Taki's Mag

On the drug war’s fortieth anniversary, the news from the front is rather grim. In Mexico, the clashes between the army and the formidable drug cartels have caused nearly 35,000 deaths in the past four years. In Afghanistan, opium continues to be a significant source of revenue for the Taliban. In Colombia, a country which is usually cited as an antinarcotics success story, the FARC guerrillas, while certainly weakened, continue to operate and cause havoc, financing themselves largely through the cocaine trade.

Given the problem’s transnational nature, most critics of the drug war have been trying to bring about a “global debate.” In practice, this means that Third World leaders feel entitled to demand an overhaul of Washington’s drug laws, the US being the world’s largest consumer.

Former Colombian President César Gaviria, for instance, recently stated in an interview that Colombia has the “moral authority” to “examine the United States’ antidrug policy.”

As was to be expected from a man who ran the mostly useless Organization of American States for ten years, Gaviria says he hopes that complaining to the UN along with other Latin American ex-presidents, Kofi Annan, and a few intellectuals will eventually end US drug prohibition.

A similar approach has been adopted by current Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. During a recent speech at Brown University in which he lectured Americans about what he calls their “syndrome” of geopolitical hyperopia, Santos demanded that the US adopt “new strategies, new visions, and new approaches” to take on the cartels, which have continuously found “the path of least resistance” in order to export illegal substances.

“As the biggest consumer in the world,” Santos sermonized, “the US must be present” in the global debate on the drug problem.

“We (Colombians) have done our part,” he added. “With our moral authority and our expertise, which comes through our sacrifice and our achievements, we are ready to participate in this debate….But, I repeat, we cannot do it alone.”

Santos’s strategy is bound to end in disappointment.

In terms of bringing about an end to US prohibition, using self-righteous, indignant, and perhaps even arrogant language would be about as effective as Muammar Gaddafi demanding that Europe and North America convert fully to Islam.

As far as the US is concerned, Gaviria, Santos, and company seem to have difficulty understanding that the world’s powers are not often persuaded to change their laws based on the self-appointed “moral authority” of Third World presidents with a penchant for bombast.

In June, the Obama Administration’s “Drug Czar” declared that he was hardly impressed by Gaviria’s proposals, even with respect to legalizing cannabis, implying there’s not the slightest possibility of a change in current US drug policy.

In light of this, the presidents of Colombia, Mexico, and other countries the drug war has decimated should trust markets instead of international bureaucracies. But first they should realize the futility of their own efforts to bring about a “global debate.”

The only ways forward are through global legalization or an agreement among the producing countries to legalize as a bloc.

According to a thesis written by Colombian Gustavo Silva Cano last year at Princeton, unilateral legalization would save Colombia approximately $7 billion annually. Taxing cocaine production would also become a considerable source of government revenue. Finally, and most importantly, unilateral legalization would result in thousands of fewer homicides annually.

The debate that should be held inside Colombia is whether unilateral legalization’s immediate benefits would outweigh the perhaps inevitable diplomatic isolation vis-à-vis the US, something which could lead to the loss of foreign investment and even economic sanctions. (Legal exports to the US totaled $15.7 billion in 2010.)

Until this question is considered internally, it’s mere disingenuous vanity to pretend that the rest of the world will take measures based on a debate that only Colombia and the other producing countries are willing to have.

When you rule over Lilliput, Napoleonic ambitions are seldom realized. It’s about time Latin American presidents came to terms with reality.