US drugs war in Colombia a dismal failure

Worst of all, the federal government knew that coca eradication would never work.  A CIA assesment of Plan Colombia from 2000 uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act by Jeremy Bigwood, predicted that Plan Colombia would have virtually no impact on cocaine availability in the US.

I summarized the report in an article in Milenio Semanal in February of 2004:

"The CIA report predicted that if the U.S. met its goal of eradicating 50% of the coca in the targeted departments of Putumayo and Caqueta by 2006, it would only succeed in pushing coca cultivation into other areas of Colombia.  If the U.S. were to succeed in eradicating 80% of the coca crop in southern Colombia, 'Peru, and to some extent Bolivia, would face increased market pressures that probably would fuel a resurgence in coca cultivation.'  This might, in turn, lead Bolivian and Peruvian drug traffickers to take control of a larger share of the cocaine trade.  At this extremely high level of successful eradication, 'Such a reduction probably also would cause a temporary decline in total Andean potential cocaine production—and could adversely affect available worldwide supplies,' but the decline would only be temporary.  'In the long term, Attacks on the Colombia-dominated cocaine industry are likely to accelerate already existing trends toward greater regionalization and globalization of the trade [and . . . ] could contribute to the growing international spread of the cocaine industry.'”

Most disturbingly, the CIA report accurately predicted that coca eradication in Colombia would lead to increased opium production and heroin trafficking.  As I wrote in Milenio Semanal:

"The CIA report also predicted that Plan Colombia would push Colombian drug traffickers to diversify their business, expanding their role in the heroin trade. This prediction appears to have come true, as the ONDCP reported an increase in heroin use in Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, and Washington, DC in 2002.   There is also a historical precedent for this --  U.S. eradication of Colombian marijuana in the 1980’s contributed to the growth in coca cultivation in the 1990’s"

"According to [Adam] Isacson [of the Center for International Policy], the majority of the heroin available in the eastern U.S. comes from Colombia.  Colombian heroin is very pure, allowing smokers to smoke the drug rather than injecting it, making it more popular among young people who are wary of using hypodermic needles.  It is also cheap – in some areas a hit of heroin costs as little as $5.

"Heroin also has certain advantages for farmers and for traffickers.   Opium poppies can be grown at high altitudes, on cloudy mountaintops out of the reach of fumigation  It can be grown on small, half or quarter acre plots.  Heroin is compact and can be smuggled more easily than cocaine – traffickers can hire
'mules' to carry a substantial amount of heroin in their bodies.

"There are also political advantages to growing opium poppies.  Plan Colombia targets coca production in large part because Marxist guerillas control many of the major coca growing areas in Colombia, and profit from imposing a 'tax' on the sale of coca in the areas they control.  So the coca fumigation program is in part a counter-insurgency program.   The heroin trade is controlled by apolitical criminal gangs, so poppy eradication has not been a high priority for the U.S. and Colombian governments."

I've watched the lives of several close friends and a lover be devastated by heroin in recent years . .  in every case the same three factors played a role -- bullshit drug education in schools that treated all drugs as equally dangerous, leading them to believe that if what they learned about pot was a lie then what they learned about heroin must be too; untreated post-traumatic stress disorder; and the fall in the price and increase in the availability of heroin.  The war in Afghanistan has of course also served to increase the supply of heroin and its availibity in the US.  And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue creating a steady stream of untreated trauma survivors looking for anything that will let them sleep at night . . .

So enough of this diatribe for now .  . back to the piece I was actually writing for the Narcosphere which I will post later.  . .

I definitely agree . . .

For those who I know who have become addicted, the addiction began because heroin was the one thing that could stop flashbacks, numb pain, and bring sleep.

What was it Terrence McKenna called it?  Something along the lines of a drug of concentration camps and hospital wards.

And what I have seen of most "treatment" programs makes it clear to me that with some exceptions they are just as much a money making operation as the production and trafficking industry or the prison industry.  They focus on making people perpetually dependent on medications and support groups without ever really addressing the emotional, psychological, political, and economic conditions that lead to addiction  . . .