U.S. BULLIES WORLD INTO WAGING FUTILE DRUG WAR

On June 6, 1998, a surprising letter was delivered to Kofi Annan,
secretary-general of the United Nations. "We believe," the letter declared,
"that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself."

The letter was signed by statesmen, politicians, academics and other public
figures. Former UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar signed. So did
George Shultz, the former U.S. secretary of state, and Joycelyn Elders, the
former U.S. surgeon general. Nobel laureates such as Milton Friedman and
Argentina's Adolfo Perez Esquivel added their names. Four former presidents
and seven former Cabinet ministers from Latin American countries signed.

The drug policies the world has been following for decades are a
destructive failure, they said. Trying to stamp out drug abuse by banning
drugs has only created an illegal industry worth $400 billion, "or roughly
8 percent of international trade."

The letter continued: "This industry has empowered organized criminals,
corrupted governments at all levels, eroded internal security, stimulated
violence and distorted both economic markets and moral values." It
concluded that these were the consequences "not of drug use per se, but of
decades of failed and futile drug war policies."

This powerful statement landed on Annan's desk just as the UN was holding a
special assembly on global drug problems. Going into that meeting, the
governments of the world appeared all but unanimous in the belief that the
best way to combat drug abuse was to ban the production, sale or possession
of certain drugs.

Drug prohibition, most governments believe, makes harmful substances less
available to people and far more expensive than they otherwise would be.
Combined with the threat of punishment for using or selling drugs,
prohibition significantly cuts the number of people using these substances,
thus saving them from the torment of addiction and reducing the personal
and social harms drugs can inflict. For these governments--and probably for
most people in most countries--drug prohibition is just common sense.

Still, the letter to Annan showed that this view is far from unanimous. In
fact, a large and growing number of world leaders and experts think the war
on drugs is nothing less than a humanitarian disaster.

But governments are all but unanimous in supporting drug prohibition. It's
not easy to imagine alternatives to a policy that has been in place for
decades, especially when few people remember how the policy came into being
in the first place, or why.

"War on drugs" is a compelling sound bite, whereas the damage drug
prohibition may do is complex and impossible to summarize on a bumper sticker.

But the core reason the war on drugs so completely dominates the official
policies of so many nations is simple: The United States insists on it.

'Turning The World Dry'

The "international" war on drugs is a policy conceived, created and
enforced by the U.S. government. Originally, nations were cajoled, prodded
or bullied into joining it. Then it became international orthodoxy, and
today most national governments are enthusiastic supporters of prohibition.
To the extent that they debate drug policy at all, it is only to question
how strictly or harshly prohibition should be enforced, not whether the
basic idea is sound.

The few officials and governments that do stray, even slightly, outside the
prohibition orthodoxy are cajoled, manipulated or bullied to get back in.
The U.S. government does everything it can to prevent the views of
conscientious objectors from being heard.

Drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and opium are linked in modern minds to
organized crime, street violence and junkies wasting away in crack dens.
But they weren't always thought of this way.

These drugs were used for centuries before they were criminalized in the
20th century. Like alcohol today, they were produced, sold and purchased
legally. And like alcohol, the producers and sellers of these drugs usually
were ordinary merchants and companies that conducted their business
according to the laws of the day. They fought for market share with
advertisements and settled disputes with lawsuits, like any other business.

These legal markets for drugs clearly had their harms. As in every age and
every society, a small minority of the people who used what are now illegal
drugs became addicted and suffered. But the legal availability of what are
now illegal drugs did not create burgeoning plagues of drug addiction any
more than the legal availability of alcohol today has spawned an epidemic
of alcoholism.

For many well-intentioned activists of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, that wasn't good enough. In the United States, where the puritan
dream of building a morally righteous "City on the Hill" always has been a
potent social force, anti-drug activism took its strongest hold.

