LOSING THE WAR ON DRUGS: UNCLE SAM'S WAR, Part 1a

continued from Part 1a:

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 away from mere regulation toward total criminal prohibition. The
First World War delayed this process before prohibition could be made
internationally mandatory, however. American plans were further hampered in
the inter-war period by the refusal of the U.S. to join the League of Nations.

When the Second World War ended, everything changed. "It was only in 1945
that the United States within the international community had the political
clout to internationalize these ideas of prohibition," says David
Bewley-Taylor, a professor at the University of Wales and author of The
United States and International Drug Control, 1909-1997. The U.S., which
dominated the United Nations, tried to ensure that drug prohibition as the
American government envisioned it would be a central part of the UN agenda.

Several international protocols were signed in the 1940s and 1950s. The
U.S. also worked behind the scenes to internationalize its prohibition
efforts -- sometimes using questionable pressure tactics. Charles Siragusa,
an American narcotics agent during the early years of international
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 American drug policies was
occasionally made explicit. The 1984 National Drug Strategy for Prevention
of Drug Abuse and Drug Trafficking stated 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 U.S. 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, were all
initiated by the government of the U.S.

"I was there when they were beginning the process of drafting the 1988
international convention," says Ethan Nadelmann, a onetime employee of the
U.S. State Department's Narcotics Bureau. Mr. Nadelmann, also a former
professor at Princeton University and now director of the Lindesmith Centre
in New York, is one of America's foremost critics of the war on drugs. "It
was based on (U.S.) federal legislation to a great extent. Then it gets
re-vamped and reworked but it's heavily, heavily influenced by U.S. drafters."

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 has never been seriously debated
at the international level.

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 U.S. has long attempted to carry out its anti-drug activities in
other countries and to have its favoured policies and programs implemented
abroad. It has also 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 the U.S.
Congress, the president, through the State Department, each year reports on
the level of co-operation and effort other nations are putting into
anti-drug measures. Countries whose efforts are approved are "certified";
those deemed deficient are "decertified." Decertification can result in
economic sanctions, international isolation, even an end to American
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 favour 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 American
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
per cent of the nation's territory. These developments in turn led to
spectacular increases in drug production and even greater instability.

Even Canada has been caught in the certification process. In 1999, State
Department officials considered placing this country on the "majors" list
of nations considered top sources of drugs entering the U.S.

That didn't happen, but the 1999 certification report, released in March of
this year, did include serious criticism of this country. The U.S. approved
of the latest Canadian drug laws and police tactics but claimed these
"efforts have been undermined in numerous cases by court decisions." The
State Department, for instance, specifically criticized the Supreme Court
of Canada for having "questioned the legality of `sting'-type operations,
undercover `buys' and other techniques now commonly used around the world
in drug investigations ... " Robert Metzger, the chief judge of the B.C.
provincial court, was so angered by the American report that he took the
unusual step of publicly berating the Americans, telling the Vancouver Sun,
"They don't seem to have a handle on their own problems. I don't see why
they should be criticizing us for ours."

The Clinton administration dislikes the certification process. Instead, the
White House prefers the direction taken in something called the Memorandum
of Understanding and Evaluation, which the Organization of American States
signed last October largely at the behest of Barry McCaffrey, who heads the
White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. It commits
member-states, including Canada, to a set of enforcement standards and
evaluation mechanisms. In effect, the OAS will now assess and report on its
members' efforts in much the same way certification does. Robert Weiner,
chief of press relations in the White House drug office, calls the OAS
evaluation system "a huge step forward." It shows, Mr. Weiner says, that
"we're big on international co-operation, and it's blossoming."

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
favoured by the U.S., 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
harms 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 are often
better able to voluntarily reduce their drug use and even kick their
addiction -- both of which happen at far greater rates than without heroin
maintenance.

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, Bill Clinton's top international drug enforcer, Bob Gelbard,
flew to the Australian state of Tasmania. Officially, Mr. 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, Mr.
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 the chair
of the committee meeting with the American, recalls that Mr. Gelbard was
"very courteous" but emphatic that it would be a terrible mistake for
Australia to deviate from "the straight, hard-line position." Mr. Gelbard,
says Dr. Pennington, made it "clear that the State Department considered
this issue an absolutely critical one."

Mr. Gelbard, he says, also mentioned Tasmania's opium poppy industry, worth
$160 million (Aus) per year. He "pointed out that Australia was allowed by
(the UN) to have its poppy industry in Tasmania," says Dr. Pennington. 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, notes
Dr. Pennington, avoided saying explicitly that an unwelcome decision would
jeopardize the industry. "On the other hand, it was a very heavy hint."

Nonetheless, Dr. Pennington's committee recommended 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 State Department was asked by the Citizen 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.
Mr. Gelbard, who is now the American ambassador to Indonesia, declined to
comment.

Oblique pressure tactics have also 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 numerous Latin American presidents,
ministers, and other officials on the 1988 protest letter sent to Kofi
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. Alejo Vargas, vice-rector of the National University of Colombia,
voiced this view bitterly to the Los Angeles Times: "The United States does
not care if we all kill each other. What matters to them is that we get rid
of the drug crops."

Still, there is virtually no serious official opposition to American
policies. Senior Latin American officials do often, and 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 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
question the core idea behind American drug policy.

