US Signals Shift in International Drug Policy

Insight Crime: In a press conference that received little media attention, US drug czar William Brownfield laid the groundwork for a new US approach to international drug policy, pointing to the changing political landscape on drug regulation in the Americas.

In a meeting with reporters at the United Nations in New York on October 9, Brownfield set out the United States' position on international drug policy, including to "accept flexible interpretation" of the UN Drug Control conventions, which were first drafted in the 1960s. He stated that:

Things have changed since 1961. We must have enough flexibility to allow us to incorporate those changes into our policies ... to tolerate different national drug policies, to accept the fact that some countries will have very strict drug approaches; other countries will legalize entire categories of drugs.  Read more.

OAS proposes decriminalizing marijuana use in the region

La Jornada

September 28, 2013 

Original Americas Program Translation 

The secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, said yesterday in the Senate that the strategy to combat drug trafficking in the region has been wrong because it has focused solely on the repression of the supply of narcotics and not on attacking the economic power of the drug cartels, which has become increasingly violent.

He called for decriminalization of marijuana, and warned that focusing efforts only on the sale of drugs, without taking institutional actions aimed at tackling the financial structures and money laundering will lead to “a war without end”.

In the forum “From Prohibition to Regulation: New Approaches to Drug Policy” Insulza said that according to a report by experts from the OAS, the drug trade generates 154 billion dollars a year, of which 77 billion is laundered in the global financial system.

Also in the Senate but in another forum, Undersecretary of Prevention and Citizen Participation of the Ministry of the Interior, Roberto Campa said that despite the intense debate in the U.S. on the decriminalization of drugs like marijuana, the violence that the drug trade generates will not change radically in the region in the coming years.

Mexico's new drug war strategy: More of the same

USA Today 
August 18, 2013

Mexico City - With the capture of two top drug lords in little more than a month, the new government of President Enrique Pena Nieto is following an old strategy it openly criticized for causing more violence and crime.

Mario Armando Ramirez Trevino, a top leader of Mexico's Gulf Cartel, was detained Saturday in a military operation near the Texas border, just weeks after the arrest of the leader of the brutal Zetas cartel near another border city, Nuevo Laredo.

Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong took his post in December saying the strategy of former President Felipe Calderon to take out cartel leaders only made drug gangs more dangerous and violent. The new administration would focus less on leaders and more on reducing violence, he said.  Read more. 

Former Mexican President Fox Urges Marijuana Legalization

NY Times
By  Reauters
July 8, 2013

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox took his crusade to legalize marijuana to San Francisco on Monday, joining pot advocates to urge the United States and his own country to decriminalize the sale and recreational use of cannabis.

Fox met for three hours with the advocates, including Steve DeAngelo, the Oakland-based executive director of California's largest marijuana dispensary, and former Microsoft executive Jamen Shively, who hopes to create a Seattle-based pot brand now that Washington state has legalized recreational use.  Read more.

President Obama's Mexico visit comes with backdrop of uncertainty

Los Angeles Times
By Shashank Bengali and Tracy Wilkinson
April 28, 2013

WASHINGTON — President Obama travels to Mexico this week amid signs that the relationship between the United States and its southern neighbor's new government faces a new period of uncertainty after years of unprecedented closeness forged by the deadly war against Mexican drug cartels.

The government of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is said to be wary of the level of U.S. involvement in security affairs that characterized the administration of his predecessor, Felipe Calderon. As a result, the Mexican government is expected to narrow U.S. involvement in its attorney general's office and Interior Ministry, the agencies that oversee police and intelligence, current and former U.S. and Mexican officials say.

Instead, Peña Nieto and officials from his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, want to concentrate U.S. participation in less sensitive but potentially profitable areas such as the economy.  Read more. 

Mexico's President Alters Tactics Against Drug Crimes

NPR, by Carrie Kahn

Mexico's new attorney general says there are now 60 to 80 drug cartels operating in the country, a sharp rise from the 10 that existed when outgoing President Calderon took office in 2006. President Enrique Pena Nieto says he wants to go after crime associated with drug trafficking instead of taking down crime bosses. Listen to the story. 

