The Drug War: As Useful as Shoveling Water

Sanho Tree is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and leads IPS's Drug Policy Project. I recently spoke with him about the waging of the Drug War under the Obama administration. For more on Plan Colombia see this powerful video from Sanho Tree and Witness for Peace and my interviews with him from 2001 and 2003. Sanho Tree: First of all, Obama has about more than 500 appointed positions that require Senate confirmation that he is allowed to appoint, and about half of them have been appointed thus far. And that's par for the course. He's actually ahead of the curve in terms of Presidential transitions. But it just takes a long time to put all the people into the bureaucracy and to really set policies. Having said that, we still don't have a director of AID (Agency for International Development), for instance, or DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration). So, in that sense, there's a lot of the permanent bureaucracy that is acting on autopilot. And they are right to do that until they get instructions to the contrary, new guidance, new policies. And we're talking about a lot of layers of policies. So, without focusing high level attention on this issue, there's not a lot of radical change that's gonna happen anytime soon. The new drug Czar is a fairly decent guy, actually, Gil Kerlikowske, a thoughtful guy, and he's doing a lot of stuff quietly--not on Plan Colombia, but on other Drug War issues--quietly, that is quite positive, even though he continues to put out the rhetoric that soothes the ($23 billion a year) Drug War bureaucracy… It's a lot of money and a lot of civil servants, many of whom would love to knife him in the back if they got a chance. So, in that sense, change is slow. The (State Department's) Western Hemisphere secretary has just been confirmed, Arturo A. Valenzuela. He was an original supporter of Plan Colombia. Obama's Latin American appointees are Hillary Clinton's Latin America appointees. It's too early for them to have made many policy pronouncements but they wouldn't be my picks, I'll put it that way. And indeed, many of us in the NGO community are almost sad to see the Bush appointee leave. I know that sounds insane, but Tom Shannon, who was Deputy Executive Director of Western Hemisphere, was a Bush appointee, but he was actually someone you could talk to and try to smooth out relations with Venezuela, with other countries. But again, you're talking about very large bureaucracy and after eight years of Bush, they've managed to politicize a lot of the permanent civil service in ways that are improper, and I would say illegal as well. Some of them have burrowed into the permanent civil service and they're very difficult to fire now, from appointed positions to protected civil servant positions. And for many of these people, the status quo is kind of--a change from that represents kind of an existential crisis for these people, both in terms of budgets but also in terms of acknowledging that they were doing something fundamentally wrong. So it takes time to turn that ship around. It's like steering an ocean liner. And you figure that Plan Colombia is very low on Obama's radar right now. So in that sense, a lot of the permanent civil service and the permanent bureaucracy exercise a lot of power still, which is not unusual for Presidential transition years. In terms of Plan Colombia, the aid package has shifted every year since the Democrats took it over in Congress and continues to shift, so that it's no longer the 80/20 militarized assistance. Every year it is shifting more and more towards social assistance and less military. GR: So the 80/20 was initially military assistance/social assistance? ST: Yeah. For eight years of Bush, basically, that was the pattern. Well, not eight years. The past two years, the Democrats have had much more influence, but historically it has been 80/20. And now it's shifting every year more. There's less reliance on fumigation, so they're rolling that back. There's more manual eradication, which in some ways is worse than aerial fumigation because it is up-close and personal and it's very dangerous and really quite depressing. I used to think it would be a kinder, gentler way to do it, but in fact when I saw it firsthand, seeing these manual eradicators in the field and watching these campasinos being held back at their homes at gunpoint, while thirty or forty men come through their fields and uproot their food security, basically--it's one of the most shocking things I've witnessed. Just to see the rage and hatred in their eyes, in a country that has 45 years of civil war and all these layers of vengeance and hatred--to pile one more layer on top of that is something that is really quite mind boggling. It reminded me of going to Georgia and talking about, even mentioning, Sherman's march to the sea. People still have a visceral, genetic memory of that, more than 150 years later. And that's kind of how I think of manual eradication. The drug warriors in both State and ONDCP (Office of National Drug Control Policy)--the Drug Czar's office--are unrepentant, still contend that fumigations are a wonderful success. This was as of April. I met with them and brought three Colombians up to go meet with the senior levels of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement,INL