Think back . . . before the "War for the Whitehouse", before "World of Warcraft", before the "War on Terror" . . . there was the "War on Drugs", that wonderful incredible thing that was supposed to get crack off the streets, end poverty, and make America a magical place to be.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but I look at the War on Drugs from a Latin American Studies perspective, and from that point of view the rose colored glasses are seriously wanting.
I'll start this rant with an explanation of Coca. It is a plant grown in South America (mostly in the Northern half-Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Boliva). It is believed to have originated in the Andes region (Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia). In the indigenous cultures of these regions, coca is a sacred leaf, and is absolutely necessary to survival. It is used in spiritual rituals, is used to fight off altitude sickness, it is used to ward off hunger while working. The leaf, unprocessed, is a stimulant - think chewing gum on a plane, or a mild dose of caffeine. (A great source on the subject is Whispering in the Giant's Ear, by William Powers.)
Coca is also the plant from which cocaine is formed. This is a highly technical and specialized process, requiring a great deal of equipment and a huge amount of processing. The drug, unlike the leaf, is habit forming. The drug, unlike the leaf, causes detrimental health problems.
Cocaine is, more or less, the reason for the war on drugs. The country most associated with this "war" is Colombia, famed for drug cartels and guerilla armies. There are certainly both in this violence-torn country, although this generality loses the significance of the problem.
There are two MAJOR problems with the concept and practice of the "war", these being:
1) Coca is NOT the same as cocaine
2) What we're doing ISN'T helping
As to the significance of the first:
The United States has outlawed coca leaf in the United States. This is to prevent the importation of copious quantities of raw coca leaf for conversion into cocaine. This bans coca used for ritual, for medical reasons, and for tea. While this seems highly logical, there are a few flaws with this concept. For instance, why ban coca and not tobacco? In their respective raw forms, coca is basically harmless, while tobacco is habit forming and detrimental to physical health. Additionally, the US likes to send squadrons of fighter planes and military helicopters to torch coca fields in Latin America. This:
1) does not prevent farmers from growing coca, as it is easily replanted
2) destroys villages and small farms
3) destroys subsistence crops, and thereby increases poverty among growers
4) ignores the non-narcotic uses of the plant
and therefore in general 5) does not accomplish what it is supposed to, the eradication of drugs
Bringing me to point two. The money the United States has poured into Colombia has not reduced the fighting between the government and the paramilitaries, nor has it added to the safety of the Colombian people. It has merely fueled the unrest. The strikes the United States has carried out against Bolivia and cocaleros in other Latin American nations has added to poverty and increased violence. The subsequent labeling of guerrillas in these nations as drug lords and terrorists has supported inaccurate stereotypes about Latin America and added to United States miscomprehension of the rest of the hemisphere.
The war on drugs has proved a point, just like the war in Iraq. Problems are not going to go away because you attack them with bombs and guns, because they are not attacking the root of the problems. If you want to eliminate drug use in the United States, you have to do something about poverty IN THE UNITED STATES. You have to increase opportunities and education to the lower class IN THE UNITED STATES. You have to eliminate the demand, not just hack at the supply ineffectively. Illegal drug use has not decreased since the U.S. started channeling money into the wrong places and blowning up coca fields. Poverty and violence in Latin America HAS increased. We need to do the math and actually learn something . . . maybe an ideological "war" is not a solution.
"If you want to eliminate drug use in the United States, you have to do something about poverty IN THE UNITED STATES. You have to increase opportunities and education to the lower class IN THE UNITED STATES. You have to eliminate the demand, not just hack at the supply ineffectively."
The problem here lies in the notion of eliminating drug use. It is not realistic to assume that under any circumstances, beyond those of a perfect world, that drug consumption will be eliminated or even lessened to any significant degree. Many wealthy, well educated and intelligent people choose to use illicit drugs like cocaine, not because they are ignorant or hapless, but simply because they like cocaine.
People who enjoy drinking alcohol don't consider themselves drug users, because our society doesn't label them as drug users; people are obsessed with labels. Yet, if we label alcohol correctly as a drug and then suggest an idea like eliminating it's use, most people would roll their eyes at the feasibility of such an aim. Most people don't use a drug like alcohol simply out of hapless ignorance, they use it because they like it.
The focus needs to be shifted towards rehabilitation of those drug users who need it and away from imprisoning them and making them criminals. The focus should be centred upon managing the problems associated with serious drug abuse and not some fairy tale notion that if you shoot enough people and stuff enough of them in prisons that the issues surrounding illicit drug use will magically disappear.
This war on drugs is actually a war on personal freedom; people will always fight for their freedom, the same way some unscrupulous people will always pop up and profit massively from the plight of those whose freedom has been compromised. The war on drugs is the best thing any violent drug cartel could hope for. It creates a monopoly for them, forcing all drug users to buy their illicit stock at the absolute premium rate from violent criminals.
The alcohol industry profits from this war which seems blind to the fact that alcohol is a drug. Violent drug dealing gangs profit extensively. The only people who don't seem to be profiting are the users and the tax payers. Users have to pay over the odds for dubious product, endangering both pocket and health. Abusers can't receive the help and rehabilitation they actually need, resulting in increased threat of actual crime, a threat which is clearly not lessened by sending them into prisons which are stuffed full of drugs and violent criminals.
Resources need to redirected towards facing up to the reality that drugs, whether illicit or not, are nothing new and are here to stay. 'Just say no' failed, again, because there will always be people who will say 'yes' or 'maybe later' and many of them know more about the drug in question than the people telling them to 'just say no'.
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I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
TUFFGONG
Senior Executive Administrator™
As a person with a Latin American studies perspective, I am surprised by your misinformation. The war on Drugs has been a costly and violent struggle. However, what large-scale movement hasn't been?
Now President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia is one of my personal heroes. President Uribe inherited a nation of proud people, who were working hard to make a living in a developing capitalist country. The Colombian people however, were very poor and much of their problems were due to FARC, the communist revolutionary group whose violent tactics has harassed the Colombian people for decades. At the heart of the FARC problem lies the drug trade, which has been the main monetary fuel for the revolutionaries besides ransoms for hostages. When President Uribe was elected, he realized that the best path for the Colombian people to leave behind poverty and the illegal drug trade was not through diplomacy, but through a new campaign of crushing the rebels once and for all. The previous president had just granted FARC a multi-thousand acre armistice zone, in his bid to deal with FARC peacefully. However, FARC used the armistice zone to stockpile weapons and build its base of coca production and recruitment. That "armistice zone," was the most difficult region for the Colombian military to take in its campaign under Uribe. As should have been realized, diplomacy was not an option and the liberal method, and the Colombian people paid the price as FARC used the peace zone to make its power greater than ever.
Now, first of all, the American military is no longer directly involved in the war between FARC and the Colombian government, and therefore I do not know where you are getting "American bombings of Coca fields" from. Next, I do agree that a method to end the cocaine production would be to provide an alternate livelihood for the Colombian farmers who are forced by poverty and FARC to produce cocaine. However, this will have no success if Uribe does not continue his successful campaign and wipe out the remaining FARc forces as he has done so well. FARC is in shambles after it lost its most valuable hostages in that masterful rescue (Betancourt still refuses to recognize the success of Uribe's government and she continues has continued her ties with Fidel Castro) and the Colombian military has forced FARC out of many of the regions it once possessed to across the Venezeulan border.
My point is that the war on the supply has been long, but it has been successful. It is not necessarily an "ideological," and I find it rather ironic that you don't think just ending poverty everywhere is ideological (its not exactly as easy as that).
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. - John Locke