Could Latin America end the War on Drugs?

Maxinquaye · Apr 13, 2012

Many countries in Latin America has seen the drug cartels grow and prosper, something that has lead to an increasing spiral of violence, like that in Mexico. But even though Mexico gets the headlines, a country like Guatemala is even worse off. Murder per 100,000 people in the USA is 5, in Mexico it's 18, but in Guatemala it is now up at 41.

The New York Review of Books has an excellent, and very interesting article about this here.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblo...=Feed:+nybooks+(The+New+York+Review+of+Books)

As a normally pro-forma gathering of hemispheric leaders gets under way in Cartagena, Colombia, this weekend, Latin America could instead be approaching its declaration of independence from the United States. For the first time, the region might come out against a US policy. The change in what seemed to be an immovable subservience has come gradually, but the immediate cause is drugs, and the surprising agent is Otto Pérez Molina, retired general, former intelligence chief, graduate of the Pentagon’s School of Americas, and now the new president of Guatemala.

Pérez Molina is no stranger to the War on Drugs. He campaigned for president promising to bring out the country’s dreaded Kaibil Army special forces against the drug trade; Guatemalan voters, judging crime and insecurity to be their greatest concern, elected him in November. But less than a month after taking office in January, Perez Molina asked his Central American colleagues to consider a unilateral cease fire and ways to legalize drugs.

Do you think it is time for Latin America to end the war on drugs in their countries?

maxmordon · Apr 13, 2012

Perhaps in a decade or two, but I find it doubtful at the moment. Lots of shady interests from several governments and their armed forces, US participation or not. I can see it happen perhaps in Argentina, Chile,Brazil and one or another Central American nation but not as a single united decision. That without counting that a majority of Latin Americans tend to be more conservative than US people and then to plea for a stronger police support.

Kaiser-Kun · Apr 13, 2012

Not a chance. The governments are getting too much profit. At best the cartels would legalize into Blackwater-ish organizations.

icerose · Apr 13, 2012

I would love to see the war on drugs end. It has been a total and utter failure and worse it has birthed some ugly evils into the world.

It definitely won't stop in the US first, but I do hope that first step is taken. Sadly the cartels are so well funded it will take many years for them to die much like the mobs of the US birthed by prohibition.

maxmordon · Apr 13, 2012

Kaiser-Kun said:
Not a chance. The governments are getting too much profit. At best the cartels would legalize into Blackwater-ish organizations.

Here they cut the middleman. The drug cartel IS The National Guard, among others.

This reminds an article made today by Venezuela's main satirist website due to anti-gay violence in Choroní and the minister of foreign affairs calling the opposition politicians "little filthy fags". It was titled "We Were Going To Talk Gay Marriage Until We Remember This Ain't The First World" and describes the article they were meant to write hadn't been the reporter kidnapped, the east of the capital got power shortage and tue other reporter caught dengue fever.

In other words, as Brecht would say, food comes first moral follows on.

Zoombie · Apr 13, 2012

icerose said:
I would love to see the war on drugs end. It has been a total and utter failure and worse it has birthed some ugly evils into the world.

Maybe next time prohibition comes around we'll remember that.

Magdalen · Apr 13, 2012

Latin Spring ha llegado?

muravyets · Apr 13, 2012

Zoombie said:
Maybe next time prohibition comes around we'll remember that.

Learning from experience seems to be something only individuals can do, not societies and not governments.

Zoombie · Apr 13, 2012

muravyets said:
Learning from experience seems to be something only individuals can do, not societies and not governments.

There's a point lurking there.

muravyets · Apr 13, 2012

Zoombie said:
There's a point lurking there.

But not the one you think.

Zoombie · Apr 13, 2012

Well, it's that individuals make up both of the above.

Which indicates that societies can learn from past mistakes.

It's just harder.

Chrissy · Apr 14, 2012

Maxinquaye said:
Do you think it is time for Latin America to end the war on drugs in their countries?

