All the misinformed or incurable optimists present today who are laboring under the impression that the traditionally affluent western nations hold something of a monopoly on the killer drug market and its devastating effects, must be made aware that the reality of the "drug" problem in Eastern Europe is, for a variety of reasons, similar to if not worse than the situation in Italy or the U.S.A.

As we all know, there is no lack of repressive "prohibitionist" regulations in Eastern Europe. On the contrary, in this regard, East European drug regulations may be said to be the harshest and least "socially" equipped to help rehabilitate drug abusers. There is a shortage of statistics since the Ministries of Health and Domestic Affairs have only just begun to allow some basic statistics to leak out to the public. All other information is released thanks to alternative and dissident groups. In both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, most data is handed out by the various anti-prohibitionist associations which have sprung up in the largest cities in recent months.

From this data it emerges that the total number of drug addicts (those on record!) is in the order of several hundred thousand and that due to the chronic lack of disposable hypodermic needles and the abysmally low hygienic standards, AIDS is taking a heavy toll on thousands each year, especially within the precincts of hospitals and prisons. Those affected by AIDS do not only come from the so-called "high-risk categories," however. Many have contracted the disease through needle exchange and infected blood, which until recently was not even subject to screening. Thus, hemophiliacs, hospital patients and blood donors, along with a large number of babies, are also targeted as victims.

Not surprisingly, one of the first things which Boris Yeltsin did upon taking office was to issue a dramatic appeal to the west, in order for the Soviet Union to be supplied with millions of disposable syringes, which are now desperately needed in that country.

This may be the tip of the iceberg, but what lurks beneath is far more frightening. The Asian Mafia in Uzbekistan and Khirgisia as well as Caucasian drug rings in Georgia, Armenia or even Moscow are running a huge mobile drug-trafficking business.

During the stagnation period under Brezhnev, the linkage between the political power of the periphery and the local mafia had reached such an extent that Mr. Gorbachev was compelled to replace over 80 percent of the regional Communist Party secretaries. So after such rackets as prostitution, hard currency and missing merchandise, the going business is now drugs.

Likewise, it is not surprising that during one of his recent speeches Gorbachev owned up to the failure of alcohol prohibition while pointing to the shortcomings in Soviet drug legislation. Today the only future awaiting drug addicts is jail or the insane asylum for criminals. The only way out of this vicious circle for most is death or a place in the AIDS ghettos. The threat of life sentence or the death penalty which are envisaged under Soviet law for drug trafficking have as yet been unable to curb the growing drug market. The first cautious remarks by jurists and sociologists are starting to appear in Perestroika newspapers where the failure of Soviet-style drug prohibition is cited. Appeals are now being launched to implement preventive measures in hospitals and prisons. Urgent requests are being made to purchase in the west huge quantities of condoms which are chronically unavailable or rationed in Soviet pharmacies, but alluringly on display in great abundance on the shelves of "Beriozka" shops for foreign tourists and members of the nomenklatura who pay in dollars.

To this and other contradictory outgrowths of Soviet anti-prohibitionary madness, the Radical Party, in collaboration with the Drug Policy Foundation and CORA, rejoined by staging an anti-prohibition conference in Moscow. With the help of deputy Juri Afanasev (and Yeltsin, leader of Soviet Radical groups), who made available the prestigious conference hall for the Department of Historical Research and the authoritative appearance of Arnold Trebach from the American University in Washington, D.C., and the Italian Senator Lorenzo Strik Lievers, a spirited debate took place which did not go unnoticed by observers from both the Soviet Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Bolshevik rules are diehard, however, as an interview with Literaturnaya Gazeta (with a readership of six million), illustrating the reasons behind our struggle for anti-prohibition, has been put on hold until such time the KGB and bureaucrats from the above Ministries will consent to allowing the article to be printed.

We are also working with anti-prohibitionist groups under the umbrella of "Narkoman," based in Moscow and Leningrad.

Operating out of Yugoslavia, a country with a thriving drug market, are the Turkish and Bosnian mafias who are linked to Sicilian and American dope dealers. While the drug laws of Yugoslavia are somewhat milder than those in the USSR, they are nonetheless blatantly persecutory and prohibitionary. There exist in the country no drug addict rehabilitation facilities aside from state prisons. Those caught in possession of a few grams of hashish are persecuted, while the country as a whole is reduced to one gigantic freeway transiting tons of drugs to the west. On a number of occasions reports have appeared in the newspapers which have focused on the connections between the political and administrative leaders of Montenegro-Bosnia and the powerful Balkan drug-trafficking organizations. Radical member and reporters Milovan Bride has publicly denounced this state of affairs on a number of occasions, only to be assaulted and roughed up as a result. He was threatened to be killed by a high-ranking Montenegrino police officer, thereby being forced to go into hiding for a good many months.

Concerned with dismembering Yugoslavia into breakaway states, the political parties have swept this problem under the carpet. Were it not for the Slovenian Anti-prohibition Leagues in Maribor and Lubyan who are carrying on an intense activity in support of drug market regulation and the liberalization of light drugs, with the collaboration of LIA and CORA, the silence surrounding this immense death racket would be unbroken with the full approval of drug dealers and their patrons. Likewise, nobody would ever have known about the exchange of drugs and weapons between the Muslim mafia of Bosnia and the Iranian ayatollahs unless Walter, the young Socialists' magazine, had not courageously gone ahead and published the evidence of these illicit trade operations. One week after printing this information, the magazine was closed.

Much the same is true in Bulgaria, where the situation, however, is aggravated by the fact that the state security service has been in charge of running the "illegal" drug trade, which, together with the sale of arms, accounted for one of the major sources of revenue supporting the oppressive Bulgarian slum regime.

In light of this, it seems proper to lend credence to those who firmly believe that behind the persecution of the Turkish ethnic minority in Bulgaria is a fierce struggle for the supremacy of "drug holdings" between the Bulgarians and the Turks.

In this strange country, prohibitionism has continuously met with failure over the last 50 years. From the time of the first laws which sparked the persecution of Turks until the present time, drug-trafficking has grown at a mind-boggling pace, as well as the associated crime level.
And interestingly enough, those who happen to take a bus ride from Sofia to the Yugoslav city of Nis, in close proximity, may sense the good feelings between Turkish and Iranian drug runners and the Bulgarian border guards busily watching over their well-stocked checkpoints.

In Czechoslovakia, the first ones aside from the Radicals to point out the drug problem were the fans of John Lennon (John Lennon Peace Club), who have been a thorn in the side of the authorities because of their drug information awareness campaigns in this country where drug abuse is on the rise and where we anti-prohibitionists will be staging (staged) an International Anti-Prohibition Convention in September 1990 in Prague.

From the foregoing material it has been shown that nobody is immune from the free-flowing drug market, the Mafia and their shady dealings with national authorities.

And in conclusion, I should like to pose one final question to all the cynically-minded prohibitionist policy-makers who draft their drug regulations at the expense of human lives: whether they have taken the trouble to document themselves on the failures which have occurred in these countries where their puritanical and hypocritical policies have caused more deaths than those resulting from drugs themselves? And if they are concerned about whether the failures of prohibitionism in Eastern Europe could be read and analyzed in order to prevent the same thing from reoccurring in other countries?

Ignorance and pig-headed puritan morality go hand in hand with political cynicism and the mega-profits of drug dealers to spawn a devilish "dance macabre" — a dance of death.

John Bok, a member of the Radical Party, is an advisor to President Vaclav Havel. His address is Brezinova 7, 180 00 Praha 8, Czechoslovakia.