Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 12, 1990 TAG: 9004120183
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LONDON LENGTH: Medium
Earlier in the final day of the three-day conference, doctors warned that the spread of AIDS by drug users was increasing worldwide.
While strongly rejecting legalization, the delegates disagreed on punishment for drug abusers. However, they did back alternatives to prison for drug abusers.
U.S. delegates said users must be held accountable, but authorities from the Netherlands said drug abusers should be treated like alcoholics or smokers.
Delegates were also at odds over programs to make sterile needles available to drug users to reduce the spread of AIDS through contaminated needles.
U.S. Secretary of Health Dr. Louis Sullivan questioned research findings showing such programs did not promote increased drug use. He said the U.S. government refused to fund such programs.
The 35-point declaration adopted at the end of the drug conference, sponsored by Britain and the United Nations, noted that the drug market was no longer confined to industrial nations.
The declaration called for action at the community, neighborhood and family level, as well as the national and international level, to prevent drug abuse. It said drug education should be started in elementary school.
The declaration committed delegates to giving higher priority to fighting drugs on all fronts: reducing demand, eliminating crops and drug trafficking, preventing laundering of drug money, and promoting effective treatment and rehabilitation.
U.S. and British experts said increased drug use in the developing world was raising the number of drug abusers infected by HIV, the AIDS virus.
"Where three years ago, HIV infection among drug injectors was seen as a developed world problem, it is now really seen as a worldwide problem," said Dr. Don C. Des Jarlais of Beth Israel Hospital in New York.
by CNB