it's called, in the State Department, and then the Latin America branch of ONDCP. It's the same bureaucrats at that time as under Bush. The only difference was that they had to be nice to us, for a change. It's a step forward but, you know. That was perhaps the first time that these senior level officials came face-to-face with Colombians who had been fumigated and lived through this for the past eight years, because they live in this bubble. They still contend that their policies were working and that they don't make mistakes in terms of wrongful fumigation, et cetera, but they certainly got an earful. It's going to take time to rotate those people out. They were rather elderly, which is the one saving grace, There was an awful lot of gray hair there, and I can't imagine that they would stick around too long under Obama. I don't think they could stomach it. Not that there's a radical push for changing policies right now. In fact, the bases--it's really alarming. And again I think a lot of it is Obama not using his political capital and focusing on this issue. As President, you can imagine that it's not easy going against a large bureaucracy. He can have these fights, but it requires a lot of focus and a lot of attention that he just doesn't have right now. GR: I get the impression you feel like if Obama had his druthers, he would alter the Drug War or US drug policy in some way. ST: Yeah. As a Senator and as a community organizer, he gets it. I think he understands the drug issue quite well. But, again, there's only so much political capital he has and so many political fights he can take on at any given time. When you think about it, a $23 billion Federal bureaucracy and the allies they have, particularly in the Republicans, on Capitol Hill--it's very easy to think of scenarios where anonymous bureaucrats will go to Senator (Chuck) Grassley…and start screaming bloody murder and leaking information. The next thing you know, it goes on Fox News, and there's another scandal, or manufactured scandal, rather. You see what they're doing now with health reform. Imagine even more controversial issues such as the War on Drugs and the kind of stink these people would make with that. Which is why I said the Drug Czar, Kerlikowske is actually doing some good stuff, in terms of medical marijuana and letting the states handle these issues. There's a lot of reform going on, but quietly and under the radar. Meanwhile, he's saying "Legalization is not in my vocabulary, it's not in the President's vocabulary," saying those things that he has to say to keep the bureaucracy from going ape-shit and running to Congress and the Republicans and Fox News. GR: You mentioned medical marijuana. I think one of the most darkly amusing things for me is watching a lot of Southern Republicans, when people start talking about medical marijuana in California, suddenly trumpeting Federal law beating out states' rights. ST: Yeah. GR: Let me ask you, then, about the Drug War. I have to say, decriminalization, if not legalization, seems to be common sense and I think if people thought about it, that's a perspective that would cross a lot of political lines. An example is, in the local press here, and I imagine anywhere else, every time there's a disturbing, violent crime, people jump on the perpetrators' records and start talking about how "We've got to build more prisons! Build more prisons!" and as you know, of course, we still have, as far as I know, quantitatively more people in our prisons than any other country on Earth. Beyond that and the channeling of the profits from the Drug War to really nasty people in Mexico, to the Taliban and so on--what I need you tell me is, who is benefitting from the Drug War, aside from the obvious people, aside from the dealers and the Taliban and so forth. Why is it still being waged? ST: These culture war issues, the way they play out in national politics--you're seeing this with health care, you're seeing this with "the birthers," and there's all these nut-jobs out there. Not that they're gonna have any power to win elections anymore, but they can create a hell of a stink. Having said that, there is certainly momentum for change and there is actual change happening. In Afghanistan, for instance, Ambassador (Richard) Holbrooke, who's Obama's point-person for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has defeated the drug warriors in the State Department who wanted not only to eradicate the poppies but fumigate them, bring in aerial fumigation. He shut them out resoundingly and was none too gentle about it. He said it was the biggest waste of money he's ever seen in his career, these people have screwed everything up, they've turned the people against the government and against the US and NATO forces, driven them into the arms of the Taliban, it's been counterproductive, et cetera. Even the UN drug czar, (Antonio Maria) Costa, has said that forced eradication is a complete failure in Afghanistan and that the way to deal with the opium problem there is to allow farmers to grow as much opium as they want. They will overproduce, as they did in the late 90's, and the price of opium will collapse. And when that happens, it will be the Adam Smith "invisible hand", as it were, that persuades farmers to grow other crops rather than US troops or NATO troops playing the bad