Article from "Le Nouvel Observateur", Paris, Nov. 6-12, 1997
Author: Michel Koutouzis, research director, Geopolitical Drugwatch,
interviewed by Sara Daniel

Republished in World Press Review, February, 1998

THE GEOPOLITICS OF HYPOCRISY

We are living in a time similar to the Prohibition era. Consumption of
drugs, especially cannabis, has become commonplace. In the 1920s and early
1930s, the U.S. government completely banned consumption of heroin,
cocaine, and alcohol. The growth of organized crime and massive smuggling
forced it to back- track for alcohol, which had a mass market, but not for
heroin, which had a minor market. The question that was once asked about
alcohol arises today with regard to drugs. Yes, drugs are dangerous, but
outlawing them creates so many problems (crime, covert financing of
guerrilla movements, internationalization of organized crime) that
legalization is worth considering. If we adopted the same reasoning as the
Americans did about alcohol in the 1930s, we would decriminalize drug use.

The harmfulness of a drug is no longer the decisive factor in deciding
whether or not to prohibit it. Extremely addictive drugs are freely
available. Methadone, a substitute for heroin, is highly habit-forming. In
France, 30 percent of overdose cases are the result of mixing legal and
illegal drugs -- Rohypnol and heroin, for example. Dealers go to parties
and hand out pills of strychnine mixed with caffeine, which are perfectly
legal but have a powerful effect on the heart and are much more harmful
than uncut Ecstasy [an illegal psychedelic amphetamine]. Amphetamines were
once a medicine; out of a prohibitionist impulse, they were made illegal.
The traffic in psychotropic substances is becoming harder and harder to
dismantle. A synthetic substance can be sent around the world stuck to the
back of a postage stamp on an envelope.

The problems of drugs go far beyond issues of public health. Drugs are also
a political and geopolitical tool, at the heart of rivalries between former
colonial empires. Why do the Americans put everything into fighting
cocaine? Because it lets them intervene openly in Latin America. Europe
allows Morocco to produce hashish because that country is a bulwark against
Islamic fundamentalism.

There is also a social inequality where drugs are concerned. The
decriminalization of cocaine has already happened, but only for the very
wealthy. We seize 40 tons of cocaine yearly in Europe, but the only people
ever arrested are users of crack, a cocaine derivative. The law is not
enforced with the same zeal in the slums and in rich neighborhoods. One can
also be a soft user of a hard drug or a hard user of a soft drug. But that
idea is not easily translated into political positions.

There are strong cultural and religious biases. It is very easy, in the
name of a religion, to prohibit someone else's drugs. Are the ayatollahs
wrong when they single out the evils of alcohol, the French national drug?

Drugs themselves are not the disease. The disease is unemployment,
alienation, moral loneliness. Drugs serve as a medicine against those
social ills. People in a desperate plight will consume drugs regardless,
even at the risk of ending up in jail. On the other hand, people who are
comfortably well off and in control of their recreational drug habit will
never be prosecuted. The real drug addicts are the bankers. Cocaine
trafficking injects $1 trillion into the world economy. There is a lot of
hypocrisy in the global drug game. Why do the Americans appeal to us not to
pressure their proteges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who are flooding
Europe with heroin? It's obvious that the fight against drugs is following
an American agenda. Drugs are part of the stakes in the geopolitical
game--and too bad for the users!