Drug Abuse

 

 

Pubdate: Sun, 01 Mar 2009

Source: Japan Times (Japan)

Copyright: 2009 The Japan Times

Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Website: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/

Author: Hiroaki Sato

Note: Hiroaki Sato is a translator and essayist who lives in New York.

Cited: The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy

http://drugsanddemocracy.org/

 

The View From New York

 

WHAT 'PROHIBITION' HAS WROUGHT

 

NEW YORK - When I read the news that the Latin American Commission on

Drugs and Democracy "blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that

is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point" (Wall

Street Journal, Feb. 12), I thought: Someone is finally talking

sense. I have long regarded the U.S. approach to drugs as

self-righteous, overbearing and destructive.

 

This is not the first time the U.S. "war on drugs," which President

Richard Nixon started back in 1971, has been pronounced a failure.

Five years ago, for example, none other than President George W.

Bush's "drug czar," John Walters, admitted that the "war" was

failing. Of course, Walters, a hard-nosed conservative, made it clear

that the U.S. had no intention of abandoning it. Today, he insists

that intensified drug-related violence in Mexico - 4,000 people

killed in 2008 alone - is a sign that the U.S. war is succeeding.

 

There have been more recent judgments. Late last year, Ernest

Zedillo, former president of Mexico, wrote in a Brookings Institution

report that "current U.S. counternarcotics policies are failing by

most objective measures."

 

Just about the same time, the U.S. General Accountability Office

(GAO), "the investigative arm of Congress," came to a conclusion not

as negative, but not positive, either: The "drug reduction goals" of

Plan Colombia were "not fully met," the report said. Under that plan,

which Bush greatly expanded, the U.S. has given $4.9 billion to

Colombia's military and National Police since 2000, making that

country the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid.

 

Yet, from 2000 to 2006, even as "opium poppy cultivation and heroin

production declined about 50 percent," the report said, "coca

cultivation and cocaine production levels increased by about 15 and 4

percent." As is often pointed out, coca plants have special dietary

and medicinal roles to play for certain groups of people in Colombia.

 

The difference this time, it appears, is that the Latin American

Commission, in its brief statement, doesn't beat around the bush. The

three former presidents who head the commission - Zedillo, Fernando

Henrique Cardoso (Brazil) and Cesar Gaviria (Colombia) - call for "a

paradigm shift," telling the U.S. that its policy, particularly as it

affects their countries, is wholly misguided.

 

"Prohibitionist policies," they state, "have not yielded the expected

results." Instead, "the eradication of production," "the disruption

of drug flows" and "the criminalization of consumption" are wreaking

human and social havoc that is "growing worse by the day."

 

The word "prohibition" immediately brings to mind "The Noble

Experiment": the ban on "the manufacture, sale or transportation of

intoxicating liquors" that was enacted as a U.S. constitutional

amendment in 1919 and turned this country into a gangland. The

prohibition this time has created far more destructive organized

crime. It deploys the military, not just heavily armed police. In the

present prohibition, the United States is waging a proxy war in

foreign lands against its own domestic problem, destroying a great

many people in the process.

 

"U.S.-funded helicopters have provided the air mobility needed to

rapidly move Colombian counternarcotics and counterinsurgency

forces," observes the GAO report. Note "counterinsurgency forces." It

was prepared for U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, now vice president.

 

"U.S. advisers, training, equipment, and intelligence assistance have

also helped professionalize Colombia's military and police forces,"

Jess Ford, who put together the report, notes in an insouciant tone

that is possible only to someone who knows his country can lord it

over the world.

 

Remember how Americans cheerfully supported Bush when he went to war

with a country that hadn't even attacked their country? How rampant

the talk of attacking Iran, yet another country that hasn't done much

harm to America?

 

With equal insouciance, Ford talks about "a number of achievements,"

which include "the aerial and manual eradication of hundreds of

thousands of hectares of coca, the seizure of tons of cocaine, and

the capture or killing of a number of illegal armed group leaders and

thousands of combatants." Aerial eradication. Did Ford pause for a

moment to think about Agent Orange, the herbicide warfare in Vietnam?

 

For a paradigm shift, the Latin American Commission urges that "the

association of drugs with crime" be dropped. That is, decriminalize

drugs and drug use. As important, switch the focus from eradicating

production to reducing consumption, the commission argues. Drug

decriminalization is one thing a number of U.S. organizations have

advocated, among them Law Enforcement against Prohibition, a group of

police officers and judges opposed to the four-decade-old U.S. "war on drugs."

 

Among the reports urging eradication of at least one type of "drug"

from illegality is one prepared by Jeffrey Miron. In "The Budgetary

Implications of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States," Miron, a

visiting professor at Harvard, proposes treating marijuana like any

of the alcoholic beverages and taxing it. More than 500 economists

have endorsed his idea. The Latin American Commission is exasperated

that the U.S. treats marijuana, or cannabis, as "a drug."

 

When it comes to reducing consumption, the U.S. puts the horse before

the cart. Why punish the producer and seller, and not the buyer and

user? Where there is no demand, there should be no supply. Attempts

to regulate production and sale of guns consistently fail in this

country. Why force that approach on drugs?

 

Yes, the U.S. makes "drug arrests." The number, steadily increasing,

reached 1.89 million in 2006, the FBI reports. Apparently, large

proportions of those arrested are not jailed, and that's good. But

the number of those jailed is still large. Drug violators are

estimated to account for a quarter of the 2.3 million in prison in 2007.

 

One odd aspect of this is that four-fifths of those imprisoned drug

violators are for possession, not for use. Does that explain why

musicians, writers and movie stars talk about their drug use in books

and TV shows openly, with impunity?

 

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