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The war on drugs has utterly failed to reduce drug consumption. But it has served to maintain US military and intelligence apparatuses in Latin America.
As cocaine seizures hit record highs in Colombia, production has ramped up proportionally to meet demand, drawing more people and more land into the cocaine economy. In Latin America, prohibition has meant peasant dispossession and state and paramilitary violence.
To understand how the war on drugs has fed violence, dispossession, and US imperial domination, all while failing to reduce drug consumption, Jacobin spoke with EstefanĆa Ciro, one of Latin Americaās leading experts on the economics of drugs, at the Drug Policy, Human Rights, and Global Shared Responsibility conference in Barcelona, Spain, organized by Taula per Colombia. A strong advocate of regulation, Ciro is the director of the ALaOrillaDelRĆo think tank in the Colombian Amazon, which formulates innovative proposals to reduce the enormous violence of the drug trade in Colombia and beyond.
We spoke with Ciro about the current state of drug markets in the United States, Latin America, and Europe; the geopolitics of drugs; the social and political impacts of prohibition; and what an anti-capitalist drug policy would look like.
Pablo CastaƱoWhat are the main health impacts of drug trafficking in the United States today?
EstafanĆa CiroThe main risk is fentanyl, whose overdose crisis has caused more deaths than the Vietnam War and has deep roots in the pharmaceutical industry.
It also has much to do with the dismantling of the welfare state and deindustrialization, with the destruction of stable jobs for workers. Fentanylās a very dangerous drug, very hard to dose. Itās an opioid; you take it and your heart starts beating so slowly it can stop.
Pablo CastaƱoTrump has used the fentanyl crisis as an argument in his trade disputes with China. Do the accusations that China tolerates the illegal trafficking of this drug make sense?
EstafanĆa CiroFentanyl is also a legal anesthetic. There is legal production but also illegal production that can be done at home. Some precursor chemicals come from China, but to claim that this is a destabilization strategy or a situation that warrants breaking relations with China or Mexico is baseless.
We are in the midst of a multipolar shift, where China is increasing its power. The fentanyl issue is perfect for Donald Trump to exert geopolitical pressure on China.
Pablo CastaƱoGovernments like Gustavo Petroās have challenged prohibitionist drug discourse. Are critical stances against prohibition advancing in Latin America?
EstafanĆa CiroTwo years ago, there was more hope for change. Petro came to power in 2022 with a promise of change, a very encouraging scenario. Now I think the window of opportunity for real drug policy reform has closed.
I attended the Latin American and Caribbean Drug Policy Conference in September 2023, where all the foreign ministers of Latin America spoke. Only two of them were vehement in their stance of regulating all drugs: the Chilean and Uruguayan foreign ministers.
In Colombia, we have several documents. The 2016 Peace Agreement [with the FARC guerrillas] mentions crop substitution and transformative drug-consumption policies. That wasnāt fulfilled. In 2020, the US Congress introduced the āholistic policyā [a guideline for drug policy in Latin America]. Petro relaunched it in 2022, claiming it as his own: alternative development [of crops to replace coca] and substitution [with legal crops].
Itās the same paradigm. Weāre at record levels of cocaine production, record hectares [of coca crops], and record seizures. In other words, the result remains the same. Weāre in the same place we were with former president Juan Manuel Santos (2010ā18).
If Petro truly wants a new drug policy, he must break with the United States. And what better time than now, with Trump, who says he wonāt send more USAID funding?
Pablo CastaƱoDrug prohibition is enshrined in UN legislation, and the vast majority of countries enforce it, including US rivals like Russia and China. How do you explain the persistence of the prohibitionist paradigm, despite its failure to reduce drug production or consumption?
EstafanĆa CiroRussia and China have always had their own moral stances on substance use. But in 2023, the Vienna [prohibitionist] consensus was broken, and harm-reduction regulation entered [the international legal framework]. Colombia pushed for this. The fentanyl crisis in the United States also played a role: under Joe Biden, the US government needed to implement stronger harm-reduction policies.
Additionally, then secretary of state Anthony Blinken was at the UN Narcotics Commission, negotiating for China to impose controls on precursor chemicals sent to Mexico for fentanyl production.
Pablo CastaƱoHow does the multipolar transition you mentioned relate to drug prohibition?
EstafanĆa CiroFour or five years ago, William Brownfield, former US ambassador to Colombia, said cocaine was their fourth or fifth concern in terms of drugs ā it didnāt worry them. But that changed because of the geopolitical moment of Great Power rivalry.
One way for the United States to maintain control over Latin America is to sustain the anti-drug military apparatus, keep training police, and retain intelligence access to the regionās police forces. The entire military-industrial apparatus is sustained by prohibition. More than cocaine, what matters to the United States is maintaining a military apparatus in Latin America.
Pablo CastaƱoAnd what role is Europe playing? Does it follow the American prohibitionist line or take a more open stance?
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