Latin American Leaders Start Assessment of Drugs War

For a whole generation, the world has concentrated on a law and order approach to the control and eradication of production and transportation of narcotics and other drugs. It is clear that this so-called war has been fought with public support and hard military responses but has not yielded acceptable results. The state of affairs in Latin America alone today's shows that there is need to accept that the approach has been unsuccessful. It is encouraging that in spite of the fact that the public in many countries are not naturally drawn to legalization and regulation, it is possible to form a persuasive case that the "War on Drugs" has failed.

Jamie Doward captures the frustrations of Otto Perez Mollina of Guatemala who hopes to convince his colleagues at an upcoming summit to consider a new approach. To my mind, this conversation is required even if the results of the discussion would be difficult to sell as apolitical decision. I applaud this because many other leaders in the neighborhood have been making similar declarations in light of the toll on human life. the political risks to the leaders attending the conference are real but there is no greater evidence than four decades of a well-articulated approach that has created insecurity and militarized drug trade and production.  This fresh approach alerts one to the idea that ideology is sometimes responsible for demonstrably poor public policy.

  

Mexico Must Sustain Drugs Legalization Debate

Reno Gazette Journal reports that Vicente Fox, a former president of Mexico openly stated that legalization of the drugs trade in Mexico would break the power of drug selling organized criminals. It is clear that the series of drug wars that Mexico and a number of South American countries have had did not wipe out the brutal traffickers but instead led to far too many deaths that were altogether avoidable. As I have stressed here, this hardware approach to fighting drug production and sale sounds good for moral absolutists but it has been demonstrated to be impracticable when balanced against social safety and freedom.

While a reversal of drug prohibition policy will not necessarily wipe out all the costs of drugs use, it will definitely save many Mexicans from the effects that arise from high profits being sought by illegal drug sellers. Whatever one's moral persuasion, Mexico's president should take the opportunity to follow up the discussion opened by a predecessor and advance debate to prepare for ultimate reform. The picture described by the Economist Magazine here means that Mexicans who neither consume nor trade drugs will continue to bear the cost of a politician's intransigence. And as implied, the drug gangs have the wherewithal to last for long. Saving lives and restoring peace should not be seen as succumbing to criminals but rather bowing to the force of reason.

More on Merida Initiative

Blake Hounshell of the foreign Policy Magazine posts on his blog here about the wrong-headed approach to the drugs control policy in the America's. Similar to the views expressed in the last post on this blog, he says that its clear that a doubling up in a failed policy will yield no better results. Militarization of the fight works perfectly into the hands of the cartels. It is pretty clear that the failures are clear to many in the administration but nobody will broach the issue of abandoning the fight in its present form. The worst policy is to fail to accept when faced with a failed policy.

War on Drugs is Like Pushing a String

Perhaps there is no single subject that I have consistently posted opinions on this blog about than that of the appropriate policy approach to drug control. To my mind, the existing enforcement and militarized approach has nothing much to show in terms of good results other than a rise in violent death for innocent citizens and law enforcers. Painfully though, the deaths take place as the cartels and major drug trading enterprises continue to make enormous profits that enable them to destabilize low-income states. This trend continues as the last weekend saw the attack leading to death of two citizens of the United States and their Mexican associate in the Mexican City of Ciudad Juarez.

Obviously upset by the continued violence from the drug cartels, both President Calderon and Obama seem to have decided that more of the same will create the needed change. This NYT story states that the Mexican president visited and commisserated with the families and thereafter promised a more focussed military onslaught on the drug cartels. This is not new at all and will obviously not work even if it is spruced up with some judicial reform and social welfare expenditure. On the other hand, president Obama is to announce the expenditure of more money on joint military units and more law enforcement. This is consistent with the Merida Initiative that was predictably going to fail and from which no lessons seem to be absorbed.

So I offer some recycled simple advise regarding the Merida Initiative. Stop pushing that string.

