Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-18-Speech-4-293"
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"en.19991118.15.4-293"2
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"Mr President, congratulations to my colleague on her report. In my part of Europe 3 million people are on illegal drugs, that includes 28% of 16-29 year-olds and 14% of 14-15 year-olds. 12,000 new, notified addict cases come each year; we have 70,000 drug offenders a year and we lose 1,200 people through drug-related deaths per year. This is a battle which we may not be winning now, but which we must not lose. We need a multi-pronged policy, we need to act together to stop the growers and the traders and the pushers, but we also need policies on education and health and we need to encourage research. If we simply cut the supply and not the demand, then we will end up with a higher price for the drugs on the street and with more crime being committed to pay for people's habits.
Many of the amendments to this report before us are therefore right. We need to educate young people. We need role models from music and fashion and film to get the message across to young people: not just by saying "no", that does not work, but by telling them the truth. The truth is that drugs can bring pleasure but also the truth is that they can damage health. Damage in the form of cancer and heart disease, in memory and concentration loss, testicular problems and so on, and young people need to understand that, too.
Drug-taking is wrong, but we need to help those who are willing to accept help. I shall never forget, as a minister responsible for fighting drugs, going and meeting a young man who had lost his health and his friends and his relationships, his family, his jobs, his prospects and his self-respect. He was being helped to help himself come out of that deep black hole of addiction. I stupidly asked him "Do you feel you are beating it yet?" and he said to me "I have a lifetime struggle ahead of me – if I ever think that I have beaten it, then I am lost". He deserves our support. He needs the research to make sure that we have effective treatments and we need to give him that help and that confidence. But how much better if we could destroy this evil by persuading future generations of young people that it is simply not for them; it is simply not worth taking the risk."@en1
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