Pubdate: Sun, 03 Nov 2002
Source: Narco News (Latin America Web)
Contact:  http://www.narconews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2063
Cited: Drug Policy Alliance  http://www.drugpolicy.org
Author: Dan Feder, Special to the Narco News Bulletin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?179 (Nadelmann, Ethan)

Ethan Nadelmann in Mexico:

A GUERRILLA STRUGGLE TO END THE DRUG WAR

"I'm proud of my country," said Ethan Nadelmann this past Wednesday at a 
talk at the Center for Investigation and Economic Teachings (CIDE, in its 
Spanish initials), a small institute on the outskirts of Mexico City. "But 
do you remember that Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the Evil 
Empire? I unfortunately do regard my government as an evil empire of drug 
prohibition. We are a country that for almost 100 years has aggressively 
pursued a policy of prohibition."

Every day, South of the Border, the consensus breaks down a little more. 
That consensus, the other "Washington Consensus," that there is no way for 
a community or nation to deal with drugs other than total prohibition, 
finds fewer and fewer adherents after each year of failure. Perhaps no one 
has done more in the past two decades to expose all the fallacies and 
hypocrisies that he sees in the US-led global prohibitionist regime than 
lawyer, criminologist and activist Ethan Nadelmann, who was in Mexico City 
last week to speak about the cause to which he has devoted his life: ending 
that global prohibition.

The justification for that global policy, said Nadelmann, is not, as drug 
warriors claim, the interests of the international community, or even of 
drug addicts, but comes from a quasi-religious obsession with drugs coming 
to US shores and "poisoning our children." Despite this continuing 
obsession in the United States, said Nadelmann, and despite that country's 
ever-increasing power in the international scene, legalization is becoming 
more and more accepted as the only long-term option.

This slow change in attitude in academic and policy-making circles - as 
well as, of course, Civil Society - was the theme of Nadelmann's visit. He 
noted the serious changes that have occurred since he first started 
visiting Mexico as a noted voice in the drug policy debate in the 1980's.

"I came to Mexico in 1988," said Nadelmann, "fourteen years ago, at a time 
when the drug war was at an hysterical point in the United States. Public 
opinion polls showed that 50% of Americans thought that drugs were the 
number one problem in the country." He came for an international meeting at 
the Colegio de Mexico, one of Mexico's most elite academic institutions. At 
this meeting, Nadelmann recognized a pattern he would see over and over 
again at similar meetings around the world.

"What I found in many of these discussions was what I called the tale of 
the two dialogues. We would sit around the table for a day or two, and the 
discussions were all about, 'oh, we need to agree that this is a problem of 
supply and demand, and we Americans have to reduce our demand, and you 
Latin Americans have to reduce your supply, and we need to look at 
alternative crop development and crop substitution, and giving 
opportunities to campesinos. And of course we need the carrot of economic 
assistance, and we need the stick of eradication. And don't forget that 
you'll respect our sovereignty because we respect your sovereignty, and by 
the way, lets not let this drug issue mess up more important things, so, 
better to put it on the back burner.' And everybody would sort of nod.

"Then we would all break up and go have our nice dinners, and over some 
tequila, and whiskey sours, or whatever, we would have the other dialogue. 
Fifty percent of the people, mostly the Latin Americans, would say, let's 
face it. Legalization is the only thing that makes sense.

"Another 25 percent would mostly keep their views to themselves, they would 
be cautious, they would sort of nod, and they would agree, and they would 
say, 'well, of course, we agree, but you know you can't really tall about 
that. Because where can it go? And the other 25 percent would say, what? 
Legalization? That's immoral, that's terrible, what about the children? 
Never can we have that discussion.' And so we would go back, and get on the 
stage, and there would be the same old discussion from before."

But, as Nadelmann points out, this is beginning to change. When a Mexican 
police chief declared that legalization was the best solution to Mexico's 
drug problem, President Vicente Fox agreed with him in front of the media 
(and, of course, immediately qualified the statement by assuring the world 
that he would not act on it.) Soon afterward, the President Jorge Batlle of 
Uruguay publicly advocated legalization, much to the horror of the US 
government.

Although the United States is where he works and is the focus of his 
research, Nadelmann believes that Mexico is in a unique position in the 
history of drug control. For decades, he said, the US has been tackling the 
problem of substance abuse - the "demand" side of the supply-demand model 
that is usually used to describe the drug trade - while Mexico has been 
held responsible for tackling the supply side of the problem.

"Now, there really is the beginnings of a drug abuse problem in Mexico," 
said Nadelmann, "with Amphetamines, and cocaine to some extent. You have a 
chance to think about this in new and creative ways, rather than simply 
doing what has failed in America for the last 30 years."

Nadelmann criticized the view that American drug policy is primarily a way 
to dominate Mexico - a view he claims is shared by many of his Mexican 
colleagues. The suffering of the Latin American people, he said, is nothing 
compared to the suffering of the victims of the drug war within the United 
States. And the situation within the US is only going to get worse now that 
the CIA and the Pentagon are shifting resources from fighting drugs to "the 
war on terrorism."

"The future of drug prohibition," said Nadelmann, "is in reducing demand, 
through increasingly totalitarian means. In five years, we may have a 
situation where you get a choice between prison and an implanted chip that 
makes you sick if you use drugs."

Joining Nadelmann in his lecture were two local voices in the drug war 
debate, CIDE professors Jorge Chabat and Bruce Bagley. Chabat, an expert on 
narco-trafficking who has been featured in the Latin American press 
recently advocating legalization, said he felt the current prohibitionist 
regime has "a problem understanding the role of the state. Law is confused 
with morality." He was pessimistic, however, of Latin America's ability to 
influence drug policy, because of the deep cultural roots of the 
prohibitionist ideology in American politics, and the differing natures of 
the drug problems of the two regions. "We have a trafficking problem, and 
you have a consumption problem," he said.

(Correction: In an April 2000 Narco News report, we reported that Chabat 
was a newcomer to the legalization cause; in fact, he has advocated the 
same message since 1996.)

Professor Bagley, an American who teaches political science at the CIDE and 
who specializes in Colombia, emphasized internal political difficulties 
that block drug policy reform in the United States. The two-year election 
cycle, he said, leads to a situation where politicians constantly out-bid 
each other in anti-crime measures for election campaigns. This leads to an 
elimination of real debate on the drug issue. Also, he said, the prison 
guards' union has emerged as a major lobbying force that maintains harsh 
policies of criminalization.

In the 1980s, Nadelmann was invited to major conferences mostly as "the 
heretic who gets two minutes at the end to throw a wrench into the 
discussion." This week, he spent two days in private meetings at the 
Mexican foreign ministry before making his presentation at the CIDE. In the 
US, Nadelmann has access to US senators and committee chairs that would not 
have met with him a few years ago. (Nadelmann's Drug Policy Alliance is the 
sponsor of Tides Foundation grants recently awarded to Narco News and others.)

"I really see myself as heading up a guerrilla struggle in America and 
around the world," Nadelmann said at the end of his lecture to the small 
but enthusiastic crowd of students and professors at the CIDE. "On the 
other side is this goliath of the drug prohibition, with tens of billions 
of dollars per year, with massive institutions and laws. We have to find 
our opportunities. We have to see where is the public already with us."
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