The first goal was banning alcohol, but many in the American temperance
movement had even grander designs. William Jennings Bryan, a former
secretary of state and a pioneer in the push to ban alcohol and other
drugs, insisted in 1919, when alcohol was about to be made illegal, that
the United States must "export the gift of Prohibition to other countries,
turning the whole world dry." In 1900, the Rev. W.S. Crafts, an official in
the Theodore Roosevelt administration, had called for an even broader
"international civilizing crusade against alcohol and drugs."

Most of the early crusaders genuinely believed a ban would end drug
problems: Simply make drugs illegal, and no one would sell, buy or use
them. As the American preacher Billy Sunday joyously proclaimed when the
United States banned alcohol in 1920, "The reign of tears is over. The
slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and
our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women
will smile, and children will laugh."

In 1920, when alcohol was banned in the United States, a rich and powerful
criminal class emerged. And with it came a stupendous rise in violence and
corruption. Gangsters protected themselves from the law by buying off
officials. They fought for market share not with ads but guns.

And since they couldn't be sued or supervised by government regulators,
gangsters and smugglers often provided alcohol that was adulterated or even
poisonous, killing tens of thousands and leaving more blind or paralyzed.

These developments shocked Americans. Just 13 years after the Constitution
had been amended to create Prohibition, it was changed again to legalize
alcohol.

More Than Alcohol

But other drugs, which had been banned only gradually with few apparent
repercussions because of the vastly lower demand for them, were not legalized.

Instead, the energy of the American anti-alcohol campaign turned on them.
Under the leadership of Harry Anslinger, Prohibition agent turned
anti-narcotics chief, the American government expanded its bans on drugs at
home and took up the "international civilizing crusade" with zeal.

The precedent for international drug prohibition had been set in
conferences in 1909 and 1911. At the time, a few nations, notably Canada
and Britain, were interested in international regulation of opium, but it
was the United States that instigated these conferences and prodded the
talks toward total criminal prohibition. Though delayed by the two world
wars, such negotiations eventually led to a full ban.

"It was only in 1945 that the United States within the international
community had the political clout to internationalize these ideas of
prohibition," said David Bewley-Taylor, a professor at the University of
Wales and author of The United States and International Drug Control,
1909-1997.

Several international protocols were signed in the 1940s and 1950s. The
United States also worked behind the scenes to internationalize its
prohibition efforts--sometimes using questionable pressure tactics.

Charles Siragusa, a U.S. narcotics agent during the early years of
international drug prohibition, noted in his 1966 memoirs that foreign
police "almost always worked willingly with us. It was their superiors in
government who were sometimes unhappy that we had entered their countries.
Most of the time, though, I found that a casual mention of the possibility
of shutting off our foreign aid programs, dropped in the proper quarters,
brought grudging permission for our operations almost immediately."

The use of foreign aid as leverage in expanding U.S. drug policies was
occasionally made explicit. The 1984 National Drug Strategy for Prevention
of Drug Abuse and Drug Trafficking said that "U.S. decisions on foreign aid
and other matters" should be "tied to the willingness of the recipient
country to execute vigorous enforcement programs against narcotic traffickers."

It was not an idle threat. In 1980, the United States suspended most
foreign aid to Bolivia when it deemed the Bolivian government unresponsive
to American concerns about cocaine.

Major UN conventions on drugs passed in 1961, 1971 and 1988. These
conventions, now the basic international laws of drug prohibition, all were
initiated by the U.S. government. Today, almost every nation has signed the
UN conventions.

Yet it's important to remember that international drug prohibition came
together only gradually, in steps, over decades. Whether prohibition should
be the basic method of dealing with drug problems never has been debated
seriously at the international level.

American Arm-Twisting

The object of American policy today is not only to have nations committed
to its general approach of drug prohibition. As Charles Siragusa's memoirs
show, the United States long has attempted to carry out its anti-drug
activities in other countries and to have its favored policies and programs
implemented abroad. It also has worked doggedly to block other countries
from trying any drug policy not in line with its own strict-prohibition
approach.

Formally, at least, the key instrument of American influence is the
"certification" process. Acting under a 1986 directive from Congress, the
president, through the State Department, each year reports on the level of
cooperation and effort other nations are putting into anti-drug measures.
Decertification can result in economic sanctions, international isolation,
even an end to U.S. foreign aid.

For third-world countries, that would be a disaster. Not surprisingly, the
U.S. report, which is released in March, is always preceded by a flurry of
drug crackdowns and anti-drug initiatives in targeted nations. Mexicans
call it the "February surprise."

These efforts to curry American favor are meant to avoid the fate of
Colombia. Decertified in the mid-1990s, Colombia under President Ernesto
Samper spun into political crisis even though the full force of U.S.
economic sanctions wasn't used.

Colombia was forced to abandon other priorities and launch a furious attack
on drug trafficking. Many experts feel it was that switch of priorities
that weakened the central government, damaged the economy and, ultimately,
allowed Colombia's rebels to seize 40 percent of the nation's territory.
These developments in turn led to spectacular increases in drug production
and even greater instability.

Heroin Maintenance

More disquieting than high-level American policies is the use of quiet
pressure tactics. One such tactic was used in Australia in 1996.

For the most part, Australia has followed the orthodox drug policies
favored by the United States, but high levels of heroin addiction, along
with the threat of AIDS, have fostered a strong movement in Australia
toward the so-called "harm-reduction" approach. This is the idea that the
top goal of drug policy shouldn't necessarily be to reduce drug use but to
reduce the harm done by drug use--even if that requires easing the ban on
drug possession.

One harm-reduction policy is "heroin maintenance," in which serious heroin
addicts who haven't been able to break their addiction are prescribed legal
heroin. Heroin maintenance has been shown in some studies to lead to
dramatic decreases in deaths by overdose and in crimes committed by addicts.

There have been equally dramatic increases in health and employment. With
their lives in some semblance of order, addicts often are better able to
reduce their drug use voluntarily and even kick their addiction.

Australia began considering a heroin maintenance trial project in the early
1990s. By 1996, it was a serious proposal being reviewed by several
committees of health experts.

That year, President Clinton's top international drug enforcer, Bob
Gelbard, flew to the Australian state of Tasmania. Officially, Gelbard went
to inspect the state's opium poppy industry, an operation licensed by the
UN to produce morphine and codeine for medical use. While in Tasmania,
Gelbard invited the members of a state committee considering the heroin
maintenance trial to speak with him.

Dr. David Pennington, a respected Australian expert on drugs and chairman
of the committee meeting with the American, recalls that Gelbard was "very
courteous" but emphatic that it would be a terrible mistake for Australia
to deviate from "the straight, hard-line position." Pennington said Gelbard
made it "clear that the State Department considered this issue an
absolutely critical one."

Gelbard, he said, also mentioned Tasmania's opium poppy industry, worth
$160 million per year. He "pointed out that Australia was allowed by [the
UN] to have its poppy industry in Tasmania," Pennington said. And "if [the
UN] were to decide that Australia were not a reliable country, that of
course that industry could be at risk."

The American, Pennington said, avoided saying explicitly that an unwelcome
decision would jeopardize the industry. "On the other hand, it was a very
heavy hint."

Nonetheless, Pennington's committee recommended that the heroin trial go
ahead. So did a federal committee made up of top health and police
officials from across Australia. But in 1997, after heavy lobbying from the
frightened poppy industry and the government of Tasmania, the Australian
federal Cabinet rejected the advice of the expert committees. The Cabinet
said it would "send the wrong message" about drug use.

The Citizen asked the State Department to comment on these events. A State
Department official said it could not provide a response because several
years had passed and the officials involved had changed employment.
Gelbard, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, declined to comment.

U.S. Policies Not Criticized

Oblique pressure tactics also have come into play in the critical
drug-producing states of Latin America.

There is considerable opposition to drug prohibition in Latin America, as
evidenced by the signatures of many Latin American presidents, ministers
and other officials on the 1988 protest letter sent to Annan. Many Latin
Americans feel the U.S.-led war on drugs has hurt their countries deeply,
by creating powerful drug cartels that corrupt their governments,
destabilize their economies and spread bloody mayhem in their streets.

