Weydt 1
Kramer Weydt
EDGE
Bruce Lusignan
2 June 2004
Third-World Countries and the War on Drugs:
Potential Economic, Political and Ecological Destruction
With the presidential election peering around the corner, it is time to bring back an age-old topic which has been troubling United States citizens for decades, the War on Drugs. Politicians have long quarreled over what sort of action should be taken to combat the world’s drug problems, and it is time that this issue surfaces again. Despite increased efforts from every government faction imaginable, the drug problem subsists, if not worsens. The market for cops and criminals in the drug war fields has not made any noticeable progress within the last 20 years (Kapczynski). Perhaps with the turn of the tide and hopefully a change of administration, the United States can develop a method that will enable them to make progress in this war, if it is not too late. Whoever assumes the presidential office for this next term will have to directly confront the sterility of the United States’ anti-drug programs. The United States needs to stop the War on Drugs and devote the annual twenty billion dollars to the countries that are being plagued with the drug problems so that they can work towards economic stability, which will potentially solve the drug traffic problems. To argue this, first it must be understood that the War on Drugs has failed and that the even the legalization of drugs is not going to help enough. Then it must be presented that the United States’ current efforts in Third-World countries are doing more harm than good and that we can fix this problem first by aiding the Third-World countries and not by destroying their economic structure.
This issue is of greater importance now than ever before because we are losing the War. Despite the decrease in hectares from 223,700 to 205,400 within the last year in South America, we are losing. Not enough progress is being made. According to Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., “The American war on drugs is not only failing, it's actually perpetuating drug trafficking, profiteering and drug use all over the world.” The more we fight this war, the cheaper the drugs become, the more available they are and the higher the purity. One doesn't need to resort to conspiracy theory to know why this war is failing. It is time the administration faces the problem first hand. The United States is too focused on the Middle East and the war for oil to have spent too much time and energy on the War on Drugs, which inevitably evolved into the War on Terrorism. The government is continually shelling out more money to support the war on drugs, but this was is not one that can be purchased. With an annual budget of twenty billion dollars, we cannot afford to give more money to this war, particularly when it is not helping. This is a war that needs time and energy devoted to brainstorming so that we can develop a new way of dealing with the War on Drugs, a way that works.
One major thing that the United States must examine closely is why the current efforts being put forth are failing so miserably. We can apply Darwinian concepts to this war to understand best why our efforts are not working. We can say that the entire war is more of a “survival of the fittest” war. Despite the increase in law enforcement and the increase in the number of captured drug dealers, the war is failing. As Sanho Tree states, “When we escalate law enforcement, the kinds of people we tend to catch are inefficient traffickers," he said. "The people we tend to miss are the most efficient... we force them to evolve at a lightning rate.” The drug dealers and druggies are getting the best of the law enforcement. Critics to this “survival of the fittest” theory argue that the drug market is too large and that it grows too fast, such that the size is more overwhelming than the quality of drug traffickers. These same critics tend to argue that the reason that we are failing so miserably in this war is because we have allowed marijuana and other drugs to become more precious than gold by putting such high emphasis on stopping them. This increases the potential market for drugs because more people will be looking to make a fortune dealing drugs. These are the same people who argue that legalization will help us solve our drug problems. They argue that we should follow the examples of some European countries, such as the Netherlands, and let the druggies get bored of the drugs so that the price and value of the drugs drops enough to lower interest substantially.
