Posted on 08/25/2014 9:24:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
Having grown up in Guatemala, I’ve witnessed my country’s dramatic increase in crime due to the War on Drugs first hand. For most of my life, drug cartels used Guatemala as a natural pitstop for their smuggling routes. Unattended regions in the north provided the perfect space to refuel their vehicles and airplanes before transporting their products to major consumers in the north like the United States. This route had remained the same since the beginning of the Drug War, but recent developments over the past ten years has diverted even more narcotics and violence to my back yard, highlighting the need for reform in Mexico and the US.
In 2006, former Mexican president Felipe Calderón declared the war on cartels by shifting his country's security strategy, dubbed the Mérida Initiative, and established a major partnership with the US Department of State. From 2008 to 2014, Mexico spent $68.3 billion USD on its own security and public safety programs, plus $2.4 billion from the US. As a result, violence became cruder in Mexican territory, displacing some of the drug flows — most notably cocaine and synthetic products — to the northern part of Central America.
Central American armed forces have received $803.6 millions worth of weapons and training from the United States between 2008 and 2011 under the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). Some local efforts in Guatemala have also been pursued to capture local gang members. Combined with Plan Mérida, they have rendered an increase in extraditions of medium and high-level drug lords, most notably El Chapo Guzmán last February.
Although small successes have been made, overall these efforts have been in vain. As a result of the crackdown in the north, violence shifted from México to places with even weaker institutions of governance like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. It is here in my backyard where most of today's territorial disputes between cartels are taking place, yet there is barely a growing recognition among political leaders that the US-led efforts to blockade drug traffic is the core of the problem that it sets out to solve.
The US could have seen this coming. During the Clinton administration, the US similarly funnelled $1.2 billion in military aid and training to Columbia for the South American country to fight its drug war. Just like Mexico a decade later, the plan did little to solve the problem but simply shifted violence elsewhere.
A large part of this problem is a difference of objectives. The US is largely focused in capturing drug leaders and seizure illicit drugs, while the affected countries place a bigger emphasis on reducing drug-related crime and violence. While the US is fond of publicizing captures as achievements of a failed policy, one only needs to take another look to see that violence is nowhere near declining.
The Zetas have effectively secured control of most of northern Central American territory over the last eight years. The arrival to Central America of the Cartel de Sinaloa, the Cartel del Golfo, and the Zetas have proven to be a breaking point in the rise of violence over the last decade in the region. This is largely due to the breakdown of a partnership between the Cartel de Sinaloa and the Zetas — which prompted the latter to develop ties to local organizations in underused territories — as well as the external pressure exerted by Plan Mérida.
Over the last few years, narcos have installed themselves in these countries with weak legal institutions like my own Guatemala, utilizing corrupt police forces to gain control. They have also diversified their operations to other, equally profitable outlooks such as arms trade, smuggling migrants and less overtly, financing political campaigns. It is not exaggerating to say that the drug cartels are challenging the monopoly of violence that Central American states should be able to maintain within their territories.
It is remarkable that over the last few months, several American states as well as entire countries like Uruguay have paved the way for different decriminalization schemes, particularly for marijuana. The benefits these experiments promise are to spend less locking up people who are not hurting anyone, increase tax revenue, and, most importantly, end the black market trade of drugs. The latter is the hardest to achieve, given the partial legalization schemes.
Luckily, public opinion is tilting towards lifting the federal-level prohibition in the US as well as reform in other Latin American countries. As promising as these polls may be, legalization of other drugs like cocaine are still a taboo when it comes to discussing reform. While marijuana is a start, it is only one of many drugs Central American cartels smuggle. With this in mind, the US needs to rethink the big influence of its drug policies in Central America. Failing to will not only render it unsuccessful in achieving its objective of ending drug trafficking, but also create countless more innocent victims in other countries. It’s time to end the War on Drugs.
Hhhuuuhhhh, and drugs and odumbo are destroying my country, go figure.
Bull Cheese. It's time to START the War on Drugs. Luis here does not understand the US is complicit with enabling the Drug Trade. If the US had any intent on fighting the WOD, we would be in Guatemala, Mexico, even troops on our own borders would be a start; but nope.
The US is only too happy with the $tatus Quo.
