Illegal Drugs, Anti-Drug Policy Failure, and the Need for Institutional Reforms in Colombia

Abstract

This paper is inspired by two anomalies encountered in the study of the illegal drugs industry. First, despite the very high profits of coca/cocaine and poppy/opium/heroin production, most countries that can produce do not. Why, for example, does Colombia face much greater competition in the international coffee, banana, and other legal product markets than in cocaine? And second, though illegal drugs are clearly associated with violence, why is it that illegal drug trafficking organizations have been so much more violent in Colombia and Mexico than in the rest of the world? The answers to these questions cannot be found in factors external to Colombia (and Mexico). They require identifying the societal weaknesses of each country. To do so, the history of the illegal drugs industry is surveyed, a simple model of human behavior that stresses the conflict between formal (legal) and informal (socially accepted) norms as a source of the weaknesses that make societies vulnerable is formulated. The reasons why there is a wide gap between formal and informal norms in Colombia are explored and the effectiveness of anti-drug policies is considered to explain why they fail to achieve their posited goals. The essay ends with reflections and conclusion on the need for institutional change.

Keywords :

• narcoterrorism
• vulnerability

THE AUTHORS

Francisco E. Thoumi, Ph.D., is a Colombian-American economist. He holds a B.A. from the Universidad de Los Andes (Bogotá) and a Ph. D. from the University of Minnesota. In his career, he has worked in several universities, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and at UNODC where he was Research Coordinator in the Global Programme Against Money Laundering. He has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Tinker Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas. He is a member of the Colombian Academy of Economics Sciences and a cofounder, member of the editorial board and frequent contributor to Razón Pública, a weekly virtual magazine on Colombian issues.

Mr. Thoumi is author and co-author of six books, editor and coeditor of four and author of more than one hundred academic articles and book chapters.

Notes

3 See González-Plazas (2006) for a detailed discussion of this evolution.

4 These are commonly referred to as “laboratories” but they are so primitive that the term is misleading.

5 Today the government refers to them as “bacrims”, short for “criminal bands” that are not supposed to have legitimate political agendas. As argued below, they do seek, and in many places they have supplanted the state, have political control of local governments and have had strong influence on congress. This is why the term “parastatal bands” is more adequate.

6 “In 1970 a group of politicians from the region sent a letter to the president of the country disapproving new measures to control contraband because ‘one cannot prohibit merchandize contraband trade, the only means of subsistence of the majority of the population’” (Tirado 1978)

7 The testimony of Pablo Escobar's brother concurs with this assessment. Escobar (2000: 7–11) asserts that Montesinos visited Pablo Escobar at Hacienda Nápoles to negotiate fees for each planeload from Peru.

8 http://www.internal- displacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpCou -ntries)/ F3D3CAA7CBEBE276802570A7004B87E4?opendocument& count = 10000

9 I use ‘guaranteed’ in inverted commas, because the Constitution did not establish a credible funding mechanism to pay for the rights it granted the citizenry.

10 The data found in the annual World Drug Reports of UNODC provides ample support for this assertion.

11 It is remarkable that while in the late 1970s and through the 1980s extradition was the main issue behind narcoterrorism, today even massive extraditions barely make the evening news.

12 According to the government, the large figure is the result of non-combat personnel turning themselves in. This might be true for many but it is also true that others have taken the opportunity to “demobilize” and obtain some of the benefits granted by the government such as short sentences for high ranking paramilitary and membership in a social reinsertion program for low level ones.

13 Some argue that this has been a “counter land reform”. I am afraid this is a misnomer as Colombia never had a real land reform.

14 Guissarri (1988) found that tax evaders in Argentina bragged about their success. In Medellin the “crowning” (safe arrival) of a cocaine shipment to the U.S. was openly celebrated with big parties, firing shots in the air and great fanfare.

15 As the elders of a tribal village in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province once told me: “yes, we know that opium is ‘haram’, and that is why we do not consume it; it is only for Infidels”. Unfortunately they grossly underestimated the vulnerability of Pakistani society to heroin addiction.

16 The model is also consistent with Elster (1984, 1998) who argues that most human decisions are made in response to interests (money, power, status, etc.), reasons (determined by mores) and emotions (triggered by beliefs). There are other decisions made in response to other factors: “Emotions differ from other “visceral factors” (Loewenstein 1996) such as pain, hunger and drowsiness in that they are triggered by beliefs. Although some emotions may be triggered by sensory signals rather than by cognitions (Le Doux 1996), and pain as well as hunger may be influenced by beliefs, the contrast remains broadly valid” (Elster 1998: 49). Similarly, the model is consistent with legal theories about norms. See for example Bobbio (1987).

17 In the words of Francisco De Roux, the current Provincial (head) of the Colombian Jesuit congregation: “Colombia had more religion than state. The Catholic Church lost its grip on society and now many people do anything they well please” (Interview with the author, Bogotá, September, 2008).

18 It is remarkable that Spanish does not have good translations for the English “law enforcement” and “accountability” concepts.