Afghanistan Opium Policy Turnaround

On innumerable occasions, I have mentioned that the US and its allies in Afghanistan have picked the wrong fight by concentrating on opium poppy eradication. This story in slate Magazine states that Richard Holbrooke has clarified that the policy from now will be the quest for an alternative. In truth, that some distance away from the futility of trying to fight Opium and not the Taliban. The same story proves why the economics of growing opium poppy in the region makes it a very attractive activity compared to alternatives. It demonstrably has higher returns for the effort. That should not have taken five years, and more, to figure out.

Rolling Stone Assesses the War on Drugs

Ben Wallace-Wells of Rolling Stone magazine dissects the effects of the War on drugs and laments the great waste of nearly half a trillion US dollars. Essentially, it argues correctly that the war on drugs has little to show for the enormous sums spent, property destroyed and lives consumed. For anyone with a little exposure to dispassionate analysis of both the theory and the examination of the empirical facts, this is not new but is a pointer to what ideologically-driven policy often leads to: disaster and waste of resources.

As if this requires repaet on this blog, I will rehash what is clearly evident from that piece and others. First, the best approach to narcotics use reduction policy should concentrate not on outright ban but on treatment of addicts who consume a disproportionate amount of the drugs. A second lesson is that manufacture, distribution and retail of drugs requires a highly organized corporate structure and is often responsive to changes and effects of the eradication efforts. Disruption of supply simply drives up price in the short term and this creates an incentive for increased supply while wrong theories are used to keep the fight going. Finally, as stated in the book Freakonomics, the gangs make a deliberate calculation about when to confront their competitors and when cooperation is more desirable. There's no reason to work harder at a failed policy.

Narcotics Fight Goes Underwater

As if further evidence is really necesary to show that drug control and eradication policy is presently crippled by bad thinking, this report in the LA Times shows that traffickers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to transport drugs north from Colombia. Discovery of the shipyard in which crude submarines were being constructed is an important one for the police. A different interpretation may be that it demonstrates the versatility of traffickers in general hence is not as much a sign of success as demonstration that the fight is moving to the seas.

The success in ensuring the capture of tonnes of drugs that the report means that prices will rise and provide incentives for more production, transportation and sale of narcotics. Essentially therefore, the cat and mouse game persists.

Further Evidence of Failing Drugs Policy in Afghanistan

Apart from demonstrating ably that state building from scratch can be a particularly difficult task, the state of Afghanistan today may just have the unintended consequence of opening up the discussion on international narcotics policy. At the risk of repetition, this blogger has commented in earlier posts that state that the attempts at the eradication of opium poppy in Afghanistan are ill-informed and bound for failure. Different stories on the International Herald Tribune and BBC news here support that claim in interesting ways. The IHT story states that drug cultivation has not only returned in full force in Balkh province of Afghanistan where it was considered eradicated, but that the farmers have instead opted for cultivation of cannabis. The stated reasons are interesting and relate to price incentives. These are that cannabis is less laborious and more cost-effective to grow in an arid area in addition to a higher yield for acreage. The BBC story states reports that the Senlis Council has taken the initiative to establish an experiment to legalize the cultivation of opium for the production of pharmaceuticals.

Together, these reports are fascinating because the first provides a reminder that the eradication of drug cultivation is increasingly fraught with problems while the other is that a mechanism to get some of those plants to market may be more helpful. I grant that the experiment Senlis Council is worthy of consideration though I suspect that the attempt to limit all production for processing into pharmaceuticals will only establish competition with alternative uses and leakage of drugs to that sub-market would arise over time.

Nevertheless, this shows that substantial steps towards legalization and regulation would be more useful since those simple farmers already understand that their land and labour put together would lead to a very high value product. They would most probably be prepared to pay a tax (which presently is appropriated by the Taliban) than cultivate crops that are obviously less lucrative. Constitutional provisions that bar cultivation will hardly change that reality but will only ensure that the policy is not reviewed appropriately and that poor citizens of that nation will merely see that law as really idiotic.

