History and Histories

Transnational organized crime continues to grow in the absence of a comprehensive, integrated global counter strategy. Havocscope.com estimates world illicit trade to be about $1 trillion per year, with counterfeiting and piracy at $521.6 billion, the global drug trade at $321.6 billion, trade in environmental goods at $55.7 billion, human trafficking at $43.8 billion, consumer products at $37.5 billion, and weapons trade at $10.1 billion.

Higher estimates are available for illegal drugs and weapons. This does not include extortion or organized crime’s part of the $1 trillion in bribes that the World Bank estimates was paid last year or its part of the estimated $1.5–6.5 trillion in laundered money. Hence the total income could be well over $2 trillion—about twice all the military budgets in the world. Estimates for TOC (Transnational Organized Crime) are also difficult because the increasing use of cash couriers, diamonds, and anonymous Internet banking hides its gains.

According to the UN, there are 27 million people held in slavery today, far more than during the peak of the African slave trade. The vast majority are found in Asia. The Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking was launched this year and the UN Protocol Against Trafficking in Persons has been ratified by more than 110 countries, but with little effect. Since the World Bank estimates that just $20–40 billion of the total paid in bribes went to developing and transitional countries, the vast majority of bribes are paid to people in richer countries. These countries can be understood as a series of decision points that are vulnerable to vast amounts of money. Decisions could be bought and sold like heroin, making democracy an illusion.

The government of North Korea is reported to derive $500 million to $1 billion annually from criminal enterprises, and many Afghan government officials are allegedly in the illegal drug trade. Daily international transfers of $2 trillion via computer communications make a tempting target. Internet crimes such as mass identity theft have now become a substantial activity of TOC. The 13–15 million AIDS orphans, with potentially another 10 million by 2010, constitute a gigantic pool of new talent for organized crime. Meanwhile, prescription drug abuse has outstripped the use of conventional illegal drugs in many areas, and counterfeiting of these compounds is a new line of business for TOC.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Financial Action Task Force has made 40 recommendations to counter money laundering, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has created the Global Program against Money Laundering. There is also the International Narcotics Control Board, the World Customs Organization, the International Group for Anti-Corruption Coordination, Interpol, and the International Criminal Court. Nevertheless, TOC continues to grow and has not surfaced on the world agenda in the way that poverty, water, and sustainable development have. It is time for an international campaign by all sectors of society to develop a global consensus for action against TOC, which has grown to the point where it is increasingly interfering with the ability of governments to act. The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has called on all states to develop a coherent strategy to deal with the problem. One global strategy has been informally endorsed by several countries in Europe and Latin America. An international body would use a priority system for collaboration for arrest and prosecution of one TOC leader at a time based on the volume of money laundered rather than specify categories of crimes.

The UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime came into force in September 2003. It calls for international cooperation to help fight organized crime. Possibly an addition to this convention could establish the financial prosecution system as a new body to complement the related organizations addressing various parts of TOC. In cooperation with these organizations, the new system would identify top criminals by the amount of money laundered, prepare legal cases, identify suspects’ assets that can be frozen, establish the current location of the suspect, assess the local authorities’ ability to make an arrest, and send the case for immediate action to an appropriate court. When everything is ready, all the orders would be executed at the same time to apprehend the criminal, freeze the assets and access, open the court case, and then proceed to the next TOC leader on the priority list. Courts could be deputized like military forces for UN Peacekeeping, via a lottery system among volunteer countries. Countries would have to give up some sovereignty, as the global system would set the location for prosecution, preferably outside the accused country (extradition is accepted by the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime). After initial government funding, the system would receive its financial support from frozen assets of convicted criminals rather than depending on government contributions for continued operations.

Challenge 12 will have been successfully addressed when money laundering and crime income sources drop by 75% and when law enforcement organizations are effectively integrated across all countries.
Regional Considerations

Africa: The hashish trade in Morocco is being used to support terrorism in both Europe and North Africa. Links between African rebel factions, organized crime, and terrorism may be increasing, which is potentially exacerbated by millions of AIDS orphans with few legal means to make a living. Corruption has permeated much of African society and is now perhaps the greatest limit to growth in many countries.

Asia and Oceania: Heroin production and trafficking in humans provide huge sources of income for the region. It is reported that Chinese organized crime gangs are spreading their activities into Russia. China has enacted a strong new anti-money laundering law.

Europe: European coalitions based on national politics cannot address global organized crime. Russia’s now more porous border adds to the security problems caused by the EU’s integrated economic territory, and the human trafficking problem from the accession countries of Eastern Europe will be exacerbated by the open frontiers. Corruption has fallen in the transition countries of Europe and Central Asia.

Latin America: UNODC says crime is the single largest issue impeding Central American stability, where drug-related violence has risen sharply. The U.S. Plan Colombia, lasting six years and costing almost $5 billion, has left cocaine availability, price, and quality unchanged. It is estimated that 5% of Mexican GDP is laundered, and its drug cartels are moving into Peru, where coca output is up about 40%.

North America: The U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security has opened a Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center. Organized crime and its relationship to terrorism should be treated as a national security threat. Countries must be held accountable for corporations that are involved in criminal activities in their own and other countries. Intellectual property loss in just the U.S. is estimated at $200–250 billion. The use of radio frequency and other forms of identification tags will help trace legal materials into illegal transactions. About half of the 17,500 foreigners trafficked into the U.S. in 2006 were for the commercial sex business, and some 200,000 people are considered to live in slavery in the United States.

Here’s an article from the UK.

After antidepressant treatments are discredited, fears grow that other products may be ineffective.

The pharmaceutical industry came under assault from senior figures in medical research yesterday over its practice of withholding information to protect profits, exposing patients to drugs which could be useless or harmful.

Experts criticized the stranglehold exerted by multinational companies over clinical trials, which has led to biased results, under-reporting of negative findings and selective publication driven by the market, which was worth £10.1bn in the UK in 2006, amounting to 11 per cent of total NHS costs.

The latest attack was triggered yesterday by an analysis of published and unpublished trials of modern antidepressants, including Prozac and Seroxat, showing they offer no clinically significant improvement over placebos (dummy pills) in most patients. But doctors said patients on the drugs should not stop taking them without consulting their GPs.

It was the first time researchers – from the UK, Canada and the US – had successfully used freedom of information legislation to obtain all the data presented to regulators when the companies applied to license their drugs. In some cases it had not been made public for 20 years. Over the past two decades the drugs, known as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), have been among the biggest selling of all time, earning billions of pounds for their makers. Yesterday’s finding suggests that the money may have been misspent. Drug companies are required by law to provide all data on a drug, published and unpublished, to the regulatory authorities when applying for a license. But this requirement does not apply to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which assesses cost effectiveness and recommends which drugs should be used by the NHS.

Peter Littlejohns, the clinical and public health director of Nice, said: “The regulatory authorities have access to everything. Obviously we have access to the published data and we do ask the industry for unpublished data, but it is up to the companies whether to deliver it or not. We have no power to demand it. The issue is that it relies on the good will of the industry.”

Professor Mike Clarke, the director of the UK Cochrane Centre, an international collaboration between researchers in 100 countries which has published more than 3,000 systematic reviews of published trials to establish best medical practice, said lack of co-operation from the drug industry was damaging medical care.

