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DRUGS: War Succeeds at Failing
By María Isabel García
CARTAGENA, Colombia, Jun 20 (IPS) - The movement in favour of legalising drugs has proved unable to make a dent in the prohibitionist spirit that fuels the war against narcotics, which seems to have gathered as much force
internationally as fast food and pop music.
"Cultural imperialism includes the prohibition of drugs," said Sharda
Sekaran, a U.S. expert who joined jurists and other specialists in a
discussion during Friday's session of the World Social Thematic Forum, which
began Monday in this Colombian Caribbean city.
The common denominator in the anti-drugs campaigns in implementing these
bans is the suggestion that drugs will unleash aggressive behaviour that is
offensive to the morals of the dominant classes, commented Sekaran.
But before the repressive laws entered into force, the drug consumers were
"white women from the middle and upper classes," said Sekaran, of the New
York-based Drug Policy Alliance, a group that opposes the U.S. government's
anti-drugs war.
In the panel discussion during the Forum's closing day of sessions, the
experts agreed that it is a paradox - although an explicable one - that
while the anti-drugs effort continues to gather force (in spite of
statistics showing that the total area planted with drug crops remains
relatively stable), the number of habitual and casual drug users also
continues to rise, the drugs market keeps growing and the flow of
"narco-dollars" increases.
Although the trend in favour of liberalising drug laws is on the rise, the
war on terrorism launched by the United States in response to the Sep. 11,
2001 attacks in New York and Washington breathed new life into the efforts
of those who support "zero tolerance".
Colombian constitutional expert Rodrigo Uprimny outlined four major
categories in the trends of applying criminal law to the drug problem.
Two of these are "the harsh penalties against growing drugs and consuming
drugs, which results in increased prices, and the light penalties, which
reduces risks and takes into account the consumers' rights, while allowing
their reintegration into society," he said.
The other two categories for drug policies are regulated legalisation,
equivalent to the laws governing alcohol consumption in western countries,
and extreme legalisation, which is in keeping with a libertarian approach,
recognising personal autonomy, said Uprimny.
He cited the case of his country as an example in the current global debate
on drugs. Laws were passed in 1991 legalising possession of drugs for
personal consumption, but a referendum that the Alvaro Uribe government is
pushing includes an article that would overturn them.
The mutual reinforcement of the local and global policies against drugs is
an "encircling paradigm", he commented.
Colombia, which produces 80 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United
State and Europe and is the third leading opium producer after Afghanistan
and Burma, is the example cited most often in the success-failure
contradiction in the anti-drugs war.
Ricardo Vargas, a drug-trade analyst for the non-governmental group Acción
Andina, reported that in the past few years the total area planted with coca
bush (the raw material for cocaine) in the Andean-Amazon area has fluctuated
by as much as 200,000 hectares.
It is as if the plantations would shift between Colombia and Peru, depending
on where military crackdowns on the illegal crops were strongest, but
without affecting the drug market, which apparently continues to be well
supplied, Vargas said in comments to IPS.
Henry Salgado, of a Bogotá-based social and educational research centre,
said that repression against production and consumption does not resolve the
drug-trade problem, but rather provides an incentive, because the risks
involved push up prices, both for final consumption of the drugs and for
production inputs.
(END/2003)
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