The Failure of Prohibition: A Personal View

The Economist in its edition of 28 July made a very well argued case for the legalisation of drugs. I was much struck by the failure of any of the opponents of legalisation whose letters were published to address the immense costs that present policies have brought to producer and entrepot countries as well as to both drug users and non-users in consumer countries. Their concern was that legalisation would increase consumption and lead to greater addiction to drugs which were simply too dangerous for people to handle. There is an evident reluctance to engage in a serious debate about the effects of prohibition. To do so would involve admitting that present policies have failed and having to explain why they should be expected to succeed in the future. Instead we have this insistence on the dangers of drugs.

I must admit that it took me a long time to accept the arguments for legalisation. While others arrived there much earlier through theories of personal freedom or through dealing with users medically or in the social services, it was my experience of the drugs war on the hottest of its front lines-Colombia- that began my change of mind. My time there from 1990-94 taught me the terrible cost of combating the trade in a key producer country and left me with doubts about the chances of success. The following years convinced me that the war was indeed unwinnable. We, the consumer countries, have proved unable to deliver our side of the deal we made with the producers. We promised to help them to cut supply near to source while ourselves curbing the export of the necessary precursor chemicals, clamping down on money laundering and reducing demand. Living in this country for the last 7 years I have come to the conclusion that there is no longer any possibility of our being able to deal with demand. Drug use is very widely accepted and no legal measures are likely to change that.

"The Guardian's" title on an editorial about a pro-legalisation article of mine this July was "A hard-liner repents." There was some journalistic licence there. I was no crusader unlike some of the Americans in the field. But when I was in Colombia I certainly believed that we were right to back the Colombians against the drug traffickers. I came from a generation - the 50s- to whom drugs was a non-subject. I did not meet anyone who took drugs until I served in West Africa in the early 60s. There I knew people who used cannabis without any obvious problems. Indeed Senegal in those days was the least violent place I have ever lived in. I missed out personally on the drugs experiments of the 60s. At the end of the decade in Colombia I learnt from anthropologists about the ritual drug use of Amazonian Indians and the devastating effect on them of alcohol when they first encountered it. I drew the rather obvious conclusion that safe drug use depended to a large extent on social custom. In the 70s and 80s with a growing family I was concerned about the dangers that heroin abuse seemed to represent. This however only really made much impact on me when I served in Milan in the late 80s. There someone died from heroin addiction every other day and the parks were strewn with syringes.

When I arrived in Bogotá from Milan in autumn 1990 I was therefore in no mood to question official drugs policy. The situation I met in Colombia made me even less likely to. The state was to all intents under siege by the Medellin drugs cartel under its infamous leader, Pablo Escobar, then listed as the world's 7th richest man. He had launched a campaign of narcoterrorism to stop Colombia from extraditing traffickers to the United States. In the previous 12 months this had included the assassination of 3 presidential candidates, the blowing up of an airliner with over 100 on board, many car bomb attacks and the killing of 200 policemen in Medellin alone. The help that the US and the Europeans, with the UK most prominent, were giving to help the Colombians counter this threat seemed fully justified.

International help to Colombia started in autumn 1989 in answer to an appeal by President Barco after his likely successor had been killed on Escobar's orders. It took the form of training for police and prosecutors, protection for judges as well as some crop substitution projects. It was backed up by a commitment to take measures to control the flow of precursor chemicals, to crack down on money laundering and reduce demand in our home markets. This degree of international cooperation was new and there was optimism that we could reverse the vertiginous rise of the drugs trade worldwide.

The Colombians made good use of the new support and the anti-narcotics police in particular became a formidable force. Pressure was kept up on the traffickers and Escobar and several others surrendered against a promise that they would not be extradited. This deal was strengthened when the Constitutional Convention, which rewrote the Constitution in 1991, abolished extradition against the government's advice. A year later Escobar escaped from his luxurious prison when the government tried to stop him running his business there. He waged another bloody narcoterrorist campaign but was killed in late 1993 and his organization effectively destroyed. This struggle, in which illegal vigilante groups played a key role in parallel with the official "search block," has been described in vivid detail in Mark Bowden's recent bestseller "Killing Pablo." It is not a book to read for its Colombian background, which is weak, but for his very well sourced description of US involvement.

The battle against Escobar was the most spectacular element in Colombia's drug fuelled conflict but it was only a part. The traffickers were simultaneously paying protection money to Colombia's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the FARC), who were strong in the jungle in southeast Colombia where they had their laboratories and coca fields, and financing paramilitary groups (the AUC) to protect their newly acquired ranches from the FARC and other guerrillas in other parts of the country. These various illegal forces contributed greatly, both directly and indirectly, to the appalling level of violence in the country with about 25,000 killings a year, the highest rate per capita in the world. Yet despite this the administration of President Gaviria (1990-1994) carried out major reforms, both political- a new constitution that devolved power to the provinces- and economic- liberalization both internally and externally and made peace with several guerrilla groups. Colombia's traditionally steady growth increased.

