Last week, thanks to U.S. drug policy, Colombiareports.com reported that Colombia's Urabeños drug cartel effectively seized and held hostage most of northern Colombia, a massive area. It forced the entire population to abandon all economic activity at the demands of the gang's armed enforcers, who threatened death to any resident who did not comply with their shut-down orders. Transport between cities and towns was halted, millions of Colombians hid behind shuttered windows and barricaded doors in their homes. Inside virtual ghost towns, the lucrative tourist industries of Colombia's Pacific coast and Caribbean were paralyzed. (see colombiareports for map of area affected.)
The Urabeños paramilitary gang and drug cartel shut down the country in retaliation for the killing of their leader, Juan de Dios Usuga, alias "Giovanni" by the Colombian government the previous week. The massive operation to capture the head of the Urabeños gang was a part of its local "War on Drugs", funded, guided and armed by the U.S. government.
U.S. drug policy not only determines and funds massive anti-drug campaigns in developing countries, such as Colombia. It forces compliance with U.S. policies not only to obtain funding, but in order to stay off U.S. blacklists of countries which are not considered sufficiently cooperative with U.S. State Department's objectives. Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador are now on this list, having thrown the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency operatives out of its country for spying and surveillance. Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador are on their list of supposed "non-cooperators".
Venezuela threw the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials out of their country when they were found to be involved in spying, drug running and corruption. Thereafter, Venezuela's successful attacks on the organized drug cartels who use their country to transport drugs to the U.S. increased markedly. In June of 2011, the UN officially acknowledged that Venezuela is free from drug cultivation, nor is it considered a drug consuming nation. Venezuela is not considered even a drug transiting nation. It is rated fifth in the world for its levels of illegal drug seizure.
Colombia, however, is a key drug producer. It is the locus for the drug-smuggling routes north to the U.S., the main consuming nation. It has also been a U.S. cooperator par excellance.
Colombia's reward for cooperating was billions in armaments to fight the U.S.'s drug war and hundreds of thousands of bloody skirmishes within its own borders, much like the "War on Drugs" affects upon Mexico.
(Photo of deserted Urabá, Colombia from www.quedice.net.
In a comprehensive Report to the Canadian Parliamentary committee on the history of drug Control, the researchers noted that drugs have been present in human societies at least since 5000 B.C., citing to a report on ancient documents where Egyptian writing illustrates an offering of opium to royalty. The ancient Egyptian pharmacopia was replete with references to now illegal drugs. (See journal cited)
The Canadian Parliamentary report details regulation history: Up until the 1960’s, various forms of opium were openly sold in the U.S., though amounts may have been restricted. (As a child, I recall being given paregoric, an opium derivative, for a stomach ailment, and the coca cola syrup from the local pharmacy still contained a derivative of the coca plant.) Before 1906, the sale of most drugs was totally unrestricted. Our society survived without declaring a war on drugs or drug addicts.
For thousands of years, societies coped with their drug users, both medical and recreational, without initiating massive wars to stamp it out. An exception might be seen in the British-Chinese Opium Wars, circa 1839-43, but in that case Britain was fighting China to maintain an open door to the British opium trade from India into China, while China was fighting to maintain control over its own drug supplies. Thus this battle was a fight for corporate vs. sovereign control of the drug market, not a fight to suppress the drugs.
Indeed, the first international treaty regulating the opium and heroin trade was signed in Shanghai in 1906. And, according to historian, William McAllister, that treaty was pushed, not by medical or scientific interests, but by the capitalist pharmaceutical industries, which wanted to main control over their international drug business. (Cf: William McAllister shows in his “Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century” (London, NY, Routeledge, 2000)
It was not until the early 1970's that a comprehensive "War on Drugs" was declared by the Nixon Administration in the U.S. In so doing, Nixon, later augmented by President's Reagan's anti-drug efforts, created a privatized "anti-drug" industry whose wealthy tentacles now reach throughout the world, affecting not only the drugs but the internal political policies of numerous other nations.
The Canadian Parliamentary reports quotes McAllister approvingly:
McAllister rightly credits the international control system with a massive expansion of the illicit market as well as with an inextricable involvement with issues of national and international security. Our drug policies have become a means not merely for controlling drugs but to control the internal politics and economies of many foreign countries.
Indeed, McAllister credits the U.S. and its pharmaceutical industry, as being the motive force behind all three major international drug regulation and suppression treaties since 1900.
