The number of Colombians who die from U.S.produced lethal drugs exceeds the
number of North Americans who die from cocaine, and is far greater relative
to population. In East Asia, U.S.produced lethal drugs contribute to
millions of deaths. These countries are compelled not only to accept the
products but also advertising for them, under threat of trade sanctions.
The effects of "aggressive marketing and advertising by American firms is,
in a good measure, responsible for ... a sizeable increase in smoking rates
for women and youth in Asian countries where doors were forced open by
threat of severe U.S. trade sanctions," public health researchers conclude.
The Colombian cartels, in contrast, are not permitted to run huge
advertising campaigns in which a Joe Camel counterpart extols the wonders
of cocaine.
We are therefore entitled, indeed morally obligated, to ask whether
Colombia, Thailand, China, and other targets of U.S. trade policies and
lethal export promotion have the right to conduct military, chemical and
biological warfare in North Carolina. And if not, why not?
         We might also ask why there are no Delta Force raids on U.S. banks
and chemical corporations, though it is no secret that they too are engaged
in the narcotrafficking business. And why the Pentagon is not gearing up to
attack Canada, now replacing Colombia and Mexico with high potency
marijuana that has already become British Colombia's most valuable
agricultural product and one of the most important sectors of the economy,
joined by and closely followed by Manitoba, with a tenfold increase in just
the past 2 years. Or to attack United States, a major producer of marijuana
production rapidly expanding, including hydroponic groweries, and long the
center of illicit manufacture of hightech illicit drugs (ATS,
amphetamine-type stimulants), the fastest growing sector of drug abuse,
with 30 million users worldwide, probably surpassing heroin and cocaine.
         There is no need to review in detail the lethal effects of U.S.
drugs. The Supreme Court recently concluded that it has been "amply
demonstrated" that tobacco use is "perhaps the single most significant
threat to public health in the United States," responsible for more than
400,000 deaths a year, more than AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, homicides,
illegal drugs, suicides, and fires combined; the Court virtually called on
Congress to legislate regulation. As use of this lethal substance has
declined in the U.S. and producers have been compelled to pay substantial
indemnities to victims, they have shifted to markets abroad, another
standard practice. The death to is incalculable. Oxford University
epidemiologist Richard Peto estimated that in China alone, among children
under 20 today 50 million will die of cigarette-related diseases, a
substantial number because of highly selective U.S. "free trade" doctrine.
         In comparison to the 400,000 deaths caused by tobacco every year
in the United States, drug-related deaths reached a record 16,000 in 1997.
Furthermore, only 4 out of 10 addicts who needed treatment received it,
according to a White House report. These facts raise further questions
about the motives for the drug war. The seriousness of concern over use of
drugs was illustrated again when a House Committee was considering the
Clinton Colombia Plan. It rejected an amendment proposed by California
Democrat Nancy Pelosi calling for funding of drug demand reduction
services. It is well known that these are far more effective than forceful
measures. A widely cited Rand corporation study funded by the U.S. Army and
Office of National Drug Control Policy found that funds spent on domestic
drug treatment were 23 times as effective as "source country control"
(Clinton's Colombia Plan), 11 times as effective as interdiction, and 7
times as effective as domestic law enforcement. But the inexpensive and
effective path will not be followed. Rather, the drug war targets poor
peasants abroad and poor people at home; by the use of force, not
constructive measures to alleviate problems at a fraction of the cost.
         While Clinton's Colombia Plan was being formulated, senior
administration officials discussed a proposal by the Office of Budget and
Management to take $100 million from the $1.3 billion then planned for
Colombia, to be used for treatment of U.S. addicts. There was near
unanimous opposition, particularly from drug czar Barry McCaffrey, and the
proposal was dropped. In contrast, when Richard Nixon--in many respects the
last liberal president--declared a drug war in 1971, two-thirds of funding
went to treatment, which reached record numbers of addicts; there was a
sharp drop drug-related arrests and number of federal prison inmates, as
well as crime rates. Since 1980, however, "the war on drugs has shifted to
punishing offenders, border surveillance, and fighting production the
source countries," John Donnelly reports in Boston Globe. One consequence
is the enormous increase in drug-related (often victimless) crimes and an
explosion in the prison population, reaching levels far beyond any
industrial country and possibly world record, with no detectable effect on
availability or price of drugs.
         Such observations, hardly obscure, raise the question of what the
drug war is all about. It is recognized widely that it fails to achieve its
stated end and the failed methods are then pursued more vigorously while
effective ways to reach the stated goal are rejected. It is therefore
natural to conclude that the drug war, cast in the harshly punitive form
implemented since 1980, is achieving its goals, not failing. What are these
goals? A plausible answer is implicit in a comment by Senator Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, one of the few senators to pay close attention to social
statistics. By adopting these measures, he observed, "we are choosing to
have an intense crime problem concentrated among minorities." Criminologist
Michael Tonry concludes that "the war's planners knew exactly what they
were doing." What they were doing is, first, getting rid of the
"superfluous population," the "disposable people" ("desechables"), as they
are called in Colombia, where they are eliminated by "social cleansing";
and second, frightening everyone else, not an unimportant task in a period
when a domestic form of " structural adjustment" is being imposed, with
significant costs for the majority of the population.
         "While the War on Drugs only occasionally serves and more often
degrades public health and safety," a well informed and insightful review
by Partners in Health researchers concludes, "it regularly serves the
interests of private wealth: interests revealed by the pattern of winners
and losers, targets and nontargets, well funded and under funded," in
accord with "the main interests of U.S. foreign and domestic policy
generally" and the private sector that "has overriding influence on policy. "
         One may debate the motivations, but the consequences in the U.S.
and abroad seem reasonably clear.

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