May 1, 2002
Narco News '02
A Failed
Strategy:
The
War on Drugs
By Gustavo de Greiff
Special to the Narco News Bulletin
Publisher's Note: On April 18th, former Ambassador
and Attorney General of Colombia Gustavo de Greiff, currently
a fellow at the Colegio de Mexico, returned to his country to
give a speech for a professional association hosted by the Escenarios
Corporation in which De Greiff issued a stinging indictment of
the failure of United States prohibitionist drug policies not
only in Latin America, but, citing Washington's own official
statistics, within the U.S.
It has been nine years
since Dr. De Greiff became the first major Latin American official
to call for an end to drug prohibition. Nine years of efforts
by Washington to silence him, as we can see today, have failed
just like the prohibition policy he criticizes.
Narco News is pleased
to offer this translation of the remarks, with footnotes supplied
by the former attorney general, ambassador and internationally
respected scholar; who history will remember as the founder of
the Latin American drug legalization movement.
I
wish to demonstrate that the so-called war on drugs, from a purely empirical point of view, has failed
and that reason requires a change from a repressive strategy
to a strategy of legalization, that is, the legal regulation
of the production and sale of currently prohibited drugs (fundamentally,
marijuana, cocaine and heroin). This regulation would be accompanied
by educational campaigns to discourage consumption and medical
treatment for addicts.
By regulation of the production and sale
I mean a series of legal measures that establish who, under what
conditions and limits, will be able to cultivate the plants from
where these drugs are extracted, who can manufacture them, and
limits on the contents of the active elements. These regulations
would also govern those who would want to sell them, where and
under what restrictions, the licenses that the cultivators, manufacturers
and sellers will have to obtain, the prohibition of advertising
of the drugs, the type of educational and public health campaigns
that must be forwarded and the medical aid (public and private)
that will have to be available to the addicts.
Many of the statistics that demonstrate
the failure of the poorly named war on drugs refer to the United
States of America for being the country where the majority of
cocaine consumption occurs (three-quarters, approximately, of
the global production of cocaine, a greater percent of the marijuana
and a third of the global production of heroin).
The war on drugs, in its most repressive
form, began under the government of Mr. Richard Nixon with a
federal budget of $6.5 million dollars. Today, almost twenty
years later, this budget has risen to $18 billion dollars. For
fiscal year 2003 the executive branch has presented a budget
that augments, in round numbers, the amount to more than $19
billion dollars, of which 70 percent are destined to the repressive
policies and only 30 percent to education and health services.
What is the reason for this repressive
strategy?
The logic behind the repressive strategy
by the U.S. government is founded upon the following argument:
If the drugs don't enter the United States, there is no drug
problem.1 To avoid the entrance of drugs, in union with
the governments and other institutions of State of the countries
where the drugs are produced, repressive actions are deployed
for the eradication or destruction of crops, laboratories and
airfield, the interdiction of shipments and goods, the capture
and imprisonment of traffickers and other similar means. All
of this should cause a reduction of the drugs available on the
market with would then result in a rise in the prices of the
drugs that do arrive on the market, which, then, would contribute
to dissuading the consumption by potential buyers as well as
the current consumers, influencing the addicts, also, to seek
treatment or stop using.
If the repressive strategy had tendered
results we would now have:
A.
Fewer land areas cultivated with plans from which the three large
prohibited drugs are extracted: cocaine, heroin and marijuana;
B.
Less availability of these drugs in consumer markets;
C.
Higher prices of each of these three drugs, and;
D.
Fewer consumers, habitual or hardcore as well as occasional users.
Unfortunately, there has been no improvement
in any of these categories, as we will now see.