There are a few downsides to the legalization of marijuana to go with the obvious argument being presented by certain government officials. Sure, the legalization of marijuana will effectively lower the interest in drugs and ultimately help us possibly win the War on Drugs, but how do we control the marijuana once we legalize it? This is a question that is very difficult to answer for United States government anti-drug officials. Would we be able to control the distribution once we legalize it? Some argue that it would be just as easy as controlling alcohol or tobacco products and not selling them to minors. If this were true, what would the acceptable marijuana purchasing age be? How do we decide that this age is the most suitable age? The opposition to this claim that the legalization and control of marijuana would be just as easy as alcohol or tobacco states that marijuana is just to simple to produce to be controlled. It is much easier to mass-produce marijuana than it is tobacco or alcohol. Alcohol is a complex process that few individuals can mass-produce for sale without having all sorts of complex machinery, extra labor, and loads of money. On the other hand, marijuana is a very simple plant to grow and mass-produce. It just needs sufficient amounts of light to prosper anywhere. This means that, if legalized, marijuana would be extremely difficult to control as far as production goes. It could become a huge industry, sprouting factories, businesses, and marketing corporations everywhere. A problem that can be seen with legalization is that what used to be a war on the importing of drugs to the United States would become a war against the exporting of drugs out of the United States. This means that the legalization of drugs may not solve the problems, only alter them. The War on Drugs would continue, but it would become a land battle instead of an overseas battle. This presents us with more problems and the need for completely new ideas. This is why we should use the legalization of drugs as a last resort option to solving the drug problems. When considering legalization, it is always good to remember that nothing is proven yet. What works in foreign countries may not work in the United States. There are many differences between countries which may cause disturbances in the plan should the United States attempt to legalize drugs solely on the grounds that it has been effective in Europe.
The drug problem is rooted in the third-world countries. This has always been the case for several major reasons. The governments in third-world countries tend to be more lax concerning their drug policies, enforcement and action. These minute organization that call themselves governments really have no control over the drug market in their countries. They do not have the power to do all of the investigation necessary to solve the drug problems in their country. The can hardly manage the drug problems within their own county without having to worry about the external presence of say, the United States. The drug lords of the countries often have armed forces larger than military forces that their country’s government is willing to put forth to stop the drug problems. When you tie these drug lords to the influence coming from the United States drug dealers, it is easy to see why these governments are incapable of providing the slightest resistance to the War on Drugs. They simply just don’t possess the power and control in their country required to deal with these drug lords.
The lack of authority and control is not the only reason that the world’s drug problems seem to be rooted in third-world countries. The cost of most things in third-world countries is much less than second or first world countries. This means that citizens of third-world countries can purchase all of the supplies needed to mass-produce drugs easily. Citizens of other foreign countries can also travel to and from third-world countries for much less and can support the third-world economy easier. This makes it easier for a drug market to exist. Although the United States devotes more than twenty billion dollars annually to the War on Drugs, third-world countries devote almost nothing. They can neither devote anything nor do they actually care about the War on Drugs. The effort required to stop the drug system, even with the help of the United States’ twenty billion dollar budget, is enormous. The third-world countries have too many other problems that they are constantly worrying about to divert much attention in the direction of drugs. They must keep their eyes peeled for guerrilla action and coups in particular. The government is much more vulnerable in these third-world countries, which means that they must devote more time and energy to protecting themselves than anything. They cannot afford to worry about a drug problem that is not directly harming them or threatening them in any way, shape or form. It is true that a rise in drug trafficking coincides with a distinct rise in crime rates. This influences the government but not directly enough for them to devote any time to it.
Perhaps the easiest way to understand why the War on Drugs is centered in third-world countries is to focus on one particular third-world country and examine exactly why it fails in the disruption of the drug market. For this case here, lets take Colombia, the most drug-ridden country in the world and examine why it is the most popular choice for drug traffic. Colombia, like many poverty-stricken, Latin-American third-world countries, has a history of violence and corruption. Colombia suffered a terrible internal conflict between 1946 and 1963, known as La Violencia. There were an estimated 300,000 deaths during this period of violence. It was also estimated that the minimum possible amount of deaths was at 100,000, still an extremely large number. The fighting occurred between partisans of the liberal and conservative parties in rural Colombia. A particularly brutal episode in Bogota itself was the Bogotazo of April 1948. This period was basically a division of Colombia in which a lot of blood was shed over certain view and beliefs. Finally, this period ended formally when Rojas Pinilla allotted himself as the dictator of Colombia and the subsequent National Front governments let the liberals and conservatives agreed to alternate the presidency and all major government offices. The violence continued in pockets across the country well into the late 1960s. The violence was concentrated in several distinct regions, with divers other areas being completely unaffected by the violence. La Violencia was a result of the changes in the socioeconomic balance of rural Colombia brought about by the rural working class seeking dramatic reforms, a steeply growing population, increasing mobility, and the grandeur pressure of the diversity, particularly the separate regions, physically, that became divided racially, politically and ethically. This violent period seems to have been the mild beginnings of the drug market. Perhaps the United States administration would be able to control the drug trafficking from Colombia better if they examined the violent history and tendencies of the Colombian people. If the United States would stop their feeble efforts attempting to control the drug flow and maybe help Colombia achieve some form of socioeconomic equilibrium and quell the violence that subsists within their country, the drug trafficking would reduce greatly.
