies, will not agree. There is to be a major conference in Cancun/Mexico in September, and time is running short. "We need progress on drugs and agriculture to make Cancun a success" said Panitchpakdi. But the pharmaceutical companies seek to protect their huge profit margins which (they have always contended) are the key to their ability to finance research and the forward development of new drugs. This is the classic Marxist antithesis - the interests of private property ranged against the public interest, both red in tooth and claw. The corporate sector fears that, if their true profits are exposed to public gaze, incomprehension and envy will combine to ruin their business. Successful new drugs generate the most enormous "gross profit" margins, which the companies to their best to conceal and rationalise. They are desperate to maintain the secrecy of their business and the arbitrary nature of their conduct of the industry.
What do you think? Drop me a line
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