Analyse. The war on drugs is a failure, Colombia, which has paid a high price, intends to put an end to it. Since coming to power, Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president of the world’s leading cocaine-producing country, has denounced the security and militarist vision that has prevailed for almost half a century in the fight against narcotics. “Guns will not solve the drug problem”summarized Mr. Petro.
“The war on drugs was decided in Washington, initially as an internal war”, recalls Francisco Thoumi, member of the International Narcotics Control Board. In 1971, for reasons of public health and social control, US President Richard Nixon abused drugs “America’s public enemy number one”. Ronald Reagan will launch the expression « War on drugs ». In search of an external enemy after the fall of the Soviet Union, Washington will make this war its new crusade. Thirty years and a few billion dollars later, Colombia produces and consumes more drugs than ever. The planet, too.
It is difficult to estimate with precision the human cost of these years of war against drugs in Colombia, as it is intertwined with that of the armed conflict. The dead, the missing, the displaced number in the hundreds of thousands. To these direct victims must be added the collateral damage to human rights, democracy, the economy and the international position of the country.
Vicious circle
Why did Colombia become, and remain for so long, the world’s leading producer of cocaine? The question is still debated. Misery and social injustice are unquestionably fertile ground for violence and illegality, but they do not explain everything, since they exist elsewhere. The incredibly fragmented geography of Colombia and its difficulty in forming a nation, its unique strategic position between two oceans, its long experience in terms of smuggling and corruption, the former presence of armed groups are all elements of explanation. None is enough on its own. The vicious circle has long been engaged: drug trafficking flourishes on fragile institutions that it continues to corrupt.
In the 1960s, Americans discovered that the best marijuana in the world grew on the slopes of the Colombian Sierra Nevada, on the edge of the Caribbean Sea. A few years later, cocaine made its entry – or rather its return – on the American scene. White powder stands out as the trendy drug, that of actors, artists and yuppies (acronym for “young urban executives”). Colombians understand the interest of this new market.
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