Lessons From The Failed War On Drugs

Spiegel Online. Spiegel Online

Our Right To Poison: Lessons From The Failed War On Drugs -- Jochen-Martin Gutsch and Juan Moreno, Spiegel Online

The global war on drugs has cost billions and taken countless lives -- but achieved little. The scant results finally have politicians and experts joining calls for legalization. Following the journey of cocaine from a farm in Colombia to a user in Berlin sheds light on why.

"Pablo Escobar said to me: 'One shot to the head isn't enough. It has to be two shots, just above the eyes.'"

Jhon Velásquez, nicknamed "Popeye," is sitting on a white plastic chair in the prison yard. "You can survive one shot, but never two. I cut up the bodies and threw them in the river. Or I just left them there. I often drove through Medellín, where I kidnapped and raped women. Then I shot them and threw them in the trash."

Three guards are standing next to him. He is the only prisoner in the giant building. The watchtower, the security door systems, the surveillance cameras -- it's all for him. The warden of the Cómbita maximum-security prison, a three-hour drive northeast of the Colombian capital Bogotá, has given Popeye one hour to tell his story.

The experience is like opening a door into hell.

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My Comment: A 5-part comprehensive report from Spiegel Online on the world's drug trade and the battle to contain. A must read.

Signs That The U.S. War On Drugs Is Almost Over

9 Signs The War On Drugs Is Almost Over -- Salon

From pot legalization to California's reform of "Three Strikes," all signs point to a more rational drug policy.

This year will go down in history as the the beginning of the end to America’s longest failed war: the war on drugs. Voters in Colorado and Washington made worldwide news by legalizing marijuana, Presidents around Latin America spoke out passionately against the drug war, and award-winning movies documented the horrors of the drug war and gave voice to those seeking change. Below are some of top stories of 2012 that capture the momentum and give us hope that we can and will find an exit strategy to the disastrous war on drugs.

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My Comment: I concur .... it is only a matter of time before the U.S. decriminalizes certain drug behavior. But I also know that the U.S. is not prepared for the social and health consequences of liberalizing their drug policies .... a medical crisis that has the potential to even dwarf today's legal and law enforcement battle against drugs.

Will Latin America Lead The World In Decriminalizing Drug Use

How Latin America May Lead The World In Decriminalizing Drug Use -- Alfonso Serrano, Time

Even as the countries of the hemisphere are at the forefront of the war against narcotraffickers, they are also pushing alternative strategies--including the legalization of drugs, particularly marijuana.

Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has never been soft on crime. The 30-year military veteran rose to power last year on the wings of his law-and-order platform, crystalized in his campaign slogan: “Iron fist, head, and heart.” And he recently approved the creation of two military bases, outfitted with 2,500 soldiers, to guard against the growing presence of drug cartels that have turned Guatemala into a trafficking corridor and fueled some of the world’s highest murder rates.

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My Comment: Decriminalization may not be the panacea that it's advocates may think that it may bring. Drugs were decriminalized in the U.S. at the turn of the last century .... cocaine, heroin, marijuana were available .... but the social and health problems that it brought is why the U.S. changed it's policy to decriminalize drugs. So .... Latin America may end up getting rid of the drug cartels by becoming the producer and distributor of drugs .... but .... if history is any indication .... be prepared for the social and health problems that it will bring about.

How To End The Drug War (Commentary)

The Narco State -- Charles Kenny, Foreign Policy

There's good news on the drug war: The world knows how to end it -- so why can't the United States figure it out?

America's longest running war -- the one against drugs -- came in for abuse this weekend at the Summit of the Americas. The abuse is deserved. Forty years of increasingly violent efforts to stamp out the drug trade haven't worked. And the blood and treasure lost is on a scale with America's more conventional wars. On the upside, we know that an approach based around treating drugs as a public health issue reaps benefits to both users and the rest of us.

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My Comment: The global war on drugs has failed, and the result has not only been the creation and expansion of crime syndicates and armed conflicts, but also economic/social/political chaos and corruption on a national (and international) level.

This article by Charles Kenny for Foreign Policy is a must read .... providing a good summary on why we need a new approach to combat what is essentially now a worldwide conflict with casualty figures approaching what low intensity conventional wars usually produce.

US Hunger For Drugs Is The Bigger Scandal In Latin America

President Obama, pictured here with Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton at the Summit of the Americas April 14 in Cartagena, Colombia, ruled out a drug policy U-turn that some in the region want. Op-ed contributor Kristin Lewis says a viral video campaign in the style of 'Kony 2012' would 'challenge viewers to consider the international consequences of their actions.' Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Bigger Scandal In Latin America Than US Secret Service: US Drug Hunger -- Kristin Lewis, Christian Science Monitor

The secret service prostitution scandal overshadows renewed calls at the Summit of the Americas for the US to stanch its drug consumption. A viral 'Drug Violence 2012' video (think 'Kony 2012') would help young Americans connect US drug use to violence in Central and South America.

As the drug war continues to ravage much of Mexico, other countries in Central America, and the Caribbean, the US Office of National Drug Control Policy could learn something from the controversial, yet virally popular, “Kony 2012” documentary in its fight against domestic drug use.

The success of the “Kony 2012” video, despite its various flaws, reveals an important yet absent element in the US drug prevention strategy: the need to appeal to the idealistic spirit of young Americans and connect US drug use to the increasing violence spreading through Latin America.

