Addicted to Failure

President George W. Bush?s early pronouncements about the importance of Latin America raised hopes for a new golden era in relations between the United States and its neighbors. But things haven?t quite worked out according to expectation. Skirmishes over trade, economic policy, and the war in Iraq have completely eroded the optimism that greeted Bush?s arrival in the White House two and a half years ago. Meanwhile, the region?s manifold problems have only intensified. Rather than continuing to wait for a regional partnership that exists in communiqué form only, Latin America must begin to act in its own best interest. It can start by disentangling itself from the unwinnable war on drugs.

The futility of the war on drugs has long been obvious, but the evidence of failure grows starker each year. Attacking the supply side has yielded nothing: Drugs are cheaper, purer, and more plentiful than ever. Despite crop-eradication programs, there is substantially more opium poppy and coca cultivated today than there was two decades ago. Attempting to stamp out the supply of drugs is like pushing on a balloon?cut off production in one country and another quickly fills the void. Colombia, for instance, produced no heroin 15 years ago. Now the country is the leading supplier to the United States, having replaced Mexico, Turkey, Southeast Asia, and Southwest Asia, each of which was a major source of heroin at one time or another.

Far from improving the health of nations, the war on drugs has cut a swath of misery and corruption throughout Latin America. Just as they have done in Medellín and other Colombian cities, drug gangs are turning the streets of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo into free-fire zones. Across the region, tens of thousands of farmers have seen both their livelihoods and land destroyed. (The pesticides and herbicides that are used to stamp out illicit crops frequently cause lasting environmental damage.) The enormous economic dislocation and intensifying waves of social unrest in Latin America are the results of failed prohibitionist policies, not drugs per se.

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[en] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/story.php?storyID=13794
[es] http://narconews.com/Issue30/articulo809.html
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