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In parallel with the two series of panels that comprised the 1st Latin American Conference on Drug Policy Reform -- the general discussions on drug reform in Latin America and the meetings of legislators and judges on the topic -- the umbrella grouping of Latin American anti-prohibitionist organizations, REFORMA, held a series of meetings during the conference to plot strategy at both the national and international levels. (With Jamaica NORML's Paul Chang joining the REFORMA executive committee, the group will henceforth refer to itself as a Latin American and Caribbean anti-prohibitionist organization.)

Luiz Paulo Guanabara and Gustavo de Greiff

Representing Latin America and the Caribbean were, among others, conference hosts the Argentine Harm Reduction Association, the Brazilian harm reduction group Aborda, the Brazilian organization Psicotropicus, honorary head former Colombian attorney general Gustavo de Greiff, the Colombia-centered group Mama Coca, Jamaica NORML, and the Uruguayan harm reduction group El Abrojo. The working group also included Marco Perduca representing the International Antiprohibitionist League, Joep Oomen representing the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policie, and Phillip Smith of the US-based Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet), also a frankly anti-prohibitionist organization.

In the REFORMA meetings, which occurred before, after, and in between the conference's official sessions, participants hammered out a strategy and plan of action for attacking the legal backbone of global drug prohibition, the series of three United Nations conventions, or treaties, that establish drug prohibition as global policy and which constrain individual nations from deviating from the prohibitionist norms. Those treaties and their effectiveness will be up for review at the special meeting of the UN General Assembly in Vienna in 2008.

Under the conventions, any given country cannot, for example, legalize marijuana without being in breach of the conventions. The necessity of adhering to the conventions is why Holland never officially ended marijuana prohibition even though it is now observed mostly in the breach, at least when it comes to the country's famous cannabis coffee shops.

The REFORMA meetings elaborated a list of actors to target ranging from national governments -- it is only they who have votes at the UN -- to parliamentarians at the national and regional levels, local authorities, scientific experts, the press, and celebrities. Religious leaders were also mentioned, although their significance appeared to escape representatives from secular Europe.

These people and institutions will be targeted by REFORMA and its constituent groups in their respective countries in an effort to demand that countries undertake an evaluation of the impact of current prohibitionist drug policies at the national level. With these comprehensive studies completed, critics of the conventions will be able to present them in Vienna in a challenge to drug war orthodoxy.

REFORMA "must activate and animate" local authorities, such as friendly mayors or health department heads, said ARDA's Silvia Inchaurraga.

"We have two and half years before Vienna, and we need to get busy now," said the IAL's Marco Perduca.

	Phil Smith, Luiz Paulo Guanabara, Silvia Inchaurraga, Paul Chang

With plans underway to hold another Latin American drug reform meeting next year in Brazil, the REFORMA agenda and timelines will continue to evolve, with changing the UN conventions being the primary, but not sole, concern of the hemispheric umbrella group.

But REFORMA still has work to do in creating a hemispheric movement. Several major Latin American countries were not represented, notably Cuba and Venezuela, while Mexico's presence was limited to de Greiff, who has made his home in Mexico City for a number of years since serving as Colombia's ambassador. While other countries, including Ecuador, Paraguay, the Central American states and the Guyanas were not present either, REFORMA will concentrate its efforts on the first three.

As the last official act of the 1st Latin American Conference on Drug Reform, REFORMA members agreed to and presented "The Buenos Aires Declaration" formally rejecting the UN conventions and war on drugs-style drug policies, and demanding that national governments embark on rigorous studies of the effect of prohibitionist policies at the national level in time for Vienna in 2008.

"The Buenos Aires Declaration on Drug Policy Reform shows the core of the REFORMA platform and action plan from 2005 to 2008," said Inchaurraga, who sits on the group's executive committee. "Since the creation of the Latin American network in Popayan, Colombia, one year ago, we in the executive we have been discussing ideas to strengthen the anti-prohibitionist movement in Latin America by bringing together different problems related to the war on drugs, including those of drug users, producers, peasants and institutions."