Yes. It's time for the U.S. to end it, too.

I started a thread re: similar (three deaths and several serious injuries during a drug raid in New Hampshire), and it got virtually no response. I really want to know what people think, but it doesn't seem like a topic people even want to discuss.

Being an ex-opiate addict, I have a lot of experience with the current U.S. drug culture and law enforcement's efforts to eradicate "the evils of drugs" from the face of the earth. It's not working.

The evil stems from the illegality, IMO. The rest is just people who need help.

Shadow Dragon · Apr 14, 2012

Most South American countries won't end the War on Drugs. They get money from the US to help fight the cartels and that money really helps keep them afloat. If they start refusing to help the US get rid of drugs, then the financial aide to them will end, something those governments don't want to happen.

Romantic Heretic · Apr 14, 2012

The problem isn't the War on Drugs. But how it is fought.

We concentrate on the shipping routes, and occasionally the producers. We never go near the real cause: poverty and despair in the producing and consuming nations.

We have to find some way to create conditions so that people do not need to produce or use drugs. In the former case because they have no recourse to feed themselves and their families. In the latter because they are self-medicating.

If we deal with the causes the war will be over.

Jcomp · Apr 14, 2012

I don't think you can create an environment where people just don't want to use drugs. It's not as if only the desperate take to self-medication. Some people just like to get high.

Kaiser-Kun · Apr 14, 2012

Chrissy said:
The evil stems from the illegality, IMO. The rest is just people who need help.

Not really, the big evil are the fuckers who steal, murder, kidnap, rape and deal drugs, aka the cartels. Legalize drugs, and you still have the same fuckers who will steal, murder, kidnap, rape, and deal drugs legally.

Legalizing the drugs might've helped when the cartels were much younger and less powerful. Now they'll just move to any of the other criminal activities they dominate, while still making money from drugs.

icerose · Apr 14, 2012

There will always be people looking for that next high. Case in point rich celebrities who are drug addicts. We need to stop regulating what people do to their own bodies. We need to step out of personal choices realm. We need to offer support and resources to those who want to change their lives and let people self medicate or enjoy that high if that's what they choose to do. If the government were to become the drug supplier instead of the enforcer, we could develop safe, lower addicting or non-addicting drugs that still produce the same high while reducing the side effects and risk factors of drug use.

As long as human beings exist we will always seek ways to feel better or escape, even in utopia. The government needs to take the safety and regulation not penal stand point. Our society would be so much better off if drugs were regulated and made as safe as possible rather than locking away and killing a good portion of our society.

It reminds me of the medieval laws of hacking off a body part as punishment for any sort of crime, people such as sailors who'd lost a body part on the job had to carry around certification to prove they were not a criminal. Now we have background checks at every place of employment and records we don't carry to prove we aren't criminals.

The government needs to stop making criminals.

thothguard51 · Apr 14, 2012

Could Latin America end the War on Drugs?

Just my opinion, but ending the war on drugs in Latin America is not going to end the violence in L.A. What about the kidnappings, human trafficking, and a hundred other things associated with the cartels. While the drugs may be the biggest money maker for the cartels, it is not the only activity they are involved in.

The cartels are a culture and they will not give up their positions easily, even if governments stop going after them for drugs...

Chrissy · Apr 14, 2012

Kaiser-Kun said:
Not really, the big evil are the fuckers who steal, murder, kidnap, rape and deal drugs, aka the cartels. Legalize drugs, and you still have the same fuckers who will steal, murder, kidnap, rape, and deal drugs legally.

Legalizing the drugs might've helped when the cartels were much younger and less powerful. Now they'll just move to any of the other criminal activities they dominate, while still making money from drugs.

Well I'm not a cartel expert, but I imagine that if drugs were legalized, the cartel wouldn't be getting the funding as the sole supplier of the drug market.

thothguard51 said:
Just my opinion, but ending the war on drugs in Latin America is not going to end the violence in L.A. What about the kidnappings, human trafficking, and a hundred other things associated with the cartels. While the drugs may be the biggest money maker for the cartels, it is not the only activity they are involved in.

The cartels are a culture and they will not give up their positions easily, even if governments stop going after them for drugs...

The point is taken, but why not starve them of money resources where it's possible? Hit them where it counts, and financially is where it counts, by and large. What if starving them of one source of income forces them to make kidnapping and human trafficking more expensive, and thereby less affordable to their clientele?

Chrissy · Apr 14, 2012

icerose said:
There will always be people looking for that next high. Case in point rich celebrities who are drug addicts. We need to stop regulating what people do to their own bodies. We need to step out of personal choices realm. We need to offer support and resources to those who want to change their lives and let people self medicate or enjoy that high if that's what they choose to do. If the government were to become the drug supplier instead of the enforcer, we could develop safe, lower addicting or non-addicting drugs that still produce the same high while reducing the side effects and risk factors of drug use.

As long as human beings exist we will always seek ways to feel better or escape, even in utopia. The government needs to take the safety and regulation not penal stand point. Our society would be so much better off if drugs were regulated and made as safe as possible rather than locking away and killing a good portion of our society.

It reminds me of the medieval laws of hacking off a body part as punishment for any sort of crime, people such as sailors who'd lost a body part on the job had to carry around certification to prove they were not a criminal. Now we have background checks at every place of employment and records we don't carry to prove we aren't criminals.

The government needs to stop making criminals.

THIS.

Zoombie · Apr 14, 2012

Romantic Heretic said:
If we deal with the causes the war will be over.

But that's not about drugs, that's about dealing with poverty and opportunity. Geez, don't you know you're supposed to fix REAL problems?

RichardGarfinkle · Apr 14, 2012

As near as I can tell, and there are few examples to go on. What might work would be.

1. Legalization and quality control.

2. Easy access to free treatment for those who want it.

3. Social rejection, not of drug use, but of impairment due to drug use. The same social change that turned public drunkenness from a joke to an acknowledged danger.

I know that people will slip through the cracks here, but this does not strike me as a problem that has a perfect solution. The current methods however are very bad since they.

a. Fill the jails with drug users.
b. Put money into the hands of the cartels.
c. Bring about a lot of suffering and death due to a and b.

Maxinquaye · Apr 14, 2012

thothguard51 said:
Just my opinion, but ending the war on drugs in Latin America is not going to end the violence in L.A. What about the kidnappings, human trafficking, and a hundred other things associated with the cartels. While the drugs may be the biggest money maker for the cartels, it is not the only activity they are involved in.

To be perfectly honest and frank? I don't think the President of Guatemala should give one hoot about the violence in Los Angeles. He should consider the violence in his own country.

I defer though to Max and Kaiser who actually live in Latin America. They know the mood of their countries, and of their neighbours better than me. I live a continent, and a huge ocean, away from Latin America.

The question in my mind was if the violence in Central and South America could be lowered if legalisation occurred, like the President of Guatemala suggested in the article I linked.

thothguard51 · Apr 14, 2012

Drug treatment centers in Mexico are in the cross hairs of the cartels. They have gone into the treatment centers and killed people seeking help from drug dependence. Not to mention the counselor's. The cartels do no want to end the gravy boat and if doing business in America becomes too expensive, or difficult, they will turn their own countrymen into junkies. Its already happening with a rise in drug abuse in many South and Central American countries...

thothguard51 · Apr 14, 2012

Maxinquaye said:
To be perfectly honest and frank? I don't think the President of Guatemala should give one hoot about the violence in Los Angeles. He should consider the violence in his own country.

I did not mean Los Angeles, but used the L.A. abbreviation for Latin America. Sorry if it was not clear.

Could Latin America end the War on Drugs?

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