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John Coleman, PhD, och president för Drug Watch International ger inte heller mycket för de fd statsöverhuvudenas dokument "Drugs and Democracy: Toward a paradigm shift". 

Coleman skriver följande om dokumentet.

The document, "Drugs and Democracy: Toward a paradigm shift: Statement by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy," is very typical of papers written collectively by political leaders unwilling to assign or accept responsibility for some of their own shortcomings. Far from being a "paradigm shift," this is little more than a re-telling of a familiar tale of woe by former leaders unwilling to accept the verdict of history. Let's discuss a few examples:

1.   "Current drug repression policies are firmly rooted in prejudices, fears and ideological visions."(pg.6)

·         There is nothing offered in the report to support this sweeping statement. With words and concepts as general as "prejudices," "fears," and "ideological visions," I'm sure the authors might have provided some examples. Modern drug control policy has been shaped by several influences, beginning with the first global commission to study and address the Asian opium problem in the late 1800s. All international efforts since that time have been based solidly on a public health paradigm and most, if not all, the Latin American countries are signatories to international conventions in which this concept is firmly and unequivocally rooted.

2.   "Hence, breaking the taboo and acknowledging the failure of current policies and their consequences is the inescapable prerequisite for opening up the discussion about a new paradigm leading to safer, more efficient and humane drug policies." (pg. 6)

·         This looks like something that was written in an office at 410 West 58^th Street, New York City, the U.S. headquarters for the Open Society Institute, one of the sponsors of this paper and a leading advocate of ending drug prohibition in the U.S. and around the world. The reader is expected to accept on faith, alone, that current policies have failed but, again, no examples of this are offered. If, as the authors suggest, current policies are unsafe, inefficient and inhumane, one must ask what the situation would be like without prohibition. How humane would it be to double or triple or even quadruple the numbers of people in the world addicted to drugs in the utopian and "open" society of the authors' imagination?

3.   "It is imperative to review critically the deficiencies of the prohibitionist strategy adopted by the United States and the benefits and drawbacks of the harm reduction strategy followed by the European Union." (pg. 6)

·         Again, another gross statement of unsupported assumptions. What are the deficiencies of the "prohibitionist strategy" of the U.S.? Drug abuse in the U.S. remains modest and stable by historic standards and, yes, prisons are crowded and in some cases, over-crowded. What the authors do not mention is that about one-third of all prison inmates in the U.S. are non-citizens and many of those also are (or were) drug smugglers from Latin and South America. Indeed, Colombia has been extraditing its most significant narco-terrorists to the U.S. for years, a practice that President Gaviria refused to do when he was in office. Gaviria came into office partly on the promise to end the extradition of Colombian drug traffickers to the U.S. and he helped to re-write the Colombian constitution to reflect this. He encouraged traffickers to turn themselves in and be subjected to the criminal laws and courts of Colombia in return for a guarantee that they would not be extradited to the U.S. One of the first of the narco-terrorists to take Gaviria up on his promise was Pablo Escobar, the murderous leader of the Medellin cartel. Escobar surrendered in June 1991 and was "imprisoned" at a secret mountain enclave that turned out to be more of a resort than a prison. A year later, in July 1992, after Escobar got bored with living the lavish life of a recluse millionaire, he walked away from his prison. So much for Gaviria's deal with the devil.

·         The above cited sentence from the report is intended to leave the reader with several thoughts: The first and perhaps most important is that a prohibitionist strategy is deficient; the second is the use of the U.S. to exemplify this; and the third is to present the EU's harm reduction strategy as a viable and acceptable alternative, despite some "drawbacks" that, again, are not discussed. This sentence is all about image and how best to present and sell your product. The objective is to sell the idea that prohibitionist strategies are, by their very nature, deficient. This is the sine qua non of this document and its OSI sponsor. 

4.   "Taking into account our continent's experience in the fight against the narcotics trade and the seriousness of the problem, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy addresses the present statement to our countries' governments and public opinion, to the United Nations and the international community, proposing a new paradigm based on three main directives:

1.      Treating drug users as a matter of public health.

2.      Reducing drug consumption through information, education and

                        prevention.

3.      Focusing repression on organized crime." (pg. 8)

·         These are valid and worthwhile directives that have been at the core of international drug control policies since at least the 1924-1925 Opium Commission meeting in Geneva under the auspices of the then-League of Nations. They do not, however, represent a "new paradigm," as the authors self-servingly claim, except, perhaps, for some of their own nations. Moreover, the authors undermine whatever credibility they may have by defining these directives in OSI terms, i.e., decriminalization of marihuana. To highlight this point, they gratuitously again point the scolding finger at the U.S., the Great Satan in this fairy tale and the only nation in the hemisphere worthy of scorn by these former leaders.

·         Finally, I'd be remiss if I ignored a glaring error of fact that all too often characterizes OSI propaganda in Latin and South America:

·         "Its [the U.S.] policy of massive incarceration of drug users, questionable both in terms of respect for human rights and its efficiency, is hardly applicable to Latin America, given the penal system's overpopulation and material conditions." (pg. 8)

·         Many who are imprisoned on drug charges in the U.S. are nationals of Latin and South America who have been convicted of serious crimes -- crimes that often were ignored by their own governments. Contrary to what the authors state, the U.S. does not imprison people for being "drug users." Ever since a 1962 Supreme Case, Robinson v. California (370 U.S. 660), it no longer is a crime in the U.S. to be an alcoholic, drug addict, prostitute, or vagrant. Possession and sale of drugs, however, remain unlawful but the fact of being a drug addict cannot, as the authors erroneously state, cause one to be incarcerated. This differs from Napoleonic Code law, the core of many legal systems in Latin and South America, in which the mere fact of one's being a drug addict may be a law violation. As presented in this document, this statement represents the twisted and dishonest propaganda of the OSI. Sometimes we see it coupled with the notion that most prisoners in U.S. jails for cannabis violations were convicted of being in "mere possession" of the drug. This canard, likewise, has been debunked by scholarly and independent analysis but it still occasionally finds its way into foreign-produced OSI papers where the level of scrutiny is below that of ideological patronage.

The document, "Drugs and Democracy: Toward a paradigm shift: Statement by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy," is little more than a minor trip report produced and directed by George Soros and his "Hate-America-First" chorus of failed world leaders and their patrons.

John J. Coleman

PhD

President of Drug Watch International

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