The Drug Problem part 3
Colombia is a beautiful country with amazing natural resources. Emeralds, fossil fuels including oil, majestic mountains, fertile plains, exotic jungles, incredible coastlines. Throw in perhaps the finest coffee in the world and you have the makings of a paradise. However thanks to the drugs trade and cocaine Colombia is far from paradise. This is where a high percentage of the drugs come from that supply the so-called fashionable cocaine market in the West.
Guerilla groups, paramilitaries, corrupt officials, all play their part in a tidal wave of blood and crime that surrounds the Colombian cartels and their constant supply of cocaine to their Western markets and in particular the United States. The insecurity, the body count, the corruption, the consequent effect on society and its ability to properly integrate into mainstream economy and tourism are all dramatically affected. Moreover they have effects in ways which are totally disproportionate to the benefit to the economy which cocaine sales bring. Individual drug barons become fabulously rich, but the drug trade is a small proportion of the gross domestic product of Colombia, and in any event has to be balanced against the damage and destruction. Those effects stem from the drugs being illegal and the consequent attempts to suppress that trade rather than regulate it.
The US president who announced that the Colombian cartels affected US security and had to have war waged against them as part of the war on drugs was Ronald Reagan. It is that long ago. The cost of that war has not just been measured in blood and chaos, but in billions of dollars. There is no evidence that the level of supply of cocaine from Colombia to the United States has been in any way damaged. Individual drug dealers may die or be imprisoned, drug rings may be smashed, but the illegal nature of the drugs coupled with a strong demand for them and the consequent high profits which can be charged without being subject to the strictures of a wider market with lawful entrants means that there will always be desperate get rich quick types who will step into the breach. Such a war has no chance of ultimately succeeding.
Although there are many examples that show that the desire for victory is often a misplaced one, the presumed aim of a war must be to win it. I cannot believe that any rational person can seriously suppose that the so-called war on drugs has the faintest chance of success. It must therefore follow, given the profits that can be made, that quite apart from the dismal effect on Western society of the impact of illegal drugs on crime generally and allowing organised crime to make profits which allow it to insidiously enter other areas of society, that other countries supplying the drugs will be even more adversely affected by the consequences of the illegal drug trade and the war upon it. Corruption is something which is a huge barrier to any country attaining either its economic potential or its potential as a society which is a decent one for its ordinary citizens to live in. The illegal drugs trade is a magnet for corruption at all levels of society. In 2005 there was even a scandal in which it was suggested that top officials in the Colombian secret police had been selling information to paramilitary groups thought to be involved in the drugs trade. This would mean that possibly money sent from the US to aid the Colombian authorities to fight the war on drugs could have ended up indirectly going to those who were selling them. It illustrates the impossibility of succeeding in this so-called war.
Those who think that the drugs trade should remain illegal must not only confront the fact that they will not ever stop it happening in their own countries, and will allow it to foster the growth of organised crime, but that it will lead to an even more dramatic impact on those countries from whence the drugs are exported. They must do this knowing that it will not stop the drugs trade at all.