Nineteenth-century engraving. Wikimedia Commons \/ FS Church. Public domain.Today\u2019s drug policies are finally under debate. Above all, they are in
\ncrisis.<\/i><\/p>\n
Their stated objective was to establish a policy to control numerous
\nhazardous substances, to prevent the addictive behaviours that these substances
\narouse in those who consume them. These substances were considered so dangerous
\nthat the best way to ensure that people stay away from them was to declare them
\nillegal, making their purchase, possession or consumption a crime. This framework was accompanied by a moral
\nconception of the substances themselves and of the \u2018degeneration\u2019 of
\npopulations associated with consumption, which justified their being persecuted and discriminated against. It created a
\nradical policy of prevention.<\/p>\n
But things were not as simple as they appeared in this plan, which
\nwas actively promoted by the United States throughout the twentieth century. Over
\ntime, darker layers have unfolded almost everywhere in the world. While it is
\nnot self-evident, there are deep connections between drug prohibition policies and
\nincarceration rates, the rate of HIV transmission, the militarisation of citizen
\nsecurity in the Americas, the return of the practice of enforced disappearances
\nin Mexico, lack of access to pain treatment for terminally ill patients, and social
\ncontrol over marginalised sectors of society. All of these are tied to strong
\nimbalances in the international burden of a war doomed to failure from its
\ninception.<\/p>\n
Why are human rights organisations in Latin America worried about
\nthis? Why are feminist organisations voicing their opinion? Why are peasant leaders
\nspeaking out? Why are an increasing number of scholars from the most
\nprestigious academic institutions raising alarm bells among policymakers?<\/p>\n
In Latin America, the situation is dramatically exposed.<\/p>\n
In Latin America, it is because the situation is dramatically
\nexposed. Sustaining prohibition has involved a series of actions focused on
\ncriminal penalties and military and police action to combat drug trafficking.
\nThe mandate is to stop the shipment of drugs to Europe and North America in
\norder to prevent consumption. This has had an impact in many
\ncommunities, particularly those most directly affected due to their geographic
\nlocation along trafficking routes or their climatic conditions favorable to
\ndrug crops. These communities have experienced levels of violence equivalent to
\ncivil war in some cases, and tens of thousands of lives have been lost in
\nrecent years.<\/p>\n
Practices such as
\nsystematic torture or enforced disappearance, which have distressing precedents
\nin the military regimes of the 1970s and 1980s, have also returned.
\nNevertheless, the steady rise in the use of security forces, armed forces, land
\nand maritime patrols, helicopters, radar, and increasingly sophisticated
\nweapons has not been effective in achieving the main goal of these policies: to
\nreduce the supply of prohibited substances. The criminal organisations that
\ndominate these illegal markets continue to operate, and they easily replace
\nmembers who are killed or imprisoned.<\/p>\n
Organised crime has
\nshown a remarkable capacity for penetrating security forces, political
\ninstitutions and judicial systems, mainly due to the huge profits these organisations
\nreap from illegal markets.<\/p>\n
In production and trafficking regions like Latin America,
\nconsumption has also become a worrying variable. The rise in local consumption is
\ncreating concern in society, which tends to react fearfully. Drugs are
\nidentified as the cause of security problems and crime (ignoring social
\ninequality and other structural causes) and, as a result, society resorts to punitive
\nand control-oriented actions. These criminal justice approaches and laws directly
\nassociate drugs and crime. Furthermore, without rigorous empirical evidence,
\nthey sustain and justify the criminalisation of consumers, particularly among
\nthe poor.<\/p>\n
The effects of this problem have become so widespread in Latin
\nAmerican countries that many social organizations working on human rights issues
\nin neighbourhoods and communities, or on justice issues in prisons, or health issues,
\nhave come up against serious situations rooted in drug control laws on a daily
\nbasis.<\/p>\n
CELS (the Center for Legal and Social Studies) is a human rights
\norganisation in Argentina with a long tradition of working on security, justice
\nand prison policies. In the mid-2000s, while conducting research on the violence
\nin women's prisons, we found prisons in the north of the country that were
\npopulated entirely by women who had been detained on the border with Bolivia
\nwith small amounts of drugs in their possession. They accounted for 100% of the
\npopulation in these prisons, and all of them were convicted (or waiting to be
\nsentenced) for the same crime: drug trafficking. Every one of them receives the
\nsame penalty: four and a half years in prison.<\/p>\n
The incidence of drug offences in the imprisonment of women has
\nsoared since the mid-1990s in every country in Latin America. In Argentina,
\nBrazil, Costa Rica and Peru, over 60% of
\nthe female prison population is incarcerated for drug-related offences.<\/p>\n
Exorbitant increases have been recorded
\nin some countries.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The female prison population in
\nColombia grew by 459% from 1991 to 2014 (168 points more than the male prison
