Towards Drug legalization

Exerpts from a Conversation with Gustavo de Greiff former Attorney General of Colombia.

Toward Drug Legalization:

The only path to ending narco-trafficking is drug legalization: that is to say, the regulation of its production and sale. That is the thesis maintained for almost ten years by Gustavo de Greiff, who says that legalization doesn't have to produce a rise in the consumption of drugs and, in fact, will end the violence, corruption and the progressive breakdown of society caused by narco-trafficking.

According to de Greiff, it is precisely drug prohibition what provokes this violence, as well as the commerce, is its illegal nature, producing enormous profits for drug traffickers and corrupt authorities, a business that will be difficult to stop as long as there are consumers.

"The police arrested the drug traffickers, dismembered cartels, confiscated property, destroyed laboratories, intercepted drug shipments and, in spite of all that, nothing happened in the general panorama of the drug fight, because it kept coming to the consumer markets, among those, the most important, in the United States. The business is so profitable that if you disintegrate one cartel, other narco-traffickers take its place in the market."

The Harms of Prohibition

Beyond the street violence and the disintegration of the social fabric, narco-trafficking causes an unmeasured enrichment of the traffickers and also the corrupt officials, he stressed. "A prohibited business can not have success without the collaboration by authorities who close their eyes to the transport or sale of the drug in exchange for money or favors, the same in producer countries and consumer countries. The corruption reaches individuals at all levels of authority, from the police, to the Customs officers, intelligence agents, airports, maritime port managers and, of course, the politicians," he commented.

De Greiff stressed the importance of legalization of the business, transport and sale of drugs so that the business stops being so monstrously obscene, and to convert it into an ordinary business that additionally will produce taxes that can be invested in the good of society.

At the same time, he underlined the billions of dollars that are spent annually to repress drug trafficking that will then be able to be dedicated to other goals.

Fear of Legalization

One of the great difficulties in bringing about legalization is the fear by the population that drugs will be easier to obtain and raise the number of users. However, the fact is that although drugs are prohibited, they are reachable by any individual in any city of this continent who desires them, he remarked. "Drugs are already everywhere, except that because they are prohibited, small consumers that should be treated as patients go to jail - the bad joke is that nobody is rehabilitated in jail.

In this sense, de Greiff used the example of the legalization of alcohol in the United States, which ended the business of the large mafias involved in it, and did not produce a rise in consumption.

The Farse of the Drug War

Another of the obstacles to legalizing drugs are all the individuals involved in the corruption, said de Greiff. "As has been said, all the agencies involved in repression and monitoring, as well as the politicians: Some because their jobs would be eliminated, and others because they would stop receiving the benefits of narco-trafficking through bribes. Their business would end."

He cited examples that have been publicly exposed of police who seize drugs but only declare half the volume and sell the rest.

De Greiff mentioned, at the same time, the political game that is played with the numbers of arrests and seizures, that the governments use to publicize their own success in the drug war and to continue justifying the repressive policy, "when, in reality, there is no such success although they imprison more and more drug dealers, since the drugs continue flowing in the same quantities to the consumer markets."

The government most interested and invested in the policy of the drug war and at the same time is its grand promoter, he said, is the United States government, which has used the policy to subjugate the countries of Latin America. On one end they use the "de-certification" process. On the other end they use political and military intervention, more and more, to try and maintain domination and protect the warehouse of cheap natural resources for the United States.

Decriminalization and the Benefits of Legalization

However, he stressed that decriminalization is not enough: It would only avoid that the consumers go to jail or that the dealers have a more peaceful consumer, but it will not end narco-trafficking nor the current corruption by authorities who enrich themselves at alarming levels while those who suffer are the consumers and the general population.

The solution of the problem of drug trafficking is legalization of drugs, he repeated, and he specified that legalization doesn't have to mean sale in open markets but, rather, the regulation of the business, the production, the transport and sale, with permits for each activity, control over the quality of the product so it is not adulterated, and legal limits such as not selling drug near educational institutions, not advertising their sale in the media, etc., and always accompanied by prevention campaigns against abusive consumption and offering medical treatment to addicts.

The full report appears on the internet at http://www.narconews.com/Issue25/article537.html