Still, there is virtually no serious official opposition to U.S. policies.
Senior Latin American officials often publicly criticize what they see as
an exaggerated American emphasis on drug supply rather than on domestic
drug demand. But they virtually never criticize the core policy of prohibition.

In part, this false unanimity stems from the old fears of losing American
foreign aid and trade access. But another reason is hinted at in the 1998
protest letter itself: All of the senior government officials who signed
were "the former president of Colombia," "the former president of Costa
Rica," and so on. Only those whose careers are all but over seem willing to
criticize the core idea behind American drug policy.

The Latin American elites who dominate their governments have close
business, educational and social ties with the United States. For
Colombia's elite, Miami is practically a second capital. To be refused a
visa to the United States is to have careers, even social lives, crippled.

Monica de Greiff, a former Colombian justice minister, says it's even a
blemish on one's name at home. "If you don't have a visa, [people] will
say, 'Um, why don't you have a visa? You must be doing something wrong if
you don't have a visa,' " she said.

One of those who says he has felt the effects of this weapon is her father,
Gustavo de Greiff. As Colombia's prosecutor general in the early 1990s, de
Greiff was renowned in his own country and the United States for his
success in hunting and prosecuting drug traffickers.

But at the height of this fame, he publicly declared the drug war to be
futile and destructive. His formerly close relations with the United States
immediately soured, he says. Not long after, the United States accused de
Greiff of corruption. Ultimately, he lost his American visa.

The State Department denies that the United States retaliates against
dissenting Latin American officials. In a written response to the Citizen,
an official stated: "Our law provides that if we have persuasive evidence
that somebody is complicit in the commission of a number of types of
crimes, one of which is drug trafficking, he doesn't get a visa to enter
the United States. This is never done because somebody is critical."

Monica de Greiff doesn't accept this. She says the fear of losing an
American visa stunts democratic dialogue in South America. "The idea of
legalization is bigger, it's spreading [in Colombia]," she says.

But "people, because of what happened for example to my father, they will
never, never take a strong position on that, even if they talk privately
about it."

Lies About Holland

Despite the American goal of universal support for drug prohibition, a few
countries have taken slightly different directions. The Netherlands is the
most famous of these.

Holland is a signatory to international prohibition agreements and
continues aggressively to fight most forms of drug trafficking. But since
the mid-1970s, the Dutch have made it possible to possess marijuana and
sell it in tightly regulated shops. Possession of small amounts of other
drugs also is not normally punished. "Harm-reduction" programs, such as
providing clean needles to heroin addicts, are central to Dutch policy.

For taking this route, Holland has been fiercely attacked. In a series of
statements in 1998, Barry McCaffrey, the outgoing head of the White House's
office of National Drug Control Policy, savaged Dutch policy. Dutch
teenagers used marijuana at three times the rate of American teens,
McCaffrey claimed. "The murder rate in Holland is double that in the United
States. The per capita crime rates are much higher than [in] the United
States--that's drugs." The Dutch approach, he said, was "an unmitigated
disaster."

None of what he said was true.

While figures vary from study to study, most research shows that far fewer
Dutch teenagers use marijuana than do American teens. The American murder
rate is actually 4 1/2 times higher than the Dutch rate. And while the
"unmitigated disaster" claim is vague, it seems unsupportable given that
the rate of heroin abuse--considered a key drug indicator--is nearly three
times higher in the United States than in Holland.

UN Succumbs To Pressure

Subtler forms of pressure and influence are used by the United States in a
forum that is central to international drug policy: the UN.

The UN has two main bodies that control international drug policies and
programs: the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and the UN
International Drug Control Program (UNDCP). The INCB, made up of 13 people,
monitors compliance with international agreements on drugs. The UNDCP
handles the UN's drug programs.

Many public health officials identify the INCB as being most active in
enforcing strict prohibition.

