Crops Used for Illicit Purposes and Alternative
Initiatives, Narcotics traffic and Counter-Drugs
Policies
—Approach and Structure—
APPROACH
When dealing with the “illicit drugs”
issue we need to discriminate the following levels:
crops, commerce and consumption and to a) analyze
what the policies at each one of these levels
are about, b) asses policies’ effectiveness
and their social, economic and environmental impacts,
and c) hear how social movements’ address
the issue.
A second level of analysis relates to synthetic
substances and natural substances, that which
leads us into the discussion regarding the distinction
made between “producer” countries and
“consumer” countries. This distinction
seems misleading. Observation tells us that production
and marketing of synthetic drugs is expanding
and the traditional conscious-altering use of
natural plants is still being repressed. Meanwhile,
conscious-altering substances —both synthetic
and natural— can be found, and are used worldwide,
within their corresponding cultural considerations.
In 1909 only opium was considered an illicit ‘drug”.
Today, over 150 semi synthetic (morphine, heroin
and cocaine), synthetic substances, and, among
many others, three of nature’s plants —cannabis,
coca and poppy— are considered illegal. Thanks
to Prohibition, production and marketing has diversified
and expanded. In 1961 the United Nations Assembly
condemned coca, cannabis and poppy and every since,
the commerce of chemical precursors, war and ‘drugs’
have become extremely profitable and booming business
ventures. Meanwhile, people have not stopped using
recreational substances, and there are more and
more growers.
CROPS:
As regards crops used for illicit purposes, there
is urgent need to find global, sustainable and
participative solutions and we wish to point to
some of the political and structural conditions
which have led more and more peasants into growing
these crops:
In the Adean-Amazonic Region, the areas where
coca and poppy are grown are characterized by
backward political, economic, and social conditions
which are the reflection and result of agrarian-development
models typified, on the one hand, by the concentration
of large production units in the hands of the
few and, on the other, by the permanent expulsion
of large sectors of the peasantry towards cities
and frontier zones
Those campesinos who are pushed to urban areas
go to join the marginal social and economic
instances of the cities. Meanwhile, those who
are expulsed towards the colonization zones
beyond the active agrarian frontier end up living
in areas where fragile ecosystems are endangered
because they cannot absorb these market dynamics.
Thus, the areas where crops are grown for illicit
purposes are often those which have not been
effectively incorporated into national agrarian
markets and where severe structural social,
economic and environmental obstacles make it
difficult for peasants to establish stable economies.
Furthermore, national macroeconomic policies
and international market prices are wreaking
havoc on traditional peasant economies. These
policies are at the root of the recent ruin
of rural economies which had at one point been
articulated into national and international
markets. Increases in coca planting in zones
dedicated until quite recently to growing coffee
and staple food crops, also reflect the devastating
effects of these policies and constitute one
of the most severe consequences of the crisis
faced by peasant economy.
The official response to the ‘narcotics’
issue is further militarization which, for the
Andean Amazonic Region, is expressed by the
Plan Dignidad, the Plan Colombia and the Andean
Regional Initiative. These policies are centered
on forcibly eradicating crops without any consideration
whatsoever to the social, economic and political
causes underlying the emergence and proliferation
of crops used for illicit purposes. Consequently,
coca and poppy growing, which has become the
only viable means of subsistence for thousands
of the region’s peasants, is simply displaced
from one area to another.
Forced eradication measures have had devastating
impacts on the region. This is reflected by
coca marches and roadblocks in Bolivia and Perú
and is the case of aerial fumigation with pesticides
in Colombia, where chemicals sprayed from the
air are causing numerous illnesses and genetic
defects, contaminating water resources, destroying
the region’s rich biodiversity and endangering
food safety. Meanwhile, to compound the crisis
of traditional agricultural, the same companies
which sell the chemicals used against Colombian
peasants and crops, peddle their genetically
modified crops and devise the means of controlling
water resources.