The
Crops
A. The
number of acres cultivated has not been diminished. Although
it seems that this has occurred in Peru and Bolivia, the reduction
in those countries has been widely surpassed by the augmentation
of crops of coca and poppy in Colombia. As for marijuana, the
cultivation within the United States has risen. That has occurred
somewhat in Colombia, has begun in Canada and in Mexico it remains
stable in spite of the eradication efforts that all these countries
practice. 2
In Colombia, the satellite photographs
taken by the U.S. government and the United Nations indicate
that in spite of the fumigation of 60,000 hectares, coca crops
have increased in land area by 60 percent in the past year. 3
But the repressive policy so passionately
imposed by the U.S. government can be seen in the statements
of Mr. Phil Chicola, of the Colombia section of the U.S. State
Department, who responded arrogantly to the media: "If the
statistics of this study are correct, that means that we need
to do much more than what we are doing now, in place of less."
As the editor of Cambio magazine in Colombia noted, "As
he says, if fumigating more hasn't generated results, we will
fumigate much more and this will give us results." 4
The
Marketplace
B. The
availability of these three drugs of major consumption - cocaine,
heroin and marijuana - in the U.S. market has not diminished,
and in the streets of European cities it has increased. 5
According to a study published by the
Office of National Drug Control Policy of the White House, published
in December 2000 and titled "What America's Users Spend
on Illegal Drugs 1988-1998," the quantities available for
consumption have been:
Cocaine:
According to the calculations of the private
firm that conducted the study (Abt Associates, Inc.): In 1996:
288 metric tons, in 1997: 312; in 1998: 291, for 1999 it is estimated
that 276 metric tons were consumed and in the year 2000, 269
metric tons.
According to estimated calculations of
consumption: In 1996, 307 metric tons; in 1997: 154; in 1998:
212, and in 1999: 191.
According to deductive calculations regarding
cultivation: In 1996: between 411 to 599 metric tons; in 1997:
309-457; in 1998: 204-352; and in 1999: 176-324.
Heroin:
In 1996: 12.4 metric tons; in 1997: 13.1;
in 1998: 12.5, and in 1999: 12.9; an equal amount is calculated
for the year 2000.
Marijuana:
En 1996: 874 metric tons; in 1997: 960;
in 1998: 952; in 1999: 982, and in the year 2000: 1009.
The
Price
C.
The prices of these drugs have not risen either, as should have
been the result of the fumigations of crops, destruction of laboratories
and seizures.
Cocaine: The market price for the street-level consumer
per gram of cocaine has fluctuated in this way: 1988: $177; 1989:
$163; 1990: $193 6 ; 1991: $165; 1992: $160; 1993: $155; 1994: $140;
1995: $139. (in American 1996 dollars) 7 ; 1996: $159;
1997 to 2000 (each year): $149 (in American 1998 dollars) 8
Heroin:
1988: $1,655; 1989: $1,433; 1990: $1,476; 1991: $1,470; 1,992:
$1,315; 1993: $1,254; 1994: $1,099; 1995: $984. (also in American
dollars adjusted to 1996 value) 9 ; 1996: $1,048;
1997 to 2000 (each year): $1,029 (In American dollars of 1998)
10
Marijuana: Price per ounce: 1988: $287; 1989: $353; 1990:
$369; 1991: $406; 1992: $460; 1993: $334; 1995: $305; 1995: $269
(also in American dollars adjusted to 1996 value) 11
; 1996: $293; 1997:$297; 1998: $320; 1999 and 2000 (each year):
$293 (in 1998 American dollars) 12
Notice that, still, when in some years
the price has risen over that of the previous year (for cocaine
in 1990; for heroin in 1990 and 1991; and for marijuana in 1990,
1991 and 1992) the increase has not been so great as to have
any effect in dissuading consumers. 13
The
Users
D.
