Pubdate: Sun, 01 Mar 2009
Source: Japan Times (Japan)
Copyright: 2009 The Japan Times
Contact:  http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/755
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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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom