Monday, March 11, 2002
America loves its drugs, and loves to hate them. That hatred is expressed through its ongoing war on drugs, a war we have spent billions fighting even as the price of drugs has spiraled inexorably downwards. The costs of that "war" are borne by more than just Americans, however. As this article shows, Colombia is trapped in a civil war that impoverishes it's people and destabilizes it's government. That civil war is in no small part due to the profits generated from the drug trade.
When drugs are made illegal, the only people willing to produce and/or sell them exist in the black market. And when a market exists outside the structure of the legal market, the only limits on its practitioners are the extremes to which they are willing to go to sell their product. People like Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel showed that the rewards for extremes of violence in the provision of cocaine was the lion's share of the market, with all the economic rewards that position entailed.
Trafficking in drugs, however, has become more dangerous the more money America throws at fighting it, leading to a militarization of the drug trade. Today, both sides in Colombia's civil war defend their trade with military hardware and fund their war with the income generated from drugs. America came close to such a situation during prohibition, when the profits to be generated from feeding the demand for alcohol made disorganized small-time gangsters into highly organized criminal corporations capable of manipulating government at the highest level. America ignores the corrupting influence of the drug trade, but only because demand for drugs is less than the demand was for alcohol, and the people it affects exist for the most part at the lowest levels of our society.
Recent government-sponsored ads try to blame drug users for funding terrorist organizations who make their money from the drug trade. The reality is that the war on drugs funnels money to such organizations, as those organizations are the only ones willing to run the risks associated with the drug trade. Blaming users is a dodge used to justify a drug war that isn't working. How many lives would have been saved in Columbia and our inner cities if we'd spent those billions on domestic prevention programs rather than M-16s and assault helicopters?
Supply arises to feed a demand. So long as the demand exists, suppliers will find a way to feed it.
When drugs are made illegal, the only people willing to produce and/or sell them exist in the black market. And when a market exists outside the structure of the legal market, the only limits on its practitioners are the extremes to which they are willing to go to sell their product. People like Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel showed that the rewards for extremes of violence in the provision of cocaine was the lion's share of the market, with all the economic rewards that position entailed.
Trafficking in drugs, however, has become more dangerous the more money America throws at fighting it, leading to a militarization of the drug trade. Today, both sides in Colombia's civil war defend their trade with military hardware and fund their war with the income generated from drugs. America came close to such a situation during prohibition, when the profits to be generated from feeding the demand for alcohol made disorganized small-time gangsters into highly organized criminal corporations capable of manipulating government at the highest level. America ignores the corrupting influence of the drug trade, but only because demand for drugs is less than the demand was for alcohol, and the people it affects exist for the most part at the lowest levels of our society.
Recent government-sponsored ads try to blame drug users for funding terrorist organizations who make their money from the drug trade. The reality is that the war on drugs funnels money to such organizations, as those organizations are the only ones willing to run the risks associated with the drug trade. Blaming users is a dodge used to justify a drug war that isn't working. How many lives would have been saved in Columbia and our inner cities if we'd spent those billions on domestic prevention programs rather than M-16s and assault helicopters?
Supply arises to feed a demand. So long as the demand exists, suppliers will find a way to feed it.