Thumbs Down to Merida Initiative

It may be in vogue for bloggers to find reasons to characterize the policies espoused by President George Bush as ill-informed. Noting that this blog is not at all about contending on ideological matters and even less so about name calling, I have been drawn to comment on the Merida Initiative carried in this piece by BBC News.

To the extent that I can tell, this is definitely an ill-advised effort to expand and militarize the failed and failing war on drugs. Presidents George Bush and Calderon are both quite enthusiastic about the plan to reduce the amount of cocaine passing through from Mexico into the US. Who needs evidence that the similar effort in Colombia only led to loss of lives without significantly crippling the the so-called drug cartels?

I have commented on several blog posts including this one, under this same label that this is a waste of money. I state again: taxation, legalization and treatment for addicts is the way. I ask how much treatment US$ 1.4 billion over two years would buy and I conclude that it would achieve more than a militarization of the sale of the undesired narcotics. Putting more effort on flawed thinking does not make it work.

Another Lesson on Illegal Drugs Policy

Governments world over develop anti-narcotics polices with due regard neither to the lessons of past actions nor the realities of the economics of illegal goods. Fuzzy thinking now is wedded to the idea that terrorist groups are raising money from sale of opium in Afghanistan and that an additional objective of the fight against the Taliban is to eradicate opium cultivation.

As if the lesson was still required, Willem Buiter, a profesor of economics at the LSE, states in the Financial Times why the expenditures on eradication and military response are unjustified. This symbolic show of toughness ought to be saved for the Taliban and not to the farmers seeking a livelihood. he makes the strong case for legalization with taxation to pay for the treatment of users who may have developed a dependency. Otherwise, the continuing ban works to the advantage of the organized crime groups because only they can meet demand.

The area of narcotics policy is an appropriate one for multilateral action and rules. When nations decide that the views supporting a law and order approach to narcotics policy should be reviewed, they will know what to do.The unpleasant truth of decades spent fighting expensive but ill-informed drug wars is out there.

UK Committee Reviews Afghanistan Progress

Over the last few weeks, this blog has had posts here and here covering the faltering war against the Taliban, by arguing that a mixture of the objectives would be detrimental to the primary objective. It appears that to roll together the primary objective of decisively defeating the Taliban and eradication of opium poppy growing is not prudent. This is because the Taliban is the legitimate military enemy, while opium poppy cultivation is a means for extracting livelihoods for a growing number of Afghanistan's farmers.

Paul Wood,reports here that the defense committee of the UK's house of Commons have issued a report that questions that approach too. Point six on that list is profoundly clear: "You can't fight the Taleban and opium at the same time."

It results in an unnecessary diversion that militarizes the war against opium, corruption and loss of public support for NATO forces. Fighting power and technological superiority does not help when the policy is incoherent. Defeat of the Taliban is not only possible but desirable while eradication of opium poppy is not NATO's war.

Forced Eradication of Opium in Afghanistan

In this earlier post, this blogger pontificated on why the fusion of the efforts to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppy in Afghanistan should not be fused with the real war against the Taliban. A very elaborate article by Jon lee Anderson in The New Yorker here traces the complicated results of the militarized approach that is informed by the misguided thinking that the two are correlated.

As is clear from this recommended piece, needless deaths have resulted from the march to clear poppy plants from small farms while the larger cultivators remain untouchable. Jon L. Anderson's sojourn through Afghanistan reveals why the approach has currency. it is that the eradication units are headed by officials that will not review their thinking but also need to emphasize that connection because they have a financial interest in eradication in spite of its efficacy or necessity. A number of them cite efforts in Colombia, Bolivia and other Latin American states without stating the benefits that emerged from that disastrous record. The prospects are far from good especially since the farmers are aware of the financial advantages of growing the opium poppy over cultivation of wheat. Apparently, what makes sense to these villagers is lost to well-traveled bureacrats!