The U.S. Is Responsible For, and Enabling the Illegal Drug Trade.
The U.S. anti-drug policy which treats drug acquisition and addiction as a crime with lengthy prison sentences, fuels not only the profits of the private prison industry, but puts millions of young people (disproportionately black or Hispanic) in jail, when they should be in school or drug treatment programs.
The "anti-drug" armament industry sells it deadly wares to police, military and paramilitary agencies (and likely drug cartels) at enormous profits, thus diverting funds from programs which our communities need to help our young people and all those needing treatment.
U.S. Drug Policies: The Means for Controlling Foreign Politics and Economies
Our drug policies have become a means not merely for controlling drugs but for controlling the internal politics and economies of many foreign countries. The U.S. uses its anti-drug funds to buy the good will of local politicians as well as using its power to demand that foreign countries buy more and better arms and technology for their own supposed wars on drugs. Since the U.S. is one of the world’s largest suppliers of arms, this policy directly benefits our capitalist armament industries. To keep up with the latest DEA requirements, many countries may be encouraged (or forced by threat of negative consequences) to spend their dollars on arms instead of improving their schools or health care.
Since the "War on Drugs" ensures that the illegal growing, transporting and sales of drug products, with the attendant risk of long prison sentences, is an expensive process which requires large organizations (the Cartels) to effectively run, the high costs are passed on to the customers on the street. To pay for their drugs, street addicts, who tend to be poor, commit property thefts from their neighbors to pay for their drugs. A recent British government study,reported by the U.K.'s Independent, reported that fully one half of all Britains property crimes were committed by those trying to pay for their drugs.
But local property crimes is almost a minor result, as the high drug profits spawn massive corruption and violence throughout the world. In 1906, in the midst of intensive imperialist expansion and exploitation of third world countries, the U.S. drug policy transferred the responsibility for its internal drug problems as one of the top consumers, by putting the onus on third world and developing countries to cut off the supply to U.S. consumer by suppressing their drug production and export businesses.
The same U.S. policy obtains today, where we can see the U.S. using the claimed failures of many third world and developing nations to suppress drugs as the basis for introducing American drug enforcement officers inside the very government agencies of other countries, where they not only “help” to enforce U.S. drug laws, but provide close surveillance and interference with any political opposition to U.S. control of these countries. Thus we learn that the U.S. embassy supplied President Uribe’s Colombian government with advanced surveillance technology which was used by the Uribe administration to spy on opposition politicos, as well as judges and lawyers of the Colombia Supreme Court.
Where, as here in Venezuela, the people dared to elect a socialist government which opposes the U.S.’s capitalist economic system and imperialist policies, the U.S. attempts to undermine Venezuela’s international reputation by claiming it is not cooperating with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, and is therefore either “soft” on drugs or actively enabling the drug trade.
But It Is The U.S. That Is Responsible And Enabling The Illegal Drug Trade Drugs Must Be Legalized, And Addicts Treated.
Because the U.S. is the primary consumer of illegal drugs in the western hemisphere and because it has built a lucrative industry in interdicting shipments of illegal drugs and their sales to and within the U.S., the prices for drugs are maintained at a very high level in the U.S. This fact is a critical incentive for those in the drug trade to develop equivalently large and efficient cartels for over-coming government interdiction efforts and getting the drugs to the U.S.
Similar to other private capitalist businesses, the competition among drug cartels for monopolies -- for exclusive control over crop lands, transportation and smuggling lines, and markets for their drugs -- requires armies. They hire young men to fight the battles for their "cartels" control, while young women are hired as drug mules and as sexual toys for the cartel members. Not infrequently, these young people are paid in arms and drugs.
The easy access to expensive weapons, fuels continual bloody battles in the streets and towns along drug routes, producing violent crime waves as has been seen repeatedly in Mexico and Colombia. It also puts a massive amount of pistols, rifles, shotguns and other war paraphernalia in the hands of youths in drug route cities throughout the world, who when not actually engaged in cartel-related battles, use them for street robberies and to solve personal vendettas. The young women are very likely to contract and spread sexual diseases, yet another stress on local communities.
U.S. Anti-Drug Policies Provide High Profits for Third World Cartels, While Corrupting And Disrupting Local Communities.