In relation to drug consumption the number of habitual (hardcore)
users of cocaine has fluctuated between 3.28 million and 3.3
million between 1998 and 2000, while it is reported that the
number of occasional users went down from 6 million in 1988 to
2.155 million in 2000. Habitual users of heroin passed from 923,000
in 1998 to being 977,000 in the year 2000, and the occasional
users from 11.6 million in 1998 lowered to 9.8 million in 1995
and up again to 11.7 million in the year 2000 14
The reduction in the number of occasional
users of cocaine is the only success that can be boasted by the
partisans of the repressive policy. But we employ that verb conditionally
because the authors of the studies conducted by the Office of
National Drug Policy Control (ONDCP) of the White House, speak
of "estimations subject to a significant inexactitude,"
15 of "differences so large that they lack credibility,"
16 "it seems plausible that the spending on
cocaine and heroin could be more than double or less than half
of our estimations," 17 "Based on these
admittedly imperfect assumptions, we estimate that between 372
and 458 metric tons of cocaine were shipped to the United States
in 1994," 18 "Undoubtedly there are lacunas in the investigation
(or intelligence) findings that impede us from knowing of all
the cocaine shipments and there is no manner to estimate the
quantity of cocaine that, in totality, is not detected,"
19 "Due to the quality of the available facts,
there is a considerable imprecision in the estimations of the
number of heavy and occasional users of drugs, the quantity they
consume and the street value of these drugs." 20
The study corresponding to 1998, but that
makes projections of consumption and availability of drugs in
the market until the year 2000, is even less explicit than the
previous one, and also cites the inconsistencies in the statistics,
as can be read on pages 5, 11 and 16. 21
As a result, in relation to the number
of consumers of cocaine, that between 1994 and 2000, the years
of greatest repression, if we believe the statistics they decreased
from 2.930 million to 2.155 million; that is to say, 755,000
fewer. In these same years the number of consumers of heroin
grew and the number of marijuana users remained stable. The United
States federal budget for anti-drug efforts rose during this
same period from 12 billion dollars to 17 billion, that is to
say an increase of $5 billion for a questionable achievement.
The untrustworthiness of the statistics
on drug consumption is the result, in a large part, of the nature
of the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, that asks questions
of the populace about their drug use habits. The questions are
posed to people who are part of stable communities (excepting
military troops and jailed persons, as well as the homeless)
which has led to, as those in charge of the studies accept, a
great inconsistency due to the prohibitionist laws and the fact
that the activity being asked about is a crime. While the laws
are applied rigorously there is more possibility that people
aren't honest in their responses to questions about their drug
use. One doesn't need to be a genius to figure out that few would
dare declare that they engage in an activity that the laws call
a crime.
Another of the sources used to determine
drug consumption is in the statistics calculated by a program
called Drug Use Forcasting (DUF), that are the product of a survey
made of a group of prisoners in 24 urban jails about the consumption
of drugs, as well as the results of urine tests taken to determine
if they have used any drug during the three days before the interview.
The results are then extrapolated to estimate drug use among
the entire population. Here, also, the survey results have grand
inconsistencies, both for the criteria used in each case to choose
the survey group as well as the prevalence or not of drug use
in the cities where the chosen prisons are located.
And to think, that reports like these
are the basis of how plans to combat drugs are elaborated!
Unable to recognize failure in the fight
against drugs that they promote, they also set goals that time
itself rebuts. For example, during the government of President
George Bush, father of the current American president, at the
end of the 1980s he proposed a reduction in the quantity of cocaine
that comes to his country by 10 percent in the first two years
and by 50 percent in the following ten years. The statistics
above regarding the amount of cocaine available in the United
States market demonstrate that the proposed result was not achieved.
And under the government of Mr. William
Clinton, the National Drug Control Strategy of 1999 states: "The
strategy proposes a multi-year goal of reducing the consumption
and availability of drugs by 50 percent" 22, which has
not been achieved. 23
Another
Strategy
Why
not then recognize the failure of the
repressive policy and, in its place, adopt another strategy?
James Q. Wilson, a U.S. political scientist
who was named in 1972 by President Nixon as president of the
National Council for Prevention of Drug Abuse 24 defended,
during the 1980s, the prohibitionist policy because, according
to him, it was the only way to prevent an increase - and bring
about a reduction - in the number of consumers of heroin. It
would be worthwhile to ask him now how he justifies the policy
in retrospect, when the number of heroin users grew from 170,000
to 570,000 and the number of habitual users remained stable.
He now says that in this area the repressive policy as not been
at all successful. 25 And to think that he has been one of the people
who contributed to the ideology of the anti-drug policies of
the United States of America!
