Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-18-Speech-4-292"
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"en.19991118.15.4-292"2
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"Mr President, I am speaking in place of my colleague, Mr Hernández Mollar and, on his behalf, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur, Mrs Giannakou-Koutsikou on the excellent work which she has done. It is clear that the drug problem, not only on a European level but also on a world level, requires the special attention of politicians, institutions and the whole of civil society. On 26 October, in this Parliament, the President of Colombia, a country which unfortunately has strong links with the drug problem, told us: “Drug trafficking has been the great creator of violence and has led to assassinations of the highest possible human cost to our country”. And we are not talking here about an issue which only affects the Member States nor the European Union, but an issue which directly affects human beings in any country of the world.
Our first concern in this Parliament should be to point out that the responsibility is collective, that it requires collaboration, cooperation and coordination between the judicial and penal authorities and between the different continents, whether they be the European Union, Latin America, South East Asia or African countries.
The second concern is that the European Union must play a greater role in the field of reducing the demand for drugs. To this end, the European Parliament, in this resolution, has highlighted and strengthened the role which the European Observatory on Drugs and Drug Addiction must play by giving it greater means and resources to fulfil its objective efficiently. I would like particularly to stress the importance of the fight against traffickers who use and exploit illegal immigrants, especially on the Southern border of Europe, in Andalucia, Ceuta and Melilla, which have become a channel for drug trafficking.
I would like to dedicate the third consideration to the group which is most affected by this social scourge; our young people. A recent survey carried out in my country indicated that the second greatest social problem in the eyes of our young people was, after unemployment, the drug problem. As the resolution says, drugs give rise to family problems, work problems and road accidents. If we add to this the considerable increase which has been observed in the consumption of alcohol by young people, which in many cases goes hand in hand with drug-taking, especially synthetic drugs, we can see the need to adopt urgent measures which will reverse this trend. Action in the field of education and families, economic cooperation with associations and NGOs, especially in the field of leisure and sport, will complement the actions which must banish this “pressure valve” from the lives of our young people which sometimes means that they are destroyed by something which starts out as a means of escape.
But we cannot solve these problems by talk alone. Resources are required. Both the Member States and the European Union itself must prioritise, in their budgets, the economic means which will allow the implementation of the measures proposed, including prevention, suppression and rehabilitation. And unfortunately this is still not the case."@en1
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