In their constant search for social, economic
and political alternatives to the Drug War,
local peasant and indigenous communities have
designed and put forward proposals in accordance
with their social and environmental conditions,
needs, and expectations. These proposals concerted
by the communities and exposed to state representatives
have, after being negotiated and agreed to,
been buried by policy designers and decision
makers. The most significant of these demands
is an urgently needed agrarian reform which
would give the land back to the people who are
dedicated to it as well as policies geared at
generating jobs and protecting peasant economy.
But, first and foremost, peasants demand the
right to their lives, human rights and subsistence.
Undoubtedly, the regions where these crops
are grown cannot on their own resolve their
severe structural problems and the war waged
in their territories under existing policies
which focus exclusively on eradicating crops
at all costs and by any means.
It is therefore important to hear what the
specific policies and issues are in other countries
where these crops are grown and consumed, to
share experiences and build on them. To extend
our reach.
COMMERCE:
National and regional cultural, social and
economic conditions are the determinants behind
the growing of legal and illegal crops . Drug
trafficking, which is an international phenomenon,
thrives on these national and regional conditions
by stimulating both ends of the chain —growers
and consumers— and keeping most of the
earnings, both in legal and illegal ventures.
Almost all of these profits go to US and international
financial centers where money is laundered
by mafias specialized in the sale of narcotics,
chemical precursors and weapons. Retail prices
paid for ‘drugs’ on the US market
are distributed approximately as follows:
5% go to crop-growing countries —1% for
peasant growers and 4% to local processors—;
20% to international traffickers or cartels;
and 75% to distribution networks.
The close ties knit between narcotics trafficking,
corruption and organized crime tend to blur
the frontier between the legal and the illegal
economy. Issues such as the policies which
cover fiscal havens (money laundering), the
sale of chemical precursors and weapons, advanced
agricultural technologies, and ‘free’
trade zones are essential factors to be taken
into consideration in order to understand
how the weapons, chemical and narcotics business
prospers.
USE:
Humanity has always coexisted with psychoactive
substances and the issue —considering
the devastating effects and failure of Prohibition—
is the search for alternatives, beginning
with harm and risk reduction policies oriented
towards both consumers and peasant and indigenous
growers.
European harm-reduction experiences and US
activists’ struggle to defend the rights
of consumers should help to highlight the
fact that there are alternative social paths
and rights to the ‘drugs’ issue.
RISK REDUCTION:
In the countries of the South, most small ‘illicit’-crop
growers are impoverished socially and politically
marginalized sectors of the peasantry that,
under bondage, have become the labor force behind
an illicit market. For crop-growers, risk reduction
would first and foremost refer to demanding
a halt to the militarization of the region and
the war and criminalization waged against them
under the guise of eliminating ‘drugs’
through forced eradication. It encompasses applying
the precautionary principle as concerns fumigation
with chemical products and the commerce and
trafficking of genetically modified crops and
when confronting the threat of Biological War.
It also refers to the undeniable right to traditional,
recreational and alternative uses of the coca
leaf, marihuana and poppy. It furthermore comprises
considerations of international co-responsibility
and of social responsibility when designing
policies to address what is a complex and universal
phenomenon.
ALTERNATIVES:
The Thematic World Social Forum to be held
in Cartagena —convened by a good number
of Colombia’s social organizations—
wishes to offer a space where we might freely
exchange alternatives coming from knowledge
and experience. We hope that the alternative
practices related to us by our speakers might
serve our memory to avoid past mistakes and
to look to the experiences to be imitated and
shared towards building a social and multicultural
globalization. The group addressing the issue
of crops and illicit purposes is made up of
guest speakers who will address geopolitics
and war, Colombians daily pain for uncounted
years. And it will continue to be so unless
national and international drug policies are
changed. They will talk bout the Terrorist War
and it hegemonic tendencies, and how to avoid
letting it any more margin to use the “drugs”
issue to further its expansionism. Narcotics
trafficking is today, judge, party, and a further
excuse for war and, as such, is an unavoidable
issue.
Others, like Evo Morales, will bring the coca
culture to us and will address the vindication
of the right to represent the large majorities.
The true alternative which is respect and inclusion.
The goal of those of us working the Crops Issue
is to have the sacred coca leaf (and ‘drugs’
issue in general) included in the Porto Alegre
Forum, which for 2004 is to be held in India.
