FIGHT DRUGS WORLDWIDE

Recently, the Columbian newspaper El Tiempo published an editorial
supporting the legalization of drugs.

El Tiempo is one of the most conservative publications in Latin
America. One of its owners, Francisco Santos, is the vice president
of Colombia.

The other owner of the newspaper, Juan Manuel Santos, is the director
of a political group leading campaigns to re-elect president Alvaro Uribe.

Around the time the El Tiempo column was published, Frank Fulbrook,
president of the Camden Neighborhood Revitalization Corp., delivered
a lecture on the Camden campus of Rutgers University in favor of the
same position.

Endless war

For the Colombian newspaper, legalization should be the response
against drug dealing, as opposed to the failing repression efforts.
The editorial -- titled "Failed Strategy?" -- focused on Plan
Colombia, which for the last six years has been a joint effort
between the United States and Colombia.

The plan mainly consists of major military and police operations in
Colombia's drug production areas; the spraying of illicit
plantations, and the search and seizure of the end product.

During these six years, according to the column's writer, there have
been thousands of Colombian casualties, the ecology there has
suffered serious harm as a consequence of the spraying, and many
millions of dollars have been spent in vain. In the meantime, the
United States continues to receive the same amount of cocaine from
Colombia as it did six years ago.

In Camden, Fulbrook makes his case for drug legalization because, in
his opinion, the city's authorities have failed in their mission to
eradicate drugs from the streets.

Fulbrook stated that, with the help of the local police, he was able
to identify 150 fully active drug sales points in a recent study.

Since it is impossible to control the drug problem with police
measures, violence starts spreading in many ways that is hurting
Camden, Fulbrook asserts.

Both sides are right. The fight against drug dealing is not yielding
the desired results.

A recent study by the International Narcotics Control Board, a
worldwide authority in drug control monitoring, found that Africa has
become one of the most active places in the world in drug dealing.
This report was used to back the El Tiempo editorial. In the case of
marijuana, the report says, cannabis continues to be grown,
trafficked and illicitly used on the African continent. Africa ranks
second, trailing North America (Mexico, Canada and the U.S.), among
the main producers of cannabis with a share of around 28 percent, or
12,000 tons, of the worldwide production.

Similarly, the long, irregular and unprotected coasts of the African
continent, as well as its intricate geography, appeal to dealers who
are opening new routes and smuggling drugs to Europe and, on a
smaller scale, to the United States from Latin America, the Narcotics
Control Board report shows.

Drug trafficking is a worldwide problem. El Tiempo and Fulbrook, as
well as any supporter of drug legalization, are right when they say
that the fight against drugs has failed.

However, these supporters fall short when offering solutions based on
their local realities.

We cannot deal with a huge problem such as drug dealing, which
operates in a nearly synchronized manner throughout the world, with
isolated measures.

United front

Precisely because it is so difficult to make all countries agree and
create a unified battlefront, the war against drugs is far from completion.

Not even bilateral efforts have given good results. The clearest
example is the cited Plan Colombia. As if to make it intentionally
more ineffective, this bilateral plan only operates in one of the
countries involved.

In Colombia, drug production is vigorously fought. But we know little
about what is being done in the United States to control consumption.

When the subject of drug legalization is discussed, people assume
that all narcotics are illegal. But this is not so. The
pharmaceutical industry uses narcotics and their derivatives to make
many of its medicines. These are products that people use without
issue under a doctor's supervision.

For example, growing and processing opium-yielding poppy is legal in
Spain. Alcaliber S.A. (www.alcaliber.es (http://www.alcaliber.es))
presents itself as a "vertically integrated company with the
objective to create a secure supply of narcotic raw material."

To achieve its goal, the company cultivates and processes the poppy
in Spain, produces a concentrate of poppy straw and extracts the alkaloids.

However, Spain is one of the European countries with the biggest drug
trafficking problems. This is because drug dealing is not directly
related to the legalization of narcotics.

The drug-dealing world is separate, underground and evasive and has
extended to the real world like a virus. The main products in drug
trafficking continue to be the traditional narcotics, such as
cocaine, marijuana, opium and its derivatives (morphine, heroin, etc.).

Growing market

However, there has been a surge in the black market of synthetic
drugs or designer drugs, according to authorities.

In addition, there is an incredible amount of hallucinogenic
substances offered on the streets that are prepared with products
sold on the open market. These narcotics wreak havoc among consumers,
often irrevocably.

All these drugs deliver the same social impact, whether they are legal or not.

Local authorities have their own challenge of controlling the sale
and use of illegal drugs in their jurisdictions. But there is not
much they can achieve from their individual efforts, no matter how
great, if universal policies are not created to face the monster of
drug trafficking in its entirety.

Let's make use of an old Latin aphorism: Thinking of drug trafficking
as a local problem only is "like trying to cover the sun with one finger."

The writer is editor of Nuestra Comunidad, a Spanish-language weekly
published by the Courier-Post. This column appears on this page and
in the weekly Wednesdays. Published: March 29. 2006 3:00AM