When I left Colombia in autumn 1994 I was no longer so sure that victory in the drugs war was possible. The death of Escobar was probably the turning point for me. The fight against him was so clearly necessary. Once he was gone the Americans immediately said that it had long been a sideshow. The majority of the cocaine business in the world had passed from Escobar's Medellin cartel to their deadly rivals in Cali.The flow of cocaine had in no way been affected despite the loss of so many lives. The apparently dismissive American attitude towards these losses worried me. I was also aware that so far we on our side had made little, if any progress on precursors, money laundering and demand reduction. I concluded that our efforts would have to be greatly increased if the traffickers were going to be defeated.

In the years since I have watched the Colombian conflict worsen. The horrors of Escobar's narcoterrorism have never been equalled but the conflict has spread, affecting more and more of the population as both the FARC and the AUC have expanded rapidly, largely due to their income from the traffickers. Sadly I believe that US policy towards the Samper administration (1994-98), so different from their strong support for Gaviria, contributed to this development by a doubtless well intentioned but obsessive pursuit of anti-narcotics aims at the expense of everything else. The problem began within 2 days of Samper's election in June 1994. Tapes were released by the defeated candidate (president since 1998) Andres Pastrana that pointed to Cali cartel financing of the Samper campaign. It is now widely accepted that US agencies had had a hand in the tapes, perhaps hoping that they could stop Samper's election. This put both sides in an awkward position but before Samper took office US officials told him that he would be judged on results in the anti-narcotics field. I left Colombia a couple of months into the new administration with US-Colombian cooperation apparently back on course.

US pragmatism seemed to be working. By the spring of 1995 the Cali cartel had been dismantled. Whatever reservations the US administration and many Colombians had about Samper he was delivering. However when that summer leading members of Samper's campaign team who were under investigation implicated the President in the Cali financing, the US saw an opportunity to achieve even more. They put him under intense pressure to increase military measures against the traffickers and to strengthen legislation, including bringing back extradition. In March 1996 the US imposed economic sanctions on Colombia for failure to make sufficient anti-narcotics efforts. This decertification, part of the US's own system for rating the performance of producing and entrepot countries around the world, was particularly bizarre since no other country in the world had suffered losses in the drugs war as great as Colombia. The reason given was that while the Colombian police were performing splendidly their political masters were not fully committed to the struggle. Mexico, whose anti-narcotics performance was far below Colombia's, received full certification despite strong pressure from Senator Helms and others. Naturally President Clinton could not allow a political row with Mexico which had recently joined NAFTA and then been rescued from economic disaster by a multibillion package under Clinton's leadership. Samper was a useful surrogate.

When the Colombian House of Representatives voted to clear Samper of impeachment charges in June 1996 the US showed its displeasure by withdrawing his US visa. The decertification was repeated in 1997 and only in 1998, when Samper was close to achieving all the legislative changes the US had pressed for, did they give Colombia certification. Even then it was a halfway house, certification on national security grounds. US policy in this period seems to have been run by the Assistant Secretary for anti-narcotics at the State department, Robert Gelbard, aided and abetted by the flamboyant Ambassador in Bogotá, Myles Frechette, with little or no interference from the political side of State or more senior members of the administration.

The results for Colombia were devastating. The security forces were demoralized by the hostility of their closest allies to their commander-in-chief. The guerrillas were greatly encouraged. They contemptuously refused to negotiate with a president even the US said was corrupt. As the FARC expanded so did the AUC as not only traffickers turned to them for help against the guerrillas. US sanctions discouraged both foreign and domestic investors. His need for congressional support against impeachment and to push through unpopular US inspired legislation led Samper to increase government spending sharply. Growth fell and the deficit rose undermining confidence further. He left Pastrana in 1998 with an economy moving into recession for the first time in 70 years and a Colombian state gravely weakened. Meanwhile the flow of cocaine had not slowed and from 1995 there had been a dramatic expansion of coca production in Colombia as Peruvian and Bolivian supply dropped.

The US, first Congress and then the administration, had by then finally realized the damage US policy had inflicted. It had managed to conjure up the US nightmare of a second communist country in the Americas. President Pastrana has therefore been given every possible US support through the $1.3bn Plan Colombia, which provides $300m of civil aid alongside $1bn to equip the army against the drug traffickers and those who protect them. Pastrana's task has however been immensely difficult. He has combined a peace process with the FARC with a strengthening of the Armed Forces. But both these require fresh money and to restore confidence in Colombia's previously very sound economy he has had to cut public expenditure. The economy has emerged only slowly from recession and unemployment has remained at an unprecedented 20%. Large numbers have emigrated. Progress in the peace process has been painfully slow and public support for it has plunged. Although the Armed Forces have inflicted some defeats on the FARC in major engagements the ability of the latter, as well as the smaller ELN and their deadly enemies the AUC, to attack small towns, block main roads and kidnap large numbers has if anything increased. Public pressure for a much harder line by the president elected in 2002 is growing. There is no sign of the conflict easing.

