It's in the interest of the U.S. to have expensive drugs be illegal, so they can use them to raise money on the black market for black ops or whatever else they won't fund publicly.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, considering that this is a well documented phenomena that goes back decades and frequently grabs international attention when problems crop up.
I'm embarrassed about the comments that are mention that this is something is happening "just now" and annoyed about the article giving credit just to the government.
The issue for most Bolivians is simple. Coca is not cocaine, for other is a more complex and is also related with bad economic incentives also a long history of an absent government in poor regions.
In all cases La DEA was always pretentious, bad managed, with several news about prepotency and abuse. However that was not the main case to Bolivians to start despise them, it was about his media message about Coca about being essentially evil that chocks most of us, in the 80` and 90` that was so subtle, sometimes clear. (Our American President say "Coca is cocaine") Months before I saw in newspapers "USA University leads chewing coca to bad digestion in long term consumption" ... This attempts to change a core cultural aspect was the main fuel for all social movements those years, and the current government is just result of one of this movements. The main misunderstanding from foreigners about social and politics in Bolivia is that they "feel" there is just one movement, one thought and that is represented by the current government; people still marches in the street, block avenues, shouts in the media and are not the opposition are indigenous movements that are looking for the same goals that the government but don't agree on the methods.
Anyway, here is a music video with most of the common Bolivian arguments about La DEA and Coca:
It would help even more if we kicked out the DEA here in the US. In fact, banishment to an abandoned island wouldn't be too harsh a punishment at all for their crimes.
I'm with you, to a point. I'd much prefer if the DEA was stripped of its militarization and instead shifted to act as a quality/safety testing body for "illicit" drugs. Maybe enforcing certain purity standards and proper labeling of narcotics.
You know, something that would actually help the people using drugs-- "this batch of heroin in city X is actually 50% rat poison so don't use it" or "this stuff the dealers in city y call molly is actually MDPV and 25I-nBOME, be aware".
That'd help cut down a lot of the deaths and injuries from drug use. Imagine if you had a government agency looking out for you rather than trying to fuck you up for once.
Before government policy shifts enough to transition the DEA to that role, there will be full legalization. Once we're that liberal, you'll be buying your molly/heroin in regulated pharmacies, not from sketchy dealers who are willing to let you inject rat poison.
I think some college campuses try to walk the line with under age drinking. A quick search shows Purdue has a policy that grants students amnesty in the event of alcohol poisonings [1]. I don't know if anyone has run numbers to see the net effects of such a policy.
I imagine that it removes some of the teeth, but if the negative aspects associated with drinking decline, then it seems like a good basis for arguing that similar policies should be applied to harder drugs, even if they remain illegal.
My father is actually director of campus security at a large private college. He's as conservative as they come, but you probably wouldn't be shocked to learn that people in that position genuinely care about kids and just want them to not die. Dad supports harm reduction in regards to binge drinking and marijuana use, through gritted teeth, while a vein throbs and he curses about stupid kids trying to get themselves killed.
But he says it's hard to keep a hardline policy when you've seen a drunk underage kid die because they crawled under a bush to "sleep it off" in subzero temperatures, because they were too drunk to get home, but afraid to use the blue emergency phone and risk getting caught.
The alternative is to not use unregulated non-FDA-approved substances. But that would require self control. So yup, we need a nanny government to make us safe...
The DEA is currently what I would call to be "nanny government". It exists to limit your options and punish you for certain choices, in the name of your safety and in the name of "public order".
My vision for the DEA is more libertarian, shifting its functions to information gathering and dissemination rather than forceful modulation of the citizens.
We don't need a nanny government to keep us safe, we need the quality information to decide for ourselves what "safe" is and what margins of safety we are willing to tolerate. This works for some things but not others, obviously.
Addiction is more complicated than "a lack of self control." Addicts generally don't kick the habit and then start to reintegrate into society; it's the other way around. If stability is introduced into their lives, they become less dependent the escape offered by the drug. In fact, when their drug use is not criminalized, the vast majority of addicts are able to lead normal lives. This has been shown multiple times in multiple places, even in America as the drug war was gearing up. Moreover, even the drugs with bad reputations (heroin, cocaine) do not result in addiction for most people who try them. Those who become addicts largely do so because they have issues that they are using the drug to cope with. This is evidenced by the lower rates of addiction and petty crime in places where drugs are legalized rather than the sharp increase one would expect if drugs are as dangerously addictive as we are led to believe.