\npopulation). In Mexico, the number of women imprisoned for federal crimes has risen
\nby 400%
\nsince 2007. In Argentina,
\nthe female prison population serving time for drug-related offences
\nincreased 271% from 1989 to 2008. In Brazil,
\nthere was growth of 290% over the period 2005\u20132013.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The driving forces behind the
\nexorbitant rates of incarceration are the extremely punitive drug laws being passed
\nand the imposition of disproportionate penalties.<\/p>\n
Similarly, work done on justice and citizen security from a human Even countries that do not suffer from such extreme situations of As a result, police arrests, the weakening of due process guarantees, And yet all of this punitive effort to reduce drug trafficking has We have before us a prohibitionist model that has increased violence and broadened social gaps.<\/p>\n In Latin America, the failure of the drug control system has not The number of organisations that have begun to reflect upon and The international debate on the effectiveness of the existing And what reality shows is that this debate about drug policy is \u2018Pandora's box\u2019 has been This article is published as part of an editorial partnership between openDemocracy and CELS, an Argentine human rights organisation with a broad agenda that includes advocating for drug policies respectful of human rights. The partnership coincides with the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nineteenth-century engraving. Wikimedia Commons \/ FS Church. Public domain.Today\u2019s drug policies are finally under debate. Above all, they are in crisis. Their stated objective was to establish a policy to control numerous hazardous substances, to prevent the addictive behaviours that these substances arouse in those who consume them. These substances were considered so dangerous that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nrights perspective reveals clear dynamics regarding the relationship with drug
\nlaws that are impossible to overlook. Policies against drug trafficking almost
\nmonopolise discussions on security in many countries, introducing the logic associated
\nwith police and military action, which has intensified the levels of violence.
\nThe use of armed forces in Mexico and Central America, the territorial
\noccupation of Brazilian favelas <\/em>(or
\nshanty-towns) and Peru\u2019s rural producing regions \u2013 with all the human rights
\nviolations that accompany its use \u2013 have led to the definition of new forms of
\nintervention in security, blurring the limits with national defence under the
\ndoctrine of new threats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nviolence have also changed the imprint of their security policies because of
\nthe threat of drug trafficking<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nthe use of pre-trial detention and the disproportionality of sentences for drug
\noffences are all phenomena seen to varying degrees in most countries. The
\nconsequences are more overcrowding in prisons, the clogging of justice systems,
\nand a concentration on the minor players in the trafficking chain: consumers,
\nsmall local vendors and micro-traffickers. These are the people who end up in
\nprison \u2013 without producing an even minimal reduction in the dynamics of illegal
\nmarkets, which replace these minor players without losing any time, and continue
\nto operate as if nothing happened.<\/p>\n
\nnot found its counter-part in the health field, where there are still huge gaps
\nin healthcare for people seeking help. Were not all of these efforts being made
\nto address rising concerns about the impact of drug use on health? Then why are
\ncountries spending over 95% of their resources on criminal prosecution?<\/p>\n
\nsparked serious reflection on the dynamics of the relationship of state institutions
\n(police, judicial, political) with illegal markets and their informal regulation.
\nThe huge flows of money involved have led to the penetration of many state stakeholders,
\nwhich raises much more complex challenges that include, for example, the
\nnecessary reform of police institutions. Today, it would be hard to develop
\ndemocratic citizen security policies in Latin America without addressing these
\nissues.<\/p>\n
\nquestion the international drug control regime in the region is growing. They
\nare also increasingly diverse in nature.<\/p>\n
\ncontrol regime only partly addresses the consequences of the system\u2019s implementation.
\nThere is still no full acceptance of the international regulatory framework\u2019s
\nresponsibility for the situations created. The global system seems to support
\nthe idea that the debate about drug policy is a discussion about drugs<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nreally a discussion about health, wellbeing, justice, rights, development and
\nequality. We have before us a prohibitionist model that has increased violence
\nand broadened social gaps, economic inequities, political differences and
\ninternational asymmetries. The international system must attempt to intervene
\nin this business\u2019s terms of trade, and states must stop using the \u2018scourge\u2019 of
\ndrugs to justify actions that violate human rights.<\/p>\n
\nopen for some time, and its evils have spread out. But in the story of Pandora, 'hope' still remained at the bottom of the box. Now, there is a need to rethink a system that has caused much
\ngreater damage than what it was supposed to prevent. The number and variety of
\nvoices joining this debate show that the consensus has been broken, and it's
\ntime to think about change.<\/p>\n