Our Indian and Pakistani colleagues will bring
us closer to the problems faced by users and
growers in countries, which like those of the
Andean Amazonic Region, are highly vulnerable
to excluding transnational market policies and
to cultural impositions. We will also listen
to Colleagues from Europe and from the US who
seek to exercise their right to a social response
to the use of conscience altering substances.
Born in a world construing ‘drugs’
as something with which to hurt people, they,
like us, advocate for their cultural and social
rights.
Our excellent list of guest speakers owes much
to the generosity of people wanting to share their
experiences and knowledge in a search for understanding
so that we may build together. Welcome to Cartagena
to advocate for the alternative of making other
worlds and other dreams possible.
MAIN CONFERENCE, PANELS
AND DISCUSSION TABLE
Main conference
Evo Morales- MAS Bolivia “Coca
movement, policy and globalization”
Panels
1) Cultures, territories
and autonomies
Guest speakers:
Alain Labrousse* “Geopolitics of drugs”
Nancy Rufina Obregon* “Peasant coca
growers and ‘anti-drug policy’”
Iqbal Khattak* “The Afghan problem
in the context of the war on terror”
Ricardo Soberon Garrido* “The international
war on terrorism, Plan Colombia, and the Andean-Amazon
region”
Moderator: Maria Clemencia Ramirez
2) Anti-drug policies,
Andean Regional Initiative, and Plan Colombia
Guest speakers:
Iban de Rementeria- Anti drug policy and its
foreseen tendencies arising from the war in
Iraq”
Guilhem Fabre*- “The drug trade: money
laundering and financial crises”
Molly Charles* - “Dynamics of trade
and law enforcement activities” (law
enforcement)*
Luis Suarez Salazar*- “The role and
place of Latin America and the Caribbean in
the production, traffic and drug consumption
worldwide and the new pan-American order.”
Moderator: Aura Maria Puyana
3) Drugs, decriminalization, legalization,
shared responsibility and prohibition
Guest speakers:
Mamo Kogui or Ramon Gil- “Traditional
and alternative uses of the coca leaf”
Anthony Henman* - “War on coca, or
peace with coca?”
Peter Cohen*- “Drug trade, Drugs, and
damage reduction”
Ethan Nadelmann*- “A critique of the
U.S. war on drugs and a proposal for a new policy”
Moderator: Rodrigo Uprimy
Discussion table
1. Social, environmental and economic
impact of anti- drug policies
Guests:
Elsa Nivia*- Latin American network against
pesticides
Baldo Caceres*- Peruvian social; psychologist,
knowledgeable in the psychiatric construction
of the stigma on coca
Dario Gonzales*- Chemical and biological
weapons in the “war on drugs”
Iara Ilgenfritz Silva*- Brazilian - drug
trafficking and urban crime
Moderator: Gustavo Wilches Chaux- investigator
2. Is anti-drug policy a real strategy
against the drug trade?
Guests:
Pierre Salama* - Professor, CEPN-cnrs et
Gretd, France
Phil Smith* -Reporter DRCNet USA
Ricardo Vargas – TNI Andean Action
Maria Clemencia Ramirez* - Institute of Anthropology
and History
Moderator: Pedro Arenas - Member of the House
of Representatives
3. Decriminalization, shared responsibility
and legalization
Guests:
Eduardo Cifuentes - Peoples public defender
Rodrigo Uprimy * -Investigator and university
professor
Henry Salgado*- Land conflicts, illicit crops,
and criminalization of the
peasantry, Cinep
Paulo Fraga*- Brazilian psychologist on cannabis
cultivation
Moderator: Ricardo Soberon
(1) Iban de Rementeria, “Economics and
Drugs” in Colombia International, CEI, Uniandes,
No. 20, Bogota, 1992
(2) Topics will be embarked upon with a world-wide
criterion, with different cultural and geographical
perspectives, including opening to dialogue and
controversy. Names have been proposed for each
topic; this list reflects those replies obtained
as a result of messages and invitations which
were sent. Names identified with an asterisk (*)
belong to those persons who have expressed their
willingness to attend.