The Latin American elites who dominate their governments have close
business, educational and social ties with the U.S. 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 black mark 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.' "

One of those who says he has felt the effects of this weapon is Gustavo de
Greiff, the father of Monica de Greiff. As Colombia's prosecutor general in
the early 1990s, Gustavo de Greiff was renowned in his own country and the
U.S. for his success in hunting and prosecuting drug traffickers. Yet at
the height of this fame, he publicly declared the drug war to be futile and
destructive. His formerly close relations with the U.S. immediately soured,
he says. Not long after, the U.S. accused Mr. de Greiff of corruption.
Ultimately, he lost his American visa. (Mr. de Greiff's full story appears
tomorrow).

The State Department denies that the U.S. 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 American. "I feel that
now ... 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."

Robert Weiner, the White House drug spokesman, dismisses suggestions that
Latin American officials fear criticizing the war on drugs. "You work
together and that's what we're doing." He says there is open Latin American
criticism of his government's policies, citing the Colombian rebel army
known as FARC, which "is railing and ranting and raving about the fact that
we're threatening their country. The reality is we are threatening their
drug production because they're the ones doing the producing -- and we're
proud of that one.

"So you've got to watch where the publicity for that kind of mode comes
from. Sometimes it's propaganda from the people who don't want you to do
anything about drugs and there's a huge amount of drug funding out there."

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

Holland is a signatory to international prohibition agreements and
continues to aggressively 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 is also not normally punished. "Harm reduction" programs, such as
providing clean needles to heroin addicts, are central in Dutch policy.

For taking this route, Holland has been fiercely attacked. In a series of
statements in 1998, Barry McCaffrey, the White House "drug czar," savaged
Dutch policy. Dutch teenagers used marijuana at three times the rate of
American teens, Mr. McCaffrey claimed. "The murder rate in Holland is
double that in the United States. The per capita crime rates are much
higher than 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 four-and-a-half 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 U.S. than in Holland. The Dutch
government officially protested Mr. McCaffreys remarks.

Subtler forms of pressure and influence are used by the U.S. in a forum
that is central to international drug policy: The United Nations.

The UN has two main bodies that control international drug policies and
programs: the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and the United
Nations 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 of the public health officials interviewed for this article identified
the INCB as being most active in enforcing strict prohibition. This view is
supported by the Australian incident in 1996, when U.S. State Department
official Bob Gelbard made his "very strong hint" that were Australia to go
ahead with a heroin maintenance trial, its opium poppy industry might have
its licence revoked. It is the INCB that has that power.

More recent events in Australia strengthen the idea of the INCB as
enforcer. Australia has also been working toward the creation of "safe
injection rooms" -- clean, medically supervised sites where heroin addicts
can inject heroin without fear of arrest. The U.S. 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 minister of health for the Australian Capital Territory,
Michael Moore, told the Canberra Times.

Dr. David 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 events.

A former senior official with the UNDCP cited numerous instances of
American interference with that body as well. The former official spoke on
condition of anonymity, saying the American government might pressure the
person's national government to ostracize the official by, for example,
blocking appointments to drug policy committees or obstructing access to
research information.

Interfering in appointments to the UN drug bodies is one method of control
the U.S. exerts, the former official says. "They don't interfere for their
own people at low levels, they're not interested. They're only interested
in the top jobs.

"Policy is another matter. They will interfere with policy, all the way along."

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
news release announcing the publication of the results. The project, the
WHO proudly noted in the news release, was the "the largest global study on
cocaine use ever undertaken."

But the WHO never issued the report.

WHO spokesperson Gregoyr Hartl says that after the news release was issued,
the organization asked a number of experts to peer-review the report. After
"two to three years," some of the experts reported back and the WHO decided
the report was "technically unsound" -- despite the fact that in 1995,
responding to complaints from the U.S., the WHO had defended the report as
"important and objective." The WHO has no plans to do further research on
cocaine.

The unreleased document, a copy of which was obtained by the Citizen, 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 aboriginals "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 over-reliance on law-enforcement measures."

According to the former UNDCP official, this landmark report was withheld
because the U.S. pressed the WHO to bury it. If it was released, American
officials warned, the U.S. would pull its funding from the section of WHO
responsible for the report. The U.S. State Department told the Citizen it
was unable to comment on this allegation.

However, WHO spokesperson Gregory 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, Mr. Boyer cited the cocaine study, along with "evidence of WHO's
support for harm-reduction programs and previous WHO association with
organizations that supported the legalization of drugs."

Mr. Boyer concluded that "if WHO activities relating to drugs failed to
reinforce proven drug-control approaches, funds for the relevant programs
should be curtailed."

Knowing the perils of crossing the U.S., UN officials take great care if
they feel they must. The former UNDCP official cites the case of a
Brazilian needle-exchange -- another "harm reduction" policy which the U.S.
has opposed -- funded by the UNDCP and the World Bank. "We just had to keep
it quiet, we had to keep it from the knowledge of the Americans."

Australia's Dr. Pennington thinks 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 believes,
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 Kofi
Annan showed it might -- it will be increasingly difficult for the American
government to cajole, manipulate or bully other countries.

Some day, the nations of the world may finally hold an open debate on the
wisdom of international drug prohibition.

Part 1b: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1317/a03.html

Losing the War on Drugs

Is the war on drugs causing more harm than drug abuse itself? The Citizen's
Dan Gardner spent five months researching this question, travelling to
Colombia, Mexico and the United States, where efforts to end the
international trade in illicit drugs have led to unexpected, often
unwelcome, consequences. Series schedule

Today: Uncle Sam's War

Tomorrow: Losing the drug war in Colombia

Thursday: An inevitable harvest

Friday: Mexico's pain Saturday: At the border

Sunday: The drug interdiction debate

Next week: Harms at home, and alternative policies