WAR ON DRUGS

“If anyone wants to understand why drugs flourish, one has to keep in mind that every thousand lire that are invested in drugs on the first of September, will give a return of one hundred million on the first of August of the following year.” The murdered Italian judge Giovanni Falcone

"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade”. Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State during her flight to Mexico City on May 26, 2009.



The U.S.A. is the most powerful country in the world. It can start wars, and it can end them. As a very small boy, in May 1945, I saw the green U.S. army trucks with their white star turn into our street in my home village in Holland. They put an end to death and starvation in my country, and freed us from the Nazis. Now is in my opinion the time, especially for the U.S.A,  to end a new war that is spreading death and destruction.

Organized crime -  as I found out during my study of criminology - was already endemic in the U.S.A.  long before the prohibition. However, after the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment on the Constitution in 1920, the production and sale of alcohol came into the hands of the mob. Prices rocketed sky-high and a large part of the alcohol sold to the thirsty public became contaminated and sometimes deadly. The “bootleggers” started to live in a grand style, as in “The great Gatsby”, but they also became so incredibly rich that their coffers would never be empty again.   Their money was reinvested in the “upper world”  or used to finance new crimes, but, wherever the money was, it stayed in criminal hands and could always emerge as an investment in a legalized business, as start capital for criminal activities or to buy political influence.

Since the ban on alcohol in the United States was lifted, for a number of decades the law makers and the law enforcement agencies concentrated on drugs, prostitution, gambling and “loan sharking”.  It is remarkable that, apart from loan sharking,  they focused their attention on – let’s say – human weaknesses, behavior that, in other times and places, had not always been regarded as criminal, even in the U.S. The issue appeared not so much to be the weighing the possible disadvantages of the human search for pleasure, as fighting pleasure itself, as a sinful deviation that had to be exterminated with the law in the hand. Under the guidance of the United States of America, the world has – slowly but inexorably – been covered by international treaties that force the national governments to act against the use and traffic of drugs. In the success-stories of the international crime-fighters however – such as: “Another 1000 kilos confiscated” etc. – some astounding facts are systematically overlooked, or should one say: hidden. Politicians all over the world seem to be stricken with blindness as far as these facts are concerned, or worse, they brush them aside in fear of the public opinion.

To start with: during the Prohibition not more than an average 5% of the production of alcohol per annum was confiscated by the authorities (Edward Behr, Thirteen years That Changed America). The percentage for the “war on drugs” is somewhat higher, about 10%. It has, according to investigators, stayed on that level through the years and there is no reason to believe that this will ever change. The war on drugs however (in which I played my own part as a judge) is essential for maintaining the price-level of drugs. It is no coincidence that the gangs are against legalization: law-enforcement – and nothing else – causes their enormous tax-free profits, but there is more.  Nowadays, extremely violent narco-syndicates are overrunning whole countries, for instance in Africa; may-be some are even giving out passports already. The mobs infiltrate in every layer of the society, in Europe and elsewhere. The selling channels for textile are being used for drugs, vice versa (Gomorra by Roberto Saviano). Also, paradoxically, because of our war on opium we will never be able to pull the financial teeth of the Taliban. In the meantime, our adolescents, who want to experiment, lose their respect for the law, while prisons all over the world are filled with tit-bit drug traffickers or with young people who have put their finger in the sugar-pot.  And Heaven forbid that super-rich criminal master-minds start investing in weapons of mass destruction.

Should we end this war? Yes, if fighting means attacking wind-mills like don Quixote de la Mancha did. Can one compare drugs with wind-mills?  Aren’t they dangerous? Most certainly. People get addicted and some people get killed. But look at the tobacco problem. Its use is – in a small country like Holland alone – responsible for 20.000 (twenty thousand!)  smoking-related deaths per annum, but no politician in his right mind is pleading for a ban on tobacco, which of course would only lead to a take-over by the gangs and to a prohibition-like situation. The selling of cigarettes is restricted to adults, and working areas are protected from smoke. So strict regulation, instruction and inspection of the quality  (for instance of medical marihuana) are of course absolutely necessary. 

In 1840, Abraham Lincoln remarked in regard to the possibility of total liquor prohibition: “It makes a crime out of things that are not crime”. I’ll drink to that. As far as drugs are concerned, however, I think that things must get worse before they will get better.

Harry G. Hermans, vice-president (ret.) of the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam.

April 2010, Naarden, The Netherlands