tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/drug-war-31268/articlesDrug war – The Conversation2024-01-22T14:55:15Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2214292024-01-22T14:55:15Z2024-01-22T14:55:15ZDeep-seated inequality is fuelling an escalation of violence across Latin America<p>For most of the 20th century, Latin America was portrayed as one of the world’s most peaceful regions. Coups and repressive military regimes had long been commonplace but widespread civil disorder and war were relatively rare. Today, however, the world’s media is slowly waking up to a <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/latin-america-erupts-the-danger-of-democratic-delinquency/">very different reality</a>.</p>
<p>Surging levels of violence now mean that mortality rates in Latin America often exceed those seen in the world’s conflict areas. In 2021, Latin America had the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/2023/GSH23_ExSum.pdf">highest murder rate</a> in the world at almost three times the global regional average.</p>
<p>Ecuador is one country that has seen a particularly massive spike in violence in recent years. Masked gunmen <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-67930452">stormed</a> a live news broadcast on January 9 and the prosecutor investigating the attack was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-68014040">murdered</a> just days later.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ecuadors-crackdown-on-violent-crime-helped-turn-the-country-into-a-narco-state-220920">Ecuador's crackdown on violent crime helped turn the country into a narco state</a>
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<p>The explosion of violence in the region is being caused by a number of mutually reinforcing factors. Notably, deep-rooted inequalities and a weak state have allowed a destabilising narcotics economy to flourish.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Armed gangsters storm TV station in Ecuador.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Forever unequal</h2>
<p>Latin America has long been the most unequal area of the world in terms of income and wealth. But this inequality has worsened over recent decades. In 2021, Brazil’s wealthiest 1% <a href="https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04166852/document">owned</a> 47% of the country’s wealth, up from 45% in 2006. The increase was even greater for the top 0.01%, with their wealth share rising from 12% to 18%.</p>
<p>Unlike other middle-income areas, the economic structure of the region is still based on exporting primary products – something that has remained largely unchanged since colonial times. This dependence has deepened as Latin America feeds the growing <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/specialization-latam-exports-china-shows-worrying-trend-un-report-says-2023-11-02/">demand from China</a> for its minerals and foodstuffs.</p>
<p>Relying on the export of primary products has <a href="https://www.oasisbr.ibict.br/vufind/Record/UNIFAP-1_25b9cf30e04a53a0d1b7befc7f7dd0d7">reinforced inequality</a> because the expansion of large-scale commercial farming and mining has blocked moves towards agrarian reform. </p>
<p>As a result, there has been a surge in the <a href="https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/bp-land-power-inequality-latin-america-301116-en.pdf">migration</a> of school-leavers to urban areas in search of work. However, by anchoring this highly capital-intensive economic model, any serious attempt at industrialisation and labour-intensive job creation – akin to what has taken place in much of south and south-east Asia – has been stymied.</p>
<p>The long history of anti-communism promoted by successive US administrations during and after the cold war, coupled with a Catholic church that has become deeply conservative in recent decades, has also hindered attempts at social democratic reform and inclusive development. This has seen the <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/The+New+Latin+America-p-9781509540020">collapse of revolutionary movements</a> with a progressive agenda capable of bringing about the structural reforms the region so desperately needs. </p>
<p>Consequently, <a href="https://www.ilo.org/caribbean/newsroom/WCMS_867540/lang--en/index.htm#:%7E:text=The%20estimated%20average%20regional%20unemployment,level%20of%208%20per%20cent">underemployment</a> is rife – a major factor propelling <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/12/22/1221006083/immigration-border-election-presidential">soaring illegal immigration</a> to the US. Over half of workers in Latin America are employed informally with job instability, low income and no social protection.</p>
<h2>The illegal drug trade</h2>
<p>But a new factor – the narcotics industry – has emerged in recent decades with a deadly impact. Colombia is now the world’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/20/colombia-cocaine-decriminalize-petro/">largest producer of cocaine</a> and Mexico is fast becoming a global producer of <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10400">heroin and fentanyl</a>.</p>
<p>The emergence of narcotics has built on and reinforced the deep-rooted inequality that affects the region. Young and underemployed migrants to urban areas provide the foot soldiers for the growth of extremely powerful narcotics gangs. The <a href="https://greydynamics.com/primeiro-comando-da-capital-pcc-from-sao-paulo-to-the-world/">Primeiro Comando da Capital</a> in Brazil is now one of the largest gangs in the world with over 30,000 members and a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/20fb5c77-baf1-45ab-a886-51cac68cfd4e">growing global reach</a>.</p>
<p>Narcotics gangs <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/cd9d4d72-1266-4441-81e0-6259cba864ae">now exist</a> in every Latin American country and are driving homicide trends across the region. They seek to co-opt and corrupt rather than challenge the power of the state. But this is <a href="https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/aq-podcast-how-organized-crime-is-changing-in-latin-america/">likely to change</a>.</p>
<p>International development organisations that operate in the region have long been lamenting its “institutional fragility” and the falling level of citizen trust. They <a href="https://www.thedialogue.org/analysis/the-pulse-of-democracy-in-the-americas-results-of-the-2023-americasbarometer/">call for</a> governance reforms, but nothing fundamental ever changes.</p>
<p>A main reason for this dismal governance is inequality – a bloated public administration characterised by <a href="https://americasquarterly.org/article/latin-americas-inequality-is-taking-a-toll-on-governance/">“clientelism”</a> (the practice of choosing or promoting people in return for political support).</p>
<p>But the flip side is the virtual absence of a professional ethic and collective memory inside the civil service. Public sector corruption thus remains endemic within the government, police, armed forces and prison system.</p>
<h2>Failing states</h2>
<p>The most striking feature of the weak governance encouraging this gradual slide towards failed states is now rampant corruption from top to bottom of the judicial system, thanks to the infiltration of drug gangs. Personal insecurity has become the daily norm for the urban poor and the rule of law simply does not exist for most citizens.</p>
<p>When a poor person is killed – whether by state repression, settling of scores among narcos, street robbery or extortion – no criminal investigation usually takes place unless relatives have the resources to hire a lawyer. The crime prosecution rate is minimal and the vast majority of inmates in overcrowded prisons are poor people awaiting trial.</p>
<p>As a result, the capacity of the state to counter the gradual spread of narcotics is extremely limited. This vulnerability has already produced the first example of a narco state – Honduras under the presidency of Juan Orlando Hernández (2014–2022). On leaving office in April 2022, Hernández was <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/juan-orlando-hern%C3%A1ndez-former-president-honduras-indicted-drug-trafficking">extradited</a> to the US to face charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. </p>
<p>The Latin American elite try to justify the current economic model as providing food security and mineral resources for the growing world population. Yet the elite remain in denial about the violent consequences of this model. </p>
<p>There is a risk that Latin America’s very role as a bread basket will convert it into a basket case of perpetual civil disorder.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Nickson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Latin America’s spike in violence is the result of systemic problems that have long gone unaddressed.Andrew Nickson, Honorary Reader in the Department of International Development, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209082024-01-17T14:17:05Z2024-01-17T14:17:05ZWhy Colombia sees legalising drugs as the way forward. Here’s what’s being proposed<p>Another drug war has begun in Latin America. The newly elected president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, has declared a <a href="https://theconversation.com/ecuador-how-this-island-of-peace-in-latin-america-has-become-a-hotbed-of-violence-run-by-criminal-gangs-and-drug-cartels-211458">state of emergency</a> and the military is being used to tackle violence and drug trafficking in a country that is part of the transnational cocaine <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ecuador-bananas-cocaine-europe-drug-trafficking-6d6529e2b1d8f3cbd16aea74ade0b93d">smuggling trade</a>.</p>
<p>Ecuador will probably realise what other countries in Latin America have done: military solutions to the illicit drug problem <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-57565-0_15">do not work</a>.</p>
<p>For decades, the Colombian government has confronted <a href="https://jied.lse.ac.uk/articles/10.31389/jied.93">powerful drug cartels</a> and drug-related violence with a policy guided by a series of UN treaties that prohibit drugs and oblige governments to prosecute recreational drug use and production. These treaties are known as the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395903000033?casa_token=Parrh7UyjZ4AAAAA:xJoltbmUIqF3fJHVoV3fblBNdMjVMmiDhvo6OGP5ZNxHtn5dPrMgZ1WrXBVe_IvjWLrstoe_">“drug prohibition regime”</a>. Under the mantle of these treaties, the <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/us-counter-drug-policy-western-hemisphere-it-working#:%7E:text=In%202016%2C%20the%20U.S.%20Congress,a%20sobering%20reality%3A%20close%20to">US has pushed Latin American governments</a> to implement tough laws on drug use, and crackdown on drug cartels in an attempt to tackle drug trafficking and drug addiction.</p>
<p>Governments, such as Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador and Honduras, have used their <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/psq.12832?casa_token=hXExQLJoXsYAAAAA%3ALfcCTqdguXWiurhJS4F4i3VxybWG70_ic4TXvYbJL1onmInxoRGP1MS45v0qAOxDDaxYpNlseHxKew">armies against drug cartels</a> since the 1980s. However, the use of the military in the region, with operations supported by the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-interamerican-studies-and-world-affairs/article/abs/dea-in-latin-america-dealing-with-institutionalized-corruption/8F4B90C46C1DB6FD6FBB4F4F7C48C11C">US Drug and Enforcement Agency</a>, has not prevented an increase in violence in the region. In the case of Mexico, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2014.965796?casa_token=QZ2uISCwM94AAAAA%3AkhpFZ38CEGMaFK-7YEYA3JADacoxpvjodW532f5WBlHJFWgjiAeuRPFDOrd0tN4OB0enYcGlppY">researchers have found a relationship</a> between the deployment of the military in anti-drug operations and the rise of homicides since 2007. Moreover, drug <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/drug-use-illicit.htm">addiction has not reduced in the US</a> (one expected outcome of the “war on drugs”). </p>
<p>Nowadays, Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region in the world. According to the 2023 report of the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/2023/Global_study_on_homicide_2023_web.pdf">UN Office on Drugs and Crime</a> (UNODC), 34% of the homicides on the planet during 2021 happened in the Americas. Many of these homicides relate to the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10611-009-9195-z">global war on drugs</a>.</p>
<p>Some Latin American administrations have started to push back against policies that make <a href="https://www.talkingdrugs.org/drug-decriminalisation/">drugs illegal</a>. For example, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-39214085">Bolivia</a> legalised indigenous production of coca crops in 2011. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/19/uruguay-marijuana-sale-pharmacies">Uruguay</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/25/jamaica-decriminalises-marijuana">Jamaica</a> legalised some purchases of cannabis in 2014 and 2015 respectively. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/28/mexicos-high-court-strikes-down-laws-that-ban-use-of-recreational-marijuana">Mexico</a> and <a href="https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/cannabis-regulation-colombia/">Colombia</a> are discussing cannabis regulation. </p>
<p>Some of these governments, including Colombia, Mexico and Bolivia, tried to put forward a plan for a new global approach to drug use in 2016 at a UN general assembly special meeting but proponents of this failed to convince other countries to allow all types of drug decriminalisation. However, the assembly did reach <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/a-joint-commitment-to-effectively-addressing-and-countering-the-world-drug-problem">an agreement</a> to allow countries to regulate the medical uses of some previously illegal drugs such as cannabis. Now, these countries led by Colombian president Gustavo Petro will call for a new UN meeting to try to get more support for a new approach to the “war on drugs”.</p>
<h2>Colombia’s role</h2>
<p>Since the early 1960s, Colombia has been <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20043675?casa_token=Vak5pihEIyYAAAAA%3A1aOvm2PNGBIgkTk3zepMoYK_4rIVbEwQsWruBaHcH_gBp8I-VVMlTEoLpbXJm5De10ug2eVRJc4v29Vb8AuJ4DrfwScE9l-oQFzoGDGCOI20ddMObQ">the epicentre of the global war on drugs</a>. Infamously known as the centre of production of cocaine trafficked by regional criminal organisations, this country is experimenting with a peace process on two fronts: first, with the guerrillas, and second, <a href="https://urbanviolence.org/a-bargain-with-narcos/">with the drug cartels</a>. </p>
<p>Petro was elected with the promise to reduce the endless problem of violence. <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-09-07/colombias-petro-recruits-mexicos-lopez-obrador-in-his-quest-to-rethink-the-war-on-drugs.html">In September 2023</a>, Petro asked his Mexican counterpart, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to help convene a new UN meeting to overhaul the international approach to illegal drugs. Petro was also responding to pressure from global research showing the existing policy was not working. For example, public health experts in <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01060-1/fulltext">The Lancet</a> have argued that making drugs illegal has failed to stem drug use.</p>
<p>There is a longstanding debate about whether proposing the end of drug prohibition – and the war on drugs as a consequence – will stop violence and reduce harmful addiction. From 2011, a group of former world leaders and intellectuals (such as former presidents of Mexico and Colombia, César Gaviria, Juan Manuel Santos and Ernesto Zedillo) have pushed for the <a href="https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/reports/the-war-on-drugs">end of drug prohibition</a>. The data seems to back up their claims that prosecuting drug consumption and production is not reducing addiction. According to the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-with-drug-disorders-by-substance">Global Burden of Disease Data</a>, from the Institute For Health Metrics and Evaluation, since the late 1990s, the number of drug users with drug dependence has increased from 40 to 50 million users yearly around the world, despite the “war on drugs”.</p>
<p>But Petro faces an uphill battle to gather support to challenge the drug prohibition regime. In September 2023 Latin American governments signed the <a href="https://www.cancilleria.gov.co/newsroom/news/representantes-15-paises-llegan-cali-conferencia-latinoamericana-caribe-drogas">Cali declaration</a>, calling for a UN assembly on the global drug problem to be held in 2025, one year before Petro’s presidency ends. But the US, which is experiencing a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/basics/epidemic.html">fentanyl opioid epidemic</a>, is not likely to be positive about making more drugs legal. </p>
<p>US president Joe Biden is less prone to tackle drug policy with police prosecution and his approach includes alternatives such as treating <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/the-administrations-strategy/the-biden-harris-administrations-first-year-drug-policy-priorities/">addicts in health clinics instead of incarceration</a>. If in November Donald Trump wins the presidential election, drug policy is likely to be <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-deploy-military-assets-inflict-maximum-damage-cartels-elected-2024">more militarised than ever</a>. The former president explored <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/us/politics/trump-mexico-cartels-republican.html">using US military force in Mexico</a> to tackle fentanyl smuggling through Mexico. </p>
<p>López Obrador helped to organise the September 2023 Cali conference, but domestically he is not pursuing <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-29/mexico-s-supreme-court-removes-ban-against-smoking-marijuana?leadSource=uverify%20wall">drug legalisation policies</a>. He has deployed the Mexican military to reinforce drug confiscation of fentanyl after pressure from the US government.</p>
<p>Petro might find an ally in Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei. The new Argentinian president has declared he <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-08-15/whats-going-on-inside-javier-mileis-head.html">favours drug legalisation</a>, inspired by his libertarian position. However, Argentina is facing increasing crime rates <a href="https://insightcrime.org/news/new-strategies-in-rosario-argentina-as-monos-fight/">in some regions</a> and this security challenge might dissuade him from pursing drug legalisation. </p>
<p>Beyond the Americas, some European countries might back the initiative, such as <a href="https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight">Portugal</a> which decriminalised personal possession of all drugs in 2001. There, possession results in confiscation or a fine, but not imprisonment.</p>
<p>If political factors align, Petro might edge forward with his plans to tackle the global war on drugs differently. However, international tensions and the recent war in Ecuador have complicated the scenario. Hopefully, scientific evidence may force countries to consider new options.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220908/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raul Zepeda Gil does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Colombia’s current president, Gustavo Petro, is pushing for a new global approach to drug addiction and use.Raul Zepeda Gil, Lecturer in Development Studies, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1572232021-03-30T12:42:40Z2021-03-30T12:42:40ZMexico moves to legalize cannabis use, a modest step toward de-escalating drug war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392357/original/file-20210329-23-17o324x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C18%2C6240%2C4128&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexico's militarized war on drugs – and, often, drug users – has killed at least 150,000 people over the past 15 years.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/june-2020-mexico-mexiko-stadt-women-and-children-look-at-news-photo/1229949132?adppopup=true">Jair Cabrera Torres/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mexico’s lower house of Congress in March <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/world/americas/mexico-cannabis-bill.html">handily approved a bill to legalize the recreational use of cannabis</a>. The <a href="http://gaceta.diputados.gob.mx/PDF/64/2021/mar/20210310-II.pdf">bill</a> is now with the Senate, where it is likely to pass, as Mexican senators have <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2020/11/cannabislegal-senado-regulacion-uso-mariguana/">previously voted to legalize cannabis</a>. </p>
<p>If that happens, Mexico will join <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47785648">Uruguay</a> and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/rob-magazine/article-just-how-high-can-canadas-cannabis-giants-get-in-the-global-market/">Canada</a> in allowing people to use cannabis recreationally, albeit in more limited fashion. </p>
<p><a href="http://gaceta.diputados.gob.mx/PDF/64/2021/mar/20210310-II.pdf">Mexico’s bill</a> would not outright legalize cannabis; it would raise the country’s existing threshold of nonpunishable personal possession from 5 grams to 28 grams. Possession of 29 to 200 grams of cannabis would result in a fine. After that, prison would still be a possibility. </p>
<p>Selling cannabis will still be a crime, meaning peasant farmers in the states of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/29138371/El_mapa_del_cultivo_de_drogas_en_M%C3%A9xico">Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Durango or Michoacán</a> who make a pittance growing cannabis can still end up in jail.</p>
<p>However modest, marijuana legalization would be a symbolic milestone for Mexico, a country immersed in an unforgiving drug war. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man holding box of Kinder candies wears a marijuana leaf-shaped mask and gives a thumbs-up" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C20%2C3462%2C2372&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A chocolate seller celebrates the Senate’s vote to legalize cannabis in Mexico back in November 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chocolate-seller-wears-a-cannabis-plant-mask-as-part-of-a-news-photo/1285000513?adppopup=true">Clasos/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Modest advances</h2>