Two questions are often raised about the Colombian conflict. The first is could the drug trade from Colombia be defeated by different tactics or by the kind of increased resources involved in Pan Colombia. My view is that policies the US pursued in my time- close cooperation with the authorities- would certainly have been as effective against the traffickers and at a much lower cost in lives and economic activity to Colombia. But the terrain favours the traffickers. As the US puts in more resources they can move further and further into the jungle and the eastern plains. Eventually at a great cost they might be persuaded to move even further into neighbouring Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru where they are already active. A glance at the map would show the hopelessness of the task that we would then face.

The second is the Colombian conflict has lasted over 50 years and the drug trade has only served to increase its intensity. I disagree. The undeclared civil war between the Conservatives and Liberals, known simply as "La violencia," began in 1948 and was effectively ended by the National Front governments from 1958. Of the various guerrilla movements launched in the 1960s and 70s only the FARC had any links with that earlier conflict. They all, including the FARC, relied on communist states providing weapons, training and finance. During the 70s they were an irritant, no more. They had very limited political support. Colombia had a lower homicide rate than Chile that decade. Meanwhile unlike all her neighbours Colombia enjoyed steady economic growth from the 1930s on and much improvement in health, education from the 60s onwards. The FARC only started to grow rapidly in the early 80s when the cocaine business began to boom. The ELN benefited simultaneously from new oil discoveries. By the time the Soviet Union fell neither group needed outside funding. The FARC had become the world's richest guerrillas. I see no reason to think that without these resources the FARC and the ELN would not have sought a negotiated settlement when communist help dried up as the other Colombian groups and the Central Americans did. The Salvadorians for instance enjoyed vastly greater popular support than did the FARC.

My concerns about the results of international anti-narcotics cooperation were strengthened by visits to Mexico in the late 90s. I had served in Mexico from 1979-84 when public order had generally been better than most cities in the industrialized world. On a visit in 1991 I found it worse but no more so than a European capital. By 1997 the situation had deteriorated sharply. Kidnappings were extremely common with Mexico second only to Colombia and muggings and burglaries almost a part of daily life. Mexico's internal conflicts were quite insignificant in public order terms, international publicity surrounding the Zapatistas notwithstanding, and all observers seemed to agree that it was the drugs trade that had created this climate of insecurity. Although a small producer of heroin Mexico's drugs cartels had become powerful as transporters of Colombian cocaine to the US. However the defeat of the Medellin cartel in 1993 and Cali in 1995 allowed the Mexicans to seize control of the distribution within the US from the Colombians, making them the strongest players in the trade worldwide. As in Colombia their ability to intimidate and corrupt took a tremendous toll of the law enforcement agencies and led to many imitators in a get-rich quick world.

The cost of present policies in producer and entrepot countries is all too clear. Success on the supply side was always impossible unless the other 3 elements were dealt with. But over the 11 years that I have followed this situation there has been no notable progress on curbing the supply of precursor chemicals. Despite much legislation and cooperation these chemicals still get through because they serve so many legitimate businesses. On money laundering there has been even more legislation and regulation but my impression is that globalisation has made it even harder to tackle.

On demand, the most important of all, there has been no progress at all. Rather the contrary. The younger generation have a very different view of the recreational use of drugs, which they tend to regard as nothing out of the ordinary. I have described the evolution of my own ideas as one of the drugs-oblivious 50s generation. Thinking back I find it very striking that there has been such a liberalization (and individualization) of life since then. Homosexuality, abortion, divorce, extramarital sex, single mothers, drinking, broadcasting, betting, either the law or social attitudes have become more liberal. Personal choice has become the credo. The old collectivities-churches, political parties, trade unions- have weakened and their messages have softened. On everything except drugs where the law is even tighter now than then. Prohibition, which worked in the 50s when only a tiny few were interested, simply cannot work now that it goes against the grain of social change. To save some from the risk of becoming addicted we put much larger numbers at risk. The drug users who die from taking impure products, the millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens who can acquire a criminal record simply by using the stuff, the addicts, often normally law-abiding too who have no other option but crime to feed their habit and the rest of the population who are the victims of their crimes.

Since present policies have failed and have in my view no chance of succeeding it is surely time to devise some new approach that would take drug supply out of criminal hands and bring it within a legal framework. Carefully tailored regimes for each drug, taxation used to finance much more research, education and treatment these are ideas that have been cogently advanced elsewhere, most recently in "The Economist." No one doubts that it would be difficult and that there would be costs but it is hard to believe that the costs would be anything like as great as those we are now inflicting on ourselves and on the producer and entrepot countries.

Keith Morris is the former UK ambassador to Colombia