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My Comment: I concur. The desire and hunger that many Americans have for drugs is both appalling and catastrophic and shows no signs of abating.

Legalizing Drugs Will Not Kill The Cartels -- A Commentary

Legalization Won’t Kill the Cartels -- Sylvia Longmire, New York Times

FOR a growing number of American policy makers, politicians and activists, the best answer to the spiraling violence in Mexico is to legalize the marijuana that, they argue, fuels the country’s vicious cartels and smugglers. After all, according to official estimates, marijuana constitutes 60 percent of cartels’ drug profits. Legalization would move that trade into the open market, driving down the price and undermining the cartels’ power and influence.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Marijuana legalization has many merits, but it would do little to hinder the long-term economics of the cartels — and the violent toll they take on Mexican society.

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My Comment: Unfortunately .... Sylvia Longmire is probably right. I live in Quebec, and in the early 1990s we had a huge contraband cigarette trade that used the Indian reservations to supply cigarettes to Quebec's eager smokers. This trade spawned a huge criminal enterprise and cultural mindset that when the trade was finally gotten rid of by massively cutting the taxes on cigarettes .... these criminal organizations simply went into other businesses (i.e. drugs, guns, fraud, etc.). Legalizing drugs is a measure that just treats the disease .... the disease are criminal gangs, their social acceptance by many in society, and the laws and methods that are ineffective in fighting them.

Mexico's Drug War Finally Gets Washington's Attention -- A Commentary

Protesters in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey taunt riot police during a demonstration in February, one of a number in Mexico demanding the departure of soldiers deployed to deal with drug violence. Photo: AP

From L.A. Times:

A good start would be for the U.S. and Mexico to cooperate. The U.S. could shift some resources from immigration enforcement to fighting drug and weapons trafficking and money laundering.

Mexico often has felt like a stepchild of U.S. foreign policy, its demands for attention to immigration reform, the drug trade and other bilateral issues cast aside for far-flung crises, the most recent being the Bush administration's global war on terror. But now Mexican officials must be thinking they should have been careful what they wished for. Mexico's drug wars have claimed well over 7,000 lives in the last 14 months, many of them in assaults with military-grade weapons. Twice, grenades were tossed at the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, and the violence has been seeping across the border, with more than 500 drug-related kidnappings in Phoenix alone. Now that drug violence is considered a potential national security threat, the U.S. government is paying attention.

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Creeping Narcostate -- A Commentary

50pc of all the cocaine consumed in Britain is believed to have been
trafficked through Venezuela Photo: AFP/GETTY

From IBDeditorial:

War On Drugs: As Mexico burns and its drug war seeps into the U.S., it shouldn't be lost on anyone that among the embattled states fighting cartels, one in the region isn't pulling its weight. Where's the heat on Venezuela?

Venezuela is the weakest link in this hemisphere's war on drugs. It's a leading transshipment point between the cocaine producers of Colombia and the drug lords of Mexico, one of whom just "earned" himself a spot on the 2009 Forbes billionaire's list.

About half of the 600 tons of cocaine produced in Colombia each year rolls through Venezuela undisturbed before it heads north to consumers. And Hugo Chavez's government, whose top officials have been named by the Treasury Department as actual traffickers and which in 2005 cut off drug cooperation with the Drug Enforcement Administration, is doing little to halt the flow of drugs.

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War On Drugs -- A Commentary

The War On Drugs Is A Failure -- Wall Street Journal

We should focus instead on reducing harm to users and on tackling organized crime.

The war on drugs has failed. And it's high time to replace an ineffective strategy with more humane and efficient drug policies. This is the central message of the report by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy we presented to the public recently in Rio de Janeiro.

Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply haven't worked. Violence and the organized crime associated with the narcotics trade remain critical problems in our countries. Latin America remains the world's largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis, and is fast becoming a major supplier of opium and heroin. Today, we are further than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs.

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My Comment: Thousands dead. Millions who have been or are serving jail sentences. Millions of families ruined. Billions of dollars going to terrorists/guerrillas/organized crime syndicates.

And the drug problem and drug war is getting worse.

A century ago hard drugs were legal in the U.S.. It caused enormous social problems .... and is one of the reasons why such drugs were banned. But as much as that was a problem at that time .... today's crisis pales in comparison.

Obama Should Spray The Taliban's Poppies, Rep. Kirk Asserts -- A Commentary

An Afghan soldier destroys opium poppies in a field in Nangarhar province,
east of Kabul, in April 2007. Photograph: Rahmat Gul

From Real Clear Politics:

President Barack Obama should wage an aggressive, "Colombia-style" offensive against opium production in Afghanistan, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) contends after returning from military service in the war zone.

Particularly, he said, Obama should reverse Bush administration policy -- and Obama's own reported preference -- and authorize aerial herbicide spraying of the farms of drug "kingpins" in order to shut down the major source of funding for Islamic extremists.

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Mexico's Drug War -- A Commentary

From The L.A. Times:

When Obama takes office, he must deal with the escalating drug violence in Mexico.

Conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan will demand President Obama's attention as soon as he takes office, but he also must make time for the war on our border, where the Mexican government is fighting narcotics traffickers. Drug violence has claimed more than 6,800 lives in Mexico in the last two years, and has seeped into scores of U.S. cities that are marketplaces for illegal drugs. This war is as ugly as the others, with beheadings, kidnappings and urban shootouts that threaten the stability of Mexico and the national security of the United States.

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