<p>According to <a href="http://bibliodigitalibd.senado.gob.mx/bitstream/handle/123456789/2035/ML93.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">a 2016 study by the Mexican Senate</a>, Mexican cartels made up to $US2 trillion from cannabis sales in the U.S. – between 15% and 26% of their total income. However, as more U.S. states <a href="https://disa.com/map-of-marijuana-legality-by-state">make cannabis legal</a> – most recently, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/nyregion/ny-legalize-marijuana.html">New York</a> – the drug’s importance to the cartels has <a href="https://www.dw.com/es/legalizaci%C3%B3n-de-marihuana-en-m%C3%A9xico-no-afectar%C3%A1-los-negocios-de-los-carteles-de-la-droga/a-56859353">drastically decreased</a>.</p>
<p>Yet the criminalization of cannabis keeps Mexico’s penitentiary system bloated. <a href="https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/aproposito/2020/LUCHAVSDROGAS20.pdf">In 2018</a>, 37,701 adults and 3,072 teenagers were accused of “narcomenudeo” – low-level drug dealing. Of those indicted on that charge, 60% of adults and 94% of teenagers <a href="https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/aproposito/2020/LUCHAVSDROGAS20.pdf">were arrested with between 5 and 100 grams of cannabis</a> – not caught in the act of selling.</p>
<p>Even under current <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LNEP_090518.pdf">Mexican law</a>, these people should not have been detained unless they had committed other crimes or behaved violently. </p>
<p>The legalization bill should finally end that type of arrest. But it contains several provisions that undermine its intended effect of protecting vulnerable consumers and small-scale growers, as congresswomen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aktB7yTejNc">Laura Rojas</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/LuRiojas/status/1369833293860978690">Lucía Riojas</a> explained when citiquing the new bill. </p>
<p>For example, it authorizes individuals to grow cannabis for their own consumption – up to six plants per adult, or eight per household. However, growers must obtain a permit from the National Council on Addictions.</p>
<p>Riojas, <a href="https://www.milenio.com/politica/lucia-riojas-regala-porro-marihuana-olga-sanchez-cordero">who made headlines in 2019</a> when she offered a rolled joint to Mexico’s new interior minister, said that rule <a href="https://twitter.com/LuRiojas/status/1369833293860978690">perpetuates the social stigma on consumers</a>.</p>
<p>The bill also grants officials authority, without a warrant, to enter the residence of a cannabis grower to verify compliance with the law. That may lead some people who currently grow cannabis illegally at home to avoid registering, preferring their clandestine tranquility over invasive home inspections.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Small plants grow in metal basins" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An underground marijuana greenhouse in Mexico City in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/marijuana-plants-which-are-grown-for-medicinal-purposes-are-news-photo/500661398?adppopup=true">Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>SMART litigation</h2>
<p>Such provisions have tempered the celebrations of the activists and academics who have for years <a href="https://www.mucd.org.mx/cannabis-cuenta-regresiva/">intensely lobbied</a> legislators to end Mexico’s cannabis ban for human rights reasons. </p>
<p>In 2013, four <a href="https://www.mucd.org.mx/litigio-estrategico-politica-de-drogas/">board members of the drug policy nonprofit Mexico United Against Crime</a> challenged <a href="https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/nacion/sociedad/2015/11/5/un-cuarteto-que-no-la-fuma-pero-pide-libertad-para-decidir">the prohibition of cannabis</a> before the Mexican Supreme Court. The plaintiffs claimed that Mexico’s cannabis ban violated their <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/1_110321.pdf">constitutionally guaranteed rights</a>, including the right to make decisions about their personal health. </p>
<p>Filing what’s known as an “amparo” – a Mexican legal mechanism that allows citizens to defend their own constitutional rights – they argued in court that adults should be able to grow marijuana at home, and use it appropriately.</p>
<p>In 2015, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that Mexico’s total cannabis ban was unconstitutional. Justice Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea <a href="https://www2.scjn.gob.mx/juridica/engroses/1/2014/2/3_164118_2780.doc">noted in this landmark decision</a> that the Mexican Constitution “does not impose an ideal of human excellence” but “allows each individual to choose their own life plan … as long as it does not affect others.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Eight people sit at a long table with microphones; press is visible in the foreground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The members of Mexico United Against Crime explain the court’s ruling in their favor at a press conference in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-mexican-society-of-responsible-and-tolerant-news-photo/495685168?adppopup=true">Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because the outcome of an amparo trial <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151578239.pdf">applies only to the petitioner</a>, nobody beyond the handful of SMART members could grow marijuana or possess over 5 grams of weed at home. But the decision led to a groundswell of similar amparo cases, and the courts <a href="https://www.scjn.gob.mx/transparencia/lo-mas-solicitado/2019-1">repeatedly ruled in the petitioners’ favor</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, in 2018, the Supreme Court <a href="https://www2.scjn.gob.mx/denunciasincumplimiento/AbrirEngrose.aspx?EngroseID=707373">mandated Congress</a> to end the “unconstitutional” prohibition of cannabis. </p>
<p>Given the complexity of this matter and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Court has granted Congress several extensions to comply with this mandate, but the court’s final deadline <a href="https://www.mucd.org.mx/cannabis-cuenta-regresiva/%22">expires on April 30</a>. That means Mexico’s cannabis ban will be annulled on that date, even if the new regulation law has not taken effect.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>Small transformation</h2>
<p>Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador <a href="https://lopezobrador.org.mx/2021/03/08/version-estenografica-de-la-conferencia-de-prensa-matutina-del-presidente-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-484/">has presented</a> the cannabis bill as a victory of his political party, Morena. </p>
<p>But López Obrador’s views on cannabis have been ambiguous and erratic. Over his long political career, he has frequently voiced his willingness to “debate” legalization but <a href="https://politico.mx/minuta-politica/minuta-politica-gobierno-federal/%C3%AD-se-movi%C3%B3-el-discurso-de-amlo-sobre-la-legalizaci%C3%B3n-de-la-marihuana/">never explicitly committed to do it</a>. </p>
<p>López Obrador <a href="https://theconversation.com/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-was-elected-to-transform-mexico-can-he-do-it-99176">ran for president in 2018 as a progressive</a> who would “transform” and “pacify” Mexico, including by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexicos-presidential-front-runner-amlo-doesnt-want-to-escalate-the-drug-war/2018/06/29/f3081f12-7320-11e8-bda1-18e53a448a14_story.html">rethinking its drug policies</a>. But as recently as February 2020, he declared he would <a href="https://lopezobrador.org.mx/2020/02/26/version-estenografica-de-la-conferencia-de-prensa-matutina-del-presidente-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-264/">support only medical cannabis</a>, not recreational.</p>
<p>López Obrador has also largely continued the drug war of his predecessors. In 2006, former Mexican president Felipe Calderón <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">deployed the military</a> to quell the drug trade. Unbridled violence followed as soldiers battled the cartels and, increasingly, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/La_Tropa_Por_Qu%C3%A9_Mata_Un_Soldado_Premio.html?id=VjT0wgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">any citizen perceived as a threat</a> – including people who use drugs.</p>
<p>López Obrador recently <a href="https://www.dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5593105&fecha=11/05/2020">extended the armed forces’ deployment as law enforcement until 2024</a>.</p>
<p>Over the past 15 years, drug cartels and organized crime in Mexico have killed an estimated <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41576.pdf">150,000 people</a>, representing <a href="https://www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/olap/proyectos/bd/continuas/mortalidad/defuncioneshom.asp?s=est&c=28820&proy=mortgral_dh">about half of all Mexico’s homicides</a> during that period. Another <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41576.pdf">73,000 people have disappeared</a>. </p>
<p>Ultimately, this bloody history gave rise to cannabis legalization in Mexico – a small yet meaningful step toward de-escalating its war on drugs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mexico would not fully legalize cannabis; its new regulation plan makes recreational use legal. However modest, that would be a symbolic milestone for a country immersed in a long, deadly drug war.Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1508062020-12-10T13:36:42Z2020-12-10T13:36:42ZOregon just decriminalized all drugs – here’s why voters passed this groundbreaking reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374023/original/file-20201209-21-1aik374.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C7%2C5111%2C3423&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">According to Oregon law, possessing a small amount of drugs for personal consumption is now a civil – rather than criminal – offense. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/teenage-schoolgirl-reaching-for-cocaine-in-her-back-royalty-free-image/1132980785?adppopup=true">Peter Dazeley via Getty</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Oregon became the first state in the United States to decriminalize the possession of all drugs on Nov. 3, 2020. </p>
<p><a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Measure_110,_Drug_Decriminalization_and_Addiction_Treatment_Initiative_(2020)">Measure 110</a>, a ballot initiative <a href="https://www.klcc.org/post/election-preview-measure-110-would-make-oregon-1st-state-decriminalize-drug-use">funded by the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group backed in part by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg</a>, passed with more than 58% of the vote. Possessing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs for personal use is no longer a criminal offense in Oregon. </p>
<p>Those drugs are still against the law, as is selling them. But possession is now a civil – not criminal – violation that may result in a fine or court-ordered therapy, not jail. Marijuana, which Oregon legalized in 2014, remains fully legal.</p>
<p>Oregon’s move is radical for the United States, but several European countries <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/decriminalization-of-narcotics/decriminalization-of-narcotics.pdf">have decriminalized drugs to some extent</a>. There are three main arguments for this major drug policy reform. </p>
<h2>#1. Drug prohibition has failed</h2>
<p>In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared drugs to be “public enemy number one” and launched a “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-on-drugs-how-president-nixon-tied-addiction-to-crime/254319/">war on drugs</a>” that continues today.</p>
<p>The ostensible rationale for harshly punishing drug users is to deter drug use. But decades of research – including <a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000009196">our own on marijuana</a> and <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/drugs-and-drug-policy/book258916">drugs generally</a> – has found the <a href="https://www.vera.org/publications/for-the-record-prison-paradox-incarceration-not-safer">deterrent effect of strict criminal punishment to be small</a>, if it exists at all. This is especially true among young people, who <a href="http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/mtf-vol2_2019.pdf">are the majority of drug users</a>. </p>
<p>This is partly due to the nature of addiction, and also because <a href="https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence">there are simply limits to how much punishment can deter crime</a>. As a result, the U.S. has both <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/">the world’s highest incarceration rate</a> and <a href="http://www.espad.org/sites/espad.org/files/TD0116475ENN.pdf">among the highest rates of illegal drug use</a>. Roughly <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html">1 in 5 incarcerated people in the United States is in for a drug offense</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=dNcNUjn4UQEC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=Crime+in+the+Making:+Pathways+and+Turning+Points+Through+Life.&ots=UfXRYQfehU&sig=jAyUyb68tCm1Bw9dXXtlyUlXPro#v=onepage&q=Crime%20in%20the%20Making%3A%20Pathways%20and%20Turning%20Points%20Through%20Life.&f=false">Criminologists find</a> that other consequences of problematic drug use – such as harm to health, reduced quality of life and strained personal relationships – are more effective deterrents than criminal sanctions. </p>
<p>Because criminalizing drugs does not really prevent drug use, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3342518?seq=1">decriminalizing does not really increase it</a>. Portugal, <a href="https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalization/">which decriminalized the personal possession of all drugs in 2001</a> in response to high illicit drug use, has <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/11331/portugal-cdr-2019_0.pdf">much lower rates of drug use than the European average</a>. Use of cocaine among young adults age 15 to 34, for example, is 0.3% in Portugal, compared to 2.1% across the EU. <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/11331/portugal-cdr-2019_0.pdf">Amphetamine and MDMA consumption is likewise lower in Portugal</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman with a dog waits at a white van while a man drinks from a tiny cup" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373956/original/file-20201209-13-1k3fxx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mobile drug-services van in Lisbon gives out methadone, a medication for people with opioid use disorder, in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/patient-rita-pestana-holds-her-puppy-while-her-husband-news-photo/857614826?adppopup=true">Horacio Villalobos - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Decriminalization puts money to better use</h2>
<p>Arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning people for drug-related crimes is expensive. </p>
<p>The Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that all government drug prohibition-related expenditures <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/tax-budget-bulletin/budgetary-effects-ending-drug-prohibition">were US$47.8 billion nationally</a> in 2016. Oregon spent about $375 million on drug prohibition in that year. </p>
<p>Oregon will now divert some the money previously used on drug enforcement to pay for <a href="https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/16/oregon-2020-election-ballot-measure-110-decriminalize-drug-possession/3620146001/%22%22">about a dozen new drug prevention and treatment centers</a> statewide, which has been <a href="http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/04-01_rep_mdtreatmentorincarceration_ac-dp.pdf">found to be a significantly more cost-effective</a> strategy. Some tax revenue from <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2019/07/25/oregon-cannabis-tax-revenue-gets-higher-and-higher.html">recreational marijuana sales</a>, which exceeded $100 million in 2019, will also go to addiction and recovery services. </p>
<p>Oregon <a href="https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/citizen_engagement/Reports/2019-OCJC-SB1041-Report.pdf">spent about $470 million on substance abuse treatment</a> between 2017 and 2019.</p>
<p>Not everyone who uses drugs needs treatment. Decriminalization makes help accessible to those who do need it – and keeps both those users and recreational users out of jail.</p>
<h2>3. The drug war targets people of color</h2>
<p>Another aim of decriminalization is to mitigate the significant <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Disparity-by-Geography-The-War-on-Drugs-in-Americas-Cities.pdf">racial and ethnic disparities associated with drug enforcement</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and whit image of police arresting a Black man in a New York subway station; no faces are seen" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373973/original/file-20201209-17-i30jco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New York’s ‘stop and frisk’ policing most often resulted in marijuana possession charges and targeted young Black men. It was declared unconstitutional in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/saw-this-young-man-being-stopped-in-nyc-subway-by-two-news-photo/185494998?adppopup=true">Third Eye Corporation/Getty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Illegal drug use is <a href="https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/cbhsq-reports/NSDUHNationalFindingsReport2018/NSDUHNationalFindingsReport2018.pdf">roughly comparable across race</a> in the U.S. But people of color are significantly more likely to be <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/pdfs/OAG_REPORT_ON_SQF_PRACTICES_NOV_2013.pdf">searched</a>, <a href="https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/noras-blog/2020/06/message-director-racially-motivated-violence">arrested and imprisoned for a drug-related offense</a>. Drug crimes can incur long prison sentences.</p>
<p>Discretion in drug enforcement and sentencing means prohibition is among the <a href="https://newjimcrow.com/">leading causes of incarceration of people of color in the United States</a> – an injustice <a href="https://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-podcast/bipartisan-drug-policy-reform">many Americans on both sides of the aisle</a> increasingly recognize. </p>
<p>Freed up from policing drug use, departments may redirect their resources toward crime prevention and solving <a href="https://thecrimereport.org/2015/06/24/2015-06-reinventing-american-policing-a-seven-point-blueprin/">violent crimes like homicide and robbery</a>, which are time-consuming to investigate. That could help restore some trust between law enforcement and Oregon’s communities of color. </p>
<h2>Risks of decriminalization</h2>
<p>One common concern among Oregonians <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/15/measure-110-oergon-politics-decriminalize-drugs/">who voted against decriminalization</a> was that lessening criminal penalties would endanger children. </p>
<p>“I think it sends a really bad message to them, and influences their perception of the risks,” James O’Rourke, a defense attorney who helped organize the opposition to measure 110, <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/15/measure-110-oergon-politics-decriminalize-drugs/">told Oregon Public Broadcasting in October</a>.</p>
<p>But U.S. states that legalized marijuana haven’t seen adolescent use rise significantly. In fact, marijuana consumption among teens – <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.14939">though not among college-aged Americans</a> – actually <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2737637">declined in some states with legal marijuana</a>. This may be because legal, regulated marijuana is more difficult for minors to get than black-market drugs. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman browses various types of marijuana in glass jars on shelves, in well-lit, upscale setting" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373955/original/file-20201209-13-pm4j84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Customers must be 21 or older to purchase marijuana from dispensaries like Oregon’s Finest, in Portland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-shops-at-oregons-finest-a-marijuana-dispensary-in-news-photo/491438512?adppopup=true">Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Research also shows that for some people, particularly the young, banning a behavior <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4675534/">makes it more alluring</a>. So defining drugs as a health concern rather than a crime could actually make them less appealing to young Oregonians.</p>
<p>Another worry about decriminalization is that it will attract people looking to use drugs. </p>
<p>So-called “drug tourism” <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2009/08/27/treating-not-punishing">hasn’t really been a problem for Portugal</a>, but it happened in Switzerland after officials in the 1980s and 1990s began officially “ignoring” heroin in Zurich’s Platzspitz Park. People came from across the country to <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/europe/switzerland/articles/a-brief-history-of-zurichs-needle-park/">inject heroin in public, leaving discarded needles on the ground</a>. </p>
<p>The local government shut down Platzspitz Park. But rather than chase off or arrest those who frequented it, it began offering methadone and prescription heroin to <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/inside_switzerlands_radical_drug_policy_innovation">help people with opioid use disorder</a>. Public injection, HIV rates and overdoses – which had all become a problem in Zurich – <a href="https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2019/01/21/switzerland-couldnt-stop-drug-users-so-it-started-supporting-them/">plummeted</a>. </p>
<p>Certain parts of Oregon already have higher rates of public drug consumption, namely Portland and Eugene. Because public drug use is still illegal in Oregon, however, we don’t expect a Platzspitz Park-style open drug scene to emerge.
