Drug Abuse

 

 

Pubdate: Wed, 18 Feb 2009

Source: Washington Times (DC)

Copyright: 2009 The Washington Times, LLC.

Website: http://www.washingtontimes.com/

Author: Steve Chapman

Note: Steve Chapman is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Note: Report at

http://drugsanddemocracy.org/files/2009/02/declaracao-ingles-site.pdf

 

REALITY INTRUDES ON DRUG WAR

 

In the story of the emperor with no clothes, it took someone whose

observations are rarely heeded - a child - to point out the obvious

fact no one else could acknowledge. In the case of drug policy, it

takes people who are usually ignored by Washington policymakers -

Latin Americans - to perform the same invaluable service.

 

Last week, a commission made up of 17 members, from Peruvian novelist

Mario Vargas Llosa to Sonia Picado, the Costa Rican who heads the

Inter-American Institute on Human Rights, did nothing but admit the

truth: The war on drugs is a failure.

 

"Prohibitionist policies based on the eradication of production and on

the disruption of drug flows as well as on the criminalization of

consumption have not yielded the expected results," the panel said in

a report

(http://drugsanddemocracy.org/files/2009/02/declaracao-ingles-site.pdf).

"We are farther than ever from the announced goal of eradicating drugs."

 

The panel was co-chaired by three former heads of state - Ernesto

Zedillo of Mexico, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Fernando Henrique

Cardoso of Brazil, all of whom were once leaders in the crusade. In

1996, Mr. Zedillo won attention for escalating the crackdown. But they

have learned from experience that the old strategy doesn't work.

 

The mere failure to stamp out drugs is not the only result. Worse

still, particularly for Latin Americans, is the plague of unintended

consequences. Among them, the commission noted, are the expansion of

organized crime, a surge of violence related to drug trafficking and

pandemic corruption among law enforcement personnel from the street

level on up.

 

Normally, these regrettable side effects are sufficiently distant that

Americans can ignore them. But at the moment, Mexico is in the throes

of a virtual civil war. Last year, some 6,000 people died in

drug-related violence, and already this year, another 2,000 have perished.

 

Illegal workers are not the only migrants across our southern border.

"U.S. authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings, and

home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels," the

Associated Press reports. "And to some policymakers' surprise, much of

the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was

assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable distance away,

in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta."

 

The commission report highlights that we have been fighting this war

for some four decades, with no end - much less victory - in sight. No

one in Washington even talks in such terms anymore. As the Brookings

Institution pointed out in a recent study, drug use in the United

States has remained stable over the last two decades, with a million

people using heroin and 3.3 million using cocaine.

 

"Despite some of the world's strictest drug laws, combined

hard-core-user prevalence rates for hard drugs are 4 times higher than

in Europe," it noted. If tough law enforcement at home and abroad were

choking off the supply of illicit substances, prices would be soaring.

In fact, the retail cost of cocaine has dropped by more than two

thirds since 1990.

 

The U.S. government has sent a lot of money south to eradicate fields

of cannabis and coca. But this amounts to plowing the sea. Where there

is demand, there will be supply.

 

Latin America is a large place. Stamp out production in one area and

it will sprout somewhere else. Drug users in this country show a

stubborn indifference to whether their preferred vice comes from

Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay or Pluto, as long as it

comes from somewhere. It always does.

 

The Latin American commission suggests using education and treatment

to reduce the demand for illegal pleasure in consuming countries. But

between the lines lurks a more important and radical idea, namely to

treat recreational drug use (like drinking or smoking cigarettes) as a

vice, not a crime.

 

"The enormous capacity of the narcotics trade for violence and

corruption can only be effectively countered if its sources of income

are substantially weakened," it argues. Unsaid is that the only way to

drastically reduce the profitability of drug production and

trafficking is to make them legal - as we did with liquor after

Prohibition.

 

Most people, here or in Latin America, may not be ready for that

remedy. But facing the truth about the drug war is a step toward

salvation. If you want to change reality, it helps to abandon your

fantasies.

 

Steve Chapman is a nationally syndicated columnist.

 

 

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