The "New" Colombian Heroin Trade-
Here We Go Again
by Preston Peet- for DrugWar.com
posted Dec. 13, 2002
At the hearing "America's
Heroin Crisis, Colombian Heroin, and How We Can Improve Plan Colombia,"
held by the Committee
on Government Reform, (Dec. 12, 2002) one long-time prohibitionist
publicly pondered what might happen if profit motives were removed
from the drug trade, and another voiced his support for shooting
down unarmed civilian aircraft and dumping mass amounts of
deadly mycoherbicides
on the country of Colombia and everything that lives there.
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Rep. Dan Burton (R- IN)
Having taken part in over 100 Congressional
hearings about illegal drugs and drug policies, Representative
Dan Burton (R- IN) has always
heard the same stories as he watched the drug “crises”
continue to grow unabated. Burton blathered on using old
Drug War rhetoric about the "new"
threat of Colombian heroin, which he insisted is "the
most deadly and addictive" heroin, and that "under the
Clinton Administration we spent too
much time on treatment and not enough on eradication."
Then, after carefully noting that he
“hates drugs and people
who succumb to drug use,” he asked the first panel of
the day, a table full of prohibitionist police and federal representatives
who depend upon the War on Some Drugs and Users for their livelihood,
"what would happen if there was no profit in drugs?"
It is a question that should be asked, Burton said, but as he
himself bluntly stated, US politicians have been too scared to
ask it. Burton asked this after mentioning the assassination
of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escabor, bemoaning the fact that
everytime "we" kill one drug dealer, ten more step up
to take their place because there’s so much money to be made.
“What you’re arguing is complete
legalization,” responded Thomas
Carr, Director of the Baltimore-Washington, DC High Intensity
Drug Trafficking Area Taskforce (HIDTA).
“I’m not arguing anything,”
shot back Burton. “I’m saying the problem never goes
away! What would the effects be?”
Carr said he thought there will always be
people making money off drugs, that even if we legalized them
for anyone over 18 there would still be a black market selling
to underage consumers, but did concede it would probably result
in decreased crime in some areas. Burton then asked what Carr
thought the effects would be on society as a whole, to which Carr
replied, “more people would use drugs.”
“I don’t think the Colombians would
plant poppies if they couldn’t make money,” replied
Burton. He even drew a comparison between the current situation
and the one that bred the likes of the most infamous drug lord
of the alcohol prohibition-era, Al
Capone.
Shouldn‘t we go after the real criminals?
Rep.
John Tierny, (D- MA), stated that
even
with all the money the US has spent in Colombia over the years,
“the price [of drugs] has not dropped one iota.” The
US backed Plan
Colombia has caused massive displacement of poor people in
Colombia, “worse
than anywhere in the world.” Saying that focusing on
interdiction at the source has had no effect on anything but the
lives of Colombia’s poor, Tierny suggested that money would
be better spent by going after the real
money launderers, arms
traffickers shipping arms to Colombia, and those
who sell the precursor chemicals for the production of cocaine
and heroin.
Executing suspects without trial while waging chemical
warfare, the American way
Stalwart prohibitionist Rep.
John Mica, (R-FL) took his turn blathering about how drugs
are “the
most serious social issue in this country,” conveniently
ignoring the fact that 40
million plus US citizens have no guaranteed health care, the
US
poverty levels soar, and a multitude
of corporations have been cooking their books and ripping off
millions of investors. His fondest wishes, according to his
statements at the hearing, are that the US re-institutes its shoot-down
policy, whereby suspected drug courier airplanes are blown
out of the sky, on suspicion alone, as well as increasing
crop spraying, not only of the current
poisons but also of mycoherbicides,
a deadly fungi that stands
to have all sorts of serious
repercussions for the Colombian people and their environment,
and the use of which was banned
in Mica’s own home state of Florida. US Ambassador Anne
Patterson told Mica that “there are no political impediments”
in Colombia to increased spraying. “We could spray even more
if we just had the money. We
have had very good luck with mycoherbicides," she said,
stating it is very effective for use in Colombia.
Prohibitionist Rep. John Mica (R- FL)
Paul
Simons, Acting Assistant Secretary
of State for International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement, told Mica that one of the priorities
of Colombian President
Alvaro Uribe Velez is the “denial of an air bridge in
Colombia,” meaning he supports the shooting down of unarmed
civilian aircraft merely suspected of ferrying illegal drugs over
his country. “We’re working as fast as we can to get
this program back in place,” said Simons, who hopes to have
the program going again sometime in 2003. “You have strong
support from me,” Mica affectionately told him.
“Simply increasing spraying will not
work,” Adam
Isacson, Senior Associate at the Center
for International Policy. “Cultivation is hard to find,”
he explained, noting that “since 1999, Congress hasn’t
had a decent estimate” about how
much coca and poppies are actually being grown in Colombia.
“Since 1996, the
US and Colombia have sprayed a million hectares” yet
estimates of coca production levels have tripled in that country.
Plus,
the spray destroys everything on the ground. Since there is
no
workable substitution program in place, the poor are left
with nothing. “This is counter-insurgency in reverse,”
said Isacson, explaining that one of the basic tenants of counter-insurgency
is winning the hearts and minds of the populace, which isn’t
happening when US and Colombian forces destroy the Colombian peoples’
livelihoods and environment but leave them nothing in return.
“We set up a spraying program, and now we’re setting
up a pipeline protection, which I don’t think is going to
protect the Colombian people.”
Protecting murderous corporate interests
Spending US
tax money to train a brigade of elite Colombian army troops
to
protect the Cano
Limon-Covenas pipeline owned by Occidental
Petroleum, was especially galling to Rep.
Jan Schakowsky, (D- IL). “I
strongly oppose Plan Colombia,” she said, voicing concerns
over rampant corruption amongst the Colombian military
and police,
as well as human
rights abuses and mismanagement of US funds. “There’s
no guarantee of a return for our investment.” She pointed
out that there was a corporate coverup of a
massacre of 18 civilians by the Colombian military in Santo Domingo
in December, 1998, when a pilot working for the US company,
Airscan, Inc., under contract to the Colombian government to protect
Occidental’s pipeline, directed
the Colombian Air Force to drop a US-made cluster bomb on the
village.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D- IL)
Although both companies were
implicated in the planning and execution of the attack by the
Los Angeles Times, Airscan denied involvement and Occidental
refused to divulge exactly what assistance it supplied in terms
of fuel, food and facilities for planning the attack. The Colombian
military falsely blamed leftist rebels for the attack. “We
are rewarding a corporation [Occidental] who has hired a corrupt
military,” said Schakowsky.
“The number one Catch-22 of this policy
is that two-thirds of Colombians survive on about $2 a day, and
you
can’t make commodities like coca and poppies disappear by
making them more valuable,” Sanho
Tree, Director of the Drug
Policy Project at the Institute
for Policy Studies in Washington, DC told DrugWar.com. “Our
fumigation policy acts as an inadvertent price support because
we’re only able to destroy just enough coca and poppies to
keep these commodities’ prices propped up high.”
Despite repeated testimony that years of
huge expenditures of US tax dollars waging a destructive and seemingly
endless war on the Colombian peasants who grow the crops that
become hard drugs somewhere down the line has done nothing whatsoever
to stop the flow of drugs into the US, Congress continues to refund
Plan Colombia every year without pause. Unable or unwilling to
declare a ceasefire despite all the evidence of failure, the prohibitionist
drug warriors continue to throw good money after bad, money spent
on nothing but the destuction and destabilization of Colombia.
