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 merica's
certification process for determining which countries are doing
their part in the international drug "war"
turned
fifteen this spring, and the certification program is showing its
age: experienced enough to know the difference between fantasy and
reality, but lacking the self-control to act on that difference.
Senators from both sides of the aisle have been introducing bills
to suspend, amend, or otherwise rethink certification. Sen. Kay
Bailey Hutchinson of Texas states, "The drug certification ritual
results in resentment and is counterproductive." Sen. Joe Biden,
an original sponsor of the certification mandate, says that some
certification in Latin America should be temporarily suspended because
some Latin American officials are "laying their lives on the line"
in the drug "war."
Although the purpose of the certification process was to get the
drug-producing nations of the world to address the wholesale corruption
within their own borders, the tumult surrounding the certification
process has turned the spotlight on America's own failure in combating
drugs and corruption.
One criticism of the certification process is to point out that
the U.S. is the world's largest consumer of drugs. (This is hardly
surprising, since the U.S. is the largest consumer of almost every
other consumer product, especially expensive ones.) Yet the American
government has hardly been slack in attempting to suppress U.S.
drug demand. Indeed, when it comes to tossing people in prison for
drug crimes, the U.S is second to none.
A new report
from the Justice Policy Institute shows that during the eight years
of the Clinton administration, the federal prison population roughly
doubled, to more than 147,000 as of February 2001. In fact, the
federal prison population during Clinton's watch grew more than
under the Bush and Reagan years combined, with 58% of those prisoners
serving time for drug offenses. State prison populations have also
soared, with many state prisons taking in more drug offenders than
violent criminals or property felons.
Overall, there are two million Americans in prison, and another
4.5 million on probation or parole. Two million more people work
in the prison business — making prison employees (like government
school teachers), one of the most powerful lobbies in many state
legislatures. Some of the prison-population increase is attributable
to sterner attitudes toward violent and property crimes, but the
explosive growth of the prison population over the last two decades
would have been impossible without the massive incarceration of
people for victimless crimes, primarily drug offenses.
While Clinton oversaw a doubling of the federal prison population,
the federal black prison population tripled. This has mostly been
based on the brutally severe mandatory-minimum sentences for crack
cocaine. Mere possession (not sale) of very small amount of crack
for personal use — 5 grams (which weighs less than a George
Washington quarter) — triggers a 5-year mandatory federal sentence.
Unfortunately, the main congressional response to the unfairness
of this sentence has been to move toward imposing similarly inappropriate
sentences for powdered cocaine.
Yet despite America's "success" in turning the United States into
the world's largest jailer (and thus, into the world's largest employer
of de facto slave labor), illegal drugs are as available today as
they were 15 years ago and both heroin and cocaine are purer and
cheaper than when we began the certification process.
One of the original purposes of the certification law was to force
other countries to deal with their corruption. Here, the U.S. blew
its biggest chance to show some leadership. In July of 2000, U.S.
Army Colonel James Hiett, the commander of all Army anti-drug operations
in Latin America, was convicted of covering up for his wife's own
smuggling operation using the diplomatic mail pouch of the U.S.
Embassy in Bogota. Despite the fact that he knew about the smuggling
scheme and helped launder the loot, he was charged with the lightest
possible crime: misprision of a felony, for failing to report his
wife's activities.
Eric Sterling of the Criminal
Justice Policy Foundation did an analysis
of the crimes that the Colonel could have been convicted of under
current federal guidelines:
"If
Colonel Hiett had been Mr. Hiett, he would have been charged with
conspiracy to traffic in more than a kilogram of heroin with a mandatory
minimum sentence of 10 years, with a possibility of life without
parole. He would have been charged with possession of a firearm
(his army-issued weapons) in the furtherance of drug trafficking,
with a mandatory 5 year consecutive sentence. If his weapon were
an assault weapon or an automatic weapon (most Army weapons are)
he would face a mandatory 10-year, or 30 years on top of the drug
sentence. Mr. Hiett would have been charged with money laundering,
facing up to 20 years. Mr. Hiett would have been charged at a minimum
with aiding and abetting his wife's money laundering, facing 20
years."
What he got was a whopping five months in prison. For all the breast
thumping and browbeating for Latin American countries to crack down
on drug-related corruption in their police and military, when it
came time to walk the walk, American drug warriors at the highest
level just didn't have it in them to do to one of their own what
the federal government routinely does to low-level dealers, mules,
and users. Luis Ernesto, Colombia's National Police Chief, called
the sentence "a joke."
But while the federal government may be squeamish about corruption
at the highest international level of "drug warriordom" in cities
across America, drug-related police corruption is demoralizing police
departments and fueling new levels of cynicism and mistrust of law
enforcement.
Police corruption in America is difficult to quantify, partly because
there is little centralized documentation of locally investigated
law-enforcement corruption cases; what data are available on federal
investigations are disheartening.
According to a 1998
Government Accounting Office report of 950 FBI-led corruption
cases opened against law-enforcement officers between 1993 and 1997,
640 resulted in convictions, with over half being drug-related.
The sheer volume and shocking nature of drug-related police scandals
reported over the last decade are reminiscent of Al Capone's prohibition-era
Chicago. (One of the reasons that alcohol prohibition was repealed
was the intolerable level of police corruption that it produced).
In New Orleans, more than 11 police officers were convicted in a
1994 cocaine-distribution and murder-for-hire scandal. Between 1992
and 1996, 30 police from Manhattan's 30th Precinct were convicted,
mostly on drug-related offenses. In Jacksonville, Miami, and Cincinnati,
police have pled guilty or been convicted of protecting drug-running
operations or of smuggling drugs themselves.