“When we ask for details of a trial the company might tell us nothing. We have even less power than Nice. Researchers trying to make sense of trials for decision-makers need to have access to this data. If we have only got access to half of the data, when we see evidence that a drug works we don’t know whether to believe it or not.

“It makes us doubtful – that’s the big worry. The companies are in the business of making profits – but they are also in the business of providing safe, effective health care.”

Legislation to compel the drug industry to publish its results was included in Labor’s manifesto at the 2005 election and last month the Commons Health Select Committee demanded that Nice be given unfettered access to all clinical trial results.

Yesterday, the Government said it had been told that compelling the industry to publish trial data would not be allowed and it was instead pursuing a voluntary approach, developing a “searchable register” of all trials that have taken place in the UK and pressing the EU to make its own confidential register public.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “The Government has consistently supported open access to information about research when the findings could affect decisions about treatment or health outcomes. We planned to support the principle of mandatory registration of clinical trials in the UK, but legal advice stated this would be illegal under EU law.” A World Health Organization working group is examining how to improve reporting of clinical trials and is expected to announce a consultation shortly.

The pharmaceutical industry was unrepentant about its strategy yesterday. Richard Tiner, the head of medicines at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industries, said: “The regulatory authorities have access to all the data – absolutely everything. Nice is not a regulatory authority – it is making decisions on whether medicines should be available on the NHS… There is no reason why the companies would restrict access – it depends what they are asked for. The industry is very much more transparent than it was 10 years ago.”

GlaxoSmithKline, maker of Seroxat, said yesterday it “fully endorsed public disclosure of all clinical trial results” and had published all data relating to Seroxat on its website “regardless of study outcome”.

The antidepressant debate

Paul Bough, 41: ‘You name it, I’ve tried it: none of them worked’

“The findings go against several decades of experience. I have suffered three major traumas in my life – my father leaving home when I was 11, my husband having an affair, and now an unpleasant divorce – and I’m convinced these drugs helped me survive them. I’ve been close to suicide myself, but now, in my 60th year, I’m feeling positive and able to survive all the terrifying experiences each day throws at me. I take 20mg of Fluoxetine each day, and it makes me feel I can cope. I simply don’t buy the idea that it’s just a placebo – but then I suppose the point is even if it were I wouldn’t care. These drugs are my crutch and my comfort; without them I would lose hope altogether. I’m staying on.”

Sylvia Genge, 59: ‘Without these drugs I would lose hope altogether’

“The findings of this latest report don’t surprise me in the slightest. In fact, they confirm what I already knew.

“I’ve been a depressive for most of my life, and all of my adult life. After the umpteenth failed suicide attempt seven years ago my doctor said I should try taking antidepressant drugs. You name it, I’ve tried it. Diazepam, Citalopram, Prozac, Seroxat, Atenolol [a beta-blocker], Efexor: none worked. They turned me into a zombie, totally incapable of motivation or movement and forced to vegetate on a sofa.

“I’d say to anyone on these drugs, you’re better off going cold turkey. Talk to people, have therapy, be sociable: but don’t rely on these little happy pills. Having tried the lot, I’m coming off – and staying off.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration offered Thursday to pump $200 million into U.S. cities next year to combat violent crime, winning tepid support from mayors who want to see more cops on the street.

The money, announced by Attorney General Michael Mukasey, mostly targets crime-fighting programs across regions - meaning it likely won’t cover the cost of hiring new police officers.

“I know that many of your communities continue to face challenges,” Mukasey told the U.S. Conference of Mayors in a Thursday morning speech. He won light applause in announcing the new money, which will be part of the Justice Department’s budget request for the 2009 fiscal year.

Mukasey also rapped U.S. Sentencing Commission plans to allow some 19,500 federal prison inmates, most of them black, to seek reductions in their crack cocaine sentences. The attorney general described many of the inmates as violent gang members who could threaten public safety if released sooner than initially expected.

“A sudden influx of criminals from federal prison into your communities could lead to a surge in new victims as a tragic but predictable result,” Mukasey told the mayors.

Preliminary FBI data released earlier this month showed violent crime dipped slightly for the first six months of 2007 after two years of increases. Mayors have long called for more help from Washington in combating crime, and deride budget cuts that ended funding for hiring more cops.

The conference’s president, Mayor Doug Palmer of Trenton, N.J., called the new dollars “a start” but said “certainly more is necessary.”

“We’ve asked for more cops,” Palmer said after Mukasey’s speech. “That didn’t happen. So we’re looking to increase the cops funding to put more police on the street.”

He added: “We’re looking for any kinds of money that you can use.”

Palmer said he shared Mukasey’s concerns about shortening the sentences of inmates, noting that many may not have completed drug treatment or other community re-entry programs.

“I don’t think our cities can handle that right now,” Palmer said.

The FBI data, compiled from local and state police departments around the nation, showed murders, rapes, robberies and other violent crimes dropped by 1.8 percent between January and June last year. Property crimes also decreased, including a 7.4 percent drop in car thefts and arsons by nearly 10 percent. But violent crime appears to be rising, if slightly, in small cities and rural areas, the data showed.

Mukasey described the new money as mainly targeting cities and states that agree to share it with neighboring localities to combat crimes spreading across regions. Last year, he said, the Justice Department made $75 million available to communities after studying 18 cities and suburban regions over a six-month period for clues on curbing surging crime rates.

The department also is pressing Congress for tougher laws to give federal prosecutors more power to crack down on crime.

“Every criminal taken off the streets is one less who’s committing new crimes,” Mukasey said.

The illegal drug market is one of the most profitable in the world. It is extremely difficult to know the global value of the drug trade since it is a business that is illegal, underground, and hard to trace. The United Nations Drug Control Program estimates that it is worth $400 billion per year, equivalent to 8% of world trade. In the United States, alone, the drug trade is worth upwards of $100 billion per year. It is now close to 20 years since the U.S. government has been fighting the “War On Drugs,” but despite the billions of dollars spent, an enormous amount of drugs continues to flow into the country.

The drug trade in the United States has had extremely negative consequences in terms of violence and corruption. But its effect on Latin American countries has been even more severe. It has led to violence, corruption, and social dislocation on such a scale that in many cases the very viability of the state as an institution has been threatened. Domestic drug consumption in Latin America is relatively low. The vast majority of the drugs produced in Latin America are intended for the U.S. market. When talking about the negative effect of drugs, it is important to look at the overall effect throughout the continent, not just in the United States.

This article examines changes in the narcotics industry over the past 20 years. It focuses particularly on the negative effects of the drug trade on the countries of Latin America. Finally, the article explores some of the implications of the drug trade for our border community here in El Paso/Ciudad Juarez and forms an argument for the legalization of the production and sale of drugs.

Developments in the Drug Trade During the 1980s

One of the most significant trends in the drug trade during the 1980s was the growth in the trafficking of cocaine and its synthetic derivatives. This development led to the infamous appearance of crack cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities, which enormously affected the drug market for users as and fueled violent gang wars between the suppliers. Although Bolivia and Peru were the largest coca and cocaine base producers, it was Colombia that dominated the actual processing of the drug. By the 1980s, Colombian trafficking organizations were supplying approximately 50% of the cocaine to the U.S. market, primarily by way of maritime and air routes through the Bahamas and other parts of the Caribbean. During this time, Colombian drug organizations were firmly entrenched in the South Florida area.