These places should benefit from the expansion of methadone programs and other medication-assisted treatment, which is endorsed by the <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/opioids/ama-push-better-access-opioid-use-disorder-treatments">American Medical Association</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theolympian.com/opinion/editorials/article247180921.html">If neighboring Washington state decriminalizes drugs</a>, which it is considering, the chances of drug tourism would drop further. </p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p>
<h2>Upside – and downside</h2>
<p>There are risks with any major policy change. The question is whether the new policy results in a net benefit. </p>
<p>In Portugal, full decriminalization has proven more humane and effective than criminalization. Because drug users don’t worry about facing criminal charges, those who need help are more likely to seek it – and <a href="https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/52ff6eb9-76c9-44a5-bc37-857fbbfedbdd/drug-policy-in-portugal-english-20120814.pdf">get it</a>. </p>
<p>Portugal’s <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/11364/20191724_TDAT19001ENN_PDF.pdf%22%22">overdose death rate is five times lower than the EU average</a> – which is itself <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db356.htm">far lower than the United States’</a>. HIV infection rates among injection drug users also <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/11331/portugal-cdr-2019_0.pdf">dropped massively</a> since 2001.</p>
<p>These policies show that problem drug use is a public health challenge to be managed, not a war that can be won.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Possessing heroin, cocaine, meth and other drugs for personal use is no longer a criminal offense in Oregon. The idea is to get people with problem drug use help, not punishment.Scott Akins, Professor, Sociology Department, Oregon State UniversityClayton Mosher, Professor, Sociology Department, Washington State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1381622020-05-08T12:17:36Z2020-05-08T12:17:36ZThe flowers you buy your mom for Mother’s Day may be tied to the US war on drugs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333473/original/file-20200507-49565-2e8d2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=203%2C82%2C4817%2C3349&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Colombia is the world's second-biggest cut flower exporter. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Fernando Vergara</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What does Mother’s Day flowers have to do with cocaine? </p>
<p>Very little, most people would think. But as an economist, I <a href="http://businessmacroeconomics.com">often explain</a> to my students that the world is economically connected, often in strange ways. The flower business is one of those strange economic connections.</p>
<p>Mother’s Day, which this year falls on May 10, is typically big for the American floral industry, which depends on it for <a href="https://aboutflowers.com/holidays-occasions/mothers-day/mothers-day-floral-statistics/">over a quarter of all holiday flower sales</a>. It’s especially important to flower vendors this year as the coronavirus <a href="https://qz.com/1848936/the-global-flower-industry-is-wilting-ahead-of-mothers-day/">has ravaged the industry</a>, affecting both supply and demand. </p>
<p><a href="https://ccfc.org/about-ccfc/">About a third of cut flowers</a> purchased in the U.S. come from California, while the rest are imported. <a href="https://dataweb.usitc.gov/">About 80% of those</a> come from Colombia or Ecuador. </p>
<p>The story of how both countries became such an important source of flowers for the U.S. can be traced back to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/war-on-drugs-2718">U.S. war on drugs</a>.</p>
<p>In the late 2000s, the U.S. and Colombian government were looking for <a href="https://tradevistas.org/rose-how-trade-policy-was-used-to-fight-drugs-from-colombia/">new ways to stem the flow of cocaine</a> into the U.S. Part of the strategy involved law enforcement: <a href="https://www.state.gov/eradication-and-interdiction/">increasing interdictions</a> to stop drugs before they crossed the border and <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/dcf/enforce.cfm">ramping up arrests of people selling drugs</a> in the U.S.</p>
<p>Another part of this strategy, however, was to convince farmers in Colombia to stop growing coca leaves, a traditional Andean plant that provides the raw ingredient for making cocaine, by giving them preferential access to U.S. markets if they grow something else.</p>
<p>The goal of the program was to give these subsistence farmers a legal crop that would be roughly as profitable as growing coca leaves – whether flowers, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-coca-leaf-not-coffee-may-always-be-colombias-favourite-cash-crop-74723">honey or coffee</a>. This is formally called <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/146794NCJRS.pdf">crop substitution</a>. </p>
<p>In theory, by cutting back the supply of coca leaves, the price of the key raw material in cocaine rises. This cost increase is passed along the supply chain, raising the price of cocaine at every point.</p>
<p>Why is raising the price of cocaine important? A basic idea in economics is the “<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdemand.asp">law of demand</a>,” which says the higher the price of a product the less people buy, holding everything else constant. Pushing up the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945407/">price of cocaine should reduce the amount</a> Americans consume. </p>
<p>Not just Colombia but also Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru – all coca-producing countries – get duty-free access to U.S. markets in exchange for clamping down on illegal drugs, under the <a href="http://www.sice.oas.org/TPD/USA_ATPA/USA_ATPA_e.ASP">Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act</a>. </p>
<p>Has crop substitution worked? </p>
<p>Well, not to eradicate the cocaine market. Only last year <a href="https://apnews.com/0aa6474b944f4ff8eb9e7e9cffffce87">Colombia had a record coca crop</a>, and the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-does-cocaine-cost-in-the-us-2016-10">street price of cocaine</a> hasn’t budged. There are complicated reasons for this, including the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/31/opinion/failed-war-on-drugs.html">persistence of U.S. demand for drugs</a>, regardless of source, the ingenuity of drug trafficking organizations, and the <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/coca-yes-cocaine-no">cultural significance of coca leaf in the Andean region</a>.</p>
<p>But this failed U.S. drug policy did lead to a surge in cut flower exports to the U.S. from both Colombia and Ecuador. <a href="https://dataweb.usitc.gov/">Colombia exported</a> US$800 million worth of flowers to the U.S. in 2019, up from $350 million in 2000. Ecuador’s exports tripled from $90 million in 2000 to $270 million in 2019. As a result of the increased supply, flower prices in the U.S. <a href="https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUUR0000SEHL02">rose less</a> than <a href="https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm">average inflation</a>. </p>
<p>So if you do manage to find flowers this Mother’s Day, both your mom and the farmers who grow them will thank you for it.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re too busy to read everything. We get it. That’s why we’ve got a weekly newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybusy">Sign up for good Sunday reading.</a> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138162/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jay L. Zagorsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A program intended to reduce coca production ended up giving two Latin American countries a big boost to their flower power.Jay L. Zagorsky, Senior Lecturer, Questrom School of Business, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1205562019-07-18T20:38:53Z2019-07-18T20:38:53ZCartel kingpin El Chapo is jailed for life, but the US-Mexico drug trade is booming<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284797/original/file-20190718-116557-mxrtwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kingpin no longer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/El-Chapo-Prosecution/635a9ecf92af43c78e2a31c6f9e7b25c/11/0">AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera – aka “El Chapo” – has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/17/el-chapo-sentence-life-prison-mexican-drug-lord-trial">sentenced to life</a> plus an additional 30 years for <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/929896/download">drug trafficking, conspiracy, money laundering and weapons charges</a>, among other crimes committed over the past quarter-century as head of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, the <a href="https://fortune.com/2014/09/14/biggest-organized-crime-groups-in-the-world/">Western Hemisphere’s most powerful organized crime syndicate</a>. </p>
<p>Judge Brian Cogan also <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-sinaloa-cartel-leader-sentenced-life-prison-plus-30-years">ordered</a> Guzmán – who was convicted in U.S. federal court in February after a <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-trial-shows-why-a-wall-wont-stop-drugs-from-crossing-the-us-mexico-border-110001">dramatic three-month trial</a> – to forfeit US$12.6 billion in illicit narcotics proceeds.</p>
<p>U.S. officials celebrated El Chapo’s demise as a triumph in the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/04/26/717389563/a-brief-history-of-the-war-on-drugs">war on drugs</a>. President Donald Trump has taken an aggressive <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns7ocpRhDD8">stance on Mexican drug cartels</a>, vowing at his <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural-address">January 2017 inauguration</a> to stop “the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives.” </p>
<p>“This sentencing shows the world that no matter how protected or powerful you are, DEA will ensure that you face justice,” <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-sinaloa-cartel-leader-sentenced-life-prison-plus-30-years">said</a> the acting administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Uttam Dhillon, at Guzmán’s sentencing.</p>
<p>Having studied the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">politics</a> and economics of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-jailbreak-is-both-a-mexican-and-an-american-story-44679">U.S.-Mexico drug trade</a>, I see a different lesson in Guzmán’s life story. The U.S. may have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/17/el-chapo-sentence-life-prison-mexican-drug-lord-trial">locked up</a> Mexico’s worst “bad hombre,” but the business he ran is far too big to fail.</p>
<h2>‘Insatiable demand’</h2>
<p>Mexicans have greeted Guzmán’s demise with more skepticism.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/ultimas/politica/2019/07/17/dan-cadena-perpetua-a-el-chapo-guzman-6225.html">Mexican newspaper La Jornada</a> noted that the flow of illicit drugs into the United States has not diminished since El Chapo’s arrest.</p>
<p>Mexican estimates suggest that each month the Sinaloa cartel <a href="http://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=19103">trades</a> two tons of cocaine and 10,000 tons of marijuana plus heroine, methamphetamine and other drugs. Founded in Sinaloa state in the late 1980s, the cartel now <a href="http://www.insightcrime.org/mexico-organized-crime-news/sinaloa-cartel-profile">distributes drugs</a> in 50 countries, including Argentina, the Philippines and Russia. </p>
<p>But Mexican cartels were born to serve consumers in the United States, the world’s <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/interactive-map.html">biggest consumer</a> of illicit drugs. </p>
<p>It’s Americans’ “insatiable demand for illegal drugs,” as then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/americas/26mexico.html">said in 2009</a>, that allowed Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel to become the world’s biggest supplier of illicit drugs. </p>
<p>Drug trafficking has a highly lucrative business model. According to data from 2016, the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/field/10.3_Price_and_Purity_-_Cocaine.xls">wholesale price</a> for a gram of cocaine is approximately US$2.30 in Colombia and $12.50 in Mexico. The same gram will cost $28 in the U.S. By the time it gets to Australia, it could fetch as much as $176.50. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/field/10.3_Price_and_Purity_-_Cocaine.xls">Retail prices</a> per gram are even higher: $82 in the U.S. and $400 in Australia. </p>
<p>Drug prices rise significantly during transit as intermediaries demand compensation for the <a href="http://faculty.publicpolicy.umd.edu/sites/default/files/reuter/files/Risks_and_prices.pdf">risk</a> they assume in getting the product to consumers. This liability markup is one reason that keeping drugs illegal has made them so expensive on the streets and so profitable for the people who trade in them. </p>
<h2>Killing, threats and bribes</h2>
<p>Illegality is also the reason that the drug trade is so violent.</p>
<p>Running an <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.503.9024&rep=rep1&type=pdf">illegal operation</a>, kingpins like Guzmán must enforce their own agreements and protect themselves from authorities and competitors. They do so using a combination of killing, threats and bribes.</p>
<p>At least eight <a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2016/04/10/1085638#imagen-1">armed groups</a> once worked under Guzman’s command in Mexico, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/21/how-el-chapo-built-sinaloa-cartel">attacking</a> competing cartels and members deemed traitors.</p>
<p>Guzmán also <a href="http://time.com/3968992/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-escape-seven-arrested/">bribed</a> as many officers as necessary to succeed in his business. </p>
<p>Alex Cifuentes, a close associate of Guzmán, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mexico-el-chapo/el-chapo-paid-former-mexican-president-100-million-bribe-trial-witness-idUSKCN1P92OS">testified</a> in the trial that the cartel chief once paid a $100 million bribe to then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto – an accusation Peña Nieto’s administration <a href="https://twitter.com/fco__guzman/status/1085358965129654272?lang=es">dismissed</a> as “false, defamatory and absurd.”</p>
<p>Guzmán certainly <a href="https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/prisons-former-security-chief-recalls-el-chapos-perks/">bribed Mexican prison officials</a>. In 2015, he <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-jailbreak-is-both-a-mexican-and-an-american-story-44679">escaped from jail</a> by riding a motorcycle through a lit, ventilated mile-long tunnel constructed directly underneath his cell.</p>
<h2>Walls versus profit</h2>
<p>For five decades since President Richard Nixon <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html">launched the war on drugs</a>, the United States has chose not to focus on the economic forces driving this clandestine industry in favor of punishment, sending <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/criminal-justice/reports/2018/06/27/452819/ending-war-drugs-numbers/">millions</a> of drug traffickers, corner dealers and drug users to jail. </p>
<p>Even as states try to ease mass incarceration by <a href="https://theconversation.com/marijuana-is-on-the-ballot-in-four-states-but-legalization-may-soon-stall-researchers-say-105342">legalizing cannabis</a> and decriminalizing minor drug offenses like possession, President Trump has called for escalating the federal government’s drug war. </p>
<p>In 2018, Trump delivered an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-global-call-action-world-drug-problem-event/">incendiary speech</a> at the United Nations decrying the “scourge” of drugs, followed with a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4901223-Global-Call-to-Action-on-the-World-Drug-Problem.html">pledge</a> signed by 129 nations to “cut off the supply of illicit drugs by stopping their production…and flow across borders.”</p>
<p>Trump’s main proposals for ending the U.S.-Mexico drug trade are to more <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-plan-to-execute-big-drug-pushers-will-do-nothing-to-stop-opioid-overdoses-93898">harshly punish drug dealers</a> and to build a border wall, which <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/25/presidential-executive-order-enhancing-public-safety-interior-united">will be monitored by</a> 10,000 additional immigration officers.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-wall-and-the-beast-trumps-triumph-from-the-mexican-side-of-the-border-68559">physical barrier</a> is unlikely to thwart drug smugglers, particularly the wily Sinaloa cartel, history shows. </p>
<p>When confronted with a high-tech border fence in Arizona, constructed long before Trump’s administration, Mexican smugglers use a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/us/marijuana-catapult-trnd/index.html">catapult</a> to fling <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html">hundred-pound bales of marijuana</a> over to the American side. </p>
<p>“We’ve got the best fence money can buy,” former DEA chief Michael Brown <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html">told</a> New York Times journalist Patrick Radden Keefe in 2017, “and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology.”</p>
<p>Then there’s the other ancient technology perfected by Guzmán: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/underworld-monte-reel">the tunnel</a>. In the past quarter-century, <a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-california/sdut-border-tunnels-2013oct31-htmlstory.html">officials have discovered about 180</a> cleverly disguised illicit passages under the U.S.-Mexico border. Many, like the one Guzmán used to escape prison, are equipped with electricity, ventilation and elevators.</p>
<p>Corruption undermines the law outside Mexico, too. Between 2006 and 2016 some 200 employees and contractors of the Department of Homeland Security – the agency charged with defending the U.S. border – have accepted nearly $15 million in bribes, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/us/homeland-security-border-bribes.html?_r=0">according to The New York Times</a>.</p>
<p>“Almost no evidence about corrupt American officials” was allowed at El Chapo’s trial, the Times <a href="https://twitter.com/alanfeuer/status/1082820817438822400">reports</a>.</p>
<h2>After El Chapo</h2>
<p>El Chapo’s downfall hasn’t reduced the availability, price, use or lethality of currently illegal drugs. </p>
<p>In 2017, the year of Guzmán’s <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/el-chapo-trial-verdict-joaquin-guzman-drug-lord-mexico-court-new-york-a8776681.html">extradition</a> to the U.S., 70,237 people <a href="https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates">died of drug overdose</a> in the United States. </p>
<p>Another <a href="https://aristeguinoticias.com/2101/mexico/en-2017-mas-de-29-mil-asesinatos-en-mexico-671-fueron-feminicidios/">29,168 people were murdered</a> in Mexico, where the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">government’s decade-long cartel war</a> has caused violence to escalate nationwide.</p>
<p>Guzmán’s capture hasn’t even hurt the Sinaloa cartel, which has a <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ismael-el-mayo-zambada-sinaloa_n_56a0becce4b0404eb8f05313">new boss</a> who promotes a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/07/18/el-chapo-is-contained-drug-war-is-not/?utm_term=.371867785d2c">more horizontal leadership structure</a> and is expanding its operations into other criminal activities like illegal mining and human trafficking.</p>
<p>Drug trafficking, of course, is not just a Mexican business. In June, U.S. authorities in Philadelphia <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/10/business/jpmorgan-msc-gayane-cocaine-seizure/index.html">seized</a> a cargo vessel carrying nearly 20 tons of cocaine. </p>
<p>The drug-running ship didn’t belong to the Sinaloa cartel. It was owned by a fund run by banking giant JPMorgan Chase.</p>
<p><em>This story is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-story-of-a-kingpin-or-why-trumps-plan-to-defeat-mexican-cartels-is-doomed-to-fail-71781">article</a> originally published on Feb. 17, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120556/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The conviction of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who evaded justice in Mexico, is a win for US officials. But it’s a pyrrhic victory in the war on drugs.Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1094902019-01-29T11:45:31Z2019-01-29T11:45:31ZMexico is bleeding. Can its new president stop the violence?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255618/original/file-20190125-108345-1q1a7y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador with the families of the 43 students who went missing in 2014 in Guerrero state. He has ordered a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIH2PB307&SMLS=1&RW=1440&RH=816#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIH2PB307&SMLS=1&RW=1440&RH=816&POPUPPN=36&POPUPIID=2C0FQEQJOYWTP">Reuters/Edgard Garrido</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly 34,000 people were murdered in <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/docs/pdfs/nueva-metodologia/CNSP-V%C3%ADctimas-2018_dic18.pdf%22">Mexico last year</a>, according to new government statistics — the deadliest year since modern record-keeping began.</p>
<p>Of all the challenges facing Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, curbing violence may be the biggest. </p>
<p>Mexico has seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">ever-growing bloodshed</a> since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-military-is-a-lethal-killing-force-should-it-really-be-deployed-as-police-75521">the Mexican armed forces to fight drug cartels</a>. </p>
<p>Rather than reduce violence, the government’s crackdown actually increased conflicts between and among cartels, according to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-drug-violence-9780190695965?q=the%20politics%20of%20drug%20violence&lang=en&cc=us">my research on criminal violence</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/11/28/opinion-lopez-obrador-guardia-nacional/">numerous other studies</a>. It also led to widespread military abuses of power against civilians.</p>
<p>More than 250,000 people have been murdered and <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/rnped/estadisticas-fuerocomun.php">35,000 have disappeared</a> since the beginning of Mexico’s drug war. </p>
<p>López Obrador said on the campaign trail that Mexico must “<a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/06/que-dijeron-los-candidatos-presidenciales-en-sus-cierres-de-campana-estos-son-sus-discursos/%22">consider multiple alternatives to achieve the pacification of the country</a>.” </p>
<p>He pitched several possibilities to reduce crime without using law enforcement, including <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/12/lopez-obrador-precandidato-amnistia/%22">granting amnesty to low-level criminals</a>, negotiating with <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/elecciones-2018/amlo-plantea-analizar-amnistia-lideres-del-narco-para-garantizar-la-paz">crime bosses to dismantle their syndicates</a> and confronting the human rights violations <a href="https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice%22">committed by soldiers, police and public officials</a>.</p>
<h2>Finding the truth</h2>
<p>Some of those ideas – particularly the controversial notion of negotiating with organized crime – have faded away since López Obrador took office on Dec. 1. </p>