Mexico election candidates rally thousands in final days of race

latimes.com: MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's presidential campaign entered the home stretch Monday, with less than a week left until voters cast ballots in a race that could return the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to power. The PRI ruled virtually unchallenged and often with a heavy hand for 71 years before losing the presidency in 2000.

The top three candidates crisscrossed the country over the weekend rallying thousands of supporters at huge events in the final days of official campaigning.

The PRI's poll-leading candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, on Sunday held a closing rally at the cavernous Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. Leftist coalition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, runner-up in the 2006 election, closed his campaign in the capitals of western states Nayarit and Jalisco.

Josefina Vazquez Mota of the incumbent National Action Party, or PAN, rallied supporters in the port city of Coatzacoalcos, in the state of Veracruz. Read more.

A Brief History of the Federal War on Drugs

Independent Voter Network: The War on Drugs is a costly and controversial operation of the US federal government. A look into its origins and history is necessary to understand its present scope and its future direction.

The National War on Drugs has gone on since 1914 when the very first national drug law was passed by Congress. That law was the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act which required those firms that manufactured, distributed, or imported narcotics to register with the Internal Revenue Service and pay a tax on the goods they produced and sold. If this was the final law on drugs than it wouldn’t be so bad, but sadly this was just a stepping stone to more intrusive and oppressive laws in the name of the War on Drugs. read more

The Narco State

Foreign Policy: "America's longest running war -- the one against drugs -- came in for abuse this weekend at the Summit of the Americas. The abuse is deserved. Forty years of increasingly violent efforts to stamp out the drug trade haven't worked. And the blood and treasure lost is on a scale with America's more conventional wars. On the upside, we know that an approach based around treating drugs as a public health issue reaps benefits to both users and the rest of us." read more

White House Drug Policy Shifts Strategy

Philadelphia Inquirer: "The Obama Administration has chosen the middle ground with its new drug control policy, advocating treatment over tough sentencing.

The approach, unveiled Tuesday, rejects both the harsh "war on drugs" approach, characterized by maximum sentences for drug offenses, and the push to legalize illegal drugs.

Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said during a news conference Tuesday that both approaches were "not humane or realistic, and not grounded in scientific evidence. read more

New Strategy in Drug War Focuses on Treatment, Not Punishment

HispanicBusiness.com: The Obama Administration unveiled a new strategy to combat drug abuse focusing on treatment rather than throwing drug abusers in jail.

"This is nothing short of a revolution in how we approach drug control," said Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, who said the new strategy would be guided by the principle that addiction is a treatable disease, that those addicted to drugs could recover and that innovative criminal justice reforms could stop the revolving door of drug use, crime, imprisonment and eventual and inevitable rearrest.

"We are not going to arrest our way out of this problem," he said. read more

US no longer dominates drug war agenda in Central America

The Guatemala Times: It is very clear that the Presidents of Central America and many Latin American countries are tired of the empty promises and empty US rhetoric on the war on drugs. They have also learned the lesson from Mexico, where President Calderon has been doing as the US asks, turning the country into a bloodbath. Last week Gen. Charles Jacoby, commander of U.S. Northern Command, said during testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee: Mexico’s “decapitation” strategy of capturing or killing high-value drug cartel leaders with the help of U.S. has a problem, it isn´t working.

“The decapitation strategy — they’ve been successful at that. Twenty-two out of the top 37 trafficking figures that the Mexican government has gone after have been taken off the board. But it has not had an appreciable effect — an appreciable, positive effect.” read more

The Brutal Logic of a Drug Warrior: Put 'Em All in Cages

The Atlantic: "In the Asia Times, David P. Goldman has published a column that is at once jarringly horrific and possessed of a certain integrity, for it frankly acknowledges what happens when a country wages a war on drugs. His impetus for writing about the subject is Mexico, where tens of thousands have been slaughtered as a result of violence between drug cartels, their rivals, and police. He rightly points out that lawlessness is rampant in that country.

His solution?

Mexico should incarcerate a much higher percentage of its citizens." read more

Panetta set to announce more support for drug war

CNN: "U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrives in the Canadian capital Monday, where he is expected to announce new measures to support the fight against narcotics in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

He is attending a two-day meeting in Ottawa with Canadian and Mexican defense leaders. "The objective is to see how we can coordinate and support on security in ways that assist the ongoing counter-narcotics strategies in our countries," said Jay Paxton, communications director for Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay." read more

Drug Policy Debate: Is it time to decriminalise drugs?