In Los Angeles, the Rampart scandal — the largest police-corruption
scandal in American history — was discovered only after an
officer was caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker. The
Rampart Division police used drug laws to frame innocent people,
and they used drug laws to steal valuable contraband, whose value
was mainly a result of those drug laws.
Again in Los Angeles, 27 sheriff's deputies were convicted of skimming
millions of dollars in drug money while serving on an "elite narcotics
unit." And the list goes on, including Detroit, Chicago, and Washington,
D.C.
Offering an explanation for the rationale behind growing drug-war
corruption that could just as easily be applied to Mexico, Colombia,
or any other country on the certification list, retired San
Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara of the Hoover
Institution told the Los Angeles Times "Why should the
enemy get to keep all the profits? Guys with modest salaries are
suddenly looking at $10,000 or more and they go for it." The consequence
of a drug "war" that stretches from Los Angeles to Bogota is to
make the United States more like Colombia — not vice versa.
This point was succinctly underscored by Mexican President Vincente
Fox. Talking about the bribing of Mexican officials to facilitate
smuggling, he noted, "We Mexicans are smart, but not so smart as
to be able to smuggle all of those drugs (into the U.S.) ourselves,
so there must be some corruption in the United States."
Even if America's own hands were clean, the certification process
would still be a painful example of unintended consequences. The
supply-side-eradication and interdiction efforts that the certification
process forces on other nations (with the threat of reduced aid
and trading privileges), amounts to centralized planning by Washington,
D.C., on behalf of the economies and cultures of certification countries.
Certification has harmed existing democracies and thwarted moves
toward democracy and open markets.
Colombia is a prime example. The Cato Institute's Handbook
for Congress, which calls for elimination of the certification
process, shows the dreadful result. In 1996-97, the Clinton administration
de-certified Colombia. To stave off sanctions against lawful industries,
Colombia began coca-eradication efforts, which drove many peasants
out of business and increased peasant support for guerrillas, who
protect drug traffickers in return for money. The result was a new
wave of guerrilla violence and a displacement of government authority
in large parts of Colombia. This in turn has caused the U.S. to
send not just money ($1.3 billion in 2000), but also CIA and Special
Forces "trainers" into Colombia to assist in further eradication
and interdiction efforts. This is called "Plan Colombia," but a
better title would be "Plan Vietnam: Cultivating an Unwinnable Jungle
War in South America."
Because fighting Colombian coca growers necessarily means fighting
insurgent guerrillas, U.S. drug-war aid is also being used to fight
a civil war. As the Cato Handbook puts it, "the U.S.-orchestrated
drug war in Colombia has thus weakened civilian rule, strengthened
the role of the military and generated financial and popular support
for leftist rebel groups."
It might be worth asking whether the United States is helping its
long-term interests by destroying free-market democracy in Colombia
in a futile effort to protect American cocaine users from their
own foolish inclinations. Get rid of cocaine, and American cokeheads
will still have dozens of other ways to ruin their lives. Get rid
of the democratic government in Colombia, and we'll have Marxist
an anti-American government on the mainland of the Western hemisphere.
Another core weakness of eradication policies, which the certification
law mandates, is the pricing structure of drugs. The Cato Handbook
points out that the production cost of cocaine outside the U.S.
is around 3 percent, with smuggling to U.S. borders adding another
10 percent. So: Eradication and interdiction comprise a relatively
small part of the cost of doing business for drug traffickers.
That the Colombia farmers receive no more than 3 percent of the
street value of cocaine in the U.S. means that the drug importers
have a lot of flexibility to increase the price that they pay to
farmers. If the pressure from the U.S. military causes trouble for
too many farmers, the Colombian traffickers can double or triple
the price paid to farmers, without only minor price increases required
at the U.S. retail market. With so much flexibility and such enormous
profit margins, it is little wonder that narco-traffickers have
been able to react to American prohibition policy with relative
ease.
Recently, leaders from two Latin nations have broken ranks and publicly
discussed decriminalization as a means to end the corruption and
violence (and enormous profits) that accompany prohibition. At a
November 2000 Iberoamerican Summit of Chiefs of State in Panama
City, Uruguay President Jorge Batlle spoke out against "Plan Colombia,"
asking, "Do you think that as long as that substance (cocaine) has
such fantastic market power there could be any mechanism created
to prevent its trafficking?" President Batlle continued: "If that
little powder were worth only 10 cents, there would be no organization
dedicated to raising a billion dollars to finance armies in Colombia."
In December 2000, speaking at Vincente Fox's inauguration in Mexico
City, President Batlle observed, "The day it is legalized in the
U.S., it will lose value, and if it loses value there will be no
profit."
Uruguay is a fairly small voice, but Mexico is another matter. Jorge
Castenada, the country's new Foreign Minister, has publicly called
not just for and end to America's certification of Mexico, but also
for "the decriminalization in the long run of certain currently
illegal substances…and the use of market mechanisms to minimize
the profits derived from the prohibited character of the drug trade."
President
Fox apparently agrees. In a recent interview, when asked if
he agrees with Mexican Federal Preventative Police Chief Miguel
Torres's claim that decriminalization would "collapse the global
drug economy," President Fox affirmed, "that is true." But he added
that it wouldn't work unilaterally. "The day when the alternative
of freeing drug consumption from punishment comes, it will have
to be done throughout the world." The statement leaves plenty of
wiggle room, but vividly contrasts with the zero-tolerance blather
of President Fox's predecessors.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the new Mexican President, who
wants to reduce Mexican corruption rather than profit from it, is
backing away from drug laws that guarantee widespread illegal wealth
and corruption.
Washington, D.C., is never the first place to realize that a big-government
program is a colossal failure. By now, though, even in Washington
it ought to be clear that the drug-certification mandate and the
international drug war are making America more like Colombia, and
Colombia more like Vietnam.
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