A variable in the Colombian case is the geographic condition of the country that presents numerous obstacles for the government when considering the War on Drugs. Three branches of the Andes divide the country into several
discernible regions, rather isolated from one another. As La Violencia illustrated through the division of the groups physically, economically and politically, the Bogota regime has only minimal government control over several rural areas. This makes it difficult for the drug trafficking to be controlled. The government cannot fund the law enforcement in these other rural areas and they have no power over the law in these areas. The government's inability to control sections of the country is shown by the fact that the drug lords have managed to create their own sense of government.
The military in these third-world countries is responsible for controlling the drug trafficking, but history has shown these forces to be corrupted by the presence of the cartel’s loads of wealth and their motivation has been questioned. The armed forces in Colombia have traditionally been a status quo institution. The military instigated only two coups in the twentieth century, the second in the 1950s. The military was used to oust General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in 1957 and then to solidify the peace provided by the National Front. Obviously there are more pressing matters to which the military devotes itself aside from the drug war, such as the coups and revolts that take place. It is because countries like Colombia cannot control their military and agree on a particular government that they have these drug problems. In order for these drug problems to stop, the socioeconomic structure of these third-world countries needs to achieve a sense of balance. This balance can best be achieved with peaceful foreign aid from the United States as opposed to violent intervention.
The segregation of political factions within Colombia is another sprouting point for the drug trafficking. Because these third-world countries are segregated and separated within, it causes enough turmoil that a government cannot worry about the drug trafficking within the borders. Nobody in Colombia can seem to agree on what should be done to stop this drug problem. If Colombia was able to agree politically and achieve an economic balance instead of relying on the cartel leaders as the primary economic stability, they could decrease the drug trafficking by ten-fold. Four major identifiable, independent Marxist-oriented groups were operate in Colombia, increasingly successfully: the FARC, the ELN, the Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19), and Ejercito Popular de Liberacion (EPL, 'Popular Liberation Army'). The ELN has taken a pro-Castro position and its urban youth have conducted their activities in the north of the country; the EPL has been a smaller force, also operating in the north; while the M-19 dates back further than the others, to the 1970 electoral defeat of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. M-19, with its diverse youth base, has been known for spectacular urban attacks, such as the seizure of the Palace of Justice in Bogota in 1985. These four groups are primarily responsible for the division of the country.
These guerrilla forces, calling themselves “defense organizations”, frequently attacked the rural fincas (estates) of the Colombian elites, kidnapping the families of landowners and encouraging workers of these export crop areas to organize. To preserve the integrity of their families and fincas, Colombian landowners created their own private armies (self-defense groups) for protection. The creation of private armies accelerated in the late 1970s and early 1980s as guerrilla attacks increased. The government of Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala (1978-82) was unable to combat these privatized armies. This was the true beginning to the fractionized Colombia. Because he could not quell the uprisings and provide even the slightest governmental support, the country became separated and control was lost. Turbay Ayala decreed, in 1978, that whole sections of the nation were subject to militarization. He then sent out all of his military to conquer and quell these uprisings, but he was unable to provide anything other than another increase in violent activity. The military could determine all law for these regions: legal jurisdictions, freedom of movement and curfews. However, this power was pointless because the military made little headway. This action led to more and more violence as disappearances and violent outbreaks became more and more common. Simultaneously, the private armies, often with training from countries outside Colombia, such as Israel and Britain, evolved into the death squads. The United States needs to only examine this violent period and history to understand why the drug problems sprouted out of Colombia. The United States should recognize that violence has been tied into the War on Drugs so to combat this war; we should break away from fighting the drugs and fight the governmental problems. With a strong government, Colombia could fight their own war and be much more successful than the outside presence of the United States would ever be.