War On Drugs Consequences On The Latin example essay topic

Book review:" Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's futile war on drugs in Latin America " Edited by Ted Galen Carpenter Overview Introduction 3 I Modest results after thirty years of war 4 The war on drugs consequences on the drugs crops cultivation 4 The war on drugs consequences on the Latin American opinion 5 II The American strategy on the drug war: definitively a bad strategy? 8 The United States's trategy on the war on drugs 8 The causes of the American's strategy failure 9 Is "legalization" the solution for a decrease in the amount of drug in the united States's treets 12 Conclusion 14 Sources 17 Introduction "Bad neighbor policy: Washington's futile war on drugs in Latin America", from Ted Galen Carpenter, draws a negative critic (as suggested by the title) of the fight against drugs in United States. Carpenter, who is Vice President for Defence and Foreign Policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, gives clearly his negative opinion on what is for him the drug war failure. This "war" has for purpose to protect the American population against the drug scourge; however this war is mainly set in Latin America. In fact the United States war on drugs began with the entry of Richard Nixon as President in the White house. The year 1968 is marked by the will to eradicate the narcotic problem in United States.

Because the supply comes from Latin America, President Nixon decides to cut the supply, by intervening directly in Latin America whether than on the American territory. The problematic of the book seems to be: What are the consequences of the American war on drugs in Latin America? In fact the consequences on the United States territory are not shown, which should be, considering the conclusion, the purpose of the book. In this book review, we will in a first part discuss about the global results of this war. Then we will consider the strategy adopted by the American governments and highlighted by the author.

Finally we will examine the solution of the legalization, an issue which is brought to the fore by the author. I Modest results after 30 years of war Since 1968 and the Nixon drug prohibitionist strategy, the war on drug has taken a considerable interest in the American agenda. Reagan, Ford, Carter, Bush, Clinton, all of them have kept pace with this policy. The drug war has been even more emphasised under the Clinton administration with the Plan Colombia in 2001. However this determination to fight drugs has not been followed by positives results concerning first the crops cultivation, second the Latin American opinion over drugs. The war on drugs consequences on the drugs crops cultivation First of all the results of the war on drugs are quite difficult to measure considering the illegality of the issue.

Indeed how quantify the importance of drug in the export trade? How quantify the number of drugs crops produced in Latin America? However, some figures are here, but they have to be taken carefully. Those figures are used in the book to show the negative impact of the war on drugs.

Those data come from the International Narcotics Control strategy Reports, which is an American organism, the data of this organism seem to have different estimate from the United Nations. The meaning of the number is as well hidden in the book: what are the units of the data? 2000 1997 1993 Bolivia 43 200 240 Colombia 580 360 65 Peru 154 325 410 total 777 885 715 Source: INCS Report, March 2001, , pp. 6, 17, 28 However those tables show that the results of the war on drugs change within the countries in Latin America. Thus, during the period 1993-2000, the cocaine production has declined considerably in Bolivia (five times less in 1993 than in 2000) and in Peru, which is not the case in Colombia, where the cocaine production has increased more than eight times.

Those data are as much ill-assorted concerning the marijuana production. The decrease in cocaine production in Bolivia and Peru here reflects the effort of the US Army, as the antidrug programs began from the early 1980's in those countries. Among of drug-crop land eradicated Cultivated Eradicated Net Bolivia 53 386 5 486 47 900 Colombia 38 472 972 37 500 Ecuador 120 80 40 Peru 120 800 0 120 800 Total 212 778 6 538 206 240 Source: INCS Report, March 1992, pp, 27, Now let's consider the table, which is above. We can see here that in Bolivia, the drug eradication in 1992 had good results. In Bolivia, as we have just seen, the level of cocaine production between 1993 and 2000 has decreased a lot. Taking into consideration those data, the argument of the authors is that the decrease and the eradication of drug crops in one country bring about an increase in drug production in another country.

As the precedents table do not reveal the data for the same year, it is difficult to approve or not this argument. Nevertheless this phenomenon is known as the "balloon effect": pushing down production in one place only pushes it up in another". We can conclude with those data that since 1993, the war on drugs at the global level did not have a lot of effects on the drugs production. Nowadays this scourge is still really present in the Latin America economy. As the drug remains as well "cheap, pure, and readily available on United States streets", we can confirm Ted Galen Carpenter's opinion: the war on drug is a failure. The war on drugs consequences on the Latin American opinion The American war on drug does not have consequences only on the Latin American production or no-production.

Ted Galen Carpenter begins his book by giving the name of some innocent people who were killed due to the war on drugs. There is the example of this Bowers family travelling in a Cessna 185 floatplane, which has been shooting down. In fact this plane was suspected to have drug on board, which has never been proving. Those people are, by far, not the only people killed whereas innocent. A part of the American strategy is to eradicate the drug crops with the helps of helicopters, which spread poison onto farms that grow drugs. However those spraying do not hit only the drugs crops as far as with this method the precise target is difficult to reach.

