Protest
Mars
McCaffrey's
London
Visit
10/29/99
While London's Sunday Times hailed US "Drug Czar" General Barry McCaffrey's visit to Britain this week with a story profiling his military record and winking at the bureaucratic prowess he has evinced in "boosting his department's budget to the size of Luxembourg's gross domestic product," later reports indicated that other Britons were not amused. At a press conference on Monday (10/25) at the University of London, where McCaffrey met with British "Drug Tsar" Keith Hellawell to launch a drug information web site, the General was met with shouts of "hypocrite" and "Go home Nazi scum" by some thirty students and other demonstrators protesting the US-led international drug war. Footage of the protest shown across the UK on the evening news showed McCaffrey turning his back on protesters criticizing "tough" US drug policies and demanding to know about CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking, and ultimately fleeing the scene. Resentment against McCaffrey's visit was likely inflamed by recent proposals by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to adopt a more US-style drug policy. Steve Rolles of the British drug reform group Transform, which helped coordinate Monday's protest, told DRCNet that public and media sentiment against Blair's plans is running strong. "Blair's proposals to drug test all people arrested and deny bail to positives received strong condemnation from all but the most right wing media," he said via e-mail. "Even the traditionally conservative Telegraph ran a leader stating that the proposals amounted to an illegal breach of human rights." Curiously, the web site whose launch gave occasion to the press conference is loaded with precisely the sort of drug information McCaffrey rails against back home. "ResourceNet," a government funded project touted as an "expert panel"-reviewed online catalog of drug education material for professionals, lists several harm reduction guides designed for drug users among its wares. The UK was the first stop on a four-country European tour for McCaffrey, who hopes to elicit more support from European nations in the Latin American drug war. Another key item on his agenda is to promote a US proposal for a new, international drug agency to test athletes that is independent from the International Olympic Committee. Britain has agreed to back that proposal. ResourceNet is online at http://www.resourcenet.org.uk. Visit Transform at http://www.transformuk.freeserve.co.uk.
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