<p>So far, his administration has put more emphasis on traditional law-and-order policies. </p>
<p>In December, he ordered the creation of a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-politics/mexican-president-elects-party-presents-national-guard-plan-idUSKCN1NP2MZ">Mexican national guard</a> to fight organized crime. Though human rights advocates and security experts <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/11/28/opinion-lopez-obrador-guardia-nacional/">fear</a> this approach will repeat past fatal mistakes of militarizing Mexican law enforcement, the lower house of Congress recently <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-security/mexicos-new-crime-fighting-national-guard-easily-wins-lower-house-approval-idUSKCN1PB060">approved the measure</a>. It will likely be approved in the Senate. </p>
<p>López Obrador has followed through on one of his campaign proposals for “pacifying” Mexico, though. </p>
<p>Days after being sworn in, the president <a href="http://www.alejandroencinas.mx/home/decreto-presidencial-para-el-acceso-a-la-verdad-en-el-caso-ayotzinapa/">established a truth commission</a> to investigate the unsolved disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college in the southern Mexican town of Iguala in 2014. </p>
<p>Five years after their disappearance, the truth of this infamous case remains elusive. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/massacres-disappearances-and-1968-mexicans-remember-the-victims-of-a-perfect-dictatorship-104196">government</a> of former president Enrique Peña Nieto, the crime was a local affair. Students en route to a protest march in Mexico City were detained by the Iguala police, and, at the mayor’s order, handed over to a local gang, which killed them and burned their bodies. </p>
<p>Investigators <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/activities/giei.asp">from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights</a> could not corroborate this story. In the burn pit identified in 2016, they found no physical evidence of the missing students. </p>
<p>In a scathing <a href="http://centroprodh.org.mx/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/giei-informeayotzinapa2.pdf%22%22">final report</a>, investigators said that authorities had ignored crucial evidence that the army and federal police were involved in the students’ disappearance.</p>
<p>A truth commission will help Mexicans “understand the truth and do justice to the young people of Ayotzinapa,” López Obrador <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/mexico-president-forms-truth-commission-missing-students-181204060357515.html">said on Twitter</a> in announcing its creation.</p>
<p>The Ayotzinapa truth commission will put extraordinary resources and personnel on the case and give the victims’ families and perpetrators a voice in the process – neither of which police investigations in Mexico typically do. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mexicans have marched every year since 2014 to demand the truth about what happened to the 43 college students who went missing in Guerrero state in September 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://ustv-mrs-prod.ap.org/9298dcd7a7a54689a889c09efdfb4542/components/secured/main.jpg?response-cache-control=No-cache&response-content-disposition=attachment%3Bfilename%3DAP_638350409083.jpg&Expires=1538757901&Signature=T1uh0Bfk~MZmcCCL5QXiVcubCD1aAmf~mQvcUkUD3~olkGsqGsm2E~eOFGO0nbaigBDhBkWXLxAm6nhQ07jiy8lLvlfPMz0cxIga~HnNrDhq1vuxJ6S1hJqDTxhX05cP5HGgXOdIsA1mig8t1uqftJtUl9OoTDo~IANEQp~QncA_&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJ2U2YQ4Z3WBFV6TA,%20http://www.apimages.com/Search?query=ayotzinapa+investigation&ss=10&st=kw&entitysearch=&toItem=24&">AP Photo/Marco Ugarte</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Transitional justice</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ictj.org/gallery-items/truth-commissions">Truth commissions</a> aim to create a collective, participatory narrative of human rights atrocities that not only exposes the perpetrators but also identifies the conditions that facilitated violence. They are a central component of transitional justice, an approach to helping countries recover after civil war or dictatorship.</p>
<p>Countries like Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil and Peru all used truth commissions to reckon with the toll of their bloody dictatorships and wars and give reparations to victims. <a href="https://transitionaljusticedata.com/browse/index/Browse.mechanism:truthCommissions/Browse.countryid:all!">South Africa</a> famously used a truth commission to document the horrific human rights violations committed under apartheid.</p>
<p>Mexico’s situation is different: It has a criminal violence problem, not a civil war. </p>
<p>But my research indicates this pacification strategy may have some promise. </p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343318793480%22">studies suggest</a> that truth commissions can actually help prevent future violence. Because they identify perpetrators, who then face punishment for their crimes, truth commissions can both take criminals off the street and deter others from committing crime.</p>
<p>Holding public officials responsible for their <a href="https://www.hrw.org/blog-feed/mexico-lessons-human-rights-catastrophe%22">corruption</a> would be a major achievement in Mexico. </p>
<p>As the U.S. federal <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-trial-shows-why-a-wall-wont-stop-drugs-from-crossing-the-us-mexico-border-110001">trial of drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán</a> illustrates, corruption penetrates the highest levels of Mexican government. </p>
<p>Since the beginning of its drug war, in 2006, Mexican citizens have filed <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/mexico#043288%22">10,000 complaints of abuse against soldiers</a>, including accusations of extrajudicial killings and torture. The government has done little to look into those allegations. Nor has it actively investigated most of the <a href="https://articulo19.org/periodistasasesinados/%22">murders of 97 Mexican journalists</a> since then.</p>
<p>If an Ayotzinapa truth commission enjoys the full support of federal authorities – which is not a guarantee, given the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/el-chapo-trial-mexico-corruption.html">corruption it will almost certainly uncover</a> – it could restore some faith in Mexico’s justice system. Currently, 97 percent of all crimes <a href="https://www.udlap.mx/igimex/assets/files/2018/igimex2018_ESP.pdf">go unpunished</a>. </p>
<p>Focusing on truth may also help the country better understand – and therefore address – the root causes of violence in Mexico.</p>
<p>Truth commissions, however, will not immediately solve an incredibly complex security crisis. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.zocalo.com.mx/reforma/detail/imposible-comision-verdad-por-caso.-ai">Amnesty International has said</a>, the Mexican government cannot create a truth commission to investigate every mass atrocity of the drug war. Mexico also needs a functioning justice system.</p>
<h2>Pardoning low level crimes</h2>
<p>Another transitional justice tool the López Obrador government has proposed is <a href="https://seguridad.nexos.com.mx/?p=712">amnesty to non-violent, low-level drug offenders</a>.</p>
<p>The president’s Secretary of Governance, Olga Sánchez Cordero, says that pardoning people convicted and jailed for growing, processing, transporting or using drugs – particularly women and offenders from <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf">marginalized populations</a> – would <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/07/amnistia-ley-reduccion-penas-sanchez-cordero/">stop the cycle of violence in Mexico</a> and encourage petty criminals to disarm. </p>
<p>Mexico’s amnesty proposal is not unlike the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-signing-ceremony-s-756-first-step-act-2018-h-r-6964-juvenile-justice-reform-act-2018/">First Step Act</a> recently passed in the United States, which will result in the early release of about <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/11/16/what-s-really-in-the-first-step-act">2,600 prisoners, many of them drug offenders</a>.</p>
<p>Mexico’s prison population has been steadily rising for years. </p>
<p>Between 2000 and 2016, it increased 40 percent, from 154,765 inmates to 217,868 inmates, according to the <a href="http://www.prisonstudies.org/country/mexico%22">Institute of Criminal Policy Research</a>. The number of people jailed in Mexico for drug offenders has also increased <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf%22%22">markedly</a>.</p>
<p>As in the United States, most prisoners in Mexico come from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds, according to the <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf">Collective for the Study of Drugs and Law</a>, a nonprofit research group. </p>
<h2>What lies ahead</h2>
<p>Should López Obrador’s amnesty idea become policy, it would surely be controversial. </p>
<p>Victims of violence in Ciudad Juárez were outraged when, in August 2018, President-elect López Obrador said residents must be “<a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/08/momentos-foros-paz-juarez/">willing to forgive</a>.” </p>
<p>Many caught in the crossfire of Mexico’s drug war say justice and punishment should come before forgiveness. </p>
<p>But violence in Mexico is so pervasive that, in my opinion, the country must consider every option that might stanch the bleeding. </p>
<p>Truth commissions and amnesties to low level crimes will not pacify the country immediately – but they may bring some of the truth and justice Mexicans so desperately need. </p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to reflect the correct title of Olga Sanchez-Cordero. She is the Secretary of Governance, not Chief-of-Staff.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109490/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angélica Durán-Martínez has received funding from the United States Institute of Peace and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). In 2011, she was an SSRC Drugs, Security and Democracy fellow, a program funded by Open Society Foundations.</span></em></p>President López Obrador campaigned on some outside-the-box ideas to ‘pacify’ Mexico after 12 years of extreme violence. But so far his government has emphasized traditional law-and-order policies.Angélica Durán-Martínez, Assistant Professor of Political Science, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1100012019-01-16T23:23:11Z2019-01-16T23:23:11ZEl Chapo trial shows why a wall won’t stop drugs from crossing the US-Mexico border<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254192/original/file-20190116-163265-14xwn8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An artist's sketch of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán at a 2018 pretrial hearing in a Brooklyn Federal courthouse.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/El-Chapo-Prosecution/9583047735b142299c6a7bfdab33d3a4/48/0">Elizabeth Williams via AP, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/el-juicio-al-chapo-evidencia-por-que-un-muro-no-detendra-el-trafico-de-drogas-entre-mexico-y-estados-unidos-110087"><em>Leer en español</em></a>.</p>
<p>The trial of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera has exposed just how <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/el-chapo-trial-mexico-corruption.html?module=inline">powerful Mexico’s cartels really are</a>.</p>
<p>The trial has now run for two months. On Jan. 15, a Colombian drug trafficker who worked for Guzmán’s Sinaloa Cartel from 2007 to 2013 testified that Guzmán paid former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/nyregion/el-chapo-trial.html">US$100 million bribe</a> while he was in power, a charge Peña Nieto’ office denies. </p>
<p>It was just the latest allegation of the cartels paying off high-ranking politicians in Mexico, presumably to <a href="https://www.forbes.com.mx/cartel-de-sinaloa-soborno-a-calderon-y-epn-abogado-de-el-chapo-falso-responden/">exert influence over the government</a>.</p>
<p>Guzmán is charged with <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/929896/download">drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping and money laundering</a> – crimes he allegedly committed over the past quarter-century as head of the Sinaloa cartel, the Western Hemisphere’s most powerful organized crime syndicate. </p>
<p>With its witness accounts of extreme violence, political corruption, international intrigue and entrepreneurial innovation, Guzmán’s trial is a telenovela-style explainer on why a wall is unlikely to stop the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">lucrative U.S.-Mexico drug trade</a>.</p>
<h2>The Sinaloa cartel</h2>
<p>Founded in Mexico’s Sinaloa state in the 1990s, the Sinaloa cartel now <a href="http://www.insightcrime.org/mexico-organized-crime-news/sinaloa-cartel-profile">distributes drugs</a> to some 50 countries, including Argentina, the Philippines and Russia. </p>
<p>Determining the scale of Guzmán’s global empire is difficult, since gangsters usually don’t keep books and charts of accounts. But his 2016 indictment in the U.S. sought forfeiture of more than <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-loera-faces-charges-new-york-leading-continuing-criminal-enterprise">$14 billion</a> in proceeds and illicit profits from decades of narcotics sales in the U.S. and Canada.</p>
<p>The Sinaloa cartel controls perhaps half of Mexico’s drug market, with <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/americas/mexican-drug-cartels/">annual earnings of around $3 billion</a>. Mexican estimates suggest that each month it <a href="http://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=19103">moves</a> two tons of cocaine and 10,000 tons of marijuana – plus heroin, methamphetamine and other substances.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mexican druglord Joaquin Guzmán after his capture by Mexican marines in January 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/YE-2016-Latin-America-Top-10-News-Stories/0632fbc853eb4a9793e7f3424bbd2cc5/20/0">AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The drug business</h2>
<p>Illegal drugs are a highly lucrative business. </p>
<p>In 2016, the year El Chapo was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/19/us/el-chapo-guzman-turned-over-to-us/index.html">captured in Mexico</a>, the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/field/10.3_Price_and_Purity_-_Cocaine.xls">wholesale price</a> for a gram of cocaine was approximately $2.30 in Colombia and $12.50 in Mexico. The same gram had a wholesale cost of $28 by the time it got to the United States. In Australia, that same gram of cocaine fetched $176.50 wholesale.</p>
<p>Drug prices rise significantly during transit as intermediaries demand compensation for the <a href="http://faculty.publicpolicy.umd.edu/sites/default/files/reuter/files/Risks_and_prices.pdf">risk</a> they assume in getting the product to consumers. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/field/10.3_Price_and_Purity_-_Cocaine.xls">Retail prices</a> per gram of cocaine are even higher, reflecting the addition of even more middlemen: $82 in the U.S. in 2016 and $400 in Australia. </p>
<p>This liability markup is one reason why some prominent policy experts and even <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/economic-moral-case-legalizing-cocaine-heroin">conservative economists</a> call for <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-commission-calls-for-responsible-control-of-illicit-drugs-through/">legalizing and regulating illicit narcotics</a>. Keeping drugs illegal is what makes them so profitable for the people who traffick them. </p>
<h2>Bribes, violence and threats</h2>
<p>Illegality is also what makes the drug business so <a href="http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/etext/llilas/portal/portal109/drugs.pdf">violent</a>.</p>
<p>Running an <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.503.9024&rep=rep1&type=pdf">illicit operation</a>, cartel leaders must both enforce their own business agreements and protect themselves from authorities and competitors. </p>
<p>They do so using a combination of violence, threats and bribes.</p>
<p>At least eight <a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2016/04/10/1085638#imagen-1">armed groups</a> worked under Guzmán’s command in Mexico, according to Mexican government reports, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/21/how-el-chapo-built-sinaloa-cartel">attacking</a> competitors and killing defectors.</p>
<p>Guzmán also <a href="http://time.com/3968992/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-escape-seven-arrested/">bribed</a> as many <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/el-chapo-trial-mexico-corruption.html?module=inline">politicians, police officers</a> and prison guards to stay in business. </p>
<p>His elaborate disappearances from Mexican high-security prisons are the stuff of legend. In 2015, <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-jailbreak-is-both-a-mexican-and-an-american-story-44679">Guzmán escaped jail</a> by riding a motorcycle through a lit, ventilated mile-long tunnel constructed underneath his cell.</p>
<h2>American demand</h2>
<p>The Sinaloa cartel didn’t become the world’s biggest supplier of illicit drugs by coincidence. It has flourished because the United States is the world’s <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/interactive-map.html">biggest consumer</a> of illicit drugs. </p>
<p>Mexican cartels serve Americans’ “insatiable demand for illegal drugs,” as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/americas/26mexico.html">Hillary Clinton once said</a>. </p>
<p>Despite President Donald Trump’s focus on Mexican drug traffickers, his former chief of staff, <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/kelly-us-must-get-business-drug-demand-reduction">John Kelly, has admitted</a> that the U.S. is part of the problem.</p>
<p>“We’re not even trying,” he told Congress in 2017, calling for more drug-demand reduction programs. </p>
<p>Kelly added that Latin American countries chide American authorities for “lecturing [them] about not doing enough to stop the drug flow” while the U.S. does nothing to “stop the demand.”</p>
<h2>Trump’s wall</h2>
<p>Trump’s continued <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-calls-border-a-crisis-of-the-soul-3-scholars-react-to-his-oval-office-address-109597">insistence on securing the southern border with a wall</a> seems to disregard the economic forces driving the drug trade and diminish Mexican cartels’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-wall-and-the-beast-trumps-triumph-from-the-mexican-side-of-the-border-68559">innovative distribution strategies</a>.</p>
<p>A high-tech border fence constructed in Arizona long before Trump’s inauguration has proven virtually useless in stopping drugs from crossing into the U.S.: Mexican smugglers just use a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/us/marijuana-catapult-trnd/index.html">catapult</a> to fling <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html">hundred-pound bales of marijuana</a> over to the American side. </p>
<p>“We’ve got the best fence money can buy,” former DEA chief Michael Brown <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html">said</a> to The New York Times in 2012, “and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology.”</p>
<p>Then there’s the other ancient technology perfected by Guzmán: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/underworld-monte-reel">the tunnel</a>. </p>
<p>Officials have discovered about 180 cleverly disguised illicit passages under the U.S.-Mexico border. Many, like the one Guzmán used to escape prison, are equipped with electricity, ventilation and elevators.</p>
<p>Trump has admitted that anyone could use “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htR87FTRj2U">a rope</a>” to climb over his wall, but believes that more border guards and drone technology would prevent infiltration. </p>
<h2>Corruption in the US</h2>
<p>Corruption is <a href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/ultimas/2019/01/16/naranjo-en-la-nomina-de-narcos-de-colombia-antes-de-ser-asesor-de-epn-5221.html">not an exclusively Mexican trait</a>. </p>
<p>Over the past decade some 200 employees and contractors from the Department of Homeland Security have accepted nearly $15 million in bribes to look the other way as drugs were smuggled across the border into the United States, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/us/homeland-security-border-bribes.html?_r=0">The New York Times</a> has reported. </p>
<p>Some U.S. officials have also given sensitive law enforcement information to cartels members, according to the Times.</p>
<p>“Almost no evidence about corrupt American officials has been allowed at [El Chapo’s] trial,” New York Times reporter Alan Feuer <a href="https://twitter.com/alanfeuer/status/1082820817438822400">said recently on Twitter</a>.</p>
<p><em>This article is an updated version of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-story-of-a-kingpin-or-why-trumps-plan-to-defeat-mexican-cartels-is-doomed-to-fail-71781">story</a> originally published on Feb. 19, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110001/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With its tales of bloody violence, corruption, international trade and entrepreneurial innovation, Guzmán’s trial offers a telenovela-style explainer on Mexican cartels and their American clients.Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/999102018-08-12T14:13:48Z2018-08-12T14:13:48ZThe influence of opium and cocaine panic in Canadian drug policy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230246/original/file-20180801-136664-re4ijm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kids teething? Back in 1885, Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, containing morphine, was close at hand and earned the nickname the "baby killer." Concerns about the dangers of readily available medications played a big role in how Canada's drug laws evolved.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The U.S. National Library of Medicine</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Current discussions on the history of prohibition and drug laws in Canada have explored the narrative that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ondrugs/drugs-what-s-race-got-to-do-with-it-1.4206616">Canada’s drug laws were fuelled by racism</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/29768352?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">story goes like this</a>: A 1907 <a href="https://www.library.ubc.ca/chineseinbc/riots.html">anti-immigration attack on Chinese establishments</a> in Vancouver’s Chinatown brought the deputy minister of labour, <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/william-lyon-mackenzie-king/">William Lyon Mackenzie King</a>, to the city to allocate reparations to businesses damaged in the riots. Some of the submissions came from opium “factories,” <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b2893630;view=1up;seq=11">small businesses in which raw opium was refined for smoking.</a></p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228829/original/file-20180723-189332-1yghxfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228829/original/file-20180723-189332-1yghxfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228829/original/file-20180723-189332-1yghxfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228829/original/file-20180723-189332-1yghxfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228829/original/file-20180723-189332-1yghxfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228829/original/file-20180723-189332-1yghxfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228829/original/file-20180723-189332-1yghxfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A smashed window of a barber shop damaged in the Vancouver riots in 1907.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Timms/Creative Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>King investigated the issue further, the story goes. In his initial report to Parliament, King noted that opium’s <a href="http://learning.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/mackenzieking1908b-eng.pdf">“baneful influences are too well-known to require comment”</a><br>