This view is supported by the Australian incident in 1996, when Gelbard
made his "very strong hint" that were Australia to go ahead with a heroin
maintenance trial, its opium poppy industry might have its license revoked.
It is the INCB that has that power.

More recent events in Australia strengthen the idea of the INCB as
enforcer. Australia also has been working toward the creation of "safe
injection rooms"--clean, medically supervised sites where heroin addicts
can inject heroin without fear of arrest. The United States strongly
opposes such projects. In November 1999, the INCB warned the Australians
that if they went ahead, the INCB might embargo Tasmania's opium poppy
industry--exactly the same "hint" made by the U.S. State Department in 1996.

"The American influence on the narcotics board is overwhelming and
unfortunate," the health minister for the Australian Capital Territory,
Michael Moore, told the Canberra Times. Pennington agrees. "INCB has
throughout been led by the policies of the U.S. State Department." The
State Department said it was unable to comment on these views.

U.S. influence can be felt at other levels in the UN, too. For example, the
UN's World Health Organization was subjected to intense U.S. pressure when
it commissioned a report on cocaine use in the early 1990s. Two years of
research involving dozens of experts in 22 cities and 19 countries led to a
finished report in 1995. On March 15 of that year, the WHO issued a press
release announcing the publication of the results. The project, the WHO
proudly noted in the press release, was "the largest global study on
cocaine use ever undertaken."

But the WHO never issued the report.

WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl says that after the press release was issued,
the organization asked several experts to peer-review the report. After
"two to three years," some of the experts reported, and the WHO decided the
report was "technically unsound"--despite the fact that in 1995, responding
to complaints from the United States, the WHO had defended the report as
"important and objective."

The WHO has no plans to do further research on cocaine.

The Secret Report

The unreleased document is critical of existing drug policies and many of
the beliefs about cocaine that support those policies. Among its startling
conclusions:

* "Occasional cocaine" use, not "intensive" or "compulsive" consumption, is
"the most typical pattern of cocaine use."

* "Most participating countries agree that occasional cocaine use does not
typically lead to severe or even minor physical or social problems."

* The chewing of coca leaves by South American aborigines "appears to have
no negative health effects and has positive, therapeutic, sacred and social
functions."

* Educational materials on cocaine tend to be "superficial, lurid,
excessively negative."

* Public education campaigns often promote "myths and stereotypes about the
nature and extent of cocaine-related health effects."

* "Most countries believe there needs to be more assessment of the adverse
effects of current drug policies and strategies."

* "Education, treatment and rehabilitation programs should be increased to
counterbalance the current overreliance on law enforcement measures."

According to a former senior UN International Drug Control Program
official, this landmark report was withheld because the United States
pressed the WHO to bury it. If it was released, American officials warned,
the United States would pull its funding from the section of WHO
responsible for the report. The U.S. State Department says it is unable to
comment on this allegation.

However, Hartl confirms that this threat was made. In a May 1995 meeting,
according to the WHO's records, Neil Boyer, the American representative to
the organization, "took the view that [the WHO's] program on substance
abuse was headed in the wrong direction."

As proof, Boyer cited the cocaine study, along with "evidence of the WHO's
support for harm-reduction programs and previous WHO association with
organizations that supported the legalization of drugs." Boyer concluded
that "if WHO activities relating to drugs failed to reinforce proven
drug-control approaches, funds for the relevant programs should be curtailed."

Despite such pressure, Australia's Pennington says public health officials
around the world are increasingly dissenting from a status quo that sees
criminal prohibition as central to drug policy. Friction is growing, he
says, between officials who want to try novel approaches, such as
harm-reduction methods, and the American government, with its insistence on
sticking strictly to the war on drugs.

That conflict has yet to seriously break into the international political
arena. But if the growing opposition to the war on drugs starts to find a
voice among senior world leaders--as the 1998 protest letter to Annan
showed it might--it will be increasingly difficult for the American
government to cajole, manipulate or bully other countries. Someday, the
nations of the world may finally hold an open debate on the wisdom of
international drug prohibition.