The United States government is frequently
criticized for not doing enough to diminish the consumption of
prohibited drugs. For its part, the U.S. government criticizes
nations like Colombia, Mexico and others because they say we
do very little to impede the production and transport of these
same drugs. Both observations appear to me to be unjust. That
government and those countries, in fact, do a lot - very much
- toward those goals. What occurs, though, is that what they
do doesn't work, as the facts demonstrate that the strategy that
they follow is erroneous, tremendously erroneous.
It's not just that the war on drugs is
a failed policy. It's also that it has created problems that
cause innumerable damage to the countries that suffer it.
In the United States of America and our
Latin American countries the application of repressive laws against
drugs has diminished - in some cases, eliminated - precious civil
liberties, ignoring rights whose recognition cost tremendous
sacrifices for much of the last two centuries. 26 But the
policy has eroded the very legal gains for which the greatest
sacrifices were made.
As professor Douglas Husak has noted,
"the illegality has had a pernicious impact in the administration
and style in which drugs are ingested. According to what one
treatise writer describes as 'the irony of the law of prohibition,'
the potency of illegal drugs has increased to the highest level
possible to reduce the size of the containers in which they are
transported as well as the risk of being intercepted". 27
The prohibition of drugs makes the drugs
more attractive due to the phenomenon of "forbidden fruit".
28
Courts and jails have clogged as a result
of the "hard line" policy against drug consumers. The
impact of crimes related with drugs has led many commentators
to speak of the collapse of the judicial 29 and penitentiary
systems. Largely due to the war on drugs, the United States has
the dubious honor of being the country with the greatest number
of prisoners per capita: By the end of 1999 one out of every
137 residents of this country and its territories were behind
bars. 30
The foreign policy of our countries has
suffered distortions and incalculable damage because of the war
on drugs. Think no further than the pernicious effects of the
certification process by the U.S. government toward other countries
that, in its judgment, are either efficient or not in this so-called
war. Remember no more than how a United States Ambassador to
Colombia, in 1995, said that Colombia would be decertified if
it persisted in its banana export policies to European countries.
And even still, there are many other damaging
effects of the war on drugs. Think, for example, only of what
it means from an ethical point of view: the policy that authorizes
(and executes) the shooting down of airplanes suspected of carrying
illegal drugs. Professor Milton Friedman was right in his famous
letter to the then-drug czar Mr. William Bennett, when he said:
"A country where a tactic in the drug war of shooting down
suspicious airplanes is not the type of United States that you
or I wish to pass to future generations."
In light of all this, we believe that
if a change of strategy is promoted to combat the problems that
the production, sale and consumption of drugs creates, we think
that those caused by the production and sale are solved by legalization
and that those caused by drug use are solved by utilizing education
about the dangers that the abuse of narcotic or psychotropic
drugs brings, and with the administration of medical treatment
for addicts. 31 As don Carlos Fuentes recently affirmed, with
legalization there would continue being addicts but at least
the bands of narco-traffickers and corruption related to them
would disappear.
In relation to this issue it is important
to repeat that legalization must not be understood as an invitation
to consume nor an indiscriminate availability of drugs with their
sale in just any place without any control. No: By legalization
of the production and consumption what must be understood is
that it means a regulated system in which the cultivation of
the plants from which the drugs are extracted, the production
and the sale are subject to governmental administrative controls
and civil sanctions for those who break them. That is to say,
legalization would be a system regulated by law and through administrative
actions designed to prevent the evils that use and abuse can
cause. And all this, accompanied by educational campaigns to
instruct society about such evils, discourage drug use and offer
treatment to addicts.
Taking into account the noted failures
in relation to crops and prices and the concerns about consumers,
one asks himself: Why not try a different strategy than repression?
How right the Commisson on Drugs of the
Bar Association of New York County was when in 1995 it wrote:
"The goal of any policy against drugs must be the decrease
of consumption and of the evils that use and abuse cause, and
to minimize the damages that are associated with the problem.
Additionally, any policy that causes more damage than the social
problems it proposes to solve must be reevaluated regarding the
convenience of continuing it."
