Un-collaborative Chavez Frias and the American-led anti-drug campaign
www.vheadline.com
Posted: Sunday, March 09, 2003
By: Oscar Heck
VHeadline.com commentarist Oscar Heck writes: I have just received a list of what appears to be facts regarding the USA and it involvement in Iraq and in other wars.
One of the facts related to the USA's use of Agent Orange in Vietnam and another related to the assistance that the USA gave to Iraq in the development of its chemical weapons. In addition, there was mention that although the USA is supposedly attacking Iraq because of chemical and biological weapons, the USA apparently said nothing when Saddam Hussein supposedly killed thousands of Kurds with similar weapons.
Why am saying all these things?
Because, shortly after having read this list, I read Patrick J. O'Donoghue recent article, "Colombian narco-traffickers move poppy plantations to Venezuelan border badlands", and it brought up another element of great concern to me and hopefully to many others.
I had read and heard that the USA (with the OK from local governments) is fumigating large areas of Colombia (and perhaps Bolivia and Ecuador) in an attempt to stop cultivation of drugs. Some of the information points to the strong possibility that the chemicals being used by the Americans are seriously harming the health of the people who live in those areas and that they are contaminating the environment (rivers, soil, etc.).
I do not know if all this is true, and I have no interest in writing anti-American material, however (American or not) why is the use of potentially dangerous chemicals being allowed? (I have my own theories which I will not discuss here). If drug cultivation moves closer to the Venezuelan border, does this mean that the Americans will spray near the Venezuelan border as well? Contaminate Venezuela as well? Will Venezuela's water supply become contaminated? Will cancer become a concern? Can Venezuelans die from its effects? (Not to mention the many Colombians that may have already been exposed).
Would the Americans use these chemicals in the USA? Have these chemicals been tested and approved for safety? I do not know the answers ... but perhaps someone out there knows which chemicals are being used and what are the long-term effects.
Much of the media is spreading comments that Chavez is being un-collaborative with the American-led anti-drug campaign in north-western South America ... as if it were a crime not to collaborate.
Would you collaborate with someone who, for example, says "it doesn't matter if we use dangerous chemicals to kill your neighbor's lawn, it isn't your home."
What will happen to your neighbor's children? Their dog?
An other question arises.
What country is the greatest consumer of drugs? If I am not mistaken, it is the USA.
Does this mean that since they cannot educate their own people to "not take drugs," they have to get rid of the drug growers while simultaneously potentially harming innocent people and contaminating someone else's home.
What will they do to Canadians?
Canada is considering decriminalizing marijuana?
Will they have the same attitude with Venezuelans?
I would greatly appreciate any true information about the chemicals that are being used and their effects. Perhaps, I will go down to the borders in question and collect some samples of the chemicals and have them analyzed as well.
I sincerely hope that the politicians and bureaucrats (pro-Chavez or anti-Chavez) in Venezuela will strongly consider the long-term effects of any potential arrangement with the USA regarding the use of chemical "warfare."
Que viva Venezuela sin contaminacion!
Oscar Heck
oscarheck111@hotmail.com
The balloon goes up - Drugs in the Andes
www.economist.com
Mar 6th 2003 | BOGOTA, LA PAZ AND LIMA
From The Economist print edition
The “success” of Plan Colombia in cutting coca production has started to undermine governments farther south
“A TURNING point” is how John Walters, the director of the United States' office for drug control, jubilantly described figures released by his government last week, which claimed a 15% fall in 2002 in Colombia's crop of coca, the plant used to make cocaine. This follows eight years of steady increases in the amount of land under coca in Colombia, the source of three-quarters of the world's cocaine.
For American officials, last year's fall is evidence that “Plan Colombia”, a programme of mainly military aid begun by Bill Clinton and continued by George Bush, is starting to pay off. Under this plan, the United States has provided Colombia with extra helicopters and crop-dusting planes to spray coca with herbicides. Most of these have finally arrived, and Álvaro Uribe, who became Colombia's president last August, has been happy to use them: he has unleashed a massive spraying campaign which officials say is at last outpacing the ability of coca farmers to replant.
