How Latin America Is Reinventing The War On Drugs -- Sara Miller Llana, Christian Science
Frustrated with US dictates, countries across the region are floating new ideas to curb drug trafficking, from 'soft' enforcement to legalization.
Like thousands of other Bolivians, Marcela Lopez Vasquez's parents migrated to the Chapare region, in the Andean tropics, desperate to make a living after waves of economic and environmental upheaval hit farming and mining communities in the 1970s and '80s.
The new migrants, who spread across the undulating green hills here, planted bananas. They planted yucca and orange trees. But it was in the coca leaf that thrives in this climate that they found the salvation of a steady cash crop – and themselves at the nexus of the American "war on drugs."
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My Comment: What's my take .... in the end these drugs are going to be legalized and managed by government. It will be done to lessen the power of the drug cartels, and to put a handle on the violence that it brings. Unfortunately .... it is going to bring about other problems .... the number one problem being medical/social problems associated with drug addition. We see it in Afghanistan .... where a sizable portion of the population are already addicted to opium/heroin .... bringing enormous social and medical problems that are crippling what is already a crippled medical system. We may not like the war against drugs because of it's human toll .... but maybe it is the lesser of two evils.
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