If the combat against drugs has been developed
in our countries under the pressure of the various U.S. administrations,
it is a war.
It must be considered, as United States
professor Douglas Husak notes, that "a policy that doesn't
work can always be changed: but a war that is not won can only
be a lost war." 32
Those who attack legalization are accustomed
to asking: How can legalizing the narco-traffickers be morally
justified? Ignoring the insidious implication (because nobody
is trying to legalize narco-traffickers), permit me to make a
clarification that must be made. It is said that legalizing or
regulating the production and sale of narcotic and psychotropic
drugs of the kinds of which we have spoken, those that are today
prohibited, legalization would naturally have to contemplate
that those who have broken the law during prohibition would continue
to be subject to criminal process and the corresponding penalties
and that those who act outside of the new legal regulations would
be breaking anti-drug laws that are today on the lawbooks. Someone
might ask: Is it not a traditional principle of legal rights
that when a law disappears, doesn't it involve pardon or rehabilitation?
The answer must be that it is correct that this principle exists
as a positive norm in the majority of the legal codes of Latin
American countries, but it is also the case that old laws can
be replaced by new laws. This is not the issue upon which they
can attack us.
Decriminalization, such as what occured
with some drugs in Holland, in turn, consists in taking away
the criminal character of consumption. Personally, I don't like
this system. Although it is certain that in not punishing the
consumer by taking away his liberty (and all the corresponding
evils of putting someone in prison only because he consumed and
this even includes first-time use) it has the grave inconvenience
of leaving the market open to the traffickers and doesn't solve
the corruption that is part of the nature of illicit trafficking.
However, still, a more permissive or less
repressive policy, as in Holland, shows less damaging results.
Look at the comparative statistics of the years 1997 and 1998:
Consumption of marijuana by persons 12 years old or greater:
United States, 33 percent. Holland, 15.6 percent. Consumption
of heroin among persons 12 or older: United States, 1.1 percent,
Holland, .3 percent. Per capita cost of applying prohibitionist
laws: United States, $81, Holland $27 (Sources: US Department
of Health and Human Services, National Household Survey on Drug
Abuse, report of March 2000, and the University of Amsterdam,
Centre for Drug Research, September 1999.) 33
Those of us who propose the strategy of
legalization or legal regulation of the production and sale of
currently illicit drugs (fundamentally, marijuana, cocaine and
heroin) are not a group of irresponsible people who only want
to solve the evil consequences of this production and sale in
an illicit environment and we have always concerned ourselves
with the argument waged against us: that in which, opponents
say, that legalization would produce an "explosion"
in the number of drug users. Our thesis has to be understood
in the general context of contemplating this other aspect of
the problem, that is, the state of consumption, in which, we
repeat, there must be wide educational campaigns developed to
discourage the use of drugs and give medical treatment to addicts.
34
A report by the Bar Association of New
York City examines this question extensively in terms of what
occurred when the prohibition of alcohol was lifted and what
would happen in some of the United States when marijuana was
decriminalized on a state level, as well as the experience of
Holland. It concludes that the fear is unfounded. The psychiatrist
and neuro-scientist in the United States, Dr. Michael S. Gazzaniga,
came to the same conclusion in his book, Drug Legalization:
For and Against.
Various arguments of that report, backed
by innumerable statistics and by noted authors and experts in
the theme, effectively rebut those who hide behind this argument
over a possible "explosion" in the consumption of drugs
to continue supporting the useless and lost war on drugs. Let's
look at them:
A.
According to the available evidence, the recent reduction in
the use of drugs and in the consumption of alcohol and tobacco
is attributed by the experts to factors such as education, health
and the desire to be in a good physical state, more than any
laws prohibiting drugs. 35
Including, according to some observers,
the prohibitionist laws are a significant factor in causing an
increase in the use of drugs and a cause of a greater number
of addicts than there would otherwise exist.
B.