There's also no need for a nanny state solution for purity testing. There are already mobile chem labs at festivals which will test your substance for you and tell you exactly what's in it, and such services exist elsewhere also. Furthermore, if drugs were legalized, there would be far fewer instances of adulterated sales to begin with. It's done by unscrupulous dealers--already profiting from the inflated prices that a black market brings--who take advantage of the buyer's inability to go to law enforcement to report fraud. It's also done by addicts themselves who need to make money to get their next fix: it's easier to cut some of your stuff with baby powder and sell it than it is to steal money or property. Return to doctors the ability to prescribe narcotics to addicts and this problem virtually disappears.
The biggest cause of most (if not all) of the problems that the drug war is supposed to combat is the drug war itself. It's been that way since the beginning.
Any "solution" that involves everybody exercising perfect self control or personal responsibility is useless, even if it's technically true that it would solve the problem.
People simply don't work that way. You can't wish self control into existence just by saying it would be useful. It's like saying, "We wouldn't need lower shelves if everyone was over 6ft tall."
Your argument makes no sense - the FDA is itself an example of the government testing and issuing recommendations on drugs! How is that any less "nanny government" than having the DEA do the same for illegal drugs?
Because the FDA also makes drugs illegal for sale if they haven't been approved. And probably recommends cases to the DEA when someone is selling unapproved pharmaceuticals.
Sorry, but the constellation of ill-effects stemming from heavily militarized, increasingly lawless, and demonstrably corrupt police forces goes way beyond the relativly limited number of people who produce, distribute, and consume recreational drugs.
If you're wondering why you've been severely downvoted, it's probably because of extreme irritation with such willful blindness. We are well past the point where intelligent, well-informed people can kid themselves about the conspiciously nasty "side effects" from the War on Drugs.
No reasonable person is saying that recreational drug use isn't problematic. The question is how do we deal with those problems. Whatever else we may decide on, it's become abundently clear that the criminal law-enforcement based approach we're taking now is doing vastly more harm that it is ostensibly reducing. Moreover, it's doing serious damage to a growing number of people who have nothing to do with drugs. Indeed, the rot is seeping into the very foundations of democracy.
Look people, you need to understand something. The British pioneered this in the Opium Wars (1 and 2).
As far as the CIA/DEA go, they are some of the biggest drug and gun runners around. Does anyone remember Iran Contra? When you are an agency that congress is supposed to have financial oversight on, following the money can reveal things you don't want revealed. What you want is to find a way to make money off the books, so you need a black market. If there isn't one, you create it. Then you operate it, run a few stings against competition if they get too powerful, and suddenly you have a huge black bag money coffer. No oversight! Yay for unaccountability!
I've said it before and I'll say it again. There is a Company man behind every other cartel man.
Afghanistan and the new heroin epidemic is a perfect recent example. Opium production was almost nill until we invaded, and suddenly even with the country occupied most of the heroin in Us cities is from Afghanistan? It's just Vietnam on repeat...
I don't think the situation is as black and white in Afghanistan as you make it out to be. The issue now is there is chaos. Before when poppy cultivation was reduced to (a reported) a near zero, the Taliban maintained a level of order (albeit brutal).
Or you could take the other approach, they hadn't sold their previous supplies of opium due to bumper crops in previous years, so wanted to limit supplies a bit to raise the price before selling over stock then plant again the following year.
The DEA are confrontational, destructive and foreign. They're the colonial police looking out for America's interest, not Bolivia's. This means they're going to be widely hated, even by people who might otherwise support their aims. So hated, in fact, that a political movement started against them and got elected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Socialism_%28Boli...
The coca reduction that's actually happening is based on replacing coca growing with other forms of agriculture in cooperation with the farmers.