Yet there is a hollow quality to this victory. Over the past three decades, rich-country demand for cocaine has created a monster in the Andean countries. The illegal-drug industry has corrupted institutions, distorted economies, wrecked forests, and financed armed groups such as Colombia's FARC guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. But the “drug war” has imposed its own costs. One is known as the “balloon effect”: local squeezes simply move the industry elsewhere, spreading violence and corruption with it.
Thus, in a reversal of a trend begun a decade ago, drug production is rising in Bolivia and Peru, and this year coca farmers there have mounted new challenges to governments; this “politicisation” of the coca industry is “most troubling” admitted Mr Walters. This shift comes at a delicate juncture: weak economies, weak governments in several countries, political conflict in Venezuela and Bolivia, and Colombia's intensifying wars have all aroused fears about the Andean region's stability.
A second worry concerns the figures themselves. Mapping the coca crop is difficult, and not everyone trusts the American figures. But the trend is clear enough. The UN will next week publish its annual coca census, which is more comprehensive than America's sampling. Having reported an 11% fall in Colombia's coca area in 2001 to 145,000 hectares (358,000 acres), the UN is expected to reveal an even steeper fall for 2002. But its estimate for Peru (46,700 hectares in 2001, with a small increase last year) is higher than America's. The UN also reports that more productive coca varieties are being used in both countries; in Peru it reckons that fields may be producing 10% more coca than a year ago.
Nevertheless, the shrinking of coca land in Colombia will comfort the United States' Congress. It is anxious to see some return from aid to Colombia of around $500m a year. That is especially true after FARC last month shot down an American spy plane apparently on an anti-drug mission, killing one American and taking three hostage. Even so, American officials believe this year will be better still: Mr Uribe has pledged to spray 200,000 hectares. If that happens, Mr Walters thinks, coca farmers will despair of profit and give up. He told Congress that America had “an unprecedented opportunity to seriously reduce the availability of illegal drugs”. Klaus Nyholm, the UN's drugs man in Colombia, says better prices for legal crops are helping: excluding drug crops, the country's farm output expanded by 3.5% last year, double the growth of GDP.
The results are a fillip, too, for Mr Uribe, who faces mounting urban terrorism by the FARC. Some of Colombia's most drug-infested areas are close to giving up coca. Putumayo, where the UN reported 66,000 hectares in 2000, can eliminate the crop by December, says a local official. But the UN reckons it is spreading to smaller plots (to evade spraying) and that output is rising in other areas, such as Guaviare. Mr Nyholm says coca will not be eradicated until Colombia's wars end.
Fears of retreat
The guarded optimism in Colombia is mirrored by increasing problems farther south. In recent years, Bolivia was the drug warriors' success story. Between 1997 and 2001, its government eradicated 40,000 hectares of coca in the Chapare, the main growing area; aid money trickled in for alternatives, such as bananas. But American officials are now nervous about a retreat. In the past two years, new planting has outstripped eradication. And increasing amounts of Peruvian semi-processed cocaine-base are now being smuggled through Bolivia to Brazil and thence to Europe. Cobija, a poor northern outpost, has acquired sudden wealth; locals report an influx of heavily-laden, armed “backpackers” from Peru on the logging trails in the surrounding forest.
This year, Bolivia's powerful coca growers' movement has drawn blood against a weak government. Evo Morales, the movement's leader, was emboldened by winning 21% of the vote in last year's presidential election. To head off protests, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada offered to expand the area in which coca can be legally grown for traditional uses (such as chewing and tea) if a study of demand showed this to be justified. To no avail: in January, protests by coca farmers brought much of the country to a standstill for two weeks. Mr Morales played no direct role in violence last month, in which 33 people were killed in riots and clashes between striking police and the army. But these events have left Mr Sánchez (who claims there was a plot to kill him) in no position to take the offensive against coca.
