MEMORANDUM 41
Submitted by Sir Keith Morris
1. My conviction that legalisation of drugs
is the only way to limit the harm that drugs can do stems from
my experience as a participant in the drugs war in Colombia from
1990-94 and my observation of developments since. I have been
witness to the costly failure of prohibition and have finally
been driven to the conclusion that policies, which I implemented
and in which I believed, were doomed to failure because they came
from an era, which has passed.
2. Intense international collaboration with
Colombia started in 1989 when the Colombian state came under direct
attack from the Medellin drug cartel headed by the infamous Pablo
Escobar. Escobar's aim was to force the government to stop the
extradition of Colombians to the US, a policy that the US believed
was essential given the difficulty of bringing traffickers of
the power and ruthlessness of Escobar to justice in Colombia itself.
The Europeans, with the UK to the fore, joined the US in providing
training and equipment to help the Colombians both to resist Escobar
and reduce the cocaine supply. We also committed ourselves to
control the flow of precursor chemicals to the region, to tackle
money laundering and to reduce demand in our domestic markets.
This was a new departure and we believed we could succeed.
3. It took until the end of 1993 to kill
Escobar and dismantle the Medellin cartel. The cost had been thousands
of lives, three presidential candidates, two justice ministers,
many judges, soldiers, policemen and countless civilian victims
of his indiscriminate bombing attacks. Yet the supply of cocaine
had not been affected. The Cali cartel had simply replaced Medellin
as number one and heroin production had started. And a constitutional
convention in 1991 had prohibited extradition. When I left Colombia
in late 1994 I could see that victory would require a much bigger
effort on the part of the consumer countries to deliver our side
of the deal.
4. The fight against Escobar had attracted
most resources and attention while he was alive but the internal
conflict that drugs was fuelling was much wider. Colombia had
had a communist insurgency since the mid-60s. These groups were
supported by the Soviet Union, Cuba and China. They had limited
public support and did not pose a real threat to the state. If
the Colombian state had not been traditionally very limited in
its power, due both to constitutional restraints and chronic shortage
of cash, the insurgency could probably have been dealt with fairly
quickly. But Colombia was nevertheless growing steadily and poverty
was being reduced markedly. In my view it is probable that but
for drugs all the guerrilla groups would have reached a negotiated
settlement when communist support ended as happened in Central
America. Several groups did do so and took part in writing Colombia's
very democratic new constitution in 1991. But the strongest group,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), had struck
lucky. They were strong in the jungles of Colombia's southeast
just where the traffickers needed to put their labs and grow their
coca. They charged them protection money and rapidly grew on the
proceeds. The smaller Army of National Liberation (ELN) had found
a way of extorting money from the contractors building oil pipelines
in the northeast. To complicate matters further the drug traffickers
had taken over paramilitary units originally formed by the Army
and were using them to defend their newly acquired ranches from
the FARC and ELN. These groups were declared illegal by the government
but allied together as the Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC).
5. This conflict worsened after 1994 due
in large part, I fear, to US policies. President Samper (1994-98)
was accused of having used Cali cartel money for his election.
The US told him he would be judged on his anti-narcotics performance.
Within a year the Cali cartel had been put out of business. But
when members of his campaign under investigation tried to implicate
the President the US upped the ante. They called for more military
operations and tougher legislation, even the reintroduction of
extradition. They slapped on sanctions under their certification
system for drug producing countries, contrasting in their announcement
their lack of confidence in Samper with praise for the Colombian
police. When Congress voted against Samper's impeachment they
withdrew his US visa. US aims were achieved because Samper delivered
on the legislation. But the cocaine flow continued and coca production
shot up from 1995 to make up for falling supplies from Peru and
Bolivia.
6. The cost was great. The Armed Forces
were demoralized by the open contempt of US officials for their
C-in-C. Defeats by the FARC when they ventured into the jungle
on US planned missions lowered morale more. The FARC and ELN were
jubilant. The former in particular grew fast as drugs income increased
from coca production. They refused to talk peace with a president
even the US said was corrupt. The AUC grew even faster than the
FARC as many farmers turned to them for protection against the
guerrillas. Investors were discouraged by US sanctions. Growth
fell and the public sector deficit soared as Samper spent to retain
political support for himself and for the unpopular US backed
legislation. In 1998 he left his successor Pastrana with the economy
moving into recession for the first time in 70 years.
7. By late 1997 the US Congress and then
the administration realized that they had allowed drugs concerns
to dominate US policy. The effect had been to destabilize the
country and gravely weaken the Colombian state, making it vulnerable
to a communist takeover. Policy went into reverse and Pastrana
received full US backing with the $1.3 billion Plan Colombia,
aimed at both increasing the Armed Forces capacity to reduce coca
production and strengthening the state. Unfortunately it came
late. Pastrana adopted an ambitious twin-track strategy of talking
peace with the FARC and building up the Armed Forces. Both required
extra spending but he had to cut spending to restore confidence
in a country hit by recession and a rising deficit. As a result
recovery has been slow, unemployment has remained around 20 per
cent and emigration has soared. The Armed Forces have improved
but not enough to prevent the guerrillas and the AUC from increasing
attacks on small towns and kidnapping even more people. Public
support for the peace process has plummeted. And the production
of coca and cocaine continues to grow.
8. The Colombian conflict is particularly
intense but it is just one of many fuelled by the drugs trade
in producer, entrepot and even consumer countries across the globe.
Terrorist groups from the FARC, ELN, AUC and Sendero Luminoso
to bin Laden's Al-Qaeda and the IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries
have all benefited from the extraordinary profitability of the
trade. So too have repressive regimes like the Taliban and Myanmar.
9. The supply of drugs will continue whatever
the efforts as long as the traffickers can obtain the necessary
chemicals, launder their money and have a market. Despite intense
international cooperation and the best of intentions we have not
been able to make a real impact on any of these.
10. Demand is clearly the key. I simply
do not see any hope of reducing it significantly. Many now regard
recreational drug use as normal. Prohibition worked in the 1950s
when I was young because hardly anyone even thought of using drugs
other than alcohol and tobacco, which were taken enthusiastically.
But there has been immense social change since with either the
law or social attitudes liberalized on homosexuality, abortion,
extra marital sex, drinking, gambling, broadcasting, Sunday trading,
you name it. Personal choice is the credo. On everything except
drugs where the law has been made even tighter. In this climate
prohibition not only does not work but it does great damage. Users
are at risk from impure drugs, millions of law-abiding people
break the law just because they use drugs occasionally, addicts
are pushed into crime to feed their habit and the rest of society
suffers intolerable levels of crime as a result.
11. I must leave detailed proposals about
legalisation to those with greater knowledge. But it strikes me
that if appropriate regimes were established pragmatically for
each drug, with product testing and taxation used for increased
research, education and treatment, the harm drugs now do could
be greatly reduced. Of course it would not be easy. There would
be a black market and the defenders of prohibition are probably
right in saying that it would encourage greater use and hence
addiction. But I do wonder whether those psychologically likely
to become addicts are often put off by current laws. And they
would be looked after as normal members of society with a health
problem.
12. The benefits would be immense both to
consumer-less drug deaths, less crime- and producer countries-
less conflict and corruption. We would have to convince our American
friends who were the architects of the present system. But as
prohibition is a major source of terrorist funds they may now
look at it differently. And no consumer country would benefit
more. More young black Americans are in jail than in higher education.
September 2001
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