Fighting Back

i dont do cocaine like a lot of American and British people do anyways. . so let them grow it and keep the peace. quit wasting my time (taxes) on the drug war.

In the end, the problem of cocaine in the United States is one of economics. American citizens demand cocaine, so South American cartels step in to supply. Simply put, as long as this demand persists, coca will continue to be grown in Latin America.

If the US government really wants to tackle its growing drug problem, it must take steps to lower domestic demand for cocaine. Efforts of drug education, though having been in place since the 80's, need to be stepped up. This has largely worked with regards to tobacco use in the United States; because of consistent anti-tobacco advertising in print, online, and in television, tobacco products have lost their hip image, and demand has fallen. This success has prompted a similar rise in anti-marijuana advertising, and it's time to apply the same aggressiveness to lowering the demand for cocaine as well.

Attacking the problem from the supply side is pointless. When the United States succeeds in wiping out coca production in one state, farmers in another start growing, a trend often referred to as the "Balloon Effect", in that when you squeeze at one end the other inflates. As long as the demand for cocaine exists, South Americans will have a financial incentive to grow coca. Destroying their fields only deals with the symptom and not the underlying problem.

As we approach an era where we seem to be seeing the limits are on U.S. power, this piece offers another possible example. In 1996, I first went to the Chapare region of Bolivia to make a PBS documentary with Lisa Ling. Back then, coca from the region accounted for 25% of America's cocaine, and the U.S. was offering $2000 a hectare if farmers voluntarily uprooted their coca bushes--Lisa and I videotaped a ceremony where a coca farmer uprooted his coca in front of a visiting delegation of U.S. diplomats while the next field a family was harvesting coca. Finally, the U.S. government, exasperated by the lack of progress in voluntary eradication, switched to involuntary eradication--forcing the Bolivian government to send troops to pull up coca bushes. This approach dramatically reduced the amount of coca produced in Bolivia--while driving it up in Colombia. Then it hit a snag. The people growing the coca were ex-tin miners, used to living high in the Andes, where coca originally grew. When then came down to the jungles of the Chapare after the tin mines closed, they retained some elements of their old life style--particularly knowledge of dynamite. As chronicled in the piece, as the number of fatal booby traps increased, the Bolivians had to modify their approach... So then this raises the question of what the limits on the U.S. ability to project power might be when it meets persistent indigenous resistance, even it it's unorganized... And if people in multiple locations around the globe resist simultaneously, what then? ...Given that our days in the Chapare were also spent in the mud in the jungle, it also raised questions about poisonous snakes and the kinds of diseases one might get from insect bites, but Adam, Tracey Chang, and I were all fine.