E-022/01 February 1, 2001   NATIONAL ANTI-DRUG REPORTS PINPOINT NEED FOR SPECIFIC ACTIONS   The countries of the Americas need to act quickly to implement recommendations that have come out of the new hemisphere-wide drug evaluation process, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), César Gaviria, said today. The 34 national reports produced under the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM), which were made public today, show that every country needs to improve its efforts against illegal drugs, Gaviria told a news conference. He stressed that all the countries agreed on the recommendations through a fair and uniform process of collecting and analyzing the data. "The MEM helps define what each country can do to make our collective anti-drug efforts more effective," he said. "Now it’s time to act on the recommendations. This process will be judged by whether it produces concrete results." Some of the recommendations point to widespread deficiencies. For example, it was recommended that 28 countries ratify the Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, which covers extradition issues. Implementing a system to estimate drug consumption, extending prevention programs to key populations and establishing a firearms databank were among other recommendations that applied to more than 20 countries. The complete reports, as well as a summary of the recommendations, are available on the Internet www.cicad.oas.org The Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism was designed and implemented by the OAS Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (known by its Spanish acronym, CICAD), following a 1998 mandate from the region’s presidents and prime ministers assembled at the Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile. The first results – the 34 national reports as well as a hemispheric report released last month – will be presented to the Third Summit of the Americas, which will take place in Quebec City, Canada, April 20-22. The Summit Implementation Review Group, which met at the OAS this week to discuss the Summit’s Plan of Action, is considering including hemisphere-wide mandates in three areas related to drugs: establishing financial intelligence units in every country to track drug-related transactions; creating a uniform system to measure social and economic costs of the drug problem; and raising funds for alternative development and demand reduction. # # #