Also during the 1980s, Colombia was the primary source of foreign-produced marijuana in the United States, supplying approximately 80% of the market. Mexico and Jamaica were responsible for a further 10%, while domestic production supplied the rest. During the same decade, Southwest Asia was the primary source (60%) of heroin to the United States. The other 40% was Mexican-produced heroin, which supplied the western half of the United States.

The 1980s was the first time that the power of drug trafficking organizations to seriously disrupt civil society was witnessed. The 1980 coup in Bolivia, led by Garcia Meza and apparently backed by one of the country’s drug organizations, undermined drug control policies in that country. In 1981, the Colombian M-19 guerilla group kidnapped the sister of the head of the Medellin drug cartel. The cartel responded by organizing death squads that systematically killed guerillas and their families until the sister was released. These death squads went on to intimidate and murder journalists and politicians in an effort to repeal Colombia’s extradition treaty with the United States.

It was also during the 1980s that the drug trade was first perceived as a threat to the national security of the United States. As a response, the resources of the CIA and the military were put at the disposal of the anti-drug effort that was to become known as the War on Drugs.

Emergence of Mexico’s Role During the 1990s

The 1990s saw a significant shift in where drugs were produced and how they were brought into the United States. Because of increased surveillance of the Caribbean area by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Colombian drug traffickers began to rely upon Mexican organizations to smuggle cocaine into the United States, making Mexico the main transshipment point for U.S.-bound drugs. Central America was also increasingly used as an arrival destination for Colombian cocaine. Colombian organizations paid Mexican drug cartels with portions of the smuggled cocaine, sometimes up to half of the load. Usually small, twin-engine planes were used to transport drugs from Colombia as far as northern Mexico, but there were occasions when large, ex-service commercial jets brought in multi-ton quantities.

Drug-related violence continued unabated in South America. Over 150 groups loosely organized into cartels dominated the cocaine trade in Colombia. Guerilla groups such as the FARC and the ELN became more powerful and wealthy as they taxed drug producers, while right-wing paramilitary groups, often funded by the drug cartels, carried out murders and kidnappings in support of the drug cartels’ objectives.

Mexican heroin continued to supply the western half of the United States during the 1990s, while Colombian heroin replaced the supply from Southeast Asia. Colombian heroin was of an extremely high quality and could be snorted, avoiding the stigma of injecting Southeast Asian heroin with a needle.

Partly due to the success of marijuana eradication programs in Colombia, production there was severely disrupted, so Mexico stepped in as the major supplier to the United States. According to U.S. government figures, the number of marijuana users in the United States declined sharply between 1980 and 1990, but it was still extremely attractive to Mexican traffickers because of the high profit margin. The 1990s also saw the beginning of production in Mexico of synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine, which until then had been produced mainly inside the United States.

Mexico’s development as the main transshipment point for Colombian cocaine entering the United States, and largest supplier of marijuana to the U.S. market, led to an enormous increase in wealth and power for the Mexican drug cartels. This growth has had serious consequences for Mexican society. In 1994, the Mexican Attorney General’s office estimated that the drug trade contributed around $30 billion annually to the Mexican economy. Only $7 billion was generated that year by oil earnings. The amount of money laundered in Mexico from drug trade was thought to represent between 4% and 20% of the GDP. The drug trade directly employed directly approximately 360,000 Mexicans and occupied as many as 20,000 soldiers in drug eradication efforts on a daily basis.

The enormous income generated from the drug trade is used to build and buy houses, cars, and ranches, and is invested in legitimate businesses such as hotels, factories, and stores. Much of the large tourist development in states such as Jalisco and Yucatan is funded in part with proceeds from the drug industry. Analysts have argued that drugs are Mexico’s most successful export. They also assert that the drug industry has softened the blow of economic restructuring programs and financial crises experienced by Mexico and other Latin American countries over the past 20 years. In the face of an agricultural crisis brought on by the import of cheap foreign food imports, Mexican farmers are turning to the cultivation of poppies or marijuana as alternative cash crops. Many involved in the drug trade are poor people with limited economic opportunities, tempted by the ease with which large amounts of money. This is not to excuse their participation in what is an illegal and dangerous occupation. But the widespread poverty and deprivation that exists in Mexico and the rest of Latin America cannot be discounted as a factor in the growth of the drug trade.

Drug Trade and the Border

Today, the southwest border has become the main entry point for illegal drugs into the United States. The long, rugged, and in many places, isolated, 2,000 mile border is an ideal place to smuggle narcotics. Seventy-two percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States is brought across it. Colombian organizations continue to use the Mexico-Central America corridor to transship cocaine into the United States. Increasingly, they use the Pacific Ocean as the preferred maritime route as it is much larger than the Caribbean and an easier place to evade detection. Fishing boats and speedboats transport multi-ton quantities of cocaine to southern Mexico, where it is broken down into smaller loads and transported through Mexico and into the United States. Nonetheless, the Caribbean continues to be an important transit point for cocaine, by way of countries such as Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.

After almost 20 years since the initiation of the War on Drugs, and despite a current annual budget of $20 billion, an enormous amount of narcotics continues to enter the United States. In 1996, 120 tons of cocaine a month was being brought into the country from Chihuahua, Mexico, alone—1,440 tons a year (El Diario de Juárez, March 2004). In the same year, according to DEA statistics, almost 45 tons of cocaine was seized nationwide. Officially, the DEA estimates that it seizes between 20% and 25% of drugs brought into the country. Unofficially, the figure is put at 1% to 2%. Only 13 truckloads are required to supply the United States with cocaine for a year. With almost 20,000 kilometers of coastline, 300 ports of entry, and 7,500 kilometers of land border, stopping illegal drugs from entering the United States has been compared to looking for a needle in a haystack.

According to the DEA, southern New Mexico plays a major role in the laundering of drug revenue. Much of this money passes through Native American casinos that are unregulated by the state. The DEA also points to the large number of banking institutions in Las Cruces, New Mexico as evidence of the economic benefits of the drug trade. A city of Las Cruces’ side would typically have five to six banking institutions, but the city actually has over 200. El Paso also reaps considerable benefit from the trade in drugs. The Federal government estimates that $3.5 billion of drug money is laundered through the El Paso economy each year—more than twice the $1.7 billion budget of the military base at Fort Bliss, which itself represents 10% to 15% of the local economy.

Negative Effects of the Drug Trade

Anti-Drug Laws in the United States

A distinction can be made between negative effects caused by government policy to combat drugs, and negative effects caused by the actual trafficking of the drugs. In the United States, one of the government responses to the drug trade has been increasingly harsher sentences for those convicted of drug offenses. These measures, however, are generally seen as having failed since they have not led to a noticeable decrease in drug use and are extremely expensive. In 2001 it was estimated that the 55% of prisoners convicted for drug offenses were costing the taxpayer $3 billion per year. Some of these prisoners are untreated drug addicts stuck in a cycle of constant re-imprisonment in the criminal justice system. Others are people who have been convicted for minor offenses, such as possession of small amounts of narcotics. In 2002, over 45% of arrests for drug offenses involved marijuana, the vast majority for possession. The decision to introduce mandatory minimum sentences for the possession, sale, and use of drugs has made the U.S. prison population balloon to two million people. On a per capita basis, that is the largest prison population in the world. Many people argue that harsher drug sentences have had little effect on drug use.