In the case of Mexico, the U.S. Justice Department has actually enabled the sale of U.S. weapons to the drug cartels. With their massive profits, it is easy for the cartels to buy police and political officials and conduct their violent territorial wars with competitor cartels. (It can validly be asked whether the DOJ’s “Fast and Furious” program, allowing the sale of weapons to those purchasing for the Mexcian cartels, was mere negligence or if it is was operating much like the U.S.’s CIA’s 1960’s programs in Southeast Asia, which actively sent heroin into the U.S. during the Vietnam War via Air America and other routes. Huge amounts of money were made in simultaneously interdicting foreign illegal drug shipments and re-directing them to CIA friendly receivers in the U.S.)
The “playing both sides of the street” method was copied by some key political figures in third world and developing nations. Thus, in Cambodia in the 1990’s, one of the co-prime ministers was not only rumored to be obscenely wealthy from being the largest exporter of marijuana from Cambodia, but was also being given DEA money and technology to interdict the drug trade there. That gave him a very secure monopoly position in the illegal drug trade, which also kept his political party very well funded.
The U.S. is the main consumer of illegal drugs in the world. Here in South America, Colombia is the main source of cocaine, a popular street drug in the U.S. Venezuela is not a drug producer, but has been, in the past, an export route for the Colombian drug cartels to get their product from Colombia to market in the U.S. Thus, Venezuelan "trade routes" are likewise subject to the operation of the drug cartels, putting a vast amount of arms into the hands of youths here. Where there is a huge amount of illegal weapons available, that availability creates a culture of violence, where use of a weapon is an easy decision, aided no doubt, by the availability of violent video games.
Based on reading of my local Merida newspaper's reports of frequent drug seizures and arrests, the Chavez government has been putting great efforts into stopping the flow of drugs through this country, but as long as the U.S. policy of its "War on Drugs" still keeps drug prices and profits so high, it will be difficult to keep drugs and weapons out of the hands of the youth who work for the cartels along their smuggling routes.
Cutting Illegal Drug Profits Would Cut Local Street Crime and Homicides.
The western media is fond of citing Venezuela for its high crime rate, but that is largely a result of U.S.'s drug policy. The well financed cartels pay high wages to the kids for their murderous deeds, as well as supplying them with weapons. Raises in the minimum wage here, however, high, can't compete with the cartels' largess. Without the high profits, the cartels' ability to purchase officials, police, weapons and the young men to use them, would collapse.
If the U.S. legalized drug access, the extremely high profits of both the drug cartels and the "War on Drugs" armament and private prison industries would collapse.
Figures for 2006, show that 7.2 million Americans were incarcerated or on probation or parole. Approximately one half of that number were charged with drug-related offenses. The United States puts more of its racial minority members in jail than any other country. In major cities across the country, 80% of young African Americans now have criminal records. This is a form of genocide to our black and Hispanic communities. 80% of young African Americans
The high incarceration rates costs locally owned communities a fortune to sustain, a fortune that should be spent on benefiting our communities, not jailing their young people.
Without the “War on Drugs” the “Anti-Drug” industry would also collapse, and that industry is a significant reason why the Obama administration is so resistant to changing its policies to allow drug legalization.
Over two million Americans are in our prisons, one third to one half of whom are there with drug charges, which amounts to 25% of the world's entire incarcerated population although the U.S. has only 5% of the world's population. ( If the prison population were reduced by the number of persons who are charged with non-violent drug-related crimes, the anti-drug, armaments and prison industries See citation.) would likewise suffer a massive decline in profits. But our federal, state and local communities would have the money to provide treatment rather than jail, and schools and health care for all.
Time Magazine recently reported on one country, Portugal, which decriminalized possession for personal use of small amounts of all drugs and greatly reduced both its addiction rates and its HIV rates, while the number of people who sought treatment greatly increased. It would be interesting to compare its property crime statistics pre-and post decriminalization as studies have shown that addicts seeking to pay for the high cost of their illegal drugs are key contributors to property crimes. It has been reported that the homicide rates in Portugal have decreased significantly since decriminalization. ( Time, supra.)
Countries Throughout the World Must Unite to Demand an End to the U.S. Drug War.
High profits from drugs, insured by U.S. drug policies and their anti-drug industries, are killing youth and innocent citizens throughout the world . The many countries which are suffering the effects of the U.S.'s deadly policies must unite and demand that they be ended immediately.
The extreme high profits from drugs, caused by U.S. policy, has enabled the drug cartels to spread corruption among government officials at every level throughout the world. To halt this culture of violence and corruption, the countries of the world must demand that the U.S. legalize drugs, stop funding the massive anti-drug industries, and leave developing countries in peace.