Is Antonio Maria Costa Out of His Mind?
Vienna 2006 Commission on Narcotic Drugs:
“UNODC Director Antonio Maria Costa: No mention of HIV/AIDS. UN Office on Drugs and Crime Director Antonio Maria Costa noted the successes of international drug control in limiting deaths associated with illicit drugs. Strikingly, he did not mention HIV/AIDS. He urged European governments to increase pressure to reduce demand for drugs, and warned that societies have the drug problems they deserve.”
Maybe some societies have the drug problems that Antonio Maria Costa and the UNODC forced on them, did he ever think of that?
We can’t fathom what Costa is talking about. What about all the deaths from ERADICATION? A few thousand die of starvation and disease, wake up to the needle, HIV epidemic looms, but “Drugs Have Been Eradicated”? What madness is this? Costa needs to redo his math on “Limiting Deaths”. Easy for him to say in his cozy office.
Encod Attends Vienna Conference http://www.encod.org/
We wrote turid.edvardsen@nca.no at Norwegian Church Aid and asked him why NCA was STILL supporting the opium eradication policies in Laos? When it is already clear in the district they work in what the cost has been to the Akha. Norwegian Church Aid supplied arial photos of the opium fields that “needed” to be destroyed.
NCA has this poster in Luang Namtha that condemns drug tourism. Maybe they need to make one of all the Akha who died as a result of their involvement in eradicating opium?
Maybe they can share the death statistics with us?
Most of them infants and Children.
NCA continues that policy and the children continue to die.