One of the most controversial aspects of the War on Drugs is how anti-drug laws have disproportionately impacted the minority population. Almost 77% of prisoners are from minority populations (56.7% African-American and 19% Latino). In the early 1990s, there were more young African-American men in prison than in college. According to the federal Household Survey, 72% of illicit drug users are white, a slight over-representation given that they make up 69% of the population. Yet 52% of prisoners convicted of drug-related offenses in state prisons are African- Americans. African-American and Latino populations are more likely to be arrested for drug offenses than whites, and much more likely to receive prison sentences.

Drug-Related Violence

Another negative effect of the drug trade is the enormous amount of violence that accompanies it. It is difficult to estimate, but the majority of murders and other types of violence in Mexico are linked to the trade in narcotics. It is estimated that in Sinaloa, a state in western Mexico where a large amount of marijuana and poppies are grown, close to 16,000 people have died over the past 20 years as a result of drug-related violence. The vast majority of the violence is between and within the cartels, sometimes between cartels as they struggle for control of a share of the drug trade. In other cases, factions within a cartel dispute control of a particular area, theft of drugs, or other conflicts. Occasionally, drug-related violence spills over and innocent people are targeted or affected. The mere existence of such a high level of violence, even when it doesn’t affect the average citizen, is extremely detrimental to the overall well being of the society.

Much of the drug-related violence in the U.S. occurs in poor, inner city areas. Although these areas have average drug use rates, they are often used as drug distribution points because of their lack of social capital, and thus become battle grounds for gangs and factions that seek to control the drug market. Indeed, the majority of gang violence in U.S. cities is related to the drug trade. Inner cities areas subsequently experience a higher level of violence and crime than they otherwise would.

Economic Effects and Government Corruption

Although the drug trade in Latin America does create a large influx of money into generally unstable and impoverished economies, many analysts argue that the overall economic effects are negative. For example, taxes are often not paid on the income generated by the drug trade. Also, businesses funded by drug money are able to operate at a loss, which undercuts legitimate businesses selling the same products.

The trade in drugs in Mexico and the United States also causes enormous amounts of corruption and lawlessness. Mexican sociologist Luis Astorga argues that since the beginning of the drug trade in his country, drug traffickers have had a very close relationship with the political elite. It is not an exaggeration to say that many politicians in Mexico are directly benefiting from the drug trade. Probably the most famous example is General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, who in 1996 was installed as the equivalent of the Mexican Drug Czar with great fanfare. It was felt at the time that the military was Mexico’s most uncorrupted institution. By early 1997, however, General Rebollo had been arrested and charged with actually being a paid employee of the Carrillo Fuentes, or Juárez drug cartel.

This does mean that all politicians are corrupt. But it does mean that political institutions are so intertwined with and compromised by drug cartels that they are incapable of bringing them under control. In Mexico, organizations that produce and traffic drugs have penetrated the political, law enforcement, and judicial institutions to such an extent that they are able to carry out their business with a minimal amount of interference from the authorities. Many drug cartels actually employ police officers and soldiers, both active and retired. There are numerous cases in which the soldiers or police officers that are supposed to be fighting the drug trade are actually working with the drug traffickers themselves. President Fox has a reputation as an honest politician. But the fact that cocaine seizures by Mexican authorities were down from 33.5 tons in 1999 to 12.5 tons in 2002 suggests that as a whole, the Mexican government is unwilling or unable to stem the flow of illegal drugs in to the United States.

Despite changes in government, the production and trafficking of drugs is relentless. From 1986 to 2004, three governors from different political parties were in power in Chihuahua, Mexico. During their respective administrations, the cultivation and trafficking of drugs in Chihuahua was constant. In 1984, 11,000 tons of marijuana was seized from El Bufulo, a plantation in Jimenez, Chihuahua covering 200 hectares and employing 12,000 men. Obviously, the existence of a plantation of this size employing so many people was not a total surprise. El Bufulo was “discovered” by the Mexican authorities after it was revealed by DEA agent Enrique Camarena. According to a government report, the plantation was run not only by the Juárez drug cartel, but also by Mexican police organizations that offered protection and safe passage up to the northern border. During the early 1990s, the Juárez drug cartel would regularly fly into Chihuahua and other northern states multi-ton loads of cocaine aboard large ex-commercial planes. The Carrillo Fuentes cartel alone is alleged to have operated 22 ex-service Boeing 727 jets.

In 1994, two more large marijuana plantations were “discovered” in Chihuahua, one of 90 hectares and the other of 103 hectares. In 2004, Jesus Solis Silva, Chihuahua’s attorney general resigned, partly because of accusations that he was directly benefiting from the trafficking of drugs. There are allegations that the governors of Chihuahua were directly benefiting form the drug trade. Either way, the scale of drug trafficking in Chihuahua, and the fact that it continued despite changes in the government, are astounding.

In January, 2004, police in Juarez uncovered the bodies of 12 men in the small back yard of a house in a middle class area of the city. The men were all victims of the drug trade and all involved in trafficking. The extent of police involvement in the murders in Juárez is incredible. Many of the murders were carried out by a unit of the Chihuahua state police while their were on duty, in uniform, and using police vehicles. They would identify their victims, stop them, kidnap them, torture them, and then murder them. In El Diario of Juárez there are photographs of the state police commandante at the scene of murder investigations. He is standing with other police officers purportedly investigating murders that he himself committed. This unit of the Chihuahua state police was not an isolated rogue unit. Such actions by law enforcement are terrifyingly common. Some of the people who were murdered at this site had gone to a federal police unit, the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (AFI), the equivalent of the FBI. They had gone to denounce a drug safe house, then found themselves detained and eventually murdered. Reporting crime in Mexico can be dangerous. Being a police officer in Mexico can be deadly. Police are faced with a stark choice: la plata o el plomo—silver (money) or lead (bullets). Many times even turning a blind eye is not an option.

Obviously the drug trade cannot be blamed for causing corruption nor the smuggling of contraband products. These are structural problems that have existed in all societies since the beginning of time. Eradicating them is a process that requires much time and effort. Many people argue that if it weren’t drugs that were being trafficked, another illicit product would take its place. But a strong argument can be made that drugs are a special case because of the ease with which they are cultivated and transported and the enormous profit margin that can be obtained with them. Officials estimate that a drug smuggler can lose 90% of his or her load and still make a profit. Additionally, one of the factors that make the drug trade so powerful in Latin America is that it is such an extremely lucrative and powerful industry, taking place in fragile societies where there are huge disparities of wealth and severe lack of economic opportunities. From the highlands of Peru and Bolivia to the shantytowns that skirt the cities of the U.S./Mexico border, the poverty is fertile ground for the growth and development of an illegal narcotics industry.

Although the United States is the richest society in the world, and by and large its institutions are well run and respected, the enormous wealth generated by the drug trade means that even here there is corruption involving law enforcement officials. Although U.S. customs agents are well paid (earning on average $40,000-$50,000 per year, the amount of money offered by the drug cartels is often too much of a temptation to resist. The immigration and customs agencies of the United States investigate about one case of corruption per week. It is hard to understand how such large quantities of drugs are able to enter the United States without some collusion by customs, immigration, and other law enforcement officials on the U.S. side.

