from narconews.com According
to de Greiff, it is precisely drug prohibition – a policy that gained force in
the 1960s and 70s under the government of president Richard Nixon as a response
to street violence provoked by competition between crime organizations for
consumer markets. What provokes this violence, as well as the commerce, is its
illegal nature, producing enormous profits for drug traffickers and corrupt
authorities, a business that will be difficult to stop as long as there are
consumers. Currently
an investigator with the Colegio de México, the former attorney general of
Colombia explained in an interview with the daily Por Esto! that while he did
that job he realized the futility of the drug war: “The police arrested the
drug traffickers, dismembered cartels, confiscated property, destroyed
laboratories, intercepted drug shipments and, in spite of all that, nothing
happened in the general panorama of the drug fight, because it kept coming to
the consumer markets, among those, the most important, in the United States. The
business is so profitable that if you disintegrate one cartel, other
narco-traffickers take its place in the market.” De
Greiff used studies produced by the White House Office of Drug Control to
demonstrate that although the drug business is gigantic, it doesn’t rise to
the $500 billion dollar figure that has been used to justify the anti-drug
policy. Rather, American consumers spend $57 billion dollars a year on illicit
drugs or on licit drugs used illegally. To produce a kilo of cocaine and
transport it to the United States requires an investment of $2,500 dollars.
Later, the North American dealer mixes it with other substances such as talcum
powder or flour to increase its weight and distributes it in the street at a
value of $20,000 to $30,000 dollars. The enormous profits stay mainly in the
United States, while a minor part of the $57 billion dollars mentioned goes to
Latin American traffickers. The
Harms of Prohibition
De
Greiff stressed the importance of legalization of the business, transport and
sale of drugs so that the business stops being so monstrously obscene, and to
convert it into an ordinary business that additionally will produce taxes that
can be invested in the good of society. At the same time, he underlined the
billions of dollars that are spent annually to repress drug trafficking that
will then be able to be dedicated to other goals. And it’s that in the past
ten years drug consumption in the United States has remained more or less stable,
but in the same time period the government budget to fight drugs has gone from a
billion dollars to seventeen-and-a-half billion dollars (or the more than 18
billion requested for the 2003 budget). This demonstrates the war on drugs is
not effective at all, he said. Fear
of Legalization
In
this sense, de Greiff used the example of the legalization of alcohol in the
United States, which ended the business of the large mafias involved in it, and
did not produce a rise in consumption. “The consumption did rise a little
while later due to the psychological problems related to World War II,” he
said. To
support his thesis, he cited the study conducted in 1994 by the New York Bar
Association called, “A Wiser Path: Ending Prohibition,” in which a committee
of experts (politicians, economists, sociologists, doctors, chemists), after
analyzing the issue of supposed rise in consumption under legalization, came to
the conclusion that the regulation of the production and sale of drugs would not
increase consumption notably, as long as legalization is accompanied by medical
treatment for addicts and intelligent, honest, educational campaigns to
discourage drug use. “Not the stupid and tricky campaigns like the ones used
today, that say if you smoke marijuana or try cocaine two or three times you
will become an addict: the young people learn for themselves it is not the truth,
conclude that everything said is a lie, and decide to continue consuming,” de
Greiff commented. He also cited the example of tobacco use, that in spite of
being more addictive than cocaine or marijuana according to scientists, has been
substantially reduced due to informative campaigns and without causing the
damages of prohibition “that would bring the formation of illegal tobacco
trafficking gangs, violence and corruption." The
Farse of the Drug War
He
cited examples that have been publicly exposed of police who seize drugs but
only declare half the volume and sell the rest, cases in which large shipments
are seized in order to free up other routes through which larger quantities are
passing, DEA agents who target some money-launderers while they protect others
who practice the same activity, or politicians scandalized by their own drug
consumption in private but who promise to combat narco-trafficking in public,
while they receive the profits from the corruption and they are also using drugs.
De
Greiff mentioned, at the same time, the political game that is played with the
numbers of arrests and seizures, that the governments use to publicize their own
success in the drug war and to continue justifying the repressive policy,
“when, in reality, there is no such success although they imprison more and
more drug dealers, since the drugs continue flowing in the same quantities to
the consumer markets.” The
government most interested and invested in the policy of the drug war and at the
same time is its grand promoter, he said, is the United States government, which
has used the policy to subjugate the countries of Latin America. On one end they
use the “de-certification” process. De Greiff notes: “They’ve used this
on multiple occasions as a threat when U.S. conditions that have nothing to do
with the drug war are imposed, as was the case in 1995 when the U.S. Ambassador
in Colombia conditioned that country’s certification on changes in a banana
export agreement with Europe.” On the other end they use political and
military intervention, more and more, to try and maintain domination and protect
the warehouse of cheap natural resources for the United States. Politics,
the Media, and Legalization
Asked
about the possibility that the politicians will decide to speak out and promote
what they see as necessary – legalization – de Greiff said that, “what is
needed is courage, and, disgracefully, there are few brave politicians in the
world. But if there were, and above all if various Latin American countries
would unite against this farce, without fear of the economic sanctions by the
United States, a new day would dawn.” Completing
his suggestion, he said that one way to pressure the politicians would be to
demonstrate the failure of the repressive drug policies to the public: “Then
the politician will be afraid to be associated with a failed policy. At least
the honest or pragmatic politician would feel that way. As for the dishonest
politician, we have to take away his business, and that would be made possible
by legalization.” Another
problem that the legalization proposal encounters, he continued, is found in the
grand disinformation campaigns promoted, above all, by the most interested
party: the United States government, a game in which journalists are paid (with
money or with information) to affirm again and again that the only solution to
the problem of narco-trafficking is repression and that, if legalized, drug
consumption would rise. “That’s how it’s understood, including in
Colombia, with all the evils that the production and sale of drugs have cost, a
recent poll says that only 36 percent of the population is in favor of
legalization, and that’s because they are afraid of expanding the drug problem,”
he said. For
that reason, he insisted, it is necessary to continue educating the population,
showing the people the lies that are said about the drug war, demonstrating that
it is not certain that, in spite of the continuing arrests and seizures, the
narco-trafficking is not being stopped; showing them that the corruption
continues growing and it’s not the case that repression is beneficial. The
supply is available to anyone in spite of prohibition. Teaching people to avoid
consumption, and these other points, are necessary topics of information
campaigns so that the people are careful about drugs, while the addict should be
offered the chance to enter a health clinic and not prison. It’s already been
demonstrated that treatment can succeed, he said. Decriminalization
and the Benefits of Legalization
However,
he stressed that decriminalization is not enough: It would only avoid that the
consumers go to jail or that the dealers have a more peaceful consumer, but it
will not end narco-trafficking nor the current corruption by authorities who
enrich themselves at alarming levels while those who suffer are the consumers
and the general population. The
solution of the problem of drug trafficking is legalization of drugs, he
repeated, and he specified that legalization doesn’t have to mean sale in open
markets but, rather, the regulation of the business, the production, the
transport and sale, with permits for each activity, control over the quality of
the product so it is not adulterated, and legal limits such as not selling drug
near educational institutions, not advertising their sale in the media, etc.,
and always accompanied by prevention campaigns against abusive consumption and
offering medical treatment to addicts. De
Greiff concluded that this is the way to destroy the business of the
narco-traffickers, to end the corruption and the criminal violence that this
illicit activity brings, to stop drug money from being used to buy weapons, and
to stop the United States from using drug policies to maintain a subjugated
Latin America. He added, ironically, “Of course, beyond direct economic
pressures, currently the government in Washington counts with new excuses to do
that.”
|
|
|
|