and urged a law to ban opium for non-medicinal use. In July 1908, King’s boss, Rodolphe Lemieux, presented a one-page Opium Act to Parliament. <a href="http://www.cfdp.ca/sen8ex1.htm">It passed through the House of Commons</a> with no notable commentary and through Senate with little more than a minor amendment.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2014/04/04/race_riots_and_how_mackenzie_king_made_his_name.html">Scholars have interpreted King’s initiative</a> as <a href="https://toronto.citynews.ca/2017/04/13/from-opium-to-opioids-examining-british-columbias-long-history-with-drugs/">anti-Chinese</a>. The speed at which the Opium Act sailed through Parliament is also seen as evidence of a racist reaction to what may have been conceived to be a predominantly Chinese activity. As well, since restrictions on Chinese immigration to Canada were increasing, this is <a href="https://royalalbertamuseum.ca/exhibits/online/chopSuey/racism-and-immigration.html">considered by many scholars</a> to be a further attempt to restrict Chinese immigration. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-pot-smoking-became-illegal-in-canada-92499">How pot-smoking became illegal in Canada</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But this narrative of our drug laws doesn’t tell the whole story: Further historical investigation reveals it to be even more complex and nuanced.</p>
<p>Understanding the history of our drug laws requires considering events well before 1908.</p>
<h2>Opium restrictions began years earlier</h2>
<p>Soon after Confederation, provincial governments began restricting access to specific medicines, including opium. Pharmacists and doctors argued that these medicines were poisons and could lead to death. The resulting pharmacy laws included “poisons schedules” of medicines that could be obtained only from a pharmacist or physician. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/opium">Opium was an important medicine</a> at the time. It treated common illness symptoms, including coughs, pain and diarrhea. People who were prescribed opiates often developed <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-19th-century-book-that-spawned-the-opioid-crisis-87615">a habit</a>, much as they do today. </p>
<p>Restricted access meant they might turn to the patent medicine marketplace, buying painkillers, cough syrups and other products such as the popular <a href="https://museumofhealthcare.wordpress.com/2017/07/28/mrs-winslows-soothing-syrup-the-baby-killer/">Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, containing morphine and later nicknamed the “baby killer,”</a> from grocers and general merchants. Those not addicted through prescription could easily develop a habit via these over-the-counter products. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227806/original/file-20180716-44091-3g9rko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227806/original/file-20180716-44091-3g9rko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227806/original/file-20180716-44091-3g9rko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227806/original/file-20180716-44091-3g9rko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227806/original/file-20180716-44091-3g9rko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227806/original/file-20180716-44091-3g9rko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227806/original/file-20180716-44091-3g9rko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An ad for toothache drops that contained cocaine in the early 1900s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Creative Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the late 1800s, cocaine, a topical anaesthetic, tonic and treatment for sneezing and runny noses, became a popular non-medical stimulant and appeared in many patent medicines. Not surprisingly, such self-prescribing caused doctors concern. </p>
<p>Canada’s provincial and federal governments began wrestling with the best way to deal with these products. Banning them was contrary to the laissez-faire economic rationale of the time. The result was a series of attempts to restrict access to patent medicines at the provincial level, and to mandate labelling and inspection of them at the federal level. </p>
<h2>Debates about opium and cocaine</h2>
<p>Legislation to regulate patent medicines was debated in Ottawa in 1906, 1907 and 1908. In these debates, the problems of opium were well-aired. </p>
<p>In June 1908, the <a href="https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/canada-gazette/001060-119.01-e.php?image_id_nbr=161792&document_id_nbr=5658&f=g&PHPSESSID=2c2rvr6e2tda2d78s3ns9h1pm02gjg1tsq78uscjrpj7p400rv41">Proprietary or Patent Medicine Act (PPMA)</a> passed third reading. It required manufacturers to list on the label the proportion of alcohol, opium and morphine included in the product. It also banned cocaine from such remedies. Although it did not limit public access to these products, it did help wary consumers avoid taking opiates by mistake.</p>
<p>So by 1908, most habit-forming medicines were under some form of control. What remained uncontrolled, however, were drugs intended for specifically non-medical use. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227802/original/file-20180716-44094-9c8sld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227802/original/file-20180716-44094-9c8sld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227802/original/file-20180716-44094-9c8sld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227802/original/file-20180716-44094-9c8sld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227802/original/file-20180716-44094-9c8sld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227802/original/file-20180716-44094-9c8sld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227802/original/file-20180716-44094-9c8sld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Lyon Mckenzie King, then prime minister, is seen in this 1927 photo addressing the crowd at celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Archives of Canada)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Opium Act attempted to fill this gap. Recall that the law targeted opium “for non-medical uses.” It was aimed at what we now call recreational drug users.</p>
<p>King himself was actually not unfamiliar with opium in its medical, <a href="http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/prime-ministers/william-lyon-mackenzie-king/pages/item.aspx?IdNumber=841&">recreational</a> and habit-forming states. As a law student, he attended police court, where he encountered addicted criminals. In the 1890s, <a href="http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/prime-ministers/william-lyon-mackenzie-king/pages/item.aspx?IdNumber=224&">he purchased opium for his sick brother</a>; he also had an <a href="http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/prime-ministers/william-lyon-mackenzie-king/pages/item.aspx?IdNumber=725&">opium-addicted friend</a> who ended up in a Toronto asylum. </p>
<p>These are all indications that King had a wide knowledge of opium’s baneful influences. But the focus on King fails to recognize that change comes through a convergence of forces. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227811/original/file-20180716-44079-3pswq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227811/original/file-20180716-44079-3pswq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227811/original/file-20180716-44079-3pswq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227811/original/file-20180716-44079-3pswq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227811/original/file-20180716-44079-3pswq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227811/original/file-20180716-44079-3pswq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227811/original/file-20180716-44079-3pswq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Samuel Chown is seen in Manitoba in 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(United Church of Canada Archives/Creative Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the same time that King was heading to Vancouver to issue reparations, prominent Methodist minister <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/samuel-dwight-chown/">Samuel Dwight Chown</a> was already there, on the encouragement of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, to investigate opium smoking.</p>
<p>Among other things, Chown described in <a href="http://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c1907/554?r=0&s=1">correspondence with Laurier</a> the concerns expressed by members of what he called the “better class” of the Canadian Chinese community about opium smoking among their compatriots living in Canada. </p>
<p>Was lack of debate on the Opium Act also evidence that the measure solely targeted Chinese in Canada? Not necessarily considering the broader parliamentary process and the fact that MPs were highly familiar with the issue of opium use. </p>
<p>Since the PPMA had been discussed repeatedly over three years, they did not need to revisit the issue. Opium’s baneful influences were indeed very well-known. </p>
<h2>The Opium Drug Act</h2>
<p>Although opium smoking was a habit enjoyed by some Chinese, King claimed <a href="https://theprovince.com/feature/from-opium-to-fentanyl-how-did-we-get-here">it was not exclusively a Chinese problem.</a> White “bohemians” were also reportedly fond of opium.</p>
<p>In 1911, concerns about non-medical drug use were consolidated into the Opium and Drug Act. It broadened the substances restricted for non-medical use to include morphine and cocaine, and increased the penalties for trafficking. </p>
<p>These are the foundations of Canada’s drug laws. They were built on decades of increased restriction, first at the provincial level and later at the federal. They embodied concerns about how legitimate medicines were being flaunted by people seeking a thrill, escape or palliation. </p>
<p>Some of these people were Chinese. Many of them were not. </p>
<p>More than 100 years later, this tension between legitimate/medical and illegitimate/non-medical use of drugs persists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99910/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Malleck receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. He has previously received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Associated Medical Services. </span></em></p>Canadian drug policy began to take shape well before anti-immigration attacks on Chinese establishments in 1908. Drugs like opium and coke were causing grave public health concerns.Dan Malleck, Associate Professor, Medical History, Department of Health Sciences, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/987392018-06-29T08:47:21Z2018-06-29T08:47:21ZHundreds of Mexican politicians have died in the run up to the election – but cultural leaders are fighting back<p>Mexican <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/mexican-elections-2018-38558">presidential elections</a> are to be held on July 1. Congress members will also be elected. The front runner for president is the seasoned left-wing candidate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/opinion/mexico-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-amlo.html">Andrés Manuel López Obrador</a> who, with his MORENA national regeneration movement, is looking to overturn the political dominance of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). </p>
<p>Many have faith that AMLO, as he is known, will tackle corruption and bring increased social justice to Mexico. Others fear that he will be autocratic and his policies could <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexicos-next-president-could-be-a-leftist-demagogue-or-a-practical-reformer-hes-the-same-man/2018/06/20/e570ba3a-6998-11e8-a335-c4503d041eaf_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a80015368afe">damage the Mexican economy</a>. </p>
<p>What has been most troubling about the pre-election political campaign has been the extreme violence that has characterised it. Some 132 politicians and party workers have been <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/27/americas/mexico-political-deaths-election-season-trnd/index.html">killed</a> and 300 attacked (at the time of writing). Hundreds of candidates have pulled out of the elections <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/karlazabludovsky/113-politicians-killed-this-election-season-in-mexico?utm_term=.nveK42Ev44#.phneoKQ6oo">in fear of their lives</a>. Carlos Figueroa Ibarra, head of human rights at MORENA, puts this figure at an astonishing <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/karlazabludovsky/113-politicians-killed-this-election-season-in-mexico?utm_term=.nveK42Ev44#.phneoKQ6oo">600 politicians</a>.</p>
<p>If politicians, from whatever party, seek to tackle corruption or criminal activities, they quickly become targets of organised crime. Drug cartels, in particular, are using the elections to ensure that politicians seeking election do not <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/26/more-than-100-politicians-murdered-in-mexico-ahead-of-election.html">threaten their power bases</a>. They are using <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election-violence/we-are-watching-you-political-killings-shake-mexico-election-idUSKBN1HP0HV">homicide</a> as a strategy to maintain political control over local communities. </p>
<p>This is linked to a wider problem, with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/25/as-mexico-election-nears-candidates-show-no-sound-plans-to-stem-violence">30,000 murders</a> committed last year, principally as a result of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/dec/08/mexico-war-on-drugs-cost-achievements-us-billions">failed war on drugs</a>.</p>
<h2>El Día Después</h2>
<p>So Mexico’s political culture is in a state of crisis. In response, Mexican cultural figures, led by the actor and director Diego Luna, are fighting back with their movement <a href="http://eldiadespues.mx"><em>El Día Después</em></a> (The Day After). The movement is seeking radical change by appealing to citizens, transcending party politics while being deeply socially engaged. The movement’s <a href="http://eldiadespues.mx/quienes-somos/">website</a> informs us that it is: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A citizen’s initiative that invites Mexican society to act with empathy during the electoral process, particularly from July 2 when the challenge of adapting to a new reality and resolving our differences begins.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Diego Luna is joined by high profile figures from the film and culture industry including the actor Gael García Bernal, directors Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro, and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. </p>
<p>This is no headline grabbing case of celebrity activism. While media sources, unsurprisingly, are <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/english/diego-luna-presents-the-day-after-initiative">highlighting these names</a>, they are joined by many highly regarded <a href="http://eldiadespues.mx/quienes-somos/">journalists, political analysts, academics, singers, musicians, and novelists</a>. The movement is non-partisan and has deliberately refrained from supporting one candidate over another. Yet, it is deeply critical of the behaviour of politicians on the campaign trail and their adversarial tactics. </p>
<p>In this way, the movement connects political leaders with the political violence, and holds them indirectly – or even directly in some cases – responsible for it.</p>
<h2>A manifesto for change</h2>
<p>In one <a href="https://youtu.be/B8T7JKCBR5Y">video</a> made for <em>El Día Después</em>, directed by Gabriela Loaria and coproduced by Diego Luna and Diego Rabasa, the behaviour of the politicians is explicitly linked to the violence on the streets and to deepening divisions in society.</p>
<p>In one sequence, a speaker critiques the way reasoned debate “is being replaced by attacks, and low blows”. This is accompanied by clips and images of political figures engaging in crude name-calling, followed by images of fighting members of the public.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/B8T7JKCBR5Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The video is a composite of voices of prominent Mexican cultural and intellectual figures: journalists, academics, citizen’s rights groups, lawyers, and human rights activists. All call for dialogue, reconciliation, empathy, political accountability and citizen empowerment. As political violence takes a firmer hold in Mexico with the election campaigns, these figures are using their cultural status to seek a lasting shift in political culture.</p>
<p>As the name suggests, <em>El Día Después</em> sets its sights beyond the election; it is ambitious and utopian. It is rooted in a <a href="http://eldiadespues.mx">12-point manifesto</a> that promotes peace and tolerance, indigenous rights and voices, freedom to choose gender identities and women’s rights. It professes solidarity with undocumented migrants and Mexicans in the US, support for education, culture, science and the arts, respect for the environment, freedom of expression, and accountability of the government of the day. It forcefully denounces corruption, poverty and inequality, racism, classism, homophobia and discrimination against the disabled. </p>
<p>The manifesto does not, and perhaps cannot, offer specific solutions to drug-related violence and crime. Nonetheless, it is a broad appeal to end corruption and impunity, and to hold those in positions of power accountable.</p>
<p>Time will tell how successful the initiative will be, but at the time of writing – and only days after its launch – <a href="http://eldiadespues.mx">34,058 people</a> have signed the manifesto.</p>
<p>This is an important initiative led by the cultural and intellectual elite, but for all Mexicans. Mexico is leading the way in peaceful citizen activism and can offer an important lesson for the rest of the world in times of deep disillusionment with global political leadership.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98739/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deborah Shaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>El Día Después is an important initiative led by the cultural and intellectual elite, for all Mexicans.Deborah Shaw, Reader in Film Studies, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/905742018-02-22T11:40:22Z2018-02-22T11:40:22ZA record 29,000 Mexicans were murdered last year – can soldiers stop the bloodshed?<p>Mexico’s war on drugs has left <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/2017/11/23/pena-y-calderon-suman-234-mil-muertos-y-2017-es-oficialmente-el-ano-mas-violento-en-la-historia-reciente-de-mexico_a_23284/">234,966 people dead</a> in the last 11 years. In 2017 alone, the country saw some <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/incidencia-delictiva/incidencia-delictiva-datos-abiertos.php">29,000 murders</a>, the highest annual tally since such record-keeping began in 1997.</p>
<p>For years, incensed Mexicans have demanded that President Enrique Peña Nieto – now in the final stretch of his six-year term – take action. Recently, lawmakers from his Revolutionary Institutional Party proposed a controversial solution: <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-military-is-a-lethal-killing-force-should-it-really-be-deployed-as-police-75521">Put Mexico’s military on the streets to fight crime</a>.</p>
<p>Despite <a href="https://www.efe.com/efe/america/mexico/cientos-de-mexicanos-protestan-contra-la-ley-seguridad-interior/50000545-3473403">protests</a> and <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2017/12/15/mexico/1513305281_940878.html">warnings from human rights advocates</a>, who say the law will actually escalate violence, on Dec. 15, 2017, the <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/12/ley-seguridad-interior-senado-aprobo/">Mexican Senate approved the Internal Security Law</a>. </p>
<p>Just before Christmas, Peña Nieto <a href="http://www.dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5508716&fecha=21/12/2017">signed the legislation into law</a>. In response, activists <a href="http://www.proceso.com.mx/513459/tinen-rojo-fuentes-la-cdmx-en-protesta-la-ley-seguridad-interior">poured red paint</a> in fountains across Mexico City to symbolize the bloodshed it would usher in.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"936709494838583296"}"></div></p>
<h2>A military history of massacres</h2>
<p>I’ve been <a href="https://scholars.uow.edu.au/display/luis_gomez_romero">studying</a> the violence in my home country for decades. While something must be done to stem the bloodshed, history shows that militarizing law enforcement will hurt rather than help.</p>
<p>Mexico’s military has actually been fighting crime informally for over a decade. In 2006, former President Felipe Calderón sent <a href="http://calderon.presidencia.gob.mx/2006/12/anuncio-sobre-la-operacion-conjunta-michoacan/">6,500 soldiers</a> to battle cartels in the state of Michoacán. And they never really stopped. </p>
<p>The consequences have been grave. Between 2012 and 2016, Mexico’s attorney general launched 505 investigations into alleged <a href="https://www.wola.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/WOLA_MILITARY-CRIMES_REP_ENGLISH.pdf">human rights abuses</a> – including torture and forced disappearances – committed by the military. </p>
<p>In 2014, soldiers shot 22 unarmed citizens in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/mexican-soldiers-ordered-to-kill-in-san-pedro-limon-claim-rights-activists">the town of Tlatlaya</a>. Later that year, the army was allegedly involved in the <a href="https://aristeguinoticias.com/2511/mexico/la-verdadera-noche-de-iguala-la-historia-que-se-ha-querido-ocultar-primeroscapitulos/">unsolved kidnapping</a> of 43 students from a teachers college in southern Mexico. </p>
<p>Much of the military’s extrajudicial violence is undocumented and investigations move slowly, so crimes by the armed forces have been difficult to prosecute. In 11 years, <a href="https://www.wola.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/WOLA_MILITARY-CRIMES_REP_ENGLISH.pdf">only 16 soldiers</a> have been convicted of human rights abuses in civilian courts. </p>
<p>Supporters of the Internal Security Law, including Secretary of Defense <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2017/11/30/mexico/1512068744_934615.html">Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos</a>, say the new law will right this wrong. By providing a legal framework for the armed forces to take on law enforcement duties, it ensures stricter regulation and more oversight. </p>
<p>Security experts, on the other hand, call the Internal Security Law <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCjHt9kNUrk">dangerous</a>, saying it delays much-needed police reforms and violates <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Mexico_2015.pdf?lang=en">the Mexican Constitution</a>, which prohibits using the military for Mexico’s public security.</p>
<h2>The authoritarian connection</h2>
<p>The idea of “internal security” has a <a href="https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=35964">dark genealogy</a> in Mexican law. It first appeared just after the country’s independence from Spain, in 1822. According to the short-lived Emperor Agustín de Iturbide, <a href="http://www.ordenjuridico.gob.mx/Constitucion/1823.pdf">his government had the right to protect</a> “the internal order and the external security” of the fledgling nation. </p>
<p>In practice, that meant <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Siglo_de_caudillos.html?id=uuBVAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">persecuting</a> those who had opposed Iturbide’s dissolution of Congress and proclamation of himself as Mexico’s new emperor.</p>