Destructive Effects of Violence and Corruption

Probably the most destructive impact of the drug trade in Mexico and Latin America is the general destabilizing effect that the violence and corruption has on the society. Of the almost 400 murders of women in Juárez since 1993, it is estimated that around 25% were directly related to the drug trade.

When such a high level of drug-related violence is experienced by a society, violence and crime in general start to be tolerated and accepted; so, when other crimes are committed, there is less outrage and less expectation that the crimes will be solved. Also, when there is a general understanding that police officers are to some extent complicit in the trafficking of drugs and other illegal activities, law enforcement is not trusted. In Juárez, it is estimated that 95% of crimes go unsolved and unpunished. There are widely held perceptions that crimes can be committed with no consequences, and that if someone is inclined to report a crime, the police is the last place to go. At best, nothing will be done about it; at worse, you could pay for it with your life. People are often scared of reporting even mundane crimes, fearful of where it may lead. All this has extremely negative consequences for the smooth and orderly functioning of any society. The trade in drugs has simply become far too powerful, and far too lucrative, to be brought under control by the Mexican government and other governments in Latin America.

The power of the drug cartels and the influence that they exert on countries such as Mexico has never been greater. The Mexican drug cartels now exist as institutions more powerful than the state itself. This has had an enormous impact on our border region. The former director of the DEA, Thomas Constantine, has publicly stated that Mexico is in danger of becoming a narco-democracia, where the drug cartels are in control and lawlessness and violence are the norm. Mexican soldiers are patrolling the streets of Nuevo Laredo in northern Mexico. In Juárez, a unit of the state police has been accused of operating as a hit squad for the local drug cartel.

Examples like this show how the drug trade is destabilizing the countries of Latin America to such an extent that the very fabric of their society is seriously threatened. The vast majority of the violence and corruption that these societies experience is directly caused by the drug trade. The United States as a society bears great responsibility for this situation since it is our fellow citizens who are consuming the products of the drug trade. One of the reasons that the drug trade is so entrenched in Latin America is because there is simply not a viable economic alternative to it. Until there is, it seems likely that the trade in illegal drugs will continue to act as a subsidy to the legal economy. Mexico has struggled in the ten years since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Its agricultural sector is devastated, and its manufacturing sector is subject to the whims of the U.S. consumer. The United States is currently attempting to create a similar free trade zone throughout Latin America. These free trade agreements are structured to benefit the wealthy in both the United States and Latin America. Unless there is a serious effort to restructure trade and to reorient the current economic model so that society as a whole benefits, the drug trade will continue to flourish, to the detriment of the entire continent.

The Case for the Legalization of Drugs

In the meantime, there is a strong case for the legalization of the drug trade. The benefits are that the drug trade would be taken out of the hands of the powerful criminal organizations responsible for so much violence and corruption. It would be regulated by the government and subject to taxation. In the United States, legalization is still very much a fringe issue, but in Europe and Latin America it is starting to become part of public debate.

There are many arguments about the best way to legalize the drug trade. The most popular public perception of legalization is a free market distribution of all drugs. Some people advocate the legalization of soft drugs such as marijuana; hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin would have restrictions put on them, much like alcohol and tobacco. Others advocate a regulated distribution of drugs through public health facilities, where they would be legal but monitored and where addicts would be in regular contact with health professionals.

The actual form that legalization would take would be the product of extensive discussion and negotiation. But it is at least time to start to have a public debate about the legalization of drugs. To do otherwise is to ignore the grave injustice that the drug trade is inflicting on all of the American continent, but especially in Latin America.

In the fall of 2003, Maria arrived at Casa Peregrina in Juárez with her two small boys. She had been referred by a local domestic abuse organization. Maria was different from most of the guests we receive at Casa Peregrina. She had money, her children were well educated, and she had traveled widely in both Mexico and the United States. Maria had been subjected to serious domestic abuse and was seeking a separation from her husband. The problem was that her husband was a member of the Juárez drug cartel. Maria could not go to the authorities to report what had happened to her because the police regularly visited her husband at home and could not be trusted. Maria’s only option was to go to the international bridge and request political asylum. She did this and is presently in hiding in the United States.

In the spring of 2004, Rosa Emma Carbajal was given a parking ticket in the small town of Palomas, Chihuahua for double parking. Because of this she attempted to run over the police officer and was subsequently charged with resisting arrest. Shortly after being released on bond, she returned to the police station with between 30 and 40 people. The mob assaulted the police station, smashing windows and destroying equipment. Fearing for their lives, the police commander, along with six colleagues managed to flee. They dispersed the crowd by firing into the air and managed to reach the US Border where they immediately requested political asylum. The day after the incident we received the police commander’s wife and child at Annunciation House where they stayed for a few days until family members in the US could be contacted.

Afghanistan risks degenerating into a state controlled by “narco-terrorists” and drug cartels unless the soaring level of opium and heroin production is curbed, the UN warned yesterday.

Afghanistan risks degenerating into a state controlled by “narco-terrorists” and drug cartels unless the soaring level of opium and heroin production is curbed, the UN warned yesterday.

Two years after US air power and northern guerrillas drove the Taliban from power, the world’s biggest source of heroin is cultivating opium poppies and processing the opium into heroin at near record rates despite the introduction of western programs aimed at eliminating the drug .

The UN’s annual survey of Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation and production, released yesterday, paints a bleak picture of a drug culture spreading vigorously in defiance of intense efforts by the international community, humanitarian organizations and charities to wean Afghan farmers off the lucrative crop.

The Vienna-based UN office on drugs and crime (UNODC) has been surveying Afghan poppy production for the past decade and has concluded that this year’s harvest is the second biggest recorded, surpassed only by the bumper production of 4,600 tons of opium in 1999, a year before Taliban hardliners banned its cultivation.

This year’s production of 3,600 tons represents a 6% year-on-year increase, while poppy cultivation, at almost 81,000 hectares (200,000 acres), was up 8%. A further cause for concern is that opium poppies are now being grown in 28 of Afghanistan’s 32 provinces, against 18 in 1999.

“The country is at a crossroads,” said Antonio Maria Costa, director of UNODC. “There is a palpable risk that Afghanistan will again turn into a failed state, this time in the hands of drug cartels and narco-terrorists.”

Afghanistan is by far the biggest source of the heroin trafficked in western Europe, supplying 90% of the market.

The report found that Afghanistan produces 75% of the world’s illicit opium and that two in three opiate users take drugs from Afghanistan. The poppy industry generates around half the official gross domestic product.

The industry is controlled by warlords and crime cartels who use two prime routes to ferry the contraband to western Europe. Raw opium is refined into heroin at illicit laboratories all over Afghanistan.

The heroin is taken north, through the former Soviet states of central Asia and up into the Russian Urals, before heading for western Europe via Moscow and St. Petersburg. Alternatively, it is dispatched Turkey and then smuggled into western Europe via the Balkans.

“Out of this drug chest some provincial administrators and military commanders take a considerable share. The more they get used to this, the less likely it becomes that they will respect the law, be loyal to Kabul,” Mr Costa said.

“Terrorists take a cut as well. The longer this happens, the greater the threat to security within the country and on its borders.”

In one of his first moves on taking office last year, President Hamid Karzai outlawed opium poppy cultivation, trafficking and consumption while charities and other outsiders sought to develop crop substitution projects and payments to farmers to eradicate poppy growing.