guy. In the late 90's, a kilo of dry opium in Kandahar fell to as little as $30/kilo. So that gives you a sense of real-world prices without prohibition, as opposed to the peak price of opium, which is $740/kilo right before September 11, when Mullah Omar established prohibition in Afghanistan. So, that's $30 versus $740. It's a big difference. So, looks like that's the direction they're heading right now. GR: So, what the policy has been before is basically what De Beers does with diamonds, by sticking them all away in a vault and artificially creating the value. ST: Exactly. Exactly. But that's been the beauty of INL job security, these international drug warriors. The reward mechanism. It always comes down to, what's the reward mechanism? And they've been rewarded on how many hectares can you eradicate, how many kilos can you interdict, how many people can you lock up. These are meaningless metrics. They're useful as shoveling water. It's like body count. And when you change the metrics of success, then you slowly start to see a change in policies. So what I'd like to see is: How many tons of alternative development crops can you get from these projects they're starting to implement? How many farmers can you enroll in alternative development crops and maintain them year after year? As opposed to just signing them up, which is what happened under Plan Colombia: get the signatures and burn their asses right away. But you know, that's not going to get rewarded in these various bureaucracies. GR: Senator Jim Webb from Virginia recently gave a very interesting speech, the gist of which is that we need to look pretty hard at why we've got the 2 million people locked away in this country. And as I understand it, his bill would set up a study group of some sort and did include in it his concerns with drug policy. I'm sure you're aware of it. Is that moving forward? Is that a useful step? ST: Yeah. I've been working with Webb's office on this and he's doing it in a very methodical way. That is what you need in the Senate, which tends to be more cautious than the House. And he's been having a series of hearings on incarceration, on the international Drug War, on all kinds of these related issues. I think he gets it and he's very principled. I give him tremendous credit for doing what he's doing. He's also got the political cover, being a former Republican and a military person. So he's well positioned to do that. And he even says that legalization needs to be on the table for discussion even thought the Drug Czar (says legalization is not in his vocabulary). So much of this is down to framing. And legalization is not in my vocabulary either, because it's a meaningless word, because it doesn't represent what I'd like to see and has been defined by drug warriors to mean something completely different, so that the drug warriors have set up this false dichotomy: either you're in favor of zero tolerance and prohibition and the Drug War or you're accused of wanting to sell heroin in candy machines to children. That's how they define legalization: as anarchy. What I would like to see is regulation. I might prefer more liberal regulation, the Drug Czar might prefer more conservative regulation. But its nonetheless regulation rather than prohibition. (Prohibition) doesn't mean you control the drugs, it means you give up the right to control them. I think most rational people, if you take away this false and silly dichotomy, recognize that there's a spectrum of choices and once we acknowledge that, we can then debate the details: where on this spectrum do you want to be? Certainly with regards to cannabis, that's going to definitely move towards more liberalization, or legalization if you will. But again, legalization is a funny word. I mean, bazookas are legal, but I can't go out and buy one. So what does that mean with regard to drugs? So, regulation means having more control over these substances, which is what I think we all want. We want some form of regulation that keeps it out of the hands of problematic users and minors, and make it available to people who are going to have it no matter what anyway. Because prohibition doesn't work. GR: It seems like the cure is worse than the disease. Yeah. And it's this semantic trap that's kept us locked in place. And the drug warriors have really been able to capitalize on this, that even though three-quarters of the American people don't believe the drug war has worked, is working, or will ever work, the fear of the unknown has kept the current system in place, in that they think "well, maybe the current system is awful, it's not working, but boy, if they stopped, wouldn't it be all that much worse?"… (T)he fear of the unknown is something that the status quo can really capitalize on. And a lot of it is the failure of reformers to articulate what an alternative would look like for different types of drugs. I kind of like to liken it to standing at the edge of a precipice with a blindfold on. You don't know if the next step is a 1,000 foot drop, or if it's an escalator going upwards. And that's what's kept people paralyzed and politicians from speaking out on this issue. I do think that culturally, we are moving more and more towards open discussion, but this still remains one of the quintessential third-rail issues in Washington. Nick Holt's website is Grits and Roses.