03/08/2010 Joint declaration by the Nonviolent Radical Party transnational and transparty, Luca Coscioni Association and the International Anti-prohibitionist League For decades, staff working with HIV-positive patients or patients with drug addiction have collected scientific evidence bearing witness to the failings of prohibitionist policies; however, reading this data from an ideological standpoint one could easily ignore the devastating effects of the “drugs war�? in terms of public health: number of deaths and levels of infection, recovery, and cure. When political powers decide to trample on every bit of evidence, the road to new forms of totalitarianism is opened: it is because of this that we decided to back the mobilisation of scientists and doctors through the Vienna Declaration, which includes among the first signatories Elly Katabira, President of the International AIDS Society; Evan Wood, PhD, founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy; Julio Montaner, President of the International AIDS Society; Fernando Henrique Cardoso, President of Brazil 1995-2003, and Adeeba Kamarulzaman, Head of the Department for Infectious Diseases, University of Malaysia. We also commit our organisations to back the requests of the Vienna Declaration, particularly the proposal to decriminalise drug users, to increase evidence-based pharmacological therapy options, and to abolish the ineffective and binding substance abuse treatment centres which violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Finally, we embrace the appeal by the signatories to the UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon in order that he issues emergency measures to guarantee that the UN, including the International Narcotics Control Board, express support for the decriminalisation of drug users and adopt evidence-based drug control strategies. As Radicals we wish to add that, while we appreciate the UN agencies’ difficult progress in their fight against AIDS both in terms of their social and healthcare contributions, we also feel that it is wrong that the Government ought not to pay its share to the global fund for Aids, malaria, and tuberculosis (260m in 2009-10), and that the same Government has not given any reason for its absence at the Vienna conference ending on July 23, 2010. Read the full text of the Vienna Declaration (Translated from the Italian by Francesco Sani)