To judge by the figures released yesterday, there is scant evidence of success. The bumper harvest of 1999 was followed in 2000 by the Taliban prohibition, a gambit aimed partly at gaining international recognition of the regime.

The ploy failed but the ban went ahead, slashing that year’s opium production. Last year, however, UNODC confirmed a “major resurgence” of poppy growing”.

Mr Costa called for stiff “interdiction measures”, backed by the international community, “to destroy the terrorists’ and warlords’ stake in the opium economy”.

Two years after US air power and northern guerrillas drove the Taliban from power, the world’s biggest source of heroin is cultivating opium poppies and processing the opium into heroin at near record rates despite the introduction of western programs aimed at eliminating the drug .

The UN’s annual survey of Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation and production, released yesterday, paints a bleak picture of a drug culture spreading vigorously in defiance of intense efforts by the international community, humanitarian organizations and charities to wean Afghan farmers off the lucrative crop.

The Vienna-based UN office on drugs and crime (UNODC) has been surveying Afghan poppy production for the past decade and has concluded that this year’s harvest is the second biggest recorded, surpassed only by the bumper production of 4,600 tons of opium in 1999, a year before Taliban hardliners banned its cultivation.

This year’s production of 3,600 tons represents a 6% year-on-year increase, while poppy cultivation, at almost 81,000 hectares (200,000 acres), was up 8%. A further cause for concern is that opium poppies are now being grown in 28 of Afghanistan’s 32 provinces, against 18 in 1999.

“The country is at a crossroads,” said Antonio Maria Costa, director of UNODC. “There is a palpable risk that Afghanistan will again turn into a failed state, this time in the hands of drug cartels and narco-terrorists.”

Afghanistan is by far the biggest source of the heroin trafficked in western Europe, supplying 90% of the market.

The report found that Afghanistan produces 75% of the world’s illicit opium and that two in three opiate users take drugs from Afghanistan. The poppy industry generates around half the official gross domestic product.

The industry is controlled by warlords and crime cartels who use two prime routes to ferry the contraband to western Europe. Raw opium is refined into heroin at illicit laboratories all over Afghanistan.

The heroin is taken north, through the former Soviet states of central Asia and up into the Russian Urals, before heading for western Europe via Moscow and St. Petersburg. Alternatively, it is dispatched Turkey and then smuggled into western Europe via the Balkans.

“Out of this drug chest some provincial administrators and military commanders take a considerable share. The more they get used to this, the less likely it becomes that they will respect the law, be loyal to Kabul,” Mr Costa said.

“Terrorists take a cut as well. The longer this happens, the greater the threat to security within the country and on its borders.”

In one of his first moves on taking office last year, President Hamid Karzai outlawed opium poppy cultivation, trafficking and consumption while charities and other outsiders sought to develop crop substitution projects and payments to farmers to eradicate poppy growing.

To judge by the figures released yesterday, there is scant evidence of success. The bumper harvest of 1999 was followed in 2000 by the Taliban prohibition, a gambit aimed partly at gaining international recognition of the regime.

The ploy failed but the ban went ahead, slashing that year’s opium production. Last year, however, UNODC confirmed a “major resurgence” of poppy growing”.

Mr Costa called for stiff “interdiction measures”, backed by the international community, “to destroy the terrorists’ and warlords’ stake in the opium economy”.

Yes, I know this all happened in 2005, but how is it that we still aren’t pissed-off.

The pharmaceutical industry is bracing itself for criticism when the film ‘The Constant Gardener’ opens next month. But Jeremy Laurance reports that away from the Hollywood script is a true story of how multinational drug companies took liberties with African lives with devastating consequences.

In a dusty schoolyard in Kano, northern Nigeria, a group of children are kicking a football. One of them, a solemn-faced boy called Anas, sits watching quietly. He cannot play because he has pains in his knees that prevent him from running.

Nobody knows what caused Anas’ pain but suspicion has fallen on Big Pharma. Six years earlier, Anas was a patient in a trial of a new drug run by one of the world’s biggest companies. A known side effect of the drug, called Trovan, was joint pain. The issues raised by Anas’ story have become the subject of a major British film.

The multinational pharmaceutical industry is bracing itself for an uncomfortable autumn. Next month, The Constant Gardener, the film based on the novel of the same name by John Le Carré, opens in London.

Directed by Fernando Meirelles, of City of God fame, it is a thriller, a love story and a blistering attack on the drugs industry and the way it carelessly expends the lives of innocent citizens in the Third World in the quest for billion-dollar medicines to sell to the first world.

As with dramas of this kind - such as the 1999 film, The Insider, which detailed the perfidious dealings of the tobacco industry - it raises the question of how far fiction resembles fact. So it is worth examining the background to The Constant Gardener. The film opens in a remote area of northern Kenya where Tessa Quayle (played by Rachel Weisz), the wife of a British diplomat, has been murdered. Her travelling companion, a local doctor, has disappeared, and the evidence points to a crime of passion.

At the time of her death, Tessa, an activist and passionate campaigner, was on the verge of uncovering a conspiracy involving the testing of a new drug. In personality she was the opposite of her husband, the mild-mannered Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), whose chief passion is his plants - he is the gardener of the title.

But in his grief, and goaded by whispers of her infidelity, he sets out to complete what she started, embarking on a quest to expose the truth about the pharmaceutical industry.

What he uncovers, as the film’s blurb puts it, is “a vast conspiracy, at once deadly and commonplace, one that has claimed innocent lives - and is about to put his own at risk”. At the center of this conspiracy is the idea that pharmaceutical companies use African people to test drugs which are destined to become huge profit-earners in the West.

It is not the first time such allegations have been made, but they have rarely been leveled with such dramatic effect. Some will find The Constant Gardener’s thesis overblown, but it is a gripping thriller, ravishingly shot by César Charlone, that conveys the chaos, grandeur and darkness of Africa with unequaled authenticity. After the credits roll, a note from John Le Carré appears on screen that reads: “Nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world. But I can tell you this; as my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.” This is hard to credit. The film features two brutal killings, a savage beating, a campaign of harassment, intimidation and threats involving two governments and their security services - all to protect the interests of a pharmaceutical company that is testing a drug on mothers and children and quietly burying its failures.

Maybe there are pharmaceutical companies that have engaged in such crimes and enlisted the support of corrupt governments. Who can say? But it is not necessary to posit such a gargantuan conspiracy, where paranoia is the only rational response. The crimes of the pharmaceutical industry - from the price protection of Aids drugs which have denied life-saving medicines to millions, to the cover up of lethal side effects to protect profits - are well documented.

But there are two cases in which named companies have been accused of wrongdoing that partly inspired The Constant Gardener and which give resonance to the allegations about the secret testing of drugs on the unsuspecting and the suppression of any negative findings.

In 1996, Kano was suffering from outbreaks of cholera and measles when a third, even more deadly, disease arrived: meningitis. The infection spread quickly through the cramped slums of the city and within weeks thousands of children were ill.

The outbreak was not reported in the West but it did not go unnoticed. An internet message alerted scientists at the research headquarters in Connecticut, of one of the world’s biggest drug companies: Pfizer.

The company reacted swiftly. It chartered a plane to Kano with a new drug called Trovan that was a potential life-saver and a potential billion-dollar profit earner. But Trovan had never been tested on children.

