"We know that the industry is profitable only because it is illegal, and the day that tobacco becomes outlawed, that will take cocaine's place as the largest mafia business," Gomez Hurtado says, sitting at a desk on which a stack of pamphlets outlining his case for decriminalization is neatly piled. "To produce a gram of salt or sugar is more expensive than [producing] a gram of cocaine. The difference in final price only comes because cocaine is illegal."
Gomez Hurtado is asking his party to agree on a platform that includes decriminalization of drugs in Colombia, rather than outright legalization, and a shift of government resources from aggressive anti-drug policies to rehabilitation. "Legalization would show indifference in front of this illness of drug addiction," he says. "It would be like legalizing tuberculosis or AIDS. You can't legalize a disease." He recognizes that Colombia alone cannot eliminate the black market in cocaine. "We need greater help in reviewing international policies towards drugs," he says, "because this is economics; the supply comes from the demand."
Legalizing Alone?
Conservative support for the decriminalization or legalization of drugs is based largely on the belief that Colombia fights alone on the front line of the War on Drugs and that as a result the entire country has become a battlefield. All this for a war demanded by other countries, most conspicuously the United States. Drugs are so profitable because they are illegal and in great demand among those who can afford them. Nearly 75 percent of the world's cocaine is consumed in North America and Western Europe.
"I share Colombians' frustration," says Sandro Calvani, director of the United Nations International Drug Control Program in Bogota. "They pay with all the violence of the war, yet the consuming countries don't share the burden. Some European countries don't even help Colombia with one peso."
But Calvani is hesitant about extrapolating from the experience of other countries that have experimented with more tolerant drug policies. "Where they've done this, such as Holland and Switzerland, there has been a history of liberal thinking and high levels of education among the population," he says. About one in 10 Colombians is illiterate, and that rate rises sharply in the countryside, where children are often taken out of school to work.
Colombian supporters of drug policy reform are concerned about the international reaction to their proposals. "We cannot become a pariah state, and that is what would happen if we legalized alone," says Sen. Carlos Holguin, leader of the Conservative Party, who is spoken of as a possible presidential candidate. "It would make no sense, because it's not so much the problem here, but the problem is that they're illegal outside. It should be a policy of the Colombian government to pressure the international community to force them to review their drug policies. We must look at this as a health issue."
Many opponents of the drug war think its environmental cost is reason enough to abandon it. The cornerstone of Colombia's U.S.-funded anti-drug effort is aerial fumigation. The U.S. and Colombian governments have been celebrating the success of the fumigation program. The U.N. reported that in 2003 the number of hectares devoted to coca cultivation fell 16 percent, to 86,000, the lowest level since 1997. President Uribe recently estimated that the country would have less than 65,000 hectares of coca by the end of this year. "Sixty-five thousand hectares is immense, and the political aim has to be zero land devoted to drug crops in Colombia," he said.
Fumigation missions will cost some $100 million this year. As coca production has spread to encompass much of Colombian territory—satellites even pick up images of coca fields near the capital—so have fumigations. Residents and environmentalists protested the fumigation of Colombia's national parks, including the Sierra Nevada, the world's highest coastal range. Indigenous tribes who live there complain that the fumigations are polluting the rivers and killing legal crops. The U.S. and Colombian governments insist the fumigations, which use the herbicide glyphosate, are safe. Farmers living in fumigated areas complain of myriad sicknesses, including skin problems and birth defects.
Pedro Arenas is head of the leftist Communal and Communitarian Movement and congressman for the Department of Guaviare, one of the biggest coca-producing regions. Not coincidentally, it is also the site of the government's largest-ever offensive against the FARC rebels. "We're seeing in this drug war the militarization of our communities, and peasants becoming enemies of the state," Arenas says. Although the official numbers show a decline in coca production, he says, the coca farmers in his department have told him they think it is rising. Farmers are shielding coca from satellites by planting more trees. Any potential decline in land given over to coca production is offset by the increasing use of a coca strain that can be harvested more often and produces more cocaine per plant. Critics of the eradication program also point to a "balloon effect": As production is pushed down in one area, it pops up elsewhere. Peru's anti-drug agency estimated that the country produced 160 tons of cocaine in 2004, one-fifth more than in 2003, and another increase is expected this year.
Drug traffickers normally outsource the production of coca to the farmers, who grow the coca and take the initial steps in processing it into blocks of coca paste, which are then purchased by the traffickers and turned into cocaine. "These fumigations are going after the lowest people on the chain," says Arenas. "These farmers need to live, and they see no alternative but coca." He estimates the coca farmers, known as cocaleros, have a monthly profit of 400,000 pesos, just over $150. "These fumigations are destroying our environment," he says, "because every time they fumigate fields, the peasants plant again on new land, and they're moving deeper into the jungles."
Many Colombians and foreign observers feel fumigations treat the symptom rather than the underlying illness. While the poverty that propels farmers to plant coca remains, any attempt to stop them from doing so will in all likelihood be futile. "At the moment, we're spending around $5,000 per hectare fumigated," says the U.N.'s Sergio Calvani. "If that money could be distributed among the peasants, then Colombia would be like Switzerland."
It's All Uphill From Here
The government of Alvaro Uribe, a member of the Liberal Party and Washington's closest ally in South America, has avoided any discussion of decriminalizing drugs. In fact, the president backed an unsuccessful referendum that would have overturned the current laws that allow possession of drugs for personal use. His supporters in Washington say Uribe is the president Colombia has long needed, praising his offensive against the Marxist rebels and the drug industry. Uribe has boosted the army and the police and struck at the FARC's traditional stronghold in the south.
The relationship between Uribe and President Bush "could not be closer," says Kimberly Stanton, deputy director of the Washington Office on Latin America, an organization that opposes fumigation and argues that the war on drugs is counterproductive. Bush paid Uribe a compliment by visiting Colombia on his first trip abroad following his re-election.
In any case, says Stanton, "There is no way the U.S. will allow the Colombian Congress to adopt legalization. It will do everything in its power to stop this, I assure you." The U.S. is the largest donor of aid to Colombia, takes about half of Colombia's exports, and has tremendous influence on multilateral institutions that lend vital money to the cash-strapped central government. Colombia has become increasingly dependent on U.S. aid for its war against the Marxist guerrillas, the right-wing paramilitaries, and of course the drug industry. The country has received nearly $4 billion from the U.S. since the launch of the huge anti-drug initiative Plan Colombia in 2000.
"Way too many Colombian leaders think that unless they do everything the U.S. wants they'll lose everything," says Stanton, adding that Colombia should propose a review of global anti-drug policies. As the drug violence continues and the deaths mount, Colombia's population may just force their leaders to stand up and demand from the world a change in global drug policies.
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