Al Jazeera English has put together an expansive summary of the drug war that includes videos, maps, speeches, and commentary about the efficacy of the current militarization model and possible alternatives.  

Al Jazeera English: "As drug cartels expand their operations in Central America, the region is seeing the world’s highest homicide rates. Some Latin American leaders now say they are ready to discuss the decriminalisation of narcotics. We look at how the drug war between the military and the narco-traffickers impacts the people of Latin America.

In this episode of The Stream, we talk to journalist Phil Rees; Rodolfo Pastor, a former Honduran diplomat; and Eduardo Vergara, a drug policy expert." read and see more

Drug Policy Debate: U.S. not budging on drug decriminalization stance

The Tico Times: U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano arrived in Guatemala Monday evening to discuss drug war strategy with President Otto Pérez Molina, who caused a stir in Central America a few weeks ago with his proposal for a discussion on illicit drug decriminalization. Napolitano reiterated U.S. opposition Monday night.

'The United States does not view decriminalization as a viable way to deal with the narcotics problem,' she said. She suggested a regional effort that would prevent drug use, intercept production and distribution, and stop money laundering.

But Pérez Molina was firm. 'We are calling for a discussion, a debate. And we continue to insist it. ... We want to open a debate to find a more effective way to fight drug trafficking.'" read more

Drug Policy Debate: Pro-drug legalization forces are gaining clout

Andres Oppenheimer - MiamiHerald.com: "For the first time since the United States launched its “war on drugs” four decades ago, there are signs that the forces supporting legalization or de-criminalization of illegal drugs are gaining momentum across the hemisphere.

Granted, this is a debate that is just starting at government levels, and that will take years to produce concrete results. But there are several new factors ... that are beginning to pose an increasingly serious challenge to the traditional interdiction-based U.S. anti-drug strategies." read more

Drug Policy: US Ambassador to Colombia says legalisation debate is 'on the table'

Transform Drug Policy Foundation Blog: "In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais on Monday (as reported in Colombia reports), US Ambassador for Colombia, Peter Michael McKinley, when the question of Colmbian president Santos' recent remarks on drug legalisation came up, said that the issue 'had to be addressed' ... McKinley, was clear however, said that even though the debate is taking place, the U.S. "remained opposed to legalization."

The significant part of this is the opening quote that acknowledges the active debate happening in Latin America, that legalisation is 'on the table' in that debate, and that it is important to analyze all the options. ... the statement is effectively an endorsement of the Santos position - that there needs to be a debate of the options, and legalisation (or as Calderon puts it 'market alternatives') needs to be amongst them." read more

Drug War - Drug Policy: How Dodgy Numbers Distort the Drug Trade

InSight Crime: "Public perceptions of Mexico's drug trade are largely based on unreliable estimates by government agencies, who have an incentive to make the threat seem as large as possible.

Take, for instance, the estimate that the amount of illicit cash flowing across the U.S. border to Mexican capos is between $18 billion and $39 billion annually. It is immediately apparent that this is a huge range; an economist who estimated that the U.S. economy was worth between between $10 trillion and $20 trillion would be laughed at. (The real number is a bit less than $15 trillion.) For those familiar with such statistics, the lack of clarity over the government's methodology is equally worrying."

read more

The Border: How to Fix a Broken Border: Hit the Cartels Where It Hurts (Part I)

Mexico Institute: "Both sides of the immigration debate agree that our southwest border is “broken,” but they have very different views as to why or how to fix it. On one side, immigration reform advocates point to a broken immigration system that forces immigrants into the hands of increasingly violent smugglers in order to make the trip to the United States.

This side of the debate seeks to improve border security by taking border crossers who seek legitimate work out of the flow of unauthorized immigrants. But the opponents of immigration reform argue that we can’t act on reform until we first “secure the border.” The Obama Administration seems to have accepted this argument, ramping up spending on border enforcement and deporting record numbers as a down payment on immigration reform at some unspecified time in the future."

read more