In Peru, too, the politics of coca has become more confrontational. Until the mid-1990s, Peru was the world's main source of the shrub. But the price of coca has been climbing again since 1998, and production rising. Worried about the backflow from Plan Colombia, American officials have stepped up aid to Peru, while also pressing for a tougher policy. In September, the government said it would begin forcible eradication in hard-core coca areas, a policy Peru eschewed in the late-1980s, after Shining Path terrorists exploited discontent over it.
The response was a wave of violent unrest in traditional coca-growing areas. More than 70 people were injured in an 11-day “strike” last month; in Aguaytía, protestors smashed up the government's anti-drug office, burning equipment. For the first time, the coca growers may have a political leader, albeit not with the clout of Mr Morales in Bolivia: Nelson Palomino, who was recently arrested on charges of supporting the (much weakened) Shining Path, something he denies. His arrest was greeted by a protest by thousands of coca farmers in Ayacucho, the Shining Path's birthplace. Such protests are a novelty for Peru. The farmers have now called a three-week “truce”: they want the government to agree to an end to forced eradication and more money for development schemes.
Further afield, there are other worrying signs. This week, Rio de Janeiro's carnival took place under the eye of the army: on its eve, the city's leading drug gang bombed buses and buildings, its second such show of strength against an ineffective state government in five months. And following tougher action by Mexico, more drugs now flow to the United States through Caribbean islands, as they did in the 1980s. The drug industry has an unerring eye for institutional weaknesses. As long as cocaine is demanded, victories over it involve defeats elsewhere.
Passing grade from US for Barbados’ drug fight
www.barbadosadvocate.com
Web Posted - Wed Mar 05 2003
By Shawn Cumberbatch
BARBADOS has received a passing grade from the United States for its efforts to arrest illegal drug activity. Concern remains, however, that the island continues to be “a transit country and hub” for major producers of the illegal substances.
In its annual report card on illicit drug control worldwide, the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2003, the US lauded Government and other members of civil society for their efforts to control illegal drugs.
The Americans were also happy with joint efforts between themselves and authorities here, noting the governments of Barbados and the US had “brought into force three important agreements that will facilitate counter-narcotics cooperation”.
They were referring to a maritime agreement with overflight authority, an extradition treaty and a mutual legal assistance treaty.
US officials were also happy that Attorney-General Mia Mottley had publicly committed support to the Commissioner of Police Grantley Watson’s intention to “root out suspicious officers in the uniformed services, individuals who had been corrupted by narcotics traffickers and other criminal actors”.
Barbados was also lauded for its penal system that “provides alternative sentencing options beyond prison and fines”, and the fact Government planned to “develop a drug court that will specialise in providing non custodial sentences for drug offenders if appropriate”.
Another plus, thought the US, was the Proceeds of Crime Act which provides for the confiscation of property shown to have been derived or obtained through illegal means like drugs and money laundering.
Additionally, Barbados’ passing grade included its decision to establish a National Commission on Law and Order and the introduction of wire tapping legislation.
“The Government of Barbados’ National Council on Substance Abuse (NCSA) and the Attorney General’s office endeavoured with some success, to link law enforcement and demand reduction organisations in the framing and execution of the national plan,” the narcotics report noted.
It emphasised, though, that Government alone could not receive the praise since a number of Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) had continued to play important roles. The US singled out the National Committee for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency (NCPADD) as one such NGO which was “very active and effective”.
All of this notwithstanding, the Americans said more work still needed to be done since Barbados was “a transit country and hub for cocaine and marijuana products, and less frequently, heroin and designer drugs, entering by sea and by air”.
The report said these drugs came from a host of nations including Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana.
