Ethan Nadelmann in Mexico:

A GUERRILLA STRUGGLE TO END THE DRUG WAR

"I'm proud of my country," said Ethan Nadelmann this past Wednesday at a
talk at the Center for Investigation and Economic Teachings (CIDE, in its
Spanish initials), a small institute on the outskirts of Mexico City. "But
do you remember that Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the Evil
Empire? I unfortunately do regard my government as an evil empire of drug
prohibition. We are a country that for almost 100 years has aggressively
pursued a policy of prohibition."

Every day, South of the Border, the consensus breaks down a little more.
That consensus, the other "Washington Consensus," that there is no way for
a community or nation to deal with drugs other than total prohibition,
finds fewer and fewer adherents after each year of failure. Perhaps no one
has done more in the past two decades to expose all the fallacies and
hypocrisies that he sees in the US-led global prohibitionist regime than
lawyer, criminologist and activist Ethan Nadelmann, who was in Mexico City
last week to speak about the cause to which he has devoted his life: ending
that global prohibition.

The justification for that global policy, said Nadelmann, is not, as drug
warriors claim, the interests of the international community, or even of
drug addicts, but comes from a quasi-religious obsession with drugs coming
to US shores and "poisoning our children." Despite this continuing
obsession in the United States, said Nadelmann, and despite that country's
ever-increasing power in the international scene, legalization is becoming
more and more accepted as the only long-term option.

This slow change in attitude in academic and policy-making circles - as
well as, of course, Civil Society - was the theme of Nadelmann's visit. He
noted the serious changes that have occurred since he first started
visiting Mexico as a noted voice in the drug policy debate in the 1980's.

"I came to Mexico in 1988," said Nadelmann, "fourteen years ago, at a time
when the drug war was at an hysterical point in the United States. Public
opinion polls showed that 50% of Americans thought that drugs were the
number one problem in the country." He came for an international meeting at
the Colegio de Mexico, one of Mexico's most elite academic institutions. At
this meeting, Nadelmann recognized a pattern he would see over and over
again at similar meetings around the world.

"What I found in many of these discussions was what I called the tale of
the two dialogues. We would sit around the table for a day or two, and the
discussions were all about, 'oh, we need to agree that this is a problem of
supply and demand, and we Americans have to reduce our demand, and you
Latin Americans have to reduce your supply, and we need to look at
alternative crop development and crop substitution, and giving
opportunities to campesinos. And of course we need the carrot of economic
assistance, and we need the stick of eradication. And don't forget that
you'll respect our sovereignty because we respect your sovereignty, and by
the way, lets not let this drug issue mess up more important things, so,
better to put it on the back burner.' And everybody would sort of nod.

"Then we would all break up and go have our nice dinners, and over some
tequila, and whiskey sours, or whatever, we would have the other dialogue.
Fifty percent of the people, mostly the Latin Americans, would say, let's
face it. Legalization is the only thing that makes sense.

"Another 25 percent would mostly keep their views to themselves, they would
be cautious, they would sort of nod, and they would agree, and they would
say, 'well, of course, we agree, but you know you can't really tall about
that. Because where can it go? And the other 25 percent would say, what?
Legalization? That's immoral, that's terrible, what about the children?
Never can we have that discussion.' And so we would go back, and get on the
stage, and there would be the same old discussion from before."

But, as Nadelmann points out, this is beginning to change. When a Mexican
police chief declared that legalization was the best solution to Mexico's
drug problem, President Vicente Fox agreed with him in front of the media
(and, of course, immediately qualified the statement by assuring the world
that he would not act on it.) Soon afterward, the President Jorge Batlle of
Uruguay publicly advocated legalization, much to the horror of the US
government.

Although the United States is where he works and is the focus of his
research, Nadelmann believes that Mexico is in a unique position in the
history of drug control. For decades, he said, the US has been tackling the
problem of substance abuse - the "demand" side of the supply-demand model
that is usually used to describe the drug trade - while Mexico has been
held responsible for tackling the supply side of the problem.

"Now, there really is the beginnings of a drug abuse problem in Mexico,"
said Nadelmann, "with Amphetamines, and cocaine to some extent. You have a
chance to think about this in new and creative ways, rather than simply
doing what has failed in America for the last 30 years."

Nadelmann criticized the view that American drug policy is primarily a way
to dominate Mexico - a view he claims is shared by many of his Mexican
colleagues. The suffering of the Latin American people, he said, is nothing
compared to the suffering of the victims of the drug war within the United
States. And the situation within the US is only going to get worse now that
the CIA and the Pentagon are shifting resources from fighting drugs to "the
war on terrorism."

"The future of drug prohibition," said Nadelmann, "is in reducing demand,
through increasingly totalitarian means. In five years, we may have a
situation where you get a choice between prison and an implanted chip that
makes you sick if you use drugs."

Joining Nadelmann in his lecture were two local voices in the drug war
debate, CIDE professors Jorge Chabat and Bruce Bagley. Chabat, an expert on
narco-trafficking who has been featured in the Latin American press
recently advocating legalization, said he felt the current prohibitionist
regime has "a problem understanding the role of the state. Law is confused
with morality." He was pessimistic, however, of Latin America's ability to
influence drug policy, because of the deep cultural roots of the
prohibitionist ideology in American politics, and the differing natures of
the drug problems of the two regions. "We have a trafficking problem, and
you have a consumption problem," he said.

(Correction: In an April 2000 Narco News report, we reported that Chabat
was a newcomer to the legalization cause; in fact, he has advocated the
same message since 1996.)

Professor Bagley, an American who teaches political science at the CIDE and
who specializes in Colombia, emphasized internal political difficulties
that block drug policy reform in the United States. The two-year election
cycle, he said, leads to a situation where politicians constantly out-bid
each other in anti-crime measures for election campaigns. This leads to an
elimination of real debate on the drug issue. Also, he said, the prison
guards' union has emerged as a major lobbying force that maintains harsh
policies of criminalization.

In the 1980s, Nadelmann was invited to major conferences mostly as "the
heretic who gets two minutes at the end to throw a wrench into the
discussion." This week, he spent two days in private meetings at the
Mexican foreign ministry before making his presentation at the CIDE. In the
US, Nadelmann has access to US senators and committee chairs that would not
have met with him a few years ago. (Nadelmann's Drug Policy Alliance is the
sponsor of Tides Foundation grants recently awarded to Narco News and others.)

"I really see myself as heading up a guerrilla struggle in America and
around the world," Nadelmann said at the end of his lecture to the small
but enthusiastic crowd of students and professors at the CIDE. "On the
other side is this goliath of the drug prohibition, with tens of billions
of dollars per year, with massive institutions and laws. We have to find
our opportunities. We have to see where is the public already with us."