Until we make war on the buyer (drug user) nothing is going to change, it will only get worse. The way I see it we either need to make illegal drugs legal or we need to stop treating the drug user as sick and treat them as criminals, accessories to murder. Over the last six decades of my life, I have wavered between the two choices, but I am getting much meaner in my old age, I definitely favor criminalizing drug use, and not just a slap on the hands; hard hard time, perhaps even the death penalty.
Great idea!
Lets manufacture our own weed, coke , and heroin here in the USA.
More jobs created, and increased tax revenue!.
Even throw in a free heroin overdose with every EBT card purchase.
This has legs.
AGREE!
A more powerful and more vicious government is not the answer.
The War on Drugs is an industry that puts food on the table, kids through college, pays for health insurance, funds retirement, and so on.
Vote to legalize post 20 year old abortions. It is your right. Nobody should be able to tell you what to do! It's your body!
Why should women have the exclusive right? Real men and women support their right to abort.
March right down to your local pharmacy and pick up your own two capsule bottle of Enditall. Someone will be glad you did.
You won't be around to.
Warning/Disclaimers:
In some instances, people actually live. Use of this medication has resulted in severe brain damage in about 17% of those tested. Severe liver and kidney impairment has been observed. In some instances, liver and kidney transplants have become necessary. Your immediate and extended family members may need to support you at some point. If you live, you will not be able to take care of yourself at any point the remainder of your life.
The War on Drugs was never fought correctly...programs like BAD (Bears Against Drugs) and others never fully achieved the message that each individual has a choice - and self-accountability and responsibility was left out...accompanied by the settings of these programs, public schools - allowed for a young culture to grow up not thinking or analyzing situations while leaving that to others. They were lazy and fell into the spectrum of casual drug use to major drug use.
Those that choose not to do drugs had nothing to do with anti-drug programs, but stemmed from a level family life and support from others that made possible the environment that such social behaviors never flourished. They basically made the choice not to do drugs due to the risk and unacceptable consequences of such behaviors.
The approach has to be multi-prong in its delivery. Bringing back competition and universal laws as in the Bible’s 10 Commandments would aid this...the home, social, entertainment, and school environments promote drug use more and more - and the youth cannot distinguish the propganda that is being feed to them - because the left has used the very multi-prong approach with high success!
It is time to end the banks, big business, and governments part is laundered money, selling drugs, and transportation of drugs.
The war on drugs is creating violence in Central and South America, the Caribbean and in our own country.
As long as we attack the supply side with no focus on demand side, it is wasteful, ineffective and unending.
War on drugs
War on poverty
War on terrorism
War on hunger
we seem to be getting more of all those things by getting the government involved and we can’t afford it.
Perhaps not more powerful, but a more vicious government definitely puts a crimp on drug abuse. Singapore doesn't seem to have much of a drug problem. Caught with drugs? You are executed.
We have a 2% addiction rate because we won't tolerate the methods necessary to push it lower.
People are always saying the "slappy hand conflict on Drugs" is a failure, and that we would be better off without it, but they don't really bother to consider whether this might not be true.
They only know what they have now, and they assume it is worse than it would be the other way, but this assumption is strongly in conflict with the historical evidence available.
China stopped their war on Drugs. Drugs then destroyed their nation. What they ended up with was far worse than our troubles with the "tiddly winks on drugs" we have been pursuing.
I'm sorry, but your "Grass is always greener on the other side" argument just does not appear to conform to historical reality. Not having an "Arm Wrestling contest on Drugs" would appear to be a far worse outcome in the long run.
The War on (some) Drugs, like the War on Poverty perfectly achieved its objective. In both cases the purpose of the Wars was to grow government power, influence and strength while teaching a population that some of their rights are, not only unnecessary, but actually harmful to them. It taught the subject populace that big mommy government knows best and ought to be in charge of more and more of their lives.
Mission accomplished. After decades of “War” more people are poor and more people use drugs but the government is bigger, more intrusive and dangerous and we have seen our rights diminished.
You advocate giving the government the power to EXECUTE drug users? How is that not giving the government more power? Just like the answer to Prohibition was repeal, so is the answer to the WOD.
The war on drugs is not the problem, the drug abusers are the problem.
Drug abuse is just a symptom of a much bigger disease.
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