“These drugs often enter Barbados in container vessels, while smaller vessels also bring in marijuana from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Container freight forwarders and cruise lines are also reported to transport cocaine via Barbados,” the report claimed.
It said most cocaine shipments transiting Barbados were destined for North America and Europe.
Former drug czar lauds progress in war on drugs
www.govexec.com
March 4, 2003
By Mark H. Rodeffer, National Journal
As the battle against terrorism continues and an invasion of Iraq seems more likely, the war on drugs has received scant attention. NationalJournal.com's Mark H. Rodeffer talked with retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, about the connection between terrorism and illegal drugs, anti-drug efforts in South America and President Bush's plan to give federal dollars to faith-based drug treatment programs.
Q. In this year's recently released update of the National Drug Control Strategy, the White House Drug Office said it has seen "the first significant downturn in youth drug use in nearly a decade." The report cites a University of Michigan study to back up this claim. If this data is accurate, where does the proper credit belong for the downturn?
A. The claims that come out of the various pieces of the drug policy debate are always hard to sort out. Drug use among adolescents and Americans in general peaked in 1979, around 14 percent of the population. It's now around 6 percent. Drug use in America is down dramatically across the board. And almost every other indicator that goes along with that assertion has followed suit: crime rates, teenage pregnancy rates, recreational use of cocaine is down by 75 percent.
Starting in the late '80s there was a dramatic upturn. I think we took our eye off the ball in drug use by adolescents. It doubled among adolescents; it tripled among eighth graders. When I took the responsibility for drug policy in '96, I got in at the height of adolescent drug increase. And we organized ourselves; we got lots of resources flowing into it. We got the Drug Free Communities Act passed. We went from a dozen to more than 1,100 national drug courts. We started a billion-dollar media campaign. And it worked. It came down—drug use among adolescents was down 23 percent. So this year was not—not—the first year....
Basically I think what's happened is the enormous amount of resources and energy and engagement by the nation's leadership—parents, pediatricians, school teachers, law enforcement and the media—has resulted in bringing under control again the problem of adolescent gateway drug-taking behavior. And that ought to continue to work. So I applaud everyone involved in it.... Lots of people have really made a difference because they got horrified at the impact of drugs on our society.
Q. In your final report as the nation's drug czar, you said, "Although wars are expected to end, drug education—like all schooling—is a continuous process"—reminding people that the drug fight is always ongoing. Now the United States is involved in the war on terrorism, which is also seen by many as a never-ending fight. How concerned are you that the drug war will be forgotten by Americans as well as by those on Capitol Hill, and what's the risk if that does happen?
A. It's always a caution. I used to tell people, when you talk about the interagency process, at the highest levels—the principles, the deputies committees, the working groups in the interagency process—normally there's a thousand issues we're working, a hundred of them, we're keenly aware of and are under debate. And at any given time we're trying to solve about three of them.
It's a concern I have that we not forget that every year 100,000 people die of some aspect alcohol abuse. [As drug czar] I had a study done of all death certificates in the United States; 53,000 people a year die of some implication of illegal drug abuse. That is just a massive impact. If you look at our 2 million people behind bars in America, pick a study you believe in, but my personal judgment is 85 percent of those people have a significant drug or alcohol abuse problem.
The country's in great shape, notwithstanding the economic slowdown, notwithstanding the many problems we have. We're the wealthiest, most successful society in history. If you want to get worried about something, the abuse of illegal drugs and alcohol is one of them. So it's worth being concerned that we not forget about this problem. Now, having said that, there's no reason why there ought to be a competition between dealing with drug and alcohol abuse and dealing with al Qaida....
Q. In fact, the White House has worked to tie the two together. What do you think of their argument overall, and what do think about the TV ads saying that if you buy drugs, you're supporting terrorism?
