Foundation for a Drug-Free Europe
calls for results-based programs
to curb continent’s drug epidemic

 Brussels, 26 June 2006

Drug experts, NGOs and politicians gathered in Brussels to observe the United Nations’ International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking and to establish a results-based approach for a viable anti-drug policy. The conference, organized by the Foundation for a Drug-Free Europe (FDFE), was attended by NGOs, representatives of the diplomatic corps and drug treatment operators. Participants explored new ways and expanded alliances in dealing with drug abuse.

Diana Coad

David Williams

Franco Napoletano

Geoffrey Davies

Ken Eckersley

Marc Bromberg

Ugo Ferrando

Foundation members called on Mr. Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to “encourage supportive parents, efficient teachers, social workers and society at large to foster confidence and self-esteem in each child, and educate them about the effects drugs have on families and communities.”
While there are positive signs in the reduction of youth starting on drugs for the first time, cannabis still remains the most commonly abused drug in Europe, the Foundation warns. Approximately 15 percent of 15-year-old students in EU member states use the drug more than 40 times a year, according to United Nations International Narcotics Control Board’s (INCB) president, Professor Hamid Ghodse, in the INCB’s 2005 report.

The tone of the FDFE conference was set by Foundation Chairman E. Kenneth Eckersley, former Magistrate and CEO of CEPTA (Campaign for Effective Prevention & Treatment of Addiction), who said, “We want to hear from the silent majority who may not be getting the solutions to drugs they expected from the MPs and MEPs they voted for.”

The FDFE was acknowledged by Keith Hellawell, former UK drug czar and chairman of the UK Association of Chief Police Officers, who stated, “I commend your Foundation and its mission to all those political policy-makers and officials who are daily searching for light at the end of the ‘drug problem’ tunnel, and advise them to open their throttles wide and speed towards a Drug-Free Europe, because that IS the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Geoffrey Davies, a businessman before devoting his life to campaigning against drug abuse, is now chairman of trustees of the National Drug Prevention Alliance (NDPA), a leading UK charity that provides drug prevention services. His is a story common to many other families: it started one evening when a policeman rang his doorbell to tell him and his wife that his son, Philip, was found dead on his bed after a rave party held in the student union. Mr. Davis knew that his son had smoked cannabis but certainly didn’t suspect, as many others misled by false propaganda, that Philip’s cannabis smoking would lead to his use of other illicit drugs. 
“I want a future in which young people are not afraid to pursue their limits but are encouraged and advised well enough that they avoid dangerous limits,” said Mr. Davies. “My dream is one of a society where drug taking is not regarded as inevitable and the damage to be at best limited but one where a super model found taking drugs loses her engagements permanently — one where drug taking is regarded with the abhorrence reserved for paedophilia.”

UK politician Diana Coad is the founder of a British think tank, “Kids Count,” which formulates policies effecting young people from birth to 25 years of age. She emphasizes to politicians, opinion makers and lawmakers that the commonplace “laissez-faire” attitude toward drugs, “drug legalization” and “harm reduction” are leading nowhere. “We are now top the European league for teenage pregnancies, substance use and binge drinking,” said Mrs. Coad of Britain’s drug situation. “We have younger and younger children trying drugs — a mental and physical health time bomb waiting to explode.”

The purpose of the conference, say its organizers, was to shift anti-drug policy to a results-based approach, a principal theme of Ugo Ferrando, President of Narconon South Europe & Africa, an expanding network of 20 drug rehabilitation and drug prevention centers from the United Kingdom to South Africa.

“In a recent six-month follow-up survey of Narconon graduates, 78 percent had no new legal situations since graduating and many of them had cleared up those that existed prior to graduation,” said Mr. Ferrando. ”These are the results the people and the governments of Europe wants to know.”

David A. Williams, author and senior consultant at Thames Valley University, gave a 34-year senior police officer’s perspective of the devastation illegal drugs inflict on communities throughout the continent. He leads “Drugs and the Workplace,” a new and inventive anti-drug strategy that targets the workplace, where 28.5 million UK employees comprise 47.5 percent of the entire population (according to the UK’s National Statistics Office, published June 2005). “It is my view, that much better returns can be achieved by reducing the demand factor,” Mr. Williams told FDFE Conference attendees. “ ‘Saying no to drugs and yes to life’ must be based on effective information, education and awareness programmes which are capable of reaching the masses, specifically targeting large sectors of the community who operate in a controlled environment namely, our schools and workplaces.”

In this respect, Marc Bromberg, a French representative of the “Say No to Drugs – Say Yes to Life” drug prevention campaign briefed attendees on the results achieved by its effective information campaign, which targets children, teens and young adults. Active in 53 countries and coordinated by the Church Scientology, “Say No to Drugs – Say Yes to Life” successfully exposes the dangers of drugs, with millions of “Truth About Drugs” booklets distributed for free to youth, students, parents, law enforcement and educators.