During the prohibition of alcohol, in the United States, the
per capita consumption of alcohol increased. 36 After "the
repeal of Prohibition, in 1993, the consumption remained relatively
stable until the Second World War when, without any change in
public policy, it began to increase". 37 The prohibitionist
laws, as a consequence, seem to have very little impact on individual
decisions about whether to use drugs or not. 38
C. In
ten of the 50 United States, where small quantities of marijuana
for personal use were decriminalized in the 1970s, there was
no increase in the amount of marijuana used. 39 To the contrary,
the consumption of marijuana in those states, as well as those
that kept the penal sanctions for personal use, declined, 40
and thus the prohibitionist laws have little to do with the matter
of consumption or no consumption.
D.
In 1976, Holland decriminalized the consumption of marijuana,
41 while possession and sale technically remained
illegal. 42 The level of use actually declined after decriminalization.
43 In reality, the use of marijuana in the Third
World is substantially lower than that in those countries that
wage a "war on drugs," including the United States
and, at least recently, Germany. 44 Among Dutch
youth aged 17 and 18, only 17.7 percent have used marijuana at
least once in their lives, as opposed to 43.7 percent of the
Americans of the same age. Only 4.6 percent of Holland's citizens
have used marijuana at least once in the past month, as opposed
to 16.7 percent of the Americans. At the same time, these statistics
clearly indicate that the prohibitionist laws don't work against
the use of drugs. They demonstrate that by legalizing their use,
at least with marijuana, there is no increase in use. 45
The same report indicates that "due
to an exception in the British prohibitionist system, doctors
can administer prohibited drugs to addicts. Dr. John Marks of
Liverpool began such a program in 1982, and noted that the number
of addicts in Liverpool decreased while a nearby city that operated
under a prohibitionist system saw an increase of new addicts
12 times greater. 46 Dr. Marks attributed this to the fact that the
addicts received the drug they need for a few cents, and consequently
did not have to recruit new addicts to be able to obtain money
that would allow them to maintain their habit.
Finally, Dr. Michael S. Gazzaniga makes
an authoritative argument over what could occur with consumption
upon legalizing the production and sale of drugs in an interview
published by the National Review (February 5, 1990, pages
34 to 41), and reproduced in his book, Drug Legalization:
For and Against. 47 According to this outstanding professional, human
beings are possessed by a powerful instinct of not repeating
conduct that can harm them. That's why when one crosses the street,
one looks both ways to avoid being hit by a car and when one
plays sports that are dangerous one takes all kinds of precautions
to diminish the risk. This same instinct takes effect in the
sense of being careful in the consumption of products that can
cause harm. The immense majority of human beings consume alcohol
socially and only a minority of them do so abusively. Among those,
a smaller minority becomes addicted, and the same can happen
with cocaine, regardless of whether there is legalization or
prohibition. And those who are part of this minority have genetic,
physical or psychological problems that cause them to abandon
this instinct of self-preservation.
Why then, in spite of all the evidence
about the failure of the repressive policy, do they insist on
it? I think the problem has to do with political and economic
interests that encourage the repression. On one side are the
narco-traffickers and the corrupt officials who would see their
obscene profits (numerous and illicit) disappear under a policy
of legalization, and those whose jobs depend upon the existence
of the repression, as well as dishonest politicians who make
their careers presenting themselves as moral saviors. On the
other side are honest people who sincerely think that with legalization
there would be an "explosion" of consumption: It is
to those whom I invite to examine the facts that demonstrate
the failure of a policy with an open mind.
Certainly, we are in agreement that legalization
or legal regulation could not be achieved by one or a few countries
individually and that a nearly universal concert of nations is
needed to adopt it. But this is not an obstacle for academics
and politicians and social leaders to study and promote its adoption.
The force of ideas is incredible. Remember no more than that
the cultural revolution of 1968 came out of a modest philosophy
class of no more than twenty students in California whose professor
was Herbert Marcuse.
I speak frequently with high public officials
in various nations and all of them say to me, "Dr. De Greiff,
you are right, this problem of drugs and how it is being combated
is crazy, and we have to get to what you are proposing,"
but it is discouraging that very few dare to say it publicly.
