The U.S.: Looking for Drug Traffickers in the Foreign Eye

It’s a script that is repeated time and time again: The United States always manages to hide the beam in its own eye and fly the banner of its ostensible fight against drug trafficking to crack down on other countries’ alleged infractions. And (what a coincidence!) they always state that they firmly stand by their people and implement socioeconomic policies that quite upset the empire because they are examples of sovereignty, independence and the defense of their resources.

These attitudes have to be punished. Washington — in perennial reruns of its Hollywood scripts — puts the aggressive propaganda machine into motion, a precursor to who knows what kind of warlike and interventionist plans, which will be much more dangerous.

Recently, the White House presented a report to Congress (protected by a 1961 law that gives it the “right” to point at other nations and accuse them of whatever they feel like*) that stated that Venezuela, Bolivia and many others have failed in the fight against drug trafficking. Specifically, the report states without proof that Venezuela has “failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to make substantial efforts to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements”; and, as it is the imperial leader’s word and decertification order, it is the word that the entire world must believe and obey …

Bolivian President Evo Morales immediately exposed: “Countries with ideological, cultural and programmatic anti-imperialist ideals will always be decertified by the United States government. … The classification does have a cost, but it doesn’t scare me because these decertifications are decided politically and without valuing the effort that national governments make in the fight against drug trafficking.” He added that, in the region, “only two countries have been decertified: Venezuela and Bolivia. And we know why.”

With this act, Washington pretends not to know and, from its privileged position as the global media epicenter, hides from the world that the United Nations has recognized Venezuela for bringing to a standstill the proliferation of illicit farming in its territory. So far this year, it has seized 30.2 tons of drugs, destroyed 17 narcotics processing laboratories in areas along its 2,200 km border — a good part of which were along its shared border with Colombia, the largest producer on the continent — and it has captured and deported 15 individuals accused of being drug traffickers by the Interpol, seven of whom were deported as recently as this Monday (six Colombians and an American).

“If any country has failed, it is the United States. It’s a threat to the world; it has not been able to intercept the drugs that come into its territory,” noted Venezuelan Minister of Justice and Internal Affairs Tareck El Aissami at the Seminar of Sovereign Policies and Strategies of Venezuela in the Global Fight Against Drugs. The seminar was attended by foreign and national journalists — an example of Venezuela’s policy of transparency on this delicate subject.

Nevertheless, this is the beam that the White House doesn’t want to behold nor cast out from its own eye. It continues to be the largest market for the purchase and consumption of drugs on this battered planet. This was confirmed in a U.N. global report, which states that in the state of Tennessee, there are 17 times more marijuana crops than soy crops. And if they don’t contain its use, the U.S. will also be the largest producer of methamphetamine in the laboratories of the cartels of this abominable business, and of marijuana, including the variety genetically modified with the application of the nation’s great scientific and technological development, supermarijuana or sinsemilla, with a 30 percent higher concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive component of marijuana.

As always, it’s the clinical application of a double standard, [used] especially to discredit others and, if possible, pave a way that would allow any justification to destabilize governments — to the point of provoking an intervention with the perverse purpose of seizing someone else’s wealth. That’s the way things go, and this decertification is one of the rocks that paves the way where cars can pass on their way to an interventionist war. Watch out!


*Note: Sections of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 give the U.S. president authority to suspend assistance to any country that the U.S. is unable to certify to be fully cooperative with the U.S.’ drug control efforts.