Below is the Buenos Aires Declaration in its entirety:

The Buenos Aires Declaration on Drug Policy Reform

The REFORMA network, meeting on September 7-9, 2005, in Buenos Aires has agreed to issue this document.

Whereas:

• Prohibitionist policies have failed worldwide, with this failure signifying grave problems for citizens, organizations, producers, peasants, and drug users;
• Prohibitionist policies have also failed in their effort to control and reduce the supply and demand for drugs
• Latin America shows significant signs of political, institutional, police, and judicial corruption, the criminalization of users, the demonization of plants, etc.;
• Alternative approaches have had to and must confront significant obstacles and are in many cases neutralized, as is reflected in the reality that countries that have made progress with harm reduction strategies in the region have usually been associated with the prevention of HIV/AIDS and anti-prohibitionist organizations have not received official support;
• It is urgent that the agendas of harm reduction not be reduced to the prevention of the transmission of HIV/AIDS but that they include the social, political, and institutional harms associated with phenomenon like police and judicial corruption, urban and institutional violence, and the weakening of individual rights as well as environmental and cultural harms;
• It is necessary to involve health and legal experts, governments, the means of communications, economists, and leaders in general to demand the reform of drug policies in Latin America;
• The war on drugs has diverted 80% of the billions of dollars appropriated for the issue toward warlike, repressive, and overwhelmingly police-military ends when this immense amount of resources should have been made available for prevention, aid, and health promotion for the affected populations and the preservation of ecosystems;
• It is absolutely necessary that actions are coordinated so that human rights includes access to health and information and guarantees of social justice and preservation of the environment.

• To denounce the harms created by Latin American governments aligning themselves with the policy of a war against drugs, which has been transformed into a war against the ecosystem, plants, indigenous people, peasants, drug users and even anti-prohibitionist thinkers, maximizing social exclusion and the harms derived from the criminalization of poverty;
• To demand from our governments a rigorous study of the effects and impact of the drug policies that have implemented to this time and a study of the costs of executing these policies to reject the international treaties on drugs;
• To convoke a group of specialists from the region to form a committee of advisors to REFORMA that will accompany us in creating a document for the United Nations Commission on Drugs in 2008;
• To call on local and national authorities, professionals, the mass media, and drug user and peasant producer networks to join in the 2nd Latin American Conference on Drug Policy Reform to be held in 2006 in Brazil;
• To contribute to preserving the human rights of peasants, indigenous people, and drug users beginning with the need to reduce the harms of mistaken policies that have overwhelmingly failed in Latin America, and to support the development and strengthtening of harm reduction in Latin America and campaigns and initiatives for the necessary legislative reforms in the region;
• To reject public policies that are not in accord with Latin American cultures and traditions, en particular those of indigenous peoples;
• To reaffirm the ritual, traditional, and medicinal uses of substances like coca leaf and marijuana, and to contribute to the diffusion of scientific evidence in the matter;
• To conceive drug users as citizens and defend their role as protagonists as health agents in harm reduction programs;
• To defend the rights of individuals over their own lives and bodies as well as the right of free expression and the right to information about drugs;
• To push for the decriminalization of drug possession for personal use, home growing for personal use, and the legalization of marijuana for therapeutic use as perfectly viable proposals for the medium term in Latin America;
• To open the debate over the alternatives of open and controlled legalization through forums with international specialists and the establishment of working links with other anti-prohibitionist organizations around the world;
• To reject the current UN conventions on drugs and the proposals for alternative development as violations of the sovereignty of signatory states, and to appeal for the defense of the sovereignty of peoples over their legal systems;
• The demilitarization of the anti-drug agencies and the redistribution of those resources in the field of drug control from the police-court ambit to the areas of health and education.

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