19 The reader is referred to Hills's criteria for causation which were developed in order to help assist researchers and clinicians determine if risk factors were causes of a particular disease or outcomes or merely associated. There is a need to be aware of, consider and to appreciate the critical necessary conditions (endogenous as well as exogenous ones; micro to macro levels) for both posited “risk” as well as “protective” factors and processes to operate or not to do so (Editor's note)

20 Whynes (1992) concurs with MacDonald.

21 The fall of the USSR and the current uprising in the Arab world are good examples of this.

22 The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 incorporated into one document the complex set of international conventions and protocols developed from the 1909 Shanghai Commission onwards. It focused on opioids, cocaine and cannabis. The Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 was designed to control the psychoactive drugs whose use increased during the 1960s. The Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 was the response of the international community to the growth of international drug trafficking. It focused on international cooperation against trafficking organizations, introduced the concept of money laundering and the need to fight it and typified consumption as a law breaking action but depending on the importance that every country gives it, it may be considered a contravention, a misdemeanor or a felony. This implies that for the first time drug consumption could not be treated only as a domestic policy issue (Jelsma 2003). The conventions limit the use of the controlled drugs to medicinal and research uses. Other uses such as recreational, exploratory, religious or other ritualistic ones are prohibited and considered drug abuse. The conventions are also written in ways that make even small changes extremely difficult.

23 For a few decades after cocaine and heroin were discovered, laboratories in industrially advanced countries managed to keep a technological monopoly on the refining process and the production of those drugs. This led to a significant international trade in opium and coca leaves that travelled large distances from source countries to labs in the United States, Western Europe and Japan. The technology to refine those drugs is however, very simple and by mid XX Century was known in many developing countries.

²⁴ This issue has been explored in several essays by Thoumi (2003b, 2005a, 2005c, 2007 and 2009b) and Yunis (2003). This section follows the arguments developed in Thoumi's works.

25 An example is provided by Augusto Ramírez-Moreno's column in El Siglo on March 20, 1936 cited by Acevedo-Carmona (1995: 153): “The Liberal regime has declared the civil war on Colombians … .. There is a need to disobey. Citizens are relieved from obeying the wicked laws and the illegitimate authorities in power”. Remarkably, the reference was to the duly elected government and congress. During “La Violencia” some Catholic priests like Monsignor Builes from Santa Rosa de Osos incited his flock preaching that killing Liberals was not sinful.

26 Clientelism is a system in which political support is provided in exchange for benefits. It is similar to the political machines that were prevalent in some cities in the United States.

27 Colombia is a country in which many areas remained and some still are uninhabited. These lands belong to the State and are baldíos or unused. There is a process by which settlers may claim them after proving possession for a period of time. This process is however cumbersome and because the State is not present in many places, peasants property rights are frail.

28 In November 2010 in Medellin I had the opportunity to interview three former assassins for hire and a dozen former members of FARC and AUC. Several confided that they the skills that they developed while serving in the military had come very handy in their subsequent criminal activities.

29 The readers interested in alternative development in Colombia are referred to Vargas (2003), Thoumi (2003, ch. 11),

30 CICAD-OAS (2005) provides a detailed analysis of the substances used in the production and refining of cocaine and heroin.

31 Vargas (2003) shows that in many coca growing areas the guerrillas and paramilitary groups that control the coca markets are a threat to the peasants and their communities.

32 The case of Cosurca, an organic coffee project in the Cauca department in Colombia is a case in point. This project of a peasant cooperative was aerially fumigated and destroyed. USAID argued that they had coca mixed with coffee a fact denied by the peasants (Witness for Peace 2005). It was not possible to prove what the situation had been. The point, however, is that if the aerial spraying had been coordinated with the AD program, the spraying could have been avoided and the AD program staff could have verified the existence of coca. If they had found coca, it could have been eradicated manually and the AD project saved. The German Foreign Aid Agency (GTZ) also funded AD projects in this region that were also sprayed and destroyed. Today GTZ does not fund AD projects in Colombia.

33 12,000 of which produced legal coca for traditional uses.

34 This plan was the brain child of Vice-President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga who took over for Banzer on August 7, 2001 when Banzer's illness forced him to leave his office.

35 Perhaps the first reference is found in Tullis, (1995) who uses those words as the title of his book.

36 It is interesting to point out that the Acción Social program of the Colombia Presidency officially denies that AD generates a “balloon effect” (author's interview with Acción Social staff, December, 2008).

37 In a recent study Quimbayo-Ruiz (2008) argues that the negative environmental effects of anti-drug policies are greater than those of the crops themselves. In other words, that the displacement of crops (balloon effect) and the use of herbicides in aerial eradication cause more environmental damage than the coca crops. This is an empirical issue that may be debated.

38 Plan Colombia was established in late 1998 after president Pastrana took over and asked the international community to fund a “Marshall plan” for Colombia.

39 This paragraph is based on Roberts rules interviews of the author with a couple of participants in the U.S. government estimation process.

40 Only the UNODC estimates published in the 2010 World Drug Report raises questions about this issue.

41 Unfortunately, some have taken advantage of this norm to defraud the government (Interview with prosecuting attorney of the Money Laundering Unit of the Attorney General of the Nation, August 30, 2006).

42 CNE is a multi-ministry council ascribed to the Interior Ministry charged with designing national anti drug policies and strategies. DNE is the operational agency designed to support CNE.

43 DNE does not keep records of these cases but they are frequently mentioned in the news. See for example Mera (2010) who gives a couple of examples based on her personal experiences. Off the record DNE personnel acknowledge that these situations are common.

44 There are web sites established to defend Col. Plazas-Vega and to request the incarceration of the judge who sentenced him.

45 SEMANA, November 6, 2010.

46 Since the 1960s every Colombian city has had a commercial area where contraband is sold openly and where people shop without fear or qualms.

47 In my lectures on drugs to Colombian audiences I like to ask those who have relatives or close friends who have been participated in the illegal industry to raise their hands. Very few do and frequently the only hand raised is mine.

48 The reader is referred to the social historian, Charles Tilly (2006 and 2008) as helpful frames of reference. (Editor's note).

49 See for example the latest National Development Plan (DNP 2010).