In fact drugs crops grow closed to food crops and animals rearing, which are affected as well by the poison. Furthermore the new peasant's strategy is to hide their illegal drug among food crops. Spraying has thus for consequences to hit all harvest without distinction, creating famine and accentuating the level of poverty. As far as Ted Galen Carpenter is concerned, the war on drug has as well emphasised the level of corruption in Latin America.

In fact the war on drugs has created a vast illegal market which gave incentives and opportunities for corruption. The President of Colombia: Pastrana, during the Plan Colombia in 2001, asked for an additional amount of help from the United States in order to fights drugs. However it was not really clear whether this amount had for purpose the war on drugs or for other personal expenditures. In addition "many of the people the United States worked with most closely to accomplish its goal - especially in the drug war- appear to have been working both sides of the street, forming a network of corruption right under the noses of their US partners".

However, according to me, the causes of the corruption should not be attributed to the war on drugs. It is because there is a corrupt culture and government in some country in Latin America that with the war on drug the level of corruption is emphasised. What I mean here, is that what ever would have been the contribution of money, its destination would have been embezzled. The confirmation is that even money from humanitarian associations is misappropriated.

To sum up, the war on drugs did not eradicate the production of drug, did not stop the supply in the United States, emphasised the level of poverty, the level of corruption, killed innocent people and accentuated the anti-American feeling in Latin America. What is the strategy used by the United States to achieve such a failure? II The American strategy on the drug war: definitively a bad strategy? Ted Galen Carpenter well describes the United States's trategy applied on the war on drugs, and appeal seriously on the blunder made. However he does not try to find the causes of the failure. The United States's trategy on the war on drugs The United States's trategy is based on three major broad directions: Interdiction of drug-trafficking routes Drug-crop eradication measures Crop substitution and alternative development programs.

The interdiction of drug-trafficking routes takes into consideration three major "zones" of interception: the "departure", the "transit" and "the arrival zone". Obviously the two first one oblige the United States to set their militarily forces in the foreign territory in order to fight drugs, which creates a dependence on the Latin American countries. This method is revealed not to worth it. Indeed the American custom is really broad, and it is impossible to control all of it: "More than 5 000 large ships are in the eastern Pacific Ocean on a given day, and an additional 1 000 or more a rein the Caribbean". There are as well 5 000 trucks which enter the United States daily from Mexico ("only about 200 are inspected").

However the United States keep on finding the soundness of this strategy. We have already spoken about the drug-crop eradication measures. This measure is applied in partnership with the crop substitution and alternative development programs. For example in Bolivia in 1986, the United States was giving a compensation of $2 000 for every hectare destroyed. The argument given by the author, in which I agree totally, is that if this level is too low, this will push the peasants to continue the drug farming to compensate the difference of income. If this level is too high, this will push the peasants to continue the drug farming in order to get once again the money.

Other alternatives programs were to plant other production as bananas, coffee, lemon, citrus fruit... to compensate the lost of income. This measure is as well not appropriated as "illegal-drug growers can make from ten to fifty times more in provisioning the illegal drug market than they can in any other agricultural pursuit". Furthermore: Coca or marijuana plants grow everywhere, even in poor soil; Peasants can have up to 6 harvests a year with coca crops; Peasants do not have to plant again coca seed after each harvest; Peasants do not have any transportation cost as with drugs buyers come directly to the farm (an argument which has importance in countries where the transportation network is not well-developed); This United States strategy, as we have seen in the first part of this essay, did not achieve its goal. Above, there are the arguments of Ted Galen Carpenter explaining the failure of this strategy. To my mind, those arguments do not take car enough of the real situation of the Latin America peasants. The causes of the American's strategy failure Drugs harvests represent an important share in the economy of Latin American countries.

Those harvests are for most of the poor peasants the only source of income. We can see the importance of the drug trade trough the Colombian decision in 1999, to include in the GDP measure the income coming from illegal drug crops. What is more dominant is that this economy is essential for the living of numerous peasants and their family. As Maria Eugenia Ledezmo Cau a says concerning peasants in the Chapare in Bolivia: "They can obey the government's demand to stop growing coca. Or they can continue to send their children for education in Cochabamba; continue to buy vegetables, clothes, and occasionally meat; and continue to get emergency medical care".