<p>Authoritarian regimes have since invoked “internal security” – which made its way into the country’s 1917 constitution – to fight all sorts of rebels, from <a href="http://www.memoriapoliticademexico.org/Efemerides/1/17011873.html">revolutionaries</a> to student liberals to <a href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0185-25742010000100005">indigenous discontents</a>.</p>
<p>The new Internal Security Law continues this tradition, giving the president <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LSInt_211217.pdf">the right to order federal authorities, including the army and the navy</a>, to intervene when other federal and local forces cannot handle certain “threats to internal security.” </p>
<p>Built-in safeguards are supposed to prevent the government from abusing this power. Within 72 hours of such a threat emerging, the president must publish a “designation of protection” that details the specific place and limited time frame of military occupation. </p>
<p>In practice, though, these requirements are optional. <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LSInt_211217.pdf">In cases of “grave danger,”</a> the law says, the president can take “immediate action.” </p>
<p>The new law contains other concerning contradictions. <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LSInt_211217.pdf">One article</a> states that peaceful protests do not constitute a threat to Mexico’s internal security. This should avoid a repeat of the <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97546687">1968 Tlatelolco massacre</a>, in which soldiers in Mexico City gunned down hundreds of student demonstrators. </p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LSInt_211217.pdf">another article of the law may undermine that provision</a> by deeming “controlling, repelling or neutralizing acts of resistance” to be a legitimate use of military force.</p>
<h2>The most challenged law</h2>
<p>Mexican human rights advocates aren’t the only ones alarmed by the new law. In December, both the <a href="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/54ff874b5ab8ff86ab68f4f15/files/98325428-ba9e-4fb1-9f4e-1872076742da/20171218_ComPrensa_LSI.pdf">United Nations</a> and <a href="http://alzatuvoz.org/n3/correos/comunicados/archivos/20171218-%20Carta%20de%20Salil%20Shetty%20a%20Enrique%20Pe%C3%B1a%20Nieto%20-%20Ley%20de%20Seguridad.pdf">Amnesty International</a> asked the president to veto it. </p>
<p>Instead, Peña Nieto approved the law but <a href="https://www.gob.mx/presidencia/es/articulos/43-sesion-del-consejo-nacional-de-seguridad-publica-141727?idiom=eshttps://www.gob.mx/presidencia/es/articulos/43-sesion-del-consejo-nacional-de-seguridad-publica-141727?idiom=es">declared</a> that it would not be enforced until the Supreme Court can review its constitutionality.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court has now received thousands of legal challenges to the Internal Security Law. Suits alleging that the law encroaches on Mexicans’ basic rights were filed by Mexico’s <a href="https://twitter.com/CNDH/status/954531772422815746?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.elsoldemexico.com.mx%2Fmexico%2Fjusticia%2Fcndh-presenta-accion-de-inconstitucionalidad-contra-ley-de-seguridad-interior-577377.html">National Human Rights Commission</a>, <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/seguridad/diputados-presentan-accion-de-inconstitucionalidad-contra-ley-de-seguridad">188 congressmen</a> and <a href="https://aristeguinoticias.com/1901/mexico/senadores-presentaron-accion-de-inconstitucionalidad-contra-ley-de-seguridad-quebranta-el-pacto-federal-argumentan/">43 senators</a>. More than <a href="http://www.reforma.com/aplicacioneslibre/articulo/default.aspx?id=1314820&md5=db6def01dee25f566c20421d9edaa502&ta=0dfdbac11765226904c16cb9ad1b2efe&lcmd5=12328cc9cec0eb5369c5690feee524d0">12,000</a> citizens have also submitted individual complaints on similar grounds. On Feb. 12, the hugely <a href="https://twitter.com/Javier_Corral/status/963152949080813568">popular governor of Chihuahua, Javier Corral</a>, traveled to Mexico City to personally file a claim in the name of the people of his state.</p>
<p>No date has yet been set for the 11 Supreme Court justices to hear arguments.</p>
<h2>The problem with the police</h2>
<p>Another consequence of the Internal Security Law, in my analysis, is that it will further weaken Mexico’s already troubled police force.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/doc/Diagnostico_Nacional_MOFP.pdf">December 2017 government report</a>, Mexico has just 0.8 police officers per 1,000 inhabitants – less than half what the U.N. – recommends. </p>
<p>The report also notes that just 1 in 4 officers has received sufficient training. And out of 39 police academies, only 6 satisfy the minimum conditions – for example, dormitories, medical services or training infrastructure – to be considered fully functional. </p>
<p>Mexico’s police are also widely perceived as <a href="https://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/country?country=mexico">corrupt</a> and <a href="http://www.udlap.mx/igimex/assets/files/igimex2016_ESP.pdf">ineffective</a>. In part, that’s due to their low salaries. Currently, officers in poor states like Chiapas and Tabasco earn about half the federally recommended minimum monthly salary of 9,993 pesos, or US$500. </p>
<p>To supplement their poverty wages, as Mexicans well know, many police officers have traditionally turned to <a href="https://abelquezada.mx/index.php/personajes/11-galeria-de-personajes/13-el-policia">petty bribery</a>. More recently, some police have gotten involved in more lucrative criminal activity, <a href="https://www.infobae.com/america/mexico/2017/07/06/la-linea-el-nuevo-grupo-criminal-que-se-perfila-como-el-modelo-de-los-carteles-mexicanos-del-futuro/">working with the same drug cartels</a> they’re supposed to be fighting.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bKjn26agAEs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Distrust of the police is a common trope in Mexican pop culture.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Successive Mexican governments have used the shortcomings in the police force to justify sending in soldiers and marines, claiming it’s a <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/blogueros-ruta-critica/2017/01/18/la-permanente-intervencion-temporal-del-ejercito/">provisional measure to get crime under control</a> while the police are professionalized. The new law has turned this temporary solution into national policy. </p>
<h2>A spectacular failure</h2>
<p>The military <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/10/mexico-drug-cartels-soldiers-military?CMP=share_btn_tw">is not exempt</a> from corruption. </p>
<p>The brutal Zetas cartel, infamous for <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/08/06/mexico.drug.cartels/index.html">beheadings and indiscriminate slaughter</a>, was <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=GrMmHs7ArpwC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">originally formed</a> by deserters of the Mexican army’s elite special forces. </p>
<p>The claim that the military can keep Mexicans safe was recently put to its first test. In January President Peña Nieto <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/01/pena-nieto-violencia-reynosa/">had to cancel a trip</a> to the city of Reynosa, in Tamaulipas state, where criminal groups have been violently clashing. The army said it could not guarantee his safety there. </p>
<p>If the military cannot even protect the president, Mexicans ask, what hope do the people have?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90574/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Exactly 234,966 people have died in Mexico’s 11-year drug war. Now the government wants to deploy soldiers to criminal hot spots, a move many fear will just increase violence and weaken the police.Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/819732017-09-18T01:05:58Z2017-09-18T01:05:58ZHow the government can steal your stuff: 6 questions about civil asset forfeiture answered<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186223/original/file-20170915-4751-1m3uwx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The authorities don't need a conviction or even for a suspect to be charged with a crime before seizing a car, cash or even a house.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/confused-young-man-car-stopped-by-326490668?src=BLnKw0rBmzBYdpKmWYQMSw-1-1">Photographee.eu/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: Should someone wearing a badge have the power to relieve a suspected drug dealer of his Maserati on the spot without giving him an opportunity to flee or liquidate and launder his assets? Known as civil asset forfeiture, this practice might sound like a wise policy.</em></p>
<p><em>But <a href="https://raskin.house.gov/media/press-releases/house-approves-walberg-raskin-amendment-curb-civil-asset-forfeiture-abuse">lawmakers on both sides of the aisle</a> in Congress <a href="https://www.alec.org/article/states-seize-on-improvement-of-asset-forfeiture-laws/">and the states</a> are challenging the Trump administration’s embrace of the arrangement, which strips billions of dollars a year from Americans – who often have not been charged with a crime. Law professor and criminal justice expert <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=159728">Nora V. Demleitner</a> explains how this procedure works and why it irks conservatives and progressives alike.</em></p>
<h2>1. What is civil asset forfeiture?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.justice.gov/afp/types-federal-forfeiture">Civil asset forfeiture</a>
laws let authorities, such as federal marshals or local sheriffs, seize property – cash, a house, a car, a cellphone – that they suspect is involved in criminal activity. Seizures run the gamut from <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2017/06/13/poor-neighborhoods-hit-hardest-by-asset">12 cans of peas</a> to <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1988-05-21/news/mn-3136_1_coast-guard">multi-million-dollar yachts</a>. </p>
<p>The federal government <a href="https://oversight.gov/report/doj/review-departments-oversight-cash-seizure-and-forfeiture-activities">confiscated assets worth a total of about US$28 billion</a> during the decade ending in 2016, Justice Department data indicate.</p>
<p>In contrast to <a href="https://www.justice.gov/afp/types-federal-forfeiture">criminal forfeiture</a>, which requires that the property owner be convicted of a crime beforehand, the civil variety doesn’t require that the suspect be charged with breaking the law.</p>
<p>Three <a href="https://www.justice.gov/afp/participants-and-roles">Justice Department agencies</a> – the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – do most of this confiscating. Most states also permit local prosecutors to take personal property from people who haven’t been charged with a crime. However, <a href="https://ij.org/activism/legislation/civil-forfeiture-legislative-highlights">some states</a> have begun to limit that practice.</p>
<p>Even when there are restrictions on when and how local and state authorities can seize property, they can circumvent those limits if the federal government “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2011.02.010">adopts</a>” the impounded assets.</p>
<p>For a federal agency to do so requires the alleged misconduct to violate federal law. Local agencies get up to 80% of the shared proceeds back, with the federal agency keeping the rest. The divvying-up is <a href="https://www.justice.gov/criminal-mlars/equitable-sharing-program">known officially</a> as “<a href="http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/federal-equitable-sharing/">equitable sharing</a>.” <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-afmls/legacy/2015/01/26/victims.pdf">Crime victims</a> may also get a cut from the proceeds of civil forfeiture. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">John Oliver’s ‘Last Week Tonight’ segment on civil asset forfeiture in 2014 used humor to help viewers understand the practice.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Can people get their stuff back?</h2>
<p>Technically, the government must demonstrate that the property has something to do with a crime. In reality, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/?utm_term=.a60881a1ed0a">property owners in most states</a> must prove that they legally acquired their confiscated belongings to get them returned. This means the burden is on the owners to dispute these seizures in court. Court challenges tend to arise only when something of great value, like a house, is at stake.</p>
<p>Unless an owner challenges a seizure and effectively proves his innocence in court, the agency that took the property is free to keep the proceeds once the assets are liquidated. </p>
<p>Many low-income people don’t use bank accounts or credit cards. They carry cash instead. If they lose their life savings at a traffic stop, they <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/criminal-justice/reports/2016/04/01/134495/forfeiting-the-american-dream/">can’t afford to hire a lawyer</a> to dispute the seizure, the Center for American Progress – a liberal think tank – has observed.</p>
<p>And disputing civil forfeitures is hard everywhere. Some states require a cash bond; others add a penalty payment should the owner lose. The process is expensive, time-consuming and lengthy, deterring even innocent owners. </p>
<p>There’s no comprehensive data regarding how many people get their stuff back. But over the 10 years ending in September 2016, about 8% of all property owners who had cash seized from them by the DEA had it returned, according to a report from the <a href="https://oversight.gov/report/doj/review-departments-oversight-cash-seizure-and-forfeiture-activities">Justice Department’s inspector general</a>. </p>
<h2>3. Who opposes the practice?</h2>
<p>Many <a href="https://www.cato.org/events/policing-profit-abuse-civil-asset-forfeiture">conservatives</a> and <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2019/04/16/what-supreme-court-ruling-could-mean-civil-asset-forfeiture">progressives</a> dislike civil asset forfeiture. Politicians on the left and right have voiced concerns about the incentives this practice gives law enforcement to abuse its authority.</p>
<p>Critics across the political spectrum also question whether different aspects of civil asset forfeiture violate the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fifth_amendment">Fifth Amendment</a>, which says the government can’t deprive anyone of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” or is unconstitutional for other reasons.</p>
<p>Until now, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/supreme-court-ruling-on-civil-forfeiture-2014-11">Supreme Court</a> and lower courts, however, have consistently <a href="http://law.jrank.org/pages/1231/Forfeiture-Constitutional-challenges.html">upheld civil asset forfeitures</a> when ruling on challenges launched under the Fifth Amendment. The <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/17-1091">same goes for challenges</a> under the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/eighth_amendment">Eighth</a> Amendment, which bars “excessive fines” and “cruel and unusual punishments,” and the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">14th Amendment</a>, which forbids depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”</p>
<p>In 2019, the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/17-1091">Supreme Court</a> unanimously found for the first time that these constitutional protections against excessive fines apply not just to the federal authorities but to the states as well.</p>
<p>Some concerns resonate more strongly for different ideological camps. Conservatives object mostly about how this impounding <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444813/trumps-civil-forfeiture-position-violates-constitution-pleases-sheriffs-who-profit">undermines property rights</a>. </p>
<p>Liberals are outraged that the poor and <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/new-aclu-report-shows-philadelphia-da-seizes-1-million-cash-annually-innocent-philadelphians">communities of color</a> tend to be disproportionately targeted, often causing great hardship to people accused of minor wrongdoing.</p>
<p>Another common critique: The practice encourages overpolicing intended to <a href="http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/following-the-funds/">pad police budgets</a> or accommodate <a href="https://doi.org/10.3386/w10484">tax cuts</a>. Revenue from civil asset forfeitures can amount to a substantial percentage of local police budgets, according to a <a href="http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2015/04/above-law-groundbreaking-new-dpa-report-finds-extensive-civil-asset-forfeiture-abuses-n">Drug Policy Alliance study</a> of this practice in California. This kind of policing can undermine police-community relations.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-9-118000-ag-guidelines-seized-and-forfeited-property">Justice Department</a>’s guidelines state that forfeitures “punish and deter criminal activity by depriving criminals of property used in or acquired through illegal activities.”</p>
<p>However, the <a href="https://oversight.gov/report/doj/review-departments-oversight-cash-seizure-and-forfeiture-activities">Inspector General’s office</a> noted “without evaluating data more systemically, it is impossible for the Department to determine … whether seizures benefit law enforcement efforts, such as advancing criminal investigations and deterring future criminal activity.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186226/original/file-20170915-29578-ewukjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186226/original/file-20170915-29578-ewukjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186226/original/file-20170915-29578-ewukjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186226/original/file-20170915-29578-ewukjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186226/original/file-20170915-29578-ewukjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186226/original/file-20170915-29578-ewukjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186226/original/file-20170915-29578-ewukjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186226/original/file-20170915-29578-ewukjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Critics of civil asset forfeiture argue that it can make policing more about raising revenue than improving public safety.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rear-view-traffic-officer-cautiously-approaching-554652241?src=BLnKw0rBmzBYdpKmWYQMSw-1-0">vincent noel/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. What is the scale of this confiscation?</h2>
<p>The federal revenue raised through this practice, which emerged in the 1970s, mushroomed from $94 million in 1986 to a high of $4.5 billion in 2014, according to the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/afp">Justice Department</a>.</p>
<p>The Justice Department says it returned <a href="https://oversight.gov/report/doj/review-departments-oversight-cash-seizure-and-forfeiture-activities">more than $4 billion</a> in forfeited funds to crime victims between 2000 and 2016, while handing state and local law enforcement entities at least $6 billion through “equitable sharing.”</p>
<p>The scale of seizures on the <a href="https://ij.org/report/forfeiture-transparency-accountability/#key_findings">state</a> and local level is less clear.</p>
<h2>5. What happened during the Obama and Trump administrations?</h2>
<p>Under the leadership of <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-findings-two-civil-rights-investigations-ferguson-missouri">Attorney General Eric Holder</a>, the Obama-era Justice Department determined that civil asset forfeiture was more about making money than public safety. It then <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-prohibits-federal-agency-adoptions-assets-seized-state-and-local-law">changed the guidelines for asset adoption</a>.</p>
<p>Beginning in 2015, joint state-federal task forces could continue to share forfeiture proceeds but <a href="https://oversight.gov/report/doj/review-departments-oversight-cash-seizure-and-forfeiture-activities">state agencies were no longer permitted</a> to ask the federal government to forfeit property they had taken on their own.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sessions-welcomes-expansion-of-asset-forfeiture-i-love-that-program/">I love that program</a>,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in 2017. “We had so much fun doing that, taking drug dealers’ money and passing it out to people trying to put drug dealers in jail. What’s wrong with that?” </p>
<p>Attorney General William Barr, Sessions’ successor in the Trump administration, has also <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/william-barr-confirmation-hearing-attorney-general-watch-live-stream-today-2019-01-15/">defended this policy</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_utq58zyZ7E?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Attorney General Jeff Sessions has expressed astonishment regarding the unpopularity of civil asset forfeiture.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>6. Congress and the states</h2>
<p>When Sessions changed the policy, legislative changes seemed possible. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/misleading-and-wasteful-us-marshals-service-and-assets-forfeiture-fund">Chuck Grassley</a> sent Sessions a memo about how the federal funds obtained from seizures were wasted and misused. In some cases, Grassley wrote, the government provided “misleading details about some of these expenditures.”</p>
<p>The House of Representatives <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/350353-house-votes-to-curb-asset-seizures">voted in 2017 for an amendment that would restrict</a> civil asset forfeiture adoption.</p>
<p>The House also approved a <a href="https://walberg.house.gov/media/press-releases/house-approves-walberg-raskin-amendment-curb-civil-asset-forfeiture-abuse">bipartisan measure</a> restricting civil forfeiture on June 20, 2019. This one goes further though and would substantially curtail the federal government’s powers.</p>
<p>State governments have also tried to discourage this kind of confiscation. <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/evolving-civil-asset-forfeiture-laws.aspx">New Mexico, Nebraska and North Carolina</a> have banned civil forfeiture. <a href="https://www.mackinac.org/mackinac-center-applauds-michigan-civil-asset-forfeiture-reforms">Michigan</a> has made it easier to challenge these seizures. <a href="http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2016/09/california-governor-brown-signs-bill-protecting-californians-civil-asset-forfeiture-abu">California</a> limited equitable sharing, and <a href="https://www.alec.org/article/illinois-legislature-proposes-to-reform-states-civil-asset-forfeiture-laws/">other states</a> have increased the <a href="http://cjonline.com/news-state/2015-10-15/forfeiture-reform-aligns-likes-billionaire-charles-koch-aclu">burden of proof the government must meet</a>. But in many states, <a href="https://taken.pulitzercenter.org">investigative reporting</a> has shown that innocent owners continue to lose their property.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3028074">Georgia Law Review</a> article, I gave examples of other ways to keep police departments and municipalities funded, such as increasing fines and fees. </p>
<p>Unless the police pursue some alternatives, funding woes will continue to contribute to abusive policing practices that fall most heavily on those who can the least afford them: the poor and communities of color.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81973/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nora V. Demleitner is affiliated with the Prison Policy Initiative as a board member.