The majority of them continue on the path of the fearful because
they don't want to assume the position of being exposed to the
ire of the United States government. Thus, they prefer to remain
silent and limit themselves to backing greater repressive measures
and more budgetary spending for the war, secretly hoping that
some miracle, at some moment, will produce the disappearance
of illegal drugs. That's why my hope lies with the young students,
who some day, god willing not long from now, will take the decision
of their destiny into their own hands; for their generosity and
absence of compromise with special interests, I have faith that
they will adopt a more rational solution to the problem of drugs.
Footnotes
1.
This logic doesn't take into account the production inside the
country.
2. See reports of the International Narcotics Control
Board of the UN, that can be consulted on the Internet at incb.org
3. See Cambio magazine, May 16, 2001
4. See Cambio magazine, May 22, 2001
5. See the report of the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, ONDCP, that can also be found on the Internet at www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov.
Regarding Europe, see the report of the Geopolitical Drug Dispatch
(Observatorio Geopolítico de las Drogas de París,
El País, Spain, April 21, 2000.
6. See footnote 18
7. What America's Users Spend on Illicit Drugs 1988-1995,
Table 4
8. What America's Users Spend on Illicit Drugs 1988-2000,
Table 6
9. The statistic corresponding to 1988-1995, Table
4 and Table 3 of 1988-1998 study
10. The statistic corresponding to 1988-1995, Table
6 and Table 3 of 1988-1998 study
11. The statistic corresponding to 1988-1995, Table
6 and Table 9 of 1988-1998 study
12. The statistic corresponding to 1988-1995, Table
9 of 1988-1998 study
13. It works in such a strange manner that we could
name it "the economy of prohibited drugs" that in the
first study by the White House, titled "What America's Users
Spend on Illegal Drugs 1988-1993", it says "[T]hat
the supply of cocaine could have remained constant while at the
same time the price increased (and apparently the consumption)
during 1990 is a question that perplexes." (p.40).
14. The statistic corresponding to 1988-1998, Tables
3 and 9. In the case of cocaine it is considered that the habitual
(or hardcore) user is one who has used for at least one or two
days a week each week during the year previous to when this poll
was taken, and that the habitual heroin user is one who has consumed
more than ten times during the month previous to the survey,
and ocassional users are those who have consumed less frequently
than the habitual users according to this criteria.
15. The statistic corresponding to 1988-1995., p.
10
16. Ib., p. 14
17. Ib., p. 18
18. Ib., p. 34
19. Ib., p. 37
20. Ib., p. 46
21. The complete text of this study can be found at:
whitehousedrugpolicy,gov
22. Ib. P. 1.4
23. And the strategy for the year 2002, recognizing
implicitly the failure of the previously stated goals, has been
fixed to reflect a goal of a reduction of 10 percent of prohibited
drugs in two years and 25 percent in five years. National Drug
Control Strategy, The White House, January 2002, p. 3
24. This Council, created by the United States Congress,
was in charge of producing a report about the best manner to
coordinate the war on drugs. See Wilson, On Character
25. See Wilson, On Character, Ed. AEIPress, Washington,
1995
26. The presumption of innocence and due process are
among the various civil rights affected. In Colombia, for example,
there had been a long period during which someone could be kept
incarcerated simply for being under suspicion, without a court
order, and the prosecutors later would have an unlimited time
period to resolve the situation.
27. See note 21, p. 54
28. See note 45 infra
29. Husak, Ibíd, p. 56
30. See US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Prisoners in 1999, August 2000, p. 1
31. For a long time the fundamentalists of the "war
on drugs" said that the users, like the traffickers, should
be sent to jail, because education and medical treatment didn't
work. The empirical evidence since 1994 to the present demonstrates
the contrary. In education, what occurred in relation to tobacco,
whose consumption has decreased notably thanks to the truthful
information about the dangers of its use, without needing to
use penal measures, demonstrates the effectiveness of a rational
strategy. And in relation to drugs, the report of the Bar Association
of New York County, titled "A Wiser Course: End Prohibition,"
published in the spring of 1994, can be read at www.drugpolicy.org
. Recent public declarations by the so-called drug czar in the
United States confirm the effectiveness of medical treatment
to get addicts off of drugs.
