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De-legalizing the War on Drugs As the Summit of the Americas draws closer, members across the continent grow further apart on a debate that is set to take the spotlight in Cartagena, Colombia on April 14th and 15th: the costs of the War on Drugs and legalization as an alternative. What began with a series of comments from the Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos during a book festival in Cartagena has taken a more serious tone with the call for a formal debate on the possibilities of legalization from the President of Guatemala, Otto Perez. The response of the U.S. government so far has been that it will hear but the policies of the War on Drugs will remain essentially the same. It isnt hard to see why some American allies in the region are butting heads with the U.S. government on the topic. There is a growing consensus that the traditional strategy of the War on Drugs has failed to deliver. Drug trafficking and consumption havent receded at any substantial levels and Latin Americans keep paying the price with their blood. Legalization might not be the final solution to the drug cartels and the wave of violence that they have brought upon some areas of the region, as some critics argue. But considering alternatives wont hurt anyone if the current strategy has been deemed a failure. As Carlo Dade, the former executive director of the

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Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL), puts it: you wont know if it is a good or a bad idea unless you have the right people talking about it. And it seems that this is the right time to have leaders across the continent discussing other options. More than 40 years after the U.S. President Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs little overall progress has been made. There have been local successes, like the elimination of the drug cartels in Colombia and the reduction of trafficking across the Caribbean. But Colombia still produces almost 45 percent of the cocaine consumed worldwide, and drugs keep reaching the U.S. through different corridors. This is the result of the so-called balloon effect, whereby the problem morphs or moves but doesnt die. So Pablo Escobar is not bombing malls and terrorizing Cali to fight El Cartel del Valle, but the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels are beheading civilians in Ciudad Juarez in a bid to take control over the city; the Mexican government may be installing more bases in Tamaulipas to fight Los Zetas cartel, but the criminal group has moved into northern Guatemala and the local police is losing the war against it; and the demand for cocaine continues to rise. Based on UN estimates, between 1998 and 2008 there was a 27 per cent increase in worldwide cocaine consumption.

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What this means is that tackling production, trafficking, and consumption has not yielded sustained progress. And all this happens while the death toll reaches 50,000 in Mexico after Felipe Calderon implemented the militarized strategy of the War on Drugs in 2006, which the U.S. backed with the Merida Initiative in 2008. Thats the reason why Otto Perez came forward with a strategy that seems radical when compared to whats in place today. Perez wants to talk about decriminalization, which would open the door to state regulation of the drug business, and a regional court that would take up drug-related crimes. And an even more revolutionary petition: he wants the U.S. to pay for seized narcotics and destroyed plantations of marihuana and coca. Perez has said that its government doesnt have the resources to fight the violence in the way Colombia did between the 1990s and the early 2000s. The Guatemalan budgets for public security and for the army combined amount to US$580 million. The cartels are moving between US$40 - $50 billion worth of drugs through the country every year. And the country is receiving only US$16 million from the U.S. to fight the war. But not all are convinced that decriminalizing or legalizing narcotics is the answer to the problem of violence. Reducing the flow of drugs wont change organized crime in the region, says Ralph Espach, the director of the Latin

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American Affairs program at CNA (a non-profit centre for policy and analysis based in Virginia). Espach agrees with the idea that parts of the drug-fighting strategy have to change. There has to be more emphasis in improving the rule of law in Latin American countries, and more funding to strengthen social programs. Decreasing the wave of violence, he says, is not a matter of legalization. The fact that drug cartels have diversified their sources of income human trafficking, sex trade, arms trade, kidnappings, and other criminal activities makes it hard to believe that eliminating the drug problem would lead to the extinction of the cartels. This is in part the result of local, rather than global, problems. Some countries are incapable of enforcing their own laws and of changing their own landscape, says Espach. His argument that Latin American countries have to address some issues at home is similar to the conclusion that Federico Thoumi has reached. He is the author of The Political Economy and Illegal Drugs in Colombia, and he was the director of the Global Report on Drugs for the United Nations in 2000. Throughout his career Thoumi has written about risk factors that make some societies more vulnerable to organized crime than others. The social context of some Latin American countries, he says, provide a more fertile ground for criminal networks to grow.

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Yet, Thoumi is one of the main supporters of legalization and decriminalization to ameliorate the crisis. Policies of prohibition have strengthened criminals and undermined some states abilities to govern, he says. As [the President] Santos said, the Colombian conflict cannot be understood without the profitability of the drug trade. He admits, however, that legalization is no panacea. To reduce crime rates, he says, governments have to improve the legal system, decrease unemployment rates, tackle economic inequalities, and effectively address corruption. These are all problems that pervade some Latin American countries. But it becomes harder to improve in these areas, he says, when drug trafficking is added to the equation. Leaders of the continent probably wont reach a decision on the issue after having a talk during a summit. U.S. President Barack Obama isnt likely to be willing to lose votes at home over the War on Drugs, and many Latin American leaders are still on the fence about the Guatemalan Presidents alternative. Nonetheless, this is a step forward in the history of the trafficking of narcotics in Latin America. The fact that right-wing governments are willing to challenge the U.S. over a failed policy demonstrates that countries south of the Rio Grande are not passive actors anymore. And, more important, that this isnt necessarily an issue of political affiliation. This is about the thousands of lives that have been lost at waging a war that cant be won.