</span></em></p>Politicians on the left and right object to this practice, which the Trump administration is championing.Nora V. Demleitner, Professor of Criminal and Comparative Law, Washington and Lee UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/745842017-03-16T07:32:30Z2017-03-16T07:32:30ZRodrigo Duterte relaunches Philippine drug war despite calls for investigation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160778/original/image-20170314-10716-11nwivr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Residents look on as a police investigator inspects the body of a suspected drug pusher, along an alley in Quezon city.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romeo Ranoco/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Philippine President <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/world/asia/duterte-philippines-drug-crackdown.html?emc=edit_ae_20170314&nl=todaysheadlines-asia&nlid=64524812&_r=0">Rodrigo Duterte has vowed</a> to continue his “<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/12/philippines-duterte-unleashes-rights-calamity">war on drugs</a>” in spite of growing calls for an investigation into his role in it.</p>
<p>On March 6, the Philippine government <a href="http://www.rappler.com/nation/163358-pnp-relaunches-drug-war-vows-less-bloody-campaign">lifted</a> its suspension on police anti-drug operations. The suspension had been imposed in January following revelations that anti-drug police had <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/19/tentacles-philippine-police-killings-spread">kidnapped and killed a South Korean</a> businessman. </p>
<p>Philippine National Police Director-General Ronald dela Rosa has <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/878603/8-dead-in-double-barrel-crackdown">christened</a> this new phase of the drug war Project Double Barrel Alpha, Reloaded, and <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/878603/8-dead-in-double-barrel-crackdown">has said</a> it will be “less bloody, if not bloodless” than that of the previous eight months. </p>
<p>That bloodshed is unquestionable: police and “unidentified gunmen” have killed more than <a href="http://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/145814-numbers-statistics-philippines-war-drugs">7,000</a> suspected drug users and drug dealers since July 2016.</p>
<h2>Extrajudicial killings</h2>
<p>The body count in the first 24 hours since the resumption of police anti-drug operations indicate that the slaughter will only continue. </p>
<p>Police <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/878603/8-dead-in-double-barrel-crackdown">killed</a> at least eight suspected “drug personalities” on day one. That included a couple killed in a <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/878727/9-year-old-girl-hurt-parents-killed-in-lanao-sur-anti-drug-operations">raid</a> involving police backed by soldiers in the southern island of Mindanao. </p>
<p>As has become the norm, the police tried to justify those deaths on the dubious basis that the suspects “<a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/878603/8-dead-in-double-barrel-crackdown">fought back</a>.” </p>
<p>Our research at Human Rights Watch found that the police have repeatedly carried out extrajudicial killings of drug suspects, and then <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/02/philippines-police-deceit-drug-war-killings">falsely claimed</a> self-defense. They plant guns, spent ammunition, and drug packets on their victims’ bodies to implicate them in drug activities.</p>
<p>The Philippines’ official Commission on Human Rights has <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/877372/chr-bucks-oplan-tokhang-resumption">decried</a> the resumption of police anti-drug operations as “arbitrary” and “susceptible to abuse.” It has blamed the anti-drug campaign for causing “thousands to be killed without due process,” but dela Rosa dismissed those concerns by <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/877372/chr-bucks-oplan-tokhang-resumption">claiming</a> that police “have not killed anybody for nothing.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160779/original/image-20170314-10720-n8hjxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160779/original/image-20170314-10720-n8hjxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160779/original/image-20170314-10720-n8hjxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160779/original/image-20170314-10720-n8hjxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160779/original/image-20170314-10720-n8hjxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160779/original/image-20170314-10720-n8hjxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160779/original/image-20170314-10720-n8hjxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Philippine National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa announces the re-launch of police anti-narcotics operations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Romeo Ranoco/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The director general of police has been in no hurry to confirm the Commission on Human Rights’ claim. He has <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/795314/leila-seeks-immediate-probe">resisted</a> calls for an independent inquiry into those <a href="http://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/145814-numbers-statistics-philippines-war-drugs">2,555 killings</a> attributed to the police during the previous phase of the anti-drug crackdown by declaring it would harm police “morale.”</p>
<p>Ronald dela Rosa is taking his cues from Duterte, who has rejected all <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/876993/duterte-renews-attack-on-church-as-he-defends-war-on-drugs">criticism</a> of his drug war and declared that the anti-drug operations will <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/866493/duterte-extends-deadly-drug-war">continue</a> until the end of his term in 2022. </p>
<p>“There will be more killings,” Duterte <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/876993/duterte-renews-attack-on-church-as-he-defends-war-on-drugs">vowed</a> on March 2, “it won’t end tomorrow for as long as there is a drug pusher and drug lord.” </p>
<h2>Police and vigilantes</h2>
<p>Duterte has repeatedly claimed that the carnage of his drug war is a life and death battle against shadowy “drug lords.” But in the several dozen cases <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/02/philippines-police-deceit-drug-war-killings">investigated</a> by Human Rights Watch, the victims of drug-related killings were either unemployed or worked menial jobs, including as drivers or porters, and lived in slums or informal settlements. </p>
<p>Duterte has even <a href="http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/08/17/drug-war-only-targeting-the-poor-thats-how-it-is-says-duterte">defended</a> the killings of poor Filipinos in the drug war, saying they represent “the apparatus” of illegal drug use.“</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160775/original/image-20170314-10755-18ckhmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160775/original/image-20170314-10755-18ckhmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160775/original/image-20170314-10755-18ckhmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160775/original/image-20170314-10755-18ckhmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160775/original/image-20170314-10755-18ckhmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160775/original/image-20170314-10755-18ckhmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160775/original/image-20170314-10755-18ckhmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A family member of a victim in President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war holds a placard during a prayer rally in Quezon city.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Erik De Castro/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And while the police are only now officially returning to the anti-drug fight, those "unidentified gunmen” have continued to kill with impunity. Their victims <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-drugs-idUSKBN16845Q">include</a> 22-year-old Jomar Palamar and his 20-year-old girlfriend Juday Escilona, shot dead on March 1 as they emerged from a convenience store in a Manila slum area. </p>
<p>Local neighbourhood government officials <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-drugs-idUSKBN16845Q">say</a> the two were on a police watch list for allegedly being drug users. Two nights later, unidentified gunmen <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/877476/gunmen-kill-5-in-qc-as-cops-regroup-for-drug-war-resumption">killed</a> five more suspected drug users within hours in Manila’s Quezon City.</p>
<p>The police attribute at least <a href="http://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/145814-numbers-statistics-philippines-war-drugs">3,603</a> drug war killings to these “unidentified gunmen” or “vigilantes.” They classify those killings as “deaths under investigation,” but there is a palpable lack of curiosity to identify the killers. </p>
<p>Although the Philippine National Police have <a href="http://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/145814-numbers-statistics-philippines-war-drugs">classified</a> a total of 922 killings as “cases where investigation has concluded,” there is no evidence that those probes have resulted in the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators.</p>
<h2>Legal fiction</h2>
<p>The official narrative regarding “unidentified gunmen” is in fact a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/02/philippines-police-deceit-drug-war-killings">legal fiction</a> designed to shield police from culpability in death squad-style extrajudicial killings. </p>
<p>While the police have publicly sought to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/03/01/license-kill/philippine-police-killings-dutertes-war-drugs#af2c79">distinguish</a> between suspects killed while resisting arrest and killings by “unknown gunmen” or “vigilantes,” Human Rights Watch <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/02/philippines-police-deceit-drug-war-killings">research</a> found no such distinction in the cases investigated. </p>
<p>In several of those cases, the police dismissed allegations of involvement and instead classified such killings as “found bodies” or “deaths under investigation” when only hours before the suspects had been in police custody. Interviews with witnesses to killings, relatives of victims and analysis of police records expose a damning pattern of unlawful police conduct designed to paint a veneer of legality over summary executions. </p>
<p>Masked gunmen taking part in killings appeared to be working closely with the police, casting doubt on government claims that most killings have been committed by vigilantes or rival drug gangs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160776/original/image-20170314-10735-zziwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160776/original/image-20170314-10735-zziwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160776/original/image-20170314-10735-zziwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160776/original/image-20170314-10735-zziwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160776/original/image-20170314-10735-zziwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160776/original/image-20170314-10735-zziwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160776/original/image-20170314-10735-zziwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Residents carry the coffin of an alleged drug dealer, whom police said they killed in a buy bust drug operation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Erik De Castro/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s clear that the Duterte government is unwilling to initiate a credible and impartial inquiry into this carnage. Anything short of a United Nations-sponsored <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/03/01/license-kill/philippine-police-killings-dutertes-war-drugs#5259ae">independent international investigation</a> will only ensure that the killings continue. </p>
<p>Until there’s an urgent and loud international response, there’s no end in sight for Duterte’s drug war.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phelim Kine works for Human Rights Watch as the deputy director of Asia division and supervises HRW's Philippines' research and advocacy. He supervised the research project the results of which are cited in this piece. </span></em></p>After a short suspension of anti-drug operations, President Rodrigo Duterte has resumed his bloody war.Phelim Kine, Adjunct Professor, Roosevelt Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, City University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/703632017-01-06T07:56:06Z2017-01-06T07:56:06ZIs the US really ready to end its drug war?<p>In recent years an international movement to <a href="https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GCDP_WaronDrugs_EN.pdf">reform global narcotics policies</a> has been growing, with activists and presidents alike declaring that the United States’ “war on drugs” has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/19/war-on-drugs-statistics-systematic-policy-failure-united-nations">failed</a>. Now it seems the US has finally gotten the message – from <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/index.php/es/">Latin America</a>, at least, whose nations have long <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">borne the brunt</a> of international drug prohibition. </p>
<p>On December 16, president Barack Obama signed <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/1635/actions">into law</a> a bipartisan commission to assess four decades of US counter-narcotics policies and programmes in Latin America. The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1812">Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission Act</a>, introduced by <a href="https://engel.house.gov/latest-news1/engel-salmon-reintroduce-drug-policy-review-bill/">Democrat Eliot Engel and Republican Matt Salmon</a>, represents a potentially significant shift in American foreign policy towards its southern neighbours. </p>
<p>American drug policy is already under indictment domestically. <a href="http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana-legalization-and-regulation">Eight states and Washington, DC</a> have legalised recreational marijuana, in conflict with <a href="http://www.fda.gov/regulatoryinformation/legislation/ucm148726.htm">federal law</a>.</p>
<p>In the 2016 election, supporters of state-level initiatives to regulate cannabis in <a href="http://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2016/general/en/pdf/complete-vig.pdf">California</a>, <a href="http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/citizens/regtaxmari.doc">Maine</a>, <a href="http://www.mass.gov/ago/docs/government/2015-petitions/15-27.pdf">Massachusetts</a> and <a href="http://nvsos.gov/sos/home/showdocument?id=3294">Nevada</a>, argued that it would generate tax revenue, lower policing costs and undermine the black market. </p>
<p>The new commission’s <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/1635/text#toc-HFEC6F03EEB00487DAF6794D811D819BA">comprehensive review</a> will weigh those concerns and others internationally. It will assess the success of US drug policies in Latin America in reducing the supply and abuse of drugs, and the damages associated with illicit drug markets. It will evaluate alternative policy models and make reform recommendations. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151671/original/image-20170103-18665-9oibs7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151671/original/image-20170103-18665-9oibs7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151671/original/image-20170103-18665-9oibs7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151671/original/image-20170103-18665-9oibs7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151671/original/image-20170103-18665-9oibs7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151671/original/image-20170103-18665-9oibs7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151671/original/image-20170103-18665-9oibs7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Secretary of State Colin Powell visiting Colombia in support of Plan Colombia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Colpolwpowell.png">whitehouse.gov</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The price of aid</h2>
<p>Two topics within the commission’s broad mandate could lead to a shift in American aid to the region. </p>
<p>First, the group’s evaluation of US counter-narcotics assistance will put Plan Colombia under the microscope, a <a href="https://www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/fs/2012/187926.htm">US$8 billion</a> programme created in 1999 as a strategy to combat Colombian drug cartels and left-wing insurgent groups. It will also appraise the <a href="https://www.state.gov/j/inl/merida/">US$2.5 billion</a> Mérida Initiative, launched by the US and Mexico in 2007 to fight drug trafficking and money laundering. </p>
<p>Both programmes have been criticised for causing human rights <a href="https://www.wola.org/2015/07/the-united-states-should-withhold-conditioned-merida-initiative-aid-from-mexico/">violations</a> and conspicuously <a href="https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/drug-trafficking/">failing to prevent</a> drug production or trafficking. </p>
<p>They’ve also carried a hefty price tag for the two target countries. <a href="https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/Milex-constant-USD.pdf">Matching the US’s US$8 billion in expenditure</a>, Colombia has spent <a href="http://noticias.caracoltv.com/colombia/lo-que-le-cuesta-colombia-en-dinero-la-lucha-contra-las-farc">four times</a> more per year on Plan Colombia than it earns in coffee exports. Mexico has increased its security and defence budget by approximately <a href="http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/12/28/mexico/1482898296_231627.html">15% per year</a> over the past decade, investing <a href="https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/Milex-constant-USD.pdf">US$7.5 billion</a> annually to fight cartels. Yet the country <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/2016/09/recortes-presupuesto-2017-hacienda/">anticipates cuts</a> to infrastructure, education, environment and health in 2017.</p>
<p>A second significant agenda item is reconsidering the “decertification” <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:22%20section:2291j-1%20edition:prelim)">policy</a>. This mechanism conscripts designated countries into America’s drug war by threatening them with combined aid and trade sanctions if they are determined to have “<a href="http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:22%20section:2291j-1%20edition:prelim)">failed demonstrably</a>” to make substantial efforts to reduce illicit drug production.</p>
<p>Since the 1990s, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/03/03/us-bogota-what-went-wrong-this-is-a-decertification-not-of-colombia-but-of-president-samper/d46219cd-2c84-4eef-b041-632121cddab0/?utm_term=.f83f091b84ed">Colombia</a> and <a href="https://www.wola.org/2009/09/us-decertification-of-bolivia-a-blast-from-the-past/">Bolivia</a> have both been decertified. Even the mere threat of decertification gives the US a potent weapon against reluctant governments and limits countries’ ability to alter policies they perceive to be failing.</p>
<h2>Because we say so</h2>
<p>In 1962 American elder statesman Dean Acheson defended the role the US played in the Cuban missile crisis, claiming that US responses to any challenge to its “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25657563?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">power, position, and prestige</a>” are above and beyond law.</p>
<p>Noam Chomsky has famously interpreted this cynical contention as the key principle of American foreign policy: <a href="https://books.google.com.ar/books/about/Because_We_Say_So.html?id=AMR0CgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">US actions are legitimate whenever the US says so</a>. Military power has thus enabled the US to always be, or claim to be, right. </p>
<p>That principle has been at the heart of the war on drugs since its <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/">launch by president Richard Nixon</a> in 1971. If the Western Hemispheric Commission fulfils its mandate, it will represent an unprecedented exercise of self-criticism for a country that has employed a repertoire of bullying tactics – many of them illegal – over its four-decade international fight against narcotics.</p>
<p>Take the 1990s money-laundering sting “<a href="http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/51411.html">Casablanca</a>” in Mexico, for example. In this covert operation, in which several Mexican citizens were arrested, undercover US Customs agents bribed mid-level Mexican bank employees to convert drug profits into legitimate bank accounts. It was conducted <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/19/world/us-indicts-26-mexican-bankers-in-laundering-of-drug-funds.html">without the knowledge of the Mexican government</a> and in violation of its <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1998/jun/24/news/mn-63186">federal law</a>.</p>
<p>In 1989, the US military actually invaded Panama, detaining the dictator Manuel Noriega and flying him to the US to face charges for drug trafficking. US intelligence officials had known for years that Noriega was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/27/manuel-noriega-us-friend-foe">involved in the cocaine trade</a>, but they overlooked it because of his <strong>assistance with</strong> their <a href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/index.html">covert military operations</a> in the region – until, that is, Noriega <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/06/world/noriega-indicted-by-us-for-links-to-illegal-drugs.html?pagewanted=1">was indicted</a> on drug trafficking charges in Florida. </p>
<p>The invasion provoked international outrage, with the UN General Assembly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/30/world/after-noriega-united-nations-deal-reached-un-panama-seat-invasion-condemned.html?pagewanted=1">voting</a> 75 to 20 to condemn it as a violation of international law.</p>
<p>Extradition, in which the US demands accused drug traffickers be brought to the US for trial, is another favoured heavy-handed policy. The governments of <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/01/28/politica/009n2pol">Mexico</a>, <a href="http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-598870">Colombia</a>, and <a href="http://www.ipsnoticias.net/1996/01/drogas-y-narcotrafico-bolivia-paz-zamora-lanza-candidatura-presidencial/">Bolivia</a> have at various junctures complained that extradition is an implicit vote of no confidence that undermines their own criminal justice systems.</p>
<p>In 1991, Colombia <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/20/world/drug-baron-gives-up-in-colombia-as-end-to-extradition-is-approved.html">banned extradition</a> as part of an agreement between the Colombian government and Pablo Escobar. Once he was guaranteed <a href="http://www.proyectopabloescobar.com/2011/04/comunicado-de-los-extraditables.html">not to face trial in the US</a>, the cartel leader immediately surrendered. The ban was overturned when president Ernesto Samper sought to restore Colombia’s US certification, which American officials <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GAOREPORTS-T-NSIAD-98-103/html/GAOREPORTS-T-NSIAD-98-103.htm">had withdrawn</a> in retaliation in 1996 and 1997–a US drug policy one-two punch.</p>
<h2>A chance for peace?</h2>
<p>For Latin American people the aggressive strategies of the US seem arbitrary and hypocritical coming from a country where some 24.6 million individuals – <a href="https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/nationwide-trends">9.4% of the population</a> – use illicit drugs, and marijuana is <a href="http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000881">increasingly legal</a>.</p>
<p>Yet the war on drugs rages on, leaving <a href="http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/Development_and_security_Spanish.pdf">hundreds of thousands</a> of dead in its wake – because, to cite the Acheson-Chomsky principle, the US says so. At a minimum, the commission’s review could usher in more evidence-based policy. </p>
<p>Reducing the harms caused by current drug policies should be the guiding criterion for the commission’s work. Following Immanuel Kant’s <a href="https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/gutenberg.org/5/0/9/2/50922/50922-h/50922-h.htm">first principle</a> for effective pacifism, the exhaustion caused by war will not be sufficient for sustainable peace in the Western Hemisphere; rather it requires, above all else, a sincere intention to definitively end hostilities.</p>
