Colombia Hooked on America's Failed War on Drugs

El Tiempo of Colombia warns of the corrupting influence of this 'America aid' on Colombia's government and society, and offers a few solutions that would solve the problem, but that neither the United States or Colombian governments are likely to institute.

By Oscar Collazos 

Paula van de Werken

February 16, 2006

Original Article (Spanish)

The war to liberate ourselves from drugs has promoted the creation of criminal organizations that today are themselves trying to become legal.

Gary S. Becker, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1992, reminded us last Sunday (El Espectador, page 6A) that the failure of the war on drugs obliges us to think about the need to legalize them.

He is not the first to suggest this, but he is one of the first economists of worldwide authority to say that legalization "could have a greater effect on reducing the consumption of drugs than the war against them."  In other words, the legalization and the drastic taxation of them.

In his study, Becker had this thought: "In place of drug cartels would be legal companies dedicated to the production and distribution of drugs of reliable quality, the same as happened when the prohibition of alcohol ended. There will be neither the destruction of poor neighborhoods …,  nor the corruption of  the governments of Afghanistan or of Colombia … ."

It is likely that economists working for governments that invest fabulous sums of money in the lost wars against the production and trafficking of  stupefying drugs are already in search of arguments to refute Becker. His hypothesis on a possible legal market for drugs and their gradual reduction of production and consumption could be controversial. But what isn't controversial is the failure of the wars undertaken by police and military methods.

Many people who read and follow the advice of The Economist [magazine] will not accept the cold logic of the following conclusion: "A legal market is the best guarantee that the consumption of drugs will not be more dangerous than drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco," as the  professor says.

Nonetheless, whatever is done on this subject will not be easy. It puts more than a few countries, if not the entire international community, in an awkward position.

After all, what would not be done to prevent a drying up of the pipelines of international finance, within which circulate incalculable business profits and dealings which allow drug-trafficking to prosper: contraband, arms trafficking, etc?

We all know that the drug trade is more profitable today than it was thirty years ago. We also know that the wars begun with foreign aid [Colombia] have not reduced the production or lessened the consumption of drugs.  They have helped create criminal organizations which before were few and  visible, and which today continue as countless, widely spread out organizations, dedicated to the legalization of their fortunes.

Relations between producing and consuming countries now go beyond merely putting drugs on their respective agendas. The Colombia Plan, for example, has not returned autonomy to the Colombian Government in its anti-drugs politics, but has made Colombia more dependent on the decisions of Washington.  Because of the  "fistful of dollars" allocated to this plan, the Colombian Government fell in line with  the so-called "preventative war" initiated with the invasion of Iraq.

That war is defiling our social and political life in a manner which is more subtle and effective than any other of  the last two decades. The new masters and go-betweens have started to colonize public administration through politics. Mildly tolerated money laundering operations, the real estate sector, gambling, and health-services industries all prosper amidst this war that has been lost. The struggle of the government seems not  directed toward winning the war, but sustaining it.

Guerrilla and paramilitary fighters have become businessmen within the magnificent industry of crime, and these "businessmen"  have been the first to take steps toward legalizing their fortunes, slipping in through the cracks of the peace process.