32. "A policy that does not work can always be
changed, but a war that is not won can only be lost" Drugs
and Rights, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 16.
33. Drug War Facts, March 2001, Common Sense for Drug
Policy, Washington, USA www.drugsense.org
34. Those who, according to statistics, consume more
than 60 percent of the illicit drugs that are on the market.
Ponder what it could mean to take this market away from the narco-traffickers,
and yet the partisans of the "war on drugs," as they
practice it today, dedicate more than three-quarters of their
budgets to implment police interdiction measures and only one-third
to education and treatment.
35. The author of this article, for example, has receved
the testimony of some exaddicts who have demonstrated that possibly
in an environment of legalization they would not have fallen
into the vice, or would have been able to rehabilitate themselves
sooner. To them, the prohibitionist environment led them to a
situation of rebellion and already involved in drug use it impeded
them from seeking help due to the shame of being identified as
criminals and later for fear of being brought to prison for violating
these prohibitionist laws.
36. Letter to the Editor, Just Say Yes, The Village
Voice, January 18, 1994, p. 6 (letter by Dr. John P. Morgan,
Professor, City University of New York, School of Medicine).
37. Ibid
38. Ibid
39. Grinspoon & Balakar, The War on Drugs. A Peace
Proposal, # 330, New England J. Med, p. 358; see also Steve France,
Should We Fight or Switch?, 76 A.B.A.J. ps. 42, 45 (1990).
40. Ethan Nadelmann, Isn't it Time to Legalize Drugs?,
The Boston Sunday Globe, October 2, 1988, p. 23A, see also a
J.P. Morgan, D. Riley & G.B. Chesner, Cannabis: Legal Reform,
Medicinal Use and Harm Reduction, in Psychoactive Drugs and Harm
Reduction (Nick K. Heather Ed. 1993) (reporting that decriminalization
of small quantities of marijuana in the state of South Australia
in 1985 did not cause any change in the amount of use in that
state; there had not been any significant difference in the indexes
of use in the state of South Australia and other states of the
country that did not change their marijuana laws.)
41. See Nadelmann, Ib. p. 23A.
42. See Henk Jan van Vliet, The Uneasy Decriminalization:
A Perspective on Dutch Drug Policy, 18 Hofstra L. Rev., p. 717
(1990).
43. Nadelmann, pág. 23A, Ob. cit. In footnote
20.
44. But see Marlise Simons, Drug Floodgates Open,
Inundating the Dutch, N.Y. Times, abril 20, 1994, p. 4A (reporting
that "drug tourists" in Germany, Belgium, Luxemborg
and France have inundated the lower countries owing to "permissive
norms over soft drugs").
45. In 1993, as Attorney General of Colombia, I received
a visit from four police chiefs of Dutch cities, who shared information
similar to that cited by the New York Bar Association. They said
that the experiment did not have all the success it desired given
that there wasn't any similar regulation in other European countries,
Holland had been invaded by consumers from outside, but that
among the local population and especially among the young, the
consumption of cocaine and marijuana had diminished. Upon asking
them to what was attributed this descent in use by the youth,
the answer was: "Although it might seem naïve, the
explanation we have is that since the drugs had lost the enchantment
of the forbidden and didn't serve any more as a pretext for rebellion
against broken homes or tyrannical parents, the young people
stopped using them." In a report presented in 1997 by the
Ministers of Interior and Justice of Holland about the drug policy
in their country, that can be found on the Internet via Yahoo,
it is seen how the number of drug addicts, relative to the entire
population, is much lower in Holland and Germany than in European
countries with less liberal policies. (In Holland, 1.6 per thousand,
in Germany 1.5 per thousand, while in France and England, where
the prohibitionist laws are tougher it is 2.4 and 2.6 respectively.
46. Sidney
Zion, Battle Lines in the War on Drugs: Make Them Legal, N.Y.
Times, December 15, 1993, p. 27A.
47. Edited by Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, Open
Court, La Salle, Ill, USA, ps. 231 to 246
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