A. I get asked the question all the time. I think, objectively, it's a correct statement.... [Americans] spend too much money on drugs, and we fuel a good bit of the international crime and the terrorism that feeds off that crime. I just wrote a chapter in a book called "Terrorism and Counterterrorism." It's 33 essays. The editors were Col. Russ Howard and Col. Reid Sawyer, brilliant young intel officers, and my chapter was on the convergence of terrorism, crime and drug money. Objectively, I think it's correct to say that when you spend $250 a day on heroin or $5,000 in a weekend on cocaine or you buy $20 bags of marijuana, you are feeding a criminal enterprise that has devastating consequences on foreign democracies and on U.S. law enforcement. So objectively, it's a correct idea.
I'm uneasy about one aspect of it. The media campaign had one purpose, which was to shape adolescent attitudes about drugs. To shape those attitudes, we said, let's get a message that resonates with the target audience. Half those ads were aimed at young people; half of them were aimed at young people's adult mentors. So if you were a parent or a pediatrician or a school teacher, we had a message for you that we thought would be appropriate. So that you, granddad, would feel educated and empowered to talk to your grandchildren about, "In this family, we don't use drugs." And if you were a pediatrician, we were in your medical journals trying to educate you on drugs. We did a lot of this.
I hope they study the effect of these linkage ads of terrorism and drugs, and that they see that the ads are favorably affecting adolescent attitudes toward drug use. If they are, then I'm supportive of them. If they're not, then I'm not supportive of them....
I'm less interested in a Super Bowl ad than I am in being on the Internet, or on rock radio or on rap radio and talking to high-risk youth in a message that's scientifically correct and that resonates with the population....
Q. On Feb. 13, when a plane with U.S. intelligence operatives aboard went down in Colombia and the Americans were kidnapped—and possibly killed—many called it a disaster waiting to happen. The United States has already invested $2.2 billion in an anti-drug campaign in Colombia, but it is widely believed to have been a failure. Do you agree? How can the program be reformed?
A. To some extent, all of us have got to struggle to be objective. I'm basically an engineer by training, so it's always people, dollars, machinery. What we are trying to achieve; what are the measures of effectiveness?
I always hear about the "controversial" Plan Colombia. If it's so controversial, then how come in nine months, I went to get a billion dollars and got $1.2 billion and then got two presidents to meet in Cartagena to sign the agreement and had [Sen.] Joe Biden [D-Del.] and [House Speaker] Denny Hastert [R-Ill.] both there? We have to be careful not to repeat ideological twaddle.
Plan Colombia went through, because [former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs] Tom Pickering and I—both of whom had 30 years of public service, were real smart and knew a lot about the region—went to [President Clinton] and said: "Sir, this thing's going over the edge. It's going to collapse on the next guy's watch. You ought to be held responsible if it goes under." And we said: "These are wonderful people. They're beleaguered. They shouldn't be isolated. This should be an [Organization of American States] problem that involves the U.S., Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela. These people are an operative democracy [but] there's violence and corruption at work here, and a lot it's fueled by drug money, and we're involved in it. Let's stand with them."
If it were 1943, would you say, it's widely believed to be a failure, the way we're dealing with Nazis, and we ought to give up and try something different? We're in a position where we're standing with an ally who's struggling against an incredible threat against their own democratic tradition.
Responding to your words, a plane went down, one American was killed, one Colombian, three were captured, this is a disaster—a disaster—waiting to happen. So what's the disaster? For God's sake, this is a three-hour flight from Miami. It's a democracy that deserves our support. We had 45,000 people in Balkans and had a bunch of people killed and wounded and spent billions of dollars trying to sustain democracy in Bosnia and Kosovo. We went into Afghanistan, and of course we've had incredible good fortune there too. So I don't know what's a disaster about three Americans who've been captured. My God, we've got 900 people down there standing with the Colombian allies struggling against drug cartels. What's the disaster?
Q. How would you respond to the argument that successful drug interdiction just increases crime because it reduces the drug supply, but the demand is inelastic, meaning addicts will do anything to get the money they need to buy drugs?