The Infectious Diseases Hospital in Kano was under siege from desperate parents who brought their dying children begging for help. One of these was Anas, then aged six. His father, Mohammed, said his son was given a drug by “a doctor from overseas” and put to bed. Mohammed assumed the doctors who treated his son were from Médecins Sans Frontièrs, an independent medical organization, who had arrived several weeks before the Pfizer team.

Only later when he examined a card he was given did he realize that Anas had been included in a trial of the new drug Trovan. The card was numbered 0001 - Anas was the first.

His story was told in the documentary “Dying for Drugs”, broadcast in 2003, which alleged that Pfizer had failed to obtain informed consent from the parents of the children tested, and had back-dated a letter granting ethical approval for the trial from the ethics committee of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. Pfizer said it remained satisfied the Kano experiment was conducted properly.

Since the trial, Anas has had a pain in his knee which X-rays showed was inflamed and which prevents him from running. Trovan was not used in the US because it caused side effects including joint pain. It is impossible to tell whether Anas’s knee problem was caused by the drug or was a consequence of the meningitis. Trovan was later withdrawn from the market for unrelated reasons, after it was linked with a number of deaths of patients from liver damage.

But the case against Pfizer did not end there. Lawyers seeking damages for the children involved in the Trovan trial obtained a letter sent by Pfizer’s childhood diseases specialist, Dr. Juan Walterspiel, protesting strongly about it. Dr. Walterspiel set out eight grounds for opposing the trial including the fact that Trovan had “not been tested for its sensitivity before the first child was exposed to a live-or-die experiment.” His contract with the company was terminated soon after.

Brian Woods, who made Dying for Drugs, met Meirelles and Le Carré, during the development of The Constant Gardener. “We had an entertaining lunch in which we were all frothing about the pharmaceutical industry,” said Woods, who last week won a commission from Channel 4 to make a follow-up film.

Meirelles, whose Brazilian background gave him a strong interest in the issue of first world/Third World exploitation, distributed copies of Dying for Drugs to cast members, and it had the desired effect. After watching it and reading other background material that Meirelles had given him, Ralph Fiennes said: “There are huge questions about Big Pharma. The companies are not obliged to disclose a lot of information about how they test or make their drugs. There’s big, big money involved.” Rachel Weisz concurred. “It’s David and Goliath; the little people taking on the big corporations. They [the pharmaceutical companies] make all this money, yet people in developing countries can’t afford the drugs that could save their lives.”

A second case of dubious practice by the pharmaceutical industry also has echoes in The Constant Gardener. A Canadian specialist, Dr Nancy Olivieri of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, was among the world’s leading experts in the blood disorder thalassaemia when she agreed to take part in the trial of a new drug, Deferiprone, made by the US company Apotex.

Deferiprone helps clear iron from the blood which builds up in patients with thalassaemia and can be fatal. At first the trial went well and Dr Olivieri published promising results in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Then she noticed worrying liver changes in some of her patients. She raised her concerns with the company and tried to find a way of adapting the trial. But she was unprepared for the response of the company, whose potential million-dollar drug she was now questioning.

Mike Spino, the vice-president of Apotex, informed her that the trial had been terminated, and warned her that she would face legal action if she spoke about it to anybody, in breach of her duty of confidentiality.

That triggered a dispute between Dr Olivieri and Apotex that has dragged on for more than five years, during which she has not published new research. Sir David Weatherall, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University and a supporter of Dr Olivieri, said the case raised a “fundamental issue of academic freedom”. Nor was it an isolated case. Sir David added that editors of medical journals including The Lancet and The Journal of the American Medical Association had come under pressure not to publish data or to change it.

This story is also told in Dying for Drugs. Deferiprone is now licensed in more than 24 countries, including the UK, and Apotex insist it is safe and effective. The company also accused Dr Olivieri of making errors in the trial that made her results worthless.

Wherever the truth in the cases of Pfizer and Apotex, the behaviour of Big Pharma will come under renewed scrutiny thanks to The Constant Gardener. Even if its picture of multinational corporations engaged in global conspiracies with corrupt governments seems excessively paranoid, there are real issues to confront. The bigger scandal lies not in the forging of consent forms to clinical trials, nor even in the intimidation of recalcitrant researchers. It lies in the rapacious pricing of the pharmaceutical industry that puts life-saving drugs out of reach of individuals, hospitals and even nations. The words used to justify these prices are “research and development”. But in truth, the industry’s biggest cost is marketing. Extraordinary sums are spent persuading doctors to prescribe new drugs only fractionally different from older, cheaper ones, which ramp up prices.

Great as this conspiracy is, unfortunately it does not provide for a blockbuster thriller.

Drug companies are placing depressed patients at risk by not publishing negative results from clinical trials and distorting the evidence doctors use to decide which drugs to prescribe.

New research published in The New England Journal of Medicine found nearly a third of the 74 industry-sponsored studies of antidepressants they examined were not published, most of which showed negative outcomes for the drug involved. Not only were positive results 12 times more likely to be published, but negative results were often written so as to convey a favorable outcome.

Researchers warn that selective reporting of clinical trials can lead to misrepresentation of the benefits and risks of a drug and could mislead healthcare professionals into believing some drugs are more effective and less harmful than they actually are, which could place patients at risk.

The published articles suggest 94 per cent of the trials conducted had positive results, whereas analysis by the FDA found only half were favorable.

The drug war is over. We lost it long before the latest declaration of war by President Bush. Whatever the other factors, we lost primarily for spiritual reasons. We merely repeated the mistake of Prohibition: the harder we tried to stamp out the evil, the more lucrative we made it. We should know that prohibition doesn’t work.

Forcible resistance to evil simply makes it more profitable. Our attempts to stamp out drugs violate a fundamental principle that Jesus articulated in the Sermon on the Mount: “Resist not evil.” The Greek term translated “resist” is antistenai. When it is used by the Greek Old Testament or by the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, however, the word is usually translated, “to be engaged in a revolt, rebellion, riot, insurrection.”

It is virtually a synonym for war. It means to stand up against an enemy and fight. So Jesus’ words should be translated, “Do not resist evil by violent means. Do not fight evil with evil. Do not mirror evil, do not let evil set the terms of your response. Applied to the drug issue, this means, “Do not resist drugs by violent methods. “When we oppose evil with the same weapons that evil employs, we commit the same atrocities, violate the same civil liberties and break the same laws as do those whom we oppose. We become what we hate. Evil makes us over into its mimetic double. If one side prevails, the evil continues by virtue of having been established through the means used. More often, however, both sides grow, fed by their mutual resistance, as in the arms race, the Vietnam war, the Salvadoran civil war and Lebanon. This principle of mimetic opposition is illustrated abundantly in the drug War.

Bush’s drug-war strategy has three elements. First, it requires cutting off the drug source in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Yet this appears to be impossible. Already we see signs that Colombia is collapsing into civil war. Officials and journalists are being gunned down on the streets, civilian homes are being raided and seized, civilian government is increasingly being taken over by the military — and so far the drug lords have only engaged in selective terrorism.

