What have we gotten for our investment? The director of Amnesty International USA, William Schulz, at a press conference on October 29, 1996, illustrated exactly how grim the situation was. The Special Session on Drugs of the UN General Assembly, scheduled for June 1998, will provide an apt forum for a critical assessment of the viability of the course the world has taken in confronting these problems.The Transnational Institute (TNI) is an international research and advocacy institute committed to building a just, democratic and sustainable planet. Short of ending the war on drugs, policymakers should convert it into a war on drug‐ related deaths by redirecting resources to programs focused on harm reduction.
Most European anti-drugs assistance to Latin America is indirect, channeled through the United Nations Drug Control Programme.In politically unstable situations or periods of transition toward a democratic regime, those sectors in society who see their traditional power base threatened often seek independent funding sources to help them resist these changes. This can result in a highly destabilizing mixture of organized crime and political violence, especially during transitions in which the repressive apparatus is being dismantled. The War on Drugs’ effects on the black community are imper-vious to community calls for dis-cipline and leadership. The following essays present insights into the various levels of military involvement in the war on drugs and the implications of this involvement in terms of democracy and human rights in the Western hemisphere. You understand what I'm saying? You can’t say that you will build a wall around yourself and shut out the outside world. The militarization in Bolivia hence takes the form of combined forces, as in the case of the build-up in the past two years of two joint training centers in the main coca-growing Chapare region, for FELCN, UMOPAR, Ecological Police and military units.A week later, on October 16, 1996, in Buenos Aires, the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission of the Organization of American States approved the Anti-Drug Strategy in the Hemisphere. In North America, for example, Canada and the state of Colorado, in the United States, have recently legalised the recreational use of cannabis, with the aim of regulating and taxing a product that is already widely used and eliminating drug trafficking.“A vast majority of the cocaine and heroin consumed in the United States is grown abroad. The more general inkillings, kidnapping, rape and robbery is in many countries reaching levels comparable to the social effects of a civil war. As their mission is redefined and their internal role is re-legitimized in order to safeguard democracy against the corrupting impact of the illegal drug traffic, the proponents of a greater role for the military in the drug war should keep in mind the saying: We have met the enemy... and he is us.In Colombia, the cause for concern is even greater. Concern about pressures to implement repressive measures and the violation of sovereignty is explicitly mentioned: In the case of drugs of natural origin, comprehensive measures such as alternative development, law enforcement, and eradication, among others, could be applied...The trend toward economic globalization and the numerous initiatives of hemispheric and regional integration (the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mercosur, the Central American Integration System, the Andean Pact, the Caribbean Community) have served to accelerate the transnationalization of the structures that coordinate anti-drugs efforts. Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be “public enemy number one” and increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and drug-treatment efforts. The war on drugs is a government agenda to ban illicit substances used for recreation. A 130 per cent increase in poppy growing, more than 72,000 deaths by overdose during 2017 in the United States alone (the highest level on record), nearly 4,000 prisoners with death sentences executed worldwide since 2009 for drug-related crimes: these are some of the alarming figures quoted in the … Authors. They then asked the State Department to verify whether any of these units had received US military equipment. 01 April 1997. War on Drugs, the effort in the United States since the 1970s to combat illegal drug use by greatly increasing penalties, enforcement, and incarceration for drug offenders.
This impact may vary across cities and regions. Did we know we were lying about the drugs?
For more than 40 years, TNI has served as a unique nexus between social movements, engaged scholars and policy makers.The following essays present insights into the various levels of military involvement in the war on drugs and the implications of this involvement in terms of democracy and human rights in the Western hemisphere. This time, however, the idea was put forward by Colombian Minister of Defense Juan Carlos Ezguerra Portocarrero. Drugs cannot be controlled or illegal or legal in reality, those ideas apply to our actions, not to objects. This can result in a highly destabilizing mixture of organized crime and political violence, especially during transitions in which the repressive apparatus is being dismantled.