The War on Drugs Revisited: Old Problems, Old Solutions, Same - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The War on Drugs Revisited: Old Problems, Old Solutions, Same Results CLAS Workshop on Drug Trade September 16, 2009 Pablo F Gomez Department of History, Vanderbilt University

Some History  A long time ago, in a far, far away country...  Shangai 1909 war on opium  Many more  1998 UN launches 'A Drug Free World' by 2008  Last week meeting in Vienna  What's coming?

Some Quick Numbers  All this are educated guesses  'Evidential rigour is a causality of illegality'  5% (at least) of world 'adult' (not an infant) populations uses drugs (more than 200m people)  Production of Cocaine, Opium (heroine) unchanged from the 90s  Production of Cannabis (Marihuana) up

More Guesses  Consumption of Cocaine is higher than in the 1990s  Street price continues to descend (despite claims of increased seizures) more on this later  No extinction but adaptation  Opium move from Turkey and Thailand to Myanmar and Afghanistan

Not Guesses  40 billion/year  Incarceration of 1.5 million US citizens/ per year  6,000 dead/year (Mexico)  Drug Industry is worth $ 320 Billion/year  And the results of the 'War on Drugs' are...

1 2 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 9 0 8 0 7 0 Index (2001 = 100) 6 0 5 0 Cannabis resin 4 0 Herbal cannabis Cocaine Heroin brown 3 0 Amphetamines Ecstasy 2 0 LSD 1 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6

U.S. Aid to Colombia, 1996-2006 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 (est) (req) 54.15 88.56 112.44 309.1 765.4 242.9 401.9 620.9 555.0 641.6 641.1 Military/ 8 9 7 3 8 7 5 Police 0.62 0 0.52 8.75 214.3 5.65 120.3 136.7 134.9 131.2 138.5 Econom 1 8 9 2 ic/Social

Bojaya

Kidnapping http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivz3bDf_6RE&f eature=related

Ciudad Juarez

President Vieria of Guinea-Bissau

Rio de Janeiro

Taliban-al Qaeda

Close to Home  Total federal expenditures for the first 10 years of Prohibition amounted to $88 million — about $1 billion in 2008 dollars  Today $19 billion a year now in federal spending alone  Effect...

Incarceration  Total drug arrests are now more than 1.5 million a year  Since 1989, more people have been incarcerated for drug offenses than for all violent crimes combined  There are now about 480,000 drug offenders in jails and prisons  50 percent of the federal prison population consists of drug offenders

The overwhelming majority....  African-Americans  Followed by Hispanics  Minor drug traffiquers (Dealers)  Poor  Users (a significant percentage with Mental Disease)

Not to talk about  Prostitution  Corruption  Broken Generations  Destroyed Economies  Destroyed Farmlands

Human Side of Story • Venezuela • Ecuador • Bolivia's Cocaine Bars • Lost generations