A. These are either—let me be blunt—these are either extremely good questions, sharp questions designed to fully explore the issue, for which I am grateful, or they are the set of questions of someone who is unalterably opposed to the international component of the struggle against drugs and is picking at the fissures of the issue. That latter question strikes me as illogical. The reason to be concerned about heroin has nothing to do with how much it costs or whether it's legal or illegal....
The price has no relationship because supply exceeds demand greatly, so it's a situational economic product. It's very strange. It's not Chilean wine, German Mercedes cars. There's no value added. It costs almost nothing to make cocaine. Any dummy can grow it. It's a product that destroys human life but produces enormous euphoria. So you don't have to have a big advertising budget, and if you give it away you'll create a market.
That's the reason to try and create prevention and education programs to create attitudes that are resistant to drug exposure. It's why you want to limit the tonnages of these drugs and their availability. We've got extremely good studies that say if they're not available in your school and you make it even slightly harder to get it, less people try it and less people get addicted. Which is why the most devastating impact of illegal drugs are in the areas where they are produced, where they're given away....
The notion that you're trying to spray them where they're grown and kill them, you're trying to take away the chemicals where they're produced, you're trying to catch them in transit, you're trying to arrest people who sell them to your students—that because of that you're making them more expensive, and so if you stop that, you'll be better off, is a nincompoop argument that nobody would make about any other product. And so most people who make that argument are either not very bright or are supportive of making drugs more widely available and don't believe they're as dangerous as some of us would assert.
It's counterintuitive to think that struggling back against evil. And people like me, who work with 5.1 million chronically addicted Americans, believe that drugs' impact on families and individuals and businesses and democratic institutions, are evil. We would say, no of course you have a responsibility to struggle back against that for God's sake.
Q. Part of President Bush's 2003 strategy on drugs is a $600 million voucher program over three years to encourage accountability in the treatment system while making funds available to all providers—including programs run by faith-based organizations. Any thoughts on that proposal?
A. I was glad to hear [President Bush's] intervention in the State of the Union speech. It made all of us very proud who are associated with the issue. I think one of the best things we did in the last administration was prevention education. We had a huge amount of resources and energy going to trying to talk about the dangers of drugs and reduce the exposure to gateway drug-taking behavior. I think the hardest thing we had to do was to educate people on a requirement for science-based drug and alcohol treatment....
Q. So you think it's a good idea because it's putting more money into drug treatment?
A. I sort of like the idea of a voucher program. I think that right now one of the problems is, literally, it's hard work and costs money to get a scientific drug treatment program put together. There ought to be a residential component, there are ought to be a follow-on.
Thank God for AA and NA, the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-step process. But you also need cognitive therapy, you must have used a whole array of potentialities. We've got to have methadone, Buprenorphine. I like the idea of having vouchers where the guy doesn't have to say, "I need to be in jail before these guys will give me drug treatment."
I've been to a lot of drug treatment programs across the country, and some terrific ones were run by the Catholics, by ministers in Harlem, by the Baptist Church, so I'm all for the faith-based program. As you know, one of the 12-step processes is acknowledging a higher spiritual presence, and higher power in your life, that you lost control of.
The only concern I would have is I want to make sure that only organizations that are using certified approaches are eligible for vouchers. I want to make sure there's oversight. There's tremendous room for mischief in the drug and alcohol treatment regime. I want to know that they're certified by the state. We want to make sure there are science-based standards to all of this. That would be my one concern.
And then if you take federal dollars, we want to make sure you comply with all appropriate federal legislation. In other words, if I'm a nice little Catholic boy working in the drug treatment field, or a Catholic treatment organization, I want to make sure that if I take federal dollars it isn't restricted to Catholics being in my program. If you're going to take federal dollars, it ought to be equal opportunity. Those are the concerns I shoulder, but I think vouchers have a lot of potential.