Bolivia's Surprising Anti-Drug Success

Source: Time

Tuesday, Aug. 05, 2008
Bolivia's Surprising Anti-Drug Success
By Jean Friedman-Rudovsky / La Paz

Evo Morales spent most of his adult life growing coca in central Bolivia, and resisting U.S.-backed efforts to eradicate the traditional crop that also produces the base ingredient for cocaine. So, when he became president of the Andean nation in 2006, many feared he would abandon the war on drugs and allow coca to proliferate, turning Bolivia into a de-facto narco-state. But after two years in office, Morales has proven to be a skilled switch- hitter: Coca cultivation is under control and drug trafficking interdiction is up. The U.S. acknowledges the achievements, even as it remains skeptical of Morales' policies on the industrialization of non-narcotic coca products. Still, Morales has managed to meet at least some of the goals of the U.S. on his own terms, without turning into an enemy of his own people.

"We have been doing very well," says Colonel Stanley Tintaya, National Director of the Coca Control Unit of Bolivia's Anti- Narcotics Special Forces (FELCN), whose group is responsible for intercepting large amounts of coca headed to cocaine labs. "Our numbers are up 30% from last year."

That's not the only good news. In the last six months alone, the FELCN cut off 11 tons of what is referred to in Spanish as "pasta base" (pre-powder paste made from the leaves) before it could get Brazil or Colombia to be turned into cocaine. That's more than what had been confiscated in all of 2005, the year before Morales came into office. And since Morales' became Bolivia's first indigenous (and coca-growing) president, the FELCN reports having destroyed 2,886 pasta base labs and jailing over 2,000 people involved in illegal coca activity.

The current government's anti-drug trafficking methods are largely carry-overs from previous administrations; Morales credits the improved performance to a policy of devoting more resources to going after those who make the drugs, rather than those who grow the plant, under the slogan "Coca Yes, Cocaine No." According to the U.N., over 68,000 acres of coca are grown here, in South America's poorest country. Because the leaf has been a part of Andean culture and diet for thousands of years, Bolivian law allows for 30,000 acres of coca, a figure established by a 1971 study measuring the market size for the plant's use in tea, in rituals, or in chewing it to stave off exhaustion and hunger or to alleviate altitude sickness. The rest was always believed to end up as cocaine, primarily on the streets of Europe.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1829782,00.html

Compare and contrast. This really got me. Our INSANE drug policy drives production and prices. Use some common sense and you dramatically reduce the amount of coca that turns into cocaine.

"The program has been relatively successful. Bolivia's coca cultivation increased 5% in 2007, but that's minimal compared to Colombia's 26% increase over the same period — and total acreage devoted to coca here is still far lass than during the early and mid-1990s. Steady rises, however, could be problematic in the long run, so the government has been asking Yungas growers to willingly reduce their fields, and warns that it will use to eradicate if necessary."

And get this...(the Bushites can't stand anything that doesn't require nazi boots stomping around and shooting people...)

"In the Chapare region, the government is encouraging crop diversification. In July, the coca grower union there mandated that its 35,000 members plant at least 2.5 acres of rice, and is offering $500 agricultural loans and housing grants to those who limit their coca to one-third of an acre. The idea is a timely spin-off of "alternative development," a USAID program that tried for years to get farmers to replace coca with other crops. But drug policy watchdog groups note that because USAID often required that farmers give up coca entirely and since there were few markets for Chapare- grown food, the program never made any real dent in coca crop totals. Resentment also grew, and the coca growers ousted USAID personnel in June, refusing any future assistance."

I was also deeply touched by this--as I always am by profound examples like this of self-determination, self-policing, dignity, and respect--and I should also mention courage, because it has taken tremendous courage for the indigenous to fight this fight. I've read stories of Morales being beaten by policy in his activist union days. Thousands dead, thousands tortured, probably hundreds of thousands displaced, unions busted, peasant farmers and their children's DNA damaged by pesticide spraying, and one horrendous long term consequence, many of Bolivia's food farmers (who also grow coca leaves, generally for local use--chewing, tea drinking) driven from the land into urban squalor.

The cost of the failed, corrupt, murderous U.S. "war on drugs" has been appalling--and never worse than under the Bush junta, as anyone could imagine. It is "ethnic cleansing" program to clear the land for the really big drug lords and Monsanto.

Hear the pride, self-respect and DEMOCRACY in this voice:

"We're in charge of our own area,' says Elmerjildo Ch�vez a coca grower in the Yungas region of Bolivia, explaining what's known as 'social control.'' The project, which is financed primarily by the European Union and gets an unenthusiastic nod from the U.S., has coca grower unions monitoring crop tallies and buyers' licenses. 'We make sure no one is growing too much, and that our coca is being sold to people who sell it for traditional uses and not for cocaine.'"