After you have the opinion of drug on war proponent as Colonel Jaime Cruz Vera who says: "They would have to work much harder, because with coca they just plant it and leave it for three months. But palm hearts and banana and other alternative development projects make them have to do farm work". Is the laziness of those peasants the reason why they do not accept drugs eradication's? When peasants see the difference of income between the sales of bunches of banana and the income from coca harvest, there is no comparison for them. They want to assure a certain standard of living for them and their family, which is impossible to reach with other farming. Thus is more than understandable.

Furthermore the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), shows that the "soil quality in the Chapare is too poor for anything other than coca production, which takes the least nutrients out of the soil and is sustainable for the longest time". However the soil is not only poor in those regions but also after having farming coca plant during a long time, peasants have to lie follow their fields for a long time before planning to use their field again. This example concerns the Chapare, a region of Bolivia. As we have seen in the first part of this essay, the eradication strategy was dominant in Bolivia since the beginning of the 1990's.

Did the United States really believed in their strategy or it was a way, once again to hide their action to the international community? The coca farming is as well part and parcel of the Latin American culture. An argument stirred up by the peasants is that the coca leaf is not a drug, which is true. Indeed the coca leaf can be used for medicinal purposes (used since a long time by the Latin American society) as well as a raw material for the creation of drugs: the cocaine. Should the United have the right to eradicate something which is not a drug? Why do they not apply themselves only to their objective which is drug?

We know the answer: it is because it is less likely to be detected than coca fields. However, we find ourselves stuck in a viscous circle, where drugs is one of the predominant scourge of the Latin American society, but on the other hand this same scourge is the source of living for an important part of poor peasants and the reconversion of the farming of those peasant seems to be difficult. Is legalization, put into the fore by Ted Galen Carpenter, the solution? Is legalization the solution for the decrease in the amount of drugs on the United States's treets? In the summary of the book, Arnold S. Tre bach, who is President of the Anti prohibitionist League, says: "Carpenter allows his masterful factual presentation to reach its logical conclusion: legalization, not decriminalization or some other partial measure".

But what is the difference between those two terms? After having done research on it, I realised that the difference was different depending on the person who tried to explain the two expressions. However decriminalization generally means: "reducing or eliminating penalties for personal use, possession and even cultivation of illegal drugs". Consequently the difference is that under legalization drug sales would be legal whereas forbidden under decriminalization. The argument stirs up by Ted Galen Carpenter is that the prohibitionist action against drugs had no impact on the drug supply and consumption in the United States. Furthermore the drug production in Latin America has still the same level and yields more than thirty years ago.

States should consequently turn their policy towards legalization. He appeals his thought on an opinion poll done in the United States and conducted by the Pew Research Centre in February 2001. This survey shows that, according to the population, the war on drugs was a failure, drug use in the Unites States is not a "pressing problem", Latin America can not stop the outflow of drugs and that the United States should give less help. On the one hand, I agree, first that decriminalization, according to the definition given above, is only a partial measure and do not serve any purpose. Indeed the goal of legalization is to stop the sale on the black market and therefore to have the control over the global price, the tax system... which is not possible under decriminalization. Here we can make a comparison with the policy toward tobacco used recently in France.

Through an important taxation, the price of cigarette increased a lot which has diminished the consumption of tobacco. In theory under legalization, the gross price of the drug should decrease a lot: "Legalization of certain substances may be the only way to bring prices down, and doing so may be the only remedy to some of the worse aspects of the drug plague... ". Jorge Castaneda.

The peasants would consequently make less profit with it, and so turn their farming toward a more profitable market. On the other side, the government can increase the net price by taxing drug, which should bring about a decrease in demand. On the other hand, legalization in one country only pushes the market in another country. France has access really easily to marijuana from the Netherlands or from Morocco. (Marijuana trade and cultivation is prohibited in Morocco, but in Chefchaouen's region, the government only turns a blind eye to it). The supplier of those countries can consequently still make profit with it.

Vicente Fox follows this opinion: "When the day comes that it is time to adopt the alternative of lifting punishment for consumption of drugs, it would have to come from all over the world because we would gain nothing if Mexico did it but the production and traffics drugs... ". . In Latin America, some countries have already talked about this solution: Jamaica in 2001, Uruguay in 2001, Mexico, Colombia... Will those countries have the courage to face the United States on this issue? In Europe Does that means, that the world starts the pace of drug legalization?

I still stay sceptic on this position. Conclusion To conclude, Ted Galen Carpenter shows in his book the failure of the thirty years war on drugs conducted by the United States in Latin America. A failure which is illustrated by the constant production of drugs in Latin America, the accentuation of scourges as poverty and corruption... We can say that the United States's trategy follows Say's theory: the demand is conducted by the supply. However, as we have discussed about. This theory can not be applied on drugs market, as we have to take into consideration the dependence of drugs products.

Sources "Bad neighbor policy: Washington's futile war on drugs in Latin America", Ted Galen Carpenter, 2003. web web.