<p>This means the ultimate success of the commission will depend on whether the next administration facilitates its work. Barack Obama may have set up the commission, but the ball is now in Donald Trump’s court.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70363/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Will America end its aggressive counter-narcotics strategy, which has battered Latin America for four decades?Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/700362016-12-11T23:18:28Z2016-12-11T23:18:28ZA decade of murder and grief: Mexico’s drug war turns ten<p>A few weeks before the Mexico’s 2006 election, La Familia Michoacana — among the most vicious of Mexico’s major drug cartels – tossed <a href="http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/estados/62434.html">five severed heads</a> onto the dance floor of the <em>Sol y Sombra</em> night club in Uruapan, Michoacán, along with a message outlining its strategy for targeted killings, which it called “divine justice”. </p>
<p>As this gruesome incident rekindled the debate on national security, candidate Felipe Calderón, who went on to win the election, made a campaign promise: to fix the country’s drug problem. Calderón would be only the second Mexican leader who did not hail from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which had ruled for most of the 20th century. His campaign presented him as the only honest alternative to the PRI’s corrupt legacy. “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPPbhwlOrfk">My hands are clean</a>”, claimed his ads. </p>
<p>On December 11, 2006, days after taking office, Calderón launched the “<a href="http://calderon.presidencia.gob.mx/2006/12/anuncio-sobre-la-operacion-conjunta-michoacan/"><em>Operativo Conjunto Michoacán</em></a>” – Operation Michoacán – sending some 6,500 soldiers, marines and federal police to the state. Its aim, according to minister of the interior Francisco Ramírez Acuña, was to “take back” a country that had been “seized” by organised crime. He also asked Mexicans for patience, cautioning that the fight would take time.</p>
<p>All this was exactly ten years ago. Today, Mexico’s drug war rages on, virtually unchanged. It is time to ask: what has the decade-long cartel strategy achieved?</p>
<h2>Another failed American war</h2>
<p>As one must when assessing war, let’s start with the casualties. <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16578&LangID=E">150,000 people have died</a> in Mexico’s drug war since 2006, and another <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/rnped/consulta-publica.php">30,000 are missing</a>. Many victims of this decade of murder and grief have been unheralded, but some have made the headlines: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/mexican-soldiers-ordered-to-kill-in-san-pedro-limon-claim-rights-activists">22 civilians</a> summarily executed by the army in Tlatlaya, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/world/americas/missing-mexican-students-suffered-a-night-of-terror-investigators-say.html">43 students</a> who disappeared without a trace in Ayotzinapa in 2014. </p>
<p>The death toll far exceeds the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-staggering-death-toll-of-mexicos-drug-war/">103,000 civilians killed</a> in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2007 and 2014. By 2012, Mexico’s homicide rate was among the world’s highest, at <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5">21 per 100,000</a>.</p>
<p>Researchers at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica have found that in Mexico the <a href="http://ppd.cide.edu/en/indice-de-letalidad">deadliness ratio</a> – that is, the proportion of civilians injured compared those killed – is alarmingly high. In 2014, the army killed 168 civilians and injured 23 (deadliness ratio: 7.3), while the Marines injured 1 and killed 74 (deadliness ratio: 74). It’s little surprise the Marines are the favoured military force in fighting the drug war.</p>
<p>Despite this violent law enforcement, drugs have continued the steady flow north to the United States, the <a href="https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/239560.pdf">world’s largest consumer</a> of cocaine; <a href="https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/239560.pdf">84% of that cocaine</a> enters via the Mexican border. Between 2005 and 2011, the height of Calderón’s war, the US Border Patrol seized <a href="http://static.apps.cironline.org/border-seizures/">13.2 million pounds of marijuana</a>. In 2015, Border Patrol seized more than <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CBP%20FY15%20Border%20Security%20Report_12-21_0.pdf">2 million pounds</a> of all sorts of drugs.</p>
<p>Mexico’s drug war actually predates Calderón. The term “War on Drugs” came into common usage after American president Richard Nixon established the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973 to conduct “<a href="https://www.dea.gov/about/history.shtml">an all-out global war on the drug menace</a>.” </p>
<p>Since then, both the US and Mexico have fought that war, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/dec/08/mexico-war-on-drugs-cost-achievements-us-billions">at great cost</a>. Mexico has spent at least $54 billion on security and defence, with <a href="http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2016/vol1/253288.htm">US donations of at least $1.5 billion</a>. That amount includes the Mérida Initiative, a security-based aid agreement that <a href="https://www.state.gov/j/inl/merida/">included special aircraft</a> and training for pilots to confront cartels from the air. </p>
<p>The American government has <a href="https://www.wola.org/sites/default/files/downloadable/Regional%20Security/2010/preachwhatyoupractice.pdf">consistently encouraged</a> Latin American governments to use weapons of war to fight drugs (a role the US military <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1385">cannot legally play at home</a>). </p>
<p>In Mexico, the armed forces have been turned against the Mexican people, and have gradually established a record of violating human rights. Under Calderón, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission saw a <a href="http://www.cmdpdh.org/publicaciones-pdf/cmdpdh-violaciones-graves-a-ddhh-en-la-guerra-contra-las-drogas-en-mexico.pdf">significant increase</a> in citizen complaints of abuse. In the first two years of Calderón’s successor Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, the army accumulated 2,212 complaints – <a href="http://www.voltairenet.org/article187080.html">541 more</a> than those lodged against the military in Calderón’s first two years.</p>
<p>The war is thus a Mexican-American problem. But the US has managed to stay righteous while quenching its thirst for cocaine and other drugs. And <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-atf-guns-20111009-story.html">American weapons</a> and drug money laundered by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs">big-name banks</a> continue flowing south into Mexico.</p>
<h2>Doing it for the kids</h2>
<p>US culpability doesn’t make the Mexican government innocent. Indeed, political analysts Rubén Aguilar and Jorge Castañeda <a href="https://books.google.com.ar/books?id=nBC1NH4T8FsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">have traced the roots</a> of the drug war back to Calderón’s faulty legitimacy in office. </p>
<p>Calderón assumed the presidency amid a turbulent struggle with the supporters of <a href="http://www.amlo.org.mx/">Andrés Manuel López Obrador</a>, his left-wing opponent in the 2006 elections. López Obrador <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/09/AR2006070900217.html">claimed fraud</a> and challenged the election results in court. Though Calderón was <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/09/05/felipe-calderon-declared-president-elect-mexico.html">unanimously declared the winner</a>, López Obrador refused to recognise the decision, calling Calderón an “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090500120.html">illegitimate president</a>”.</p>
<p>Aguilar and Castañeda argue that, in 2006, the Mexican government needed an enemy: the drug cartels handily played this role. </p>
<p>Publicly, Calderón’s main justification for waging war on drug traffickers was a supposed increase in consumption among Mexico’s youth. He coined a simple slogan – “<em><a href="http://www.sdpnoticias.com/columnas/2011/02/28/para-que-la-droga-no-llegue-a-tus-hijos">Para que la droga no lleguen a tus hijos</a></em>” (“Keep the drugs out of your children’s reach”) – and recruited <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrwWuHJFpws">masked Lucha Libre wrestlers</a> to reiterate his alleged concern for Mexican kids.</p>
<p>Calderón’s claims were groundless. According to data provided by both the Mexican <a href="http://www.conadic.salud.gob.mx/interior/estadistica_nacional.html">National Council on Addictions</a> and the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/">United Nations</a>, drug use in Mexico is very low (for international comparison, see this interactive <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/interactive-map.html">map of consumption</a>). Today, as in 2006, Mexico remains a transit country. </p>
<p>Calderón’s true motives for launching the war were probably a combination of the need to legitimise his government domestically and strengthen his strategic relationship with George W Bush. However, in a forewarning of today’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-origins-of-post-truth-and-how-it-was-spawned-by-the-liberal-left-68929">post-truth era</a>, the fact that Mexican children didn’t actually do drugs didn’t stop him from justifying a war in their name. </p>
<h2>The deadly time machine</h2>
<p>Calderón wasn’t a cartoon tyrant. He is a savvy lawyer, and a careful observer of society and politics. </p>
<p>The president knew he couldn’t rely on the police, whom <a href="http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/country/?country=mexico">90% of Mexicans</a> feel are corrupt, to undertake his crusade. They’re also outrageously inefficient: an estimated <a href="http://www.udlap.mx/igimex/assets/files/igimex2016_ESP.pdf">99% of crimes go unsolved</a>. Now that’s impunity.</p>
<p>Mexicans believe in three institutions: <a href="http://www.parametria.com.mx/carta_parametrica.php?cp=4622">family, the Catholic Church and the army</a>. Calderón thus adopted the US’s favoured policy of sending the army into the streets to fight drugs.</p>
<p>His shrewd decision may have <a href="http://cide.repositorioinstitucional.mx/jspui/bitstream/1011/117/1/000099112_documento.pdf">initially pleased the Mexican people</a> and their American neighbours, but it didn’t have the support of the constitution. According to <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Mexico_2015.pdf?lang=en">article 129</a>, no peacetime military authority may perform functions not directly connected with military affairs. In other words, the military cannot do the job of the police.</p>
<p>However, in 1999, PRI President Ernesto Zedillo proposed a law to create a <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/abro/lpfp/LPFP_orig_04ene99.pdf">Federal Preventative Police</a>, hiring <a href="https://www.wola.org/analysis/mexicos-new-military-police-force-the-continued-militarization-of-public-security-in-mexico/">5,000 new military personnel</a> for allegedly temporary positions until Mexico could select and train enough new civilian agents.</p>
<p>Zedillo’s policy was legally challenged, but in 2000 <a href="http://sjf.scjn.gob.mx/sjfsist/Documentos/Tesis/1001/1001284.pdf">the Court decided</a> that, under the Mexican constitution, the armed forces can legitimately perform law enforcement functions. And thus: the legal basis for Calderon’s cartel war.</p>
<p>As Professor Desmond Manderson has <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/citizenship-bills-harmful-consequences-already-apparent-20150717-gif2lc.html">noted</a>, the law is a time machine: the real problem with bad law isn’t its immediate implementation but how it can be used in the future. </p>
<p>Since 2014 president Peña Nieto has persisted with Calderón’s approach, with the <a href="http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2016/11/29/actualidad/1480387703_877977.html">clever twist</a> of not publicising it so much. Journalist José Luis Pardo <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/10/opinion/a-decade-of-failure-in-the-war-on-drugs.html">has observed</a> that the current president is like a teenager who, in trying to rebel, repeats what he’s seen his father do.</p>
<p>Today, organised crime accounts for <a href="http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/mapping-mexico-s-violence-through-organized-crime-related-homicides">nearly 60%</a> of the more than 15,000 homicides recorded in Mexico. <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/nacion/seguridad/2016/11/16/septiembre-y-agosto-meses-mas-violentos-en-19-anos">August and September 2016</a> were the deadliest period in almost 20 years.</p>
<h2>What is to be done?</h2>
<p>The supply-side response to a problem driven by demand has not made a dent on drug trafficking. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, two security bills pending in the Mexican parliament seek to sustain it perpetually. Presented by senator <a href="http://www.pan.senado.gob.mx/2016/09/presenta-senador-roberto-gil-zuarth-iniciativa-de-ley-para-regular-participacion-de-fuerzas-armadas-en-seguridad-interior/">Roberto Gil</a> and congressman <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/11/22/politica/003n1pol">César Camacho</a>, they propose to permanently enable the Mexican military’s law enforcement role.</p>
<p>Even General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, Mexico’s minister of defence, seemingly thinks this is a bad idea. On December 8 <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/12/09/politica/003n1pol">he declared</a> that fighting the war against drugs has “denaturalised” the Mexican military. “None of us studied to chase criminals”, he said. </p>
<p>Ten years after Calderón sent troops to Michoacán, Mexico has a choice: change or perish. We can start by accepting that we will never eliminate drug consumption. Using drugs is a personal decision and a health issue, not a criminal one.</p>
<p>Drawing from the recent recommendations of the <a href="http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GCDP-Report-2016-ENGLISH.pdf">Global Commission on Drug Policy</a>, Mexico can outline a policy agenda that decriminalises personal use and possession of drugs while implementing alternatives to incarceration for low-level suppliers. (Full disclosure: I recommended decriminalisation as a member of the transition team of Calderon’s PAN precedessor, Vicente Fox. I’m haunted by the consequences of the government’s failure to do so). It should also consider moving toward regulating the drug market, <a href="http://www.correo.com.uy/otrosdocumentos/pdf/Ley_19.172.pdf">as Uruguay has done with marijuana</a>, from production to distribution. </p>
<p>Decriminalising both the supply and consumption of something as transnational as drugs can only succeed if it’s embraced on both sides of the border. Even under a Trump presidency, lobbying for decriminalisation in the US would be a wiser use of Mexico’s resources than bemoaning Americans’ taste for Latin American drugs.</p>
<p>Decriminalisation must necessarily be accompanied by demilitarisation. <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16578&LangID=E">Two recommendations</a> from UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein can guide this process: first, to strengthen the capacity of Mexico’s police to protect public safety while respecting human rights and second, to adopt a time frame for withdrawing the military from public security functions. </p>
<h2>Follow the leader (again)</h2>
<p>In 1996, President Bill Clinton’s drug tsar <a href="http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1887488,00.html">Barry McCaffrey</a> said that a war waged against a shapeless, intangible enemy as drugs can never truly be won. </p>
<p>In recent years the US has been heeding its own advice and winding down the domestic war on drugs. President Obama has declared that addiction should be addressed as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/29/barack-obama-drug-addiction-health-problem-not-criminal-problem">health problem</a>. In the November 2016 election, <a href="https://theconversation.com/marijuana-legalization-big-changes-across-country-67415">nine states considered liberalising cannabis laws</a>. Four approved recreational marijuana, including <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-election-day-2016-proposition-64-marijuana-1478281845-htmlstory.html"> California</a>, the world’s sixth-largest economy. Residents in a total of eight states, plus the District of Columbia, can now <a href="http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana-legalization-and-regulation">legally take marijuana</a>.</p>
<p>With Colombia having similarly scaled back its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/18/colombia-united-nations-assembly-war-on-drugs">violent anti-narcotics strategy</a>, Mexico is now almost alone, in the unpleasant company of authoritarian firebrands such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/philippine-president-rodrigo-duterte-extend-drug-war-kill-them-all">Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte</a>, in waging war against an shapeless abstraction. </p>
<p>Here’s to ending this ten years of tragedy with a smarter new beginning. In an authentic republic, citizens – not soldiers – look after each other’s security and liberty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70036/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What has the decade-long frontal assault on cartels achieved?Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/630712016-09-22T00:31:24Z2016-09-22T00:31:24ZASEAN goal to eradicate drugs in the region leads to disregard for human life<p>Four years ago member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations adopted the <a href="http://www.asean.org/storage/images/ASEAN_RTK_2014/6_AHRD_Booklet.pdf">ASEAN Human Rights Declaration</a>. Yet today the region is seeing a worrying backward trend in human rights protection in the name of a “war on drugs”. </p>
<p>In the Philippines, civilian death squads and the police have murdered <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2016/08/philippines-death-toll-duterte-war-drugs-160825115400719.html">more than 2,000 people</a> since Rodrigo Duterte became president in July. He encouraged the assassinations in the name of the war on drugs and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/18/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-philippines.html">had promised 100,000 would be killed</a>. </p>
<p>In Indonesia, in the first two years of his presidency, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has ordered three waves of mass execution so far, killing 18 people, mostly death row inmates charged for drug offences. They received their death sentences under a corrupt judicial system. Many were sentenced without the <a href="https://theconversation.com/indonesia-must-investigate-claims-of-corruption-in-execution-cases-40963">minimum procedural and evidential guarantees</a> required for fair trials. </p>
<p>The ASEAN Human Rights Declaration says that member states affirm all the civil and political rights in the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a>. Article 11 of the ASEAN Declaration reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every person has an inherent right to life, which shall be protected by law.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The grouping has been silent about the blatant disregard for human lives shown by the Philippines and Indonesia. And this silence will become even more deafening as ASEAN recently appointed Duterte as its chairman for 2017. </p>
<p>Duterte’s appointment signals that despite the region’s adoption of a human rights instrument, countries continue to be reluctant to ensure rights protection in the region and continue to treat human rights as a domestic issue. </p>
<h2>ASEAN’s unrealistic ‘drug-free’ goal</h2>
<p>In their presidential campaigns, both Duterte and Jokowi promised to eliminate corruption. Both are carrying out harsh anti-drug measures, albeit in different degrees. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, it’s doubtful that either leader will succeed in eliminating drugs or corruption in their countries. The illegal drug trade and drug use are only symptoms of a bigger problem. Both countries have a weak rule of law and the policies of both presidents exacerbate the problem. </p>
<p>ASEAN’s silence on the harsh anti-drug measures is also rooted in the unrealistic goal of creating a drug-free environment, which is enshrined in the ASEAN Charter signed by member states in 2007. </p>
<p>In their <a href="http://asean.org/?static_post=asean-vision-2020">ASEAN Vision 2020</a> document, member states aim to free the region from illicit drugs by 2020. </p>
<p>Some government officials of member states have acknowledged the goal is unrealistic. Thailand’s justice minister has said the eradication of illegal drugs <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/drug-free-asean-by-2015/">is counterproductive</a> as it creates systemic corruption in law enforcement institutions and results in overcrowding in prisons. The Malaysian government also describes this goal as an illusion.</p>
<p>The drug-free society narrative has created an unbalanced intervention which heavily focuses on the criminal justice system while neglecting public health measures.</p>
<h2>How can we fix this?</h2>
<p>ASEAN drug policy should be overhauled. The number of drug seizures and people executed should not be indicators of success. With the current law-enforcement approach, drug production, processing, trafficking and use <a href="https://www.unodc.org/doc/wdr2016/WORLD_DRUG_REPORT_2016_web.pdf">continue</a> in the region. </p>
<p>ASEAN member states allocate huge budgets to eliminate drug trafficking. Indonesia, for example, has <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/southeastasiaandpacific/indonesia/publication/Country_Programme_Indonesia.pdf">spent more than US$27 million</a> to combat international organised crime between 2012 and 2015. </p>
<p>The Indonesia Narcotics Agency states that it has a budget of <a href="http://www.bnn.go.id/_multimedia/document/20160311/laporan_kinerja_bnn_2015-20160311155058.pdf">more than US$100 million in 2015</a>. But the large budget that funds these operations goes to waste as Indonesia remains the place where amphetamine-type drugs are <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/southeastasiaandpacific/indonesia/publication/Country_Programme_Indonesia.pd">produced and trafficked</a> to meet growing
demand for crystalline methamphetamine and ecstasy (MDMA) across the region. </p>
<p>Evidence shows decriminalisation and a focus public health approach, <a href="https://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_Sheet_Portugal_Decriminalization_Feb2015.pdf">such as in Portugal</a>, reduces illicit drug consumption in society. But there is no evidence showing that violence and law enforcement approach does the same.</p>
<p>Through criminalisation, certain types of drugs and distribution will disappear, but other drug types and new methods of drug trafficking will appear. </p>
<p>It is important to position the problem of drug use as a social and health issue. Governments should focus on solving social problems such as poverty and unemployment. </p>
<p>Governments should be serious about tackling corruption in the bureaucracy and criminal justice system. And, most importantly, in the effort to protect people from the effects of drug dependence, they should prioritise harm reduction over law enforcement. </p>
<p>The illicit drug market will continue to flourish where the rule of law is weak and where torture and violence are happening in people’s daily lives. The arbitrary executions will help cover up the real networks of the illicit drug market, which are run by large dark syndicates, not by the poor drug mules and dealers in the street level.</p>
<p>Ending the crime and not people’s lives is the whole issue ASEAN has failed to see. </p>
<p>This silence should not be condoned. It is time for ASEAN to re-interpret the principle of non-intervention when it fails to protect their main subjects: “WE, THE PEOPLES”, as it states in the preamble of its charter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63071/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asmin Fransiska does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>ASEAN has been silent over the blatant disregard of human lives by the Philippines and Indonesia in the name of the ‘war on drugs’.Asmin Fransiska, Lecturer in Human Rights, Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.