Moreover, the Colombian army has seldom confronted the 140 paramilitary private armies of the drug lords, or raided their training bases. For in certain areas of the country the military has formed a marriage of convenience with drug traffickers and landowners in a common front against a 30-year-old leftist guerrilla insurgency. With an income in the billions of dollars, drug leaders are able to buy generals, judges and police. In one week last fall, the Colombian national police fired 2,075 officers for having links with the cartels. The drug lords have also bought limited public acceptance by sponsoring the national soccer league, diversifying into legitimate businesses, supporting charities and offering to pay off the government’s $10 billion external debt.

To test public reaction, the Bush administration may talk about sending in U.S. troops. But even if only military advisers are sent, they will soon discover in the field what our advisers found in Vietnam: an army not really committed to a fight. And even if those producing countries could be rid of coca tomorrow, production would simply be moved somewhere else, and the eradication effort would have to be started all over again in Southeast Asia, Turkey, Afghanistan and other countries far less likely to let us call the shots. So far, cocaine cultivation uses only 700 square miles of the 2.5 million square miles suitable for its growth in South America. There is simply no way the U.S. can police so vast an area.

Second, the Bush strategy calls for interdicting cocaine at our borders. We have been trying that for years, and it simply cannot be done short of militarizing the borders. According to a Government Accounting Office study, the U.S. Air Force spent $3.3 million on drug interdiction, using sophisticated AWACS surveillance planes over a 15-month period ending in 1987. The grand total of drug seizures from that effort was eight. During the same period, the combined efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy, sailing for 2,512 ship days at a cost of $40 million, resulted in the seizure of a mere 20 drug-carrying vessels. Drugs are easy to smuggle. The entire country’s current annual import of cocaine would fit into a single C-5A cargo plane.

Even when interdiction works, it does nothing to reduce drug availability. On September 29, 1989, 21.4 tons of cocaine was seized in Los Angeles; within a week nine tons was taken in Harlingen, Texas, and five more at sea off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The almost 36 tons netted in the three seizures was valued at $11 billion. Yet ten days later undercover agents were able to buy cocaine in bulk at the same price as before the seizures.

William Bennett, director of the National Office of Drug Control Policy, hopes that interdiction will raise drug prices. In fact, however, cocaine has become more available, while its wholesale price has dropped by 80 percent during the past decade. Increased prices would not deter addicts anyway; it would simply increase their rate of criminal acts. In Dade County, Florida, a mere 254 young addicts accounted for 223,000 crimes in a single year — almost 2.5 per youth per day. Multiply that by a nation and you see why the drug war was lost before it began.

As Senator John Kerry’s subcommittee on narcotics reported in December 1988, increased cooperation with foreign governments has neither cut the amount of cocaine entering the U.S. nor led to the destruction of the major smuggling organizations. Fifteen percent of the drugs entering this country are being confiscated, but “for the drug cartels, whose production capacities stagger the imagination, a 15 percent loss rate is more than acceptable.”

Third, the Bush plan calls for arresting drug dealers and casual users. There are already 750,000 drug arrests per year, and the current prison population is overtaxing facilities. At an average of $51,000 per inmate per year, just to incarcerate the 750,000 arrested annually would cost $38 billion. There are 35 to 40 million Americans who have used illegal drugs within the past year. To jail all users would run a tidy $1.785 trillion.

As for using the death penalty for deterrence, it seems unlikely that this country is ready to execute drug dealers by the hundreds of thousands. If so many millions are flouting the law, Prohibition style, is there really a political will for harsh enforcement? And how sincere is our anti-drug effort going to be when the financial community realizes that the cash flow from the drug trade is the only thing preventing a default by some of the heavily indebted Latin American nations or major money-laundering banks? Cocaine trade brings Bolivia’s economy about’ $600 million per year, a figure equal to the country’s total legal export income. Revenues from drug trafficking in Miami are greater than those from tourism, exports, health care and all other legitimate businesses combined.

It is not drugs but rather drug laws that have made drug dealing profitable. Drug laws have also fostered drug-related murders and an estimated 40 percent of all property crime in the U.S. Ethan A. Nadelmann, whose article “Drug Prohibition in the United States” in the September 1, 1989, issue of Science has been a major catalyst for public discussion of legalization, argues that “the greatest beneficiaries of the drug laws are organized and unorganized drug traffickers. The criminalization of the drug market effectively imposes a de facto value-added tax that is enforced and occasionally augmented by the law enforcement establishment and collected by the drug traffickers.” Rather than collecting taxes on the sale of drugs, governments at all levels expend billions of dollars in what amounts to a subsidy of organized criminals.

The war on drugs creates casualties beyond those arrested. There are those killed in fights over turf, innocents caught in cross fire, citizens terrified of city streets, escalating robberies, children fed free crack to get them addicted and then enlisted as runners and dealers, mothers so crazed for a fix that they abandon their babies, prostitute themselves and their daughters, and addict their unborn. Much of that, too, is the result of the drug laws. Cocaine, after all, has been around a long time and was once sold over the counter in tablet form and consumed in Coca-Cola. What makes it so irresistible today is its lucrativeness. And it is lucrative only because it is illegal.

The media usually portray cocaine and crack use as a black ghetto phenomenon. This is a racist caricature. The New York Times reported on October 1, 1989, that there are more crack addicts among the white middle and upper class than any other segment of the population and far more such occasional cocaine users. The typical user is a single white male 20 to 40 years old who generally obtains his drugs from black dealers. The white demand makes the drugs flow. Americans consume 60 percent of the world’s illegal drugs — too profitable a market for dealers to ignore.

In the drug war, we are blindly fighting what we have become as a nation. Some observers say that drugs are the ultimate consumer product for people who want to feel good now without benefit of hard work, social interaction, or making a productive contribution to society. Drug dealers are living out the rags-to-riches American dream as private entrepreneurs trying desperately to become upwardly mobile. That is why we cannot win the war on drugs. We Americans are the enemy, and we cannot face that fact. So we launch a half-hearted, half-funded, half-baked war against a menace that only mirrors what we have ourselves become as a nation.

The uproar about drugs is itself odd. In 1987, according to the Kerry subcommittee, there were 1,400 deaths from cocaine; in 1988, that figure had increased to 3,308. Deaths from all forms of illegal drugs total under 6,000. By contrast, 320,000 to 390,000 people die prematurely each year from tobacco and 100,000 to 200,000 from misuse of alcohol. Alcohol is associated with 40 percent of all suicide attempts, 40 percent of all traffic deaths, 54 percent of all violent crimes and 10 percent of all work-related injuries.

None of the illegal drugs are as lethal as tobacco or alcohol. If anyone has ever died as a direct result of a marijuana overdose, no one seems to know about it. Many people can be addicted to heroin for most of their lives without serious consequences. Cocaine in powder form is not as addictive as nicotine; Nadelmann points out that only 3 percent of those who try it become addicted. Crack is terribly addictive, but its use is a direct consequence of the high cost of powdered cocaine. Crack was a cheap ghetto alternative, and its spread to the middle and upper classes has in part been a function of its low price. Severely addicted humans may in some ways resemble those experimental monkeys who will starve themselves to death if supplied with, unlimited cocaine, but the vast majority of users are not in such danger (and alcoholic humans also will drink themselves to death)

We must be honest about these facts, because much of the hysteria about illegal drugs has been based on misinformation: All addiction is a serious matter, and the churches are right to be concerned about the human costs. But many of these costs are a consequence of a wrongheaded approach to eradication. Our tolerance of t