Coca leaf is unlikely to be eliminated entirely as it's an effective traditional medication for dealing with altitude sickness (much of Bolivia is at high altitude, including La Paz at 13400ft). So again Bolivians are never going to support its 100% eradication.
The exported product is purified cocaine hydrochloride, not the leaf.
Having spent a fair bit of time in Peru and Bolivia, I am 100% convinced that consumers of cocaine, in the form of an illicit street drug, are missing the majority of the experience of consuming the Coca leaf as it's consumed locally. Unfortunately I simply lack the vocabulary describe what exactly is missing and how the experience of chewing the Coca leaf is superior... but I've personally found the difference to be profound.
My experiences traveling through the region have convinced me that attempts to eradicate the coca plant and practice of chewing coca leaves are fundamentally misguided and unethical.
Cocaine is problem primarily in the advanced capitalist economies and it is solely within these nations where those problems can be solved... though it's obvious to anyone who is being intellectually honest that the strategies of the DEA and the drug war are abysmal failures and so must be either substantially reformed or abandoned altogether.
I don't think one needs to have traveled through the region to consider unethical the attempts to stifle a nation's old tradition that isn't hurting anyone. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
>Cocaine is problem primarily in the advanced capitalist economies and it is solely within these nations where those problems can be solved..
Travel through the poor neighbourhoods Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Brazil etc and say cocaine (or by-products of the cocaine process) are not a problem.
>and it is solely within these nations where those problems can be solved
The only solution is legalisation of all drugs. Producter countries such as Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Laos, Burma will have billions added to the government funds to help lift 1000s if not millions of people out of poverty. Transport countries such as El Salavador, Honduras, Mexico will cut of instantly 99% of profits to the drug gangs. Users will stop dying from tainted products, or using "research chemicals" instead of the real thing.
Negatives? from what has been seen in Holland and the decriminalisation of cannabis and Portagal, none
The article insinuates that the DEA branch was accused of conspiracy and espionage - other articles seem to imply that the President at least believed that the DEA was following him around and spying on his romantic life, as well as implying that the US DEA branch attempted to contract killers to hit Bolivian gov't officials.
I can't imagine that the grounding of the President's plane under suspicions of housing Snowden warmed him up, either.
“It’s not only about making money off a crop. In the old fashioned alternative development approach, we substitute one illicit crop for a licit crop. It’s about a more comprehensive approach that includes access to essential services like schools, hospitals, and roads in areas that traditionally have been hard to reach,”
and another citation, from the original UN report press release [2]:
"the importance of comprehensive, participative and long-term development programmes, as essential elements to ensure a sustained reduction of illicit crops."
I am by far an expert in this area, but I think kicking out the DEA allowed Bolivia to shift efforts from violent, top down (US orchestrated) repression to:
* Giving farmers incentives to shift to other crops: do not let coca be the only way of sustaining the farmers family
* Still allow coca growing for traditional usage (chewed, in tea, or as a natural analgesic)
* Bottom up: work together with coca unions and farmers to understand the incentives that drive farmers to chose coca in the first place
I don't doubt the incompetence of the DEA, but I thought the same thing - so I did some deep searching (sarcasm) and found this page: http://en.institutomanquehue.org/about.html - it looks like this is an institute devoted to, among other things, "projecting a faithful image of this region to the world".
I'd imagine that this story is being spun a bit - satellite imagery isn't the most accurate for crop identification over such large areas of land (biased source: myself, a satellite imagery analyst for 5 years), plus Latin American countries are constantly, for obvious reasons, trying to distance themselves from powers such as the US which often associated with colonialism and oppression.
TL;DR: This is a puff PR piece exaggerating the efficiency of the Bolivian Gov.
"Coca is not cocaine" is a long movement that started way before the current government, a movement that for many years introduces changes with several social movements involved, one of them the most active make a president.
Giving credit to a foreign ONG/Foundation/Institute/60' minded Guys the image of an whole country, is not that pretentious?
DEA and the State Department operate a fleet of planes for, among other things, spraying defoliant on suspected drug crops in foreign countries. They roll around in armored SUVs. They bring a lot of business to houses of prostitution. They escalate violence.
