Republicans Failed War on Drugs Harms the U.S and Colombia

Petro is correct to end prohibition and his solution is rational

Colombia’s new socialist-leaning President, Gustavo Petro, declared at the United Nations last week that it was time to rethink the failed War on Drugs. He proposed decriminalizing coca leaf production for small-scale farmers, while offering financial incentives for growers to not plant in the Colombian portion of the Amazon rainforest, which is accelerating climate change. The question is, will America heed his sage advice, or will our country continue traveling down the failed road of prohibition?

“As long as there’s prohibition there will be mafia,” Petro said. Decriminalizing some production “doesn’t mean ending the American cocaine market, but it does mean taking Colombia out of this cycle of violence.”

The Biden administration is treading carefully, while trying to work out the details. While leading conservative Republicans are predictably expressing outrage. Unfortunately, that seems to be the limitation of their emotional and intellectual range on virtually any subject that requires deeper thought or nuance.

The Washington Post reports that Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter last week to Rahul Gupta, the nation’s top official for drug policy. They railed against Petro’s ideas: “President Petro’s drug policy and posture towards the United States is alarming,” they wrote.

Sen. Rubio was once semi-reasonable on issues affecting Latin America. He was a leading supporter of important bipartisan efforts to enact comprehensive immigration reform. The Florida Senator even served as the liaison to conservative media, tasked in 2013 with persuading FOX News and Rush Limbaugh to back off trashing their proposed legislation. The New York Times reported on a meeting between Rubio and Limbaugh at FOX News headquarters:

The dinner at News Corporation headquarters — which has not been previously reported — and the subsequent outreach to Mr. Limbaugh illustrate the degree to which Mr. Rubio served as the chief envoy to the conservative media for the group supporting the legislation. The bill would have provided a pathway to American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants along with measures to secure the borders and ensure that foreigners left the United States upon the expiration of their visas.  

The senators embarked on a tour of editorial boards and newsrooms, and Mr. Rubio was even featured as the “Republican savior” on the cover of Time magazine for his efforts to change immigration laws.

Unfortunately, the immigrant-bashing Tea Party stepped in and sabotaged his efforts at achieving comprehensive immigration reform. They also torpedoed Rubio’s dream of becoming President. Rubio had to completely divorce himself from this toxic issue when he unsuccessfully ran for the GOP nomination in 2016 against then-upstart Donald Trump.

Ever since, Rubio’s sole mission in life is to pose as an uncompromising hard ass on anything related to Latin America, in his sad, desperate attempt to return to the good graces of the rabid GOP base. (Occasionally, he takes a time out from pandering to embellish his family’s immigration story)

Interestingly, Rubio lives in Miami, a city where a shocking number of residents have noses that appear genetically predisposed to snorting anything white and powdery. It’s like an unexplained magnetic force that pulls powder through straws into nasal cavities. For a marauding drug warrior like Rubio, one wonders what he has done to stop drugs from the “demand” side that defines his city?

As a former disco boy who used to frequent Miami’s exciting foam parties, Rubio must be intimately familiar with the ubiquity of cocaine. He must know that the War on Drugs, launched by Richard Nixon and accelerated by Ronald Reagan, has done nothing to squelch demand in Miami or elsewhere. As Rubio gallivanted half naked in foam, did he ever hear partiers complaining that they couldn’t find coke? No, because it’s easier to access than vodka and one perk is that you don’t have to wait in line or tip a bartender.

Understanding that he has had zero impact on influencing Miami’s wind tunnel-like noses, the nosey Senator prefers to focus on the supply side by attacking Colombia. Before we discuss this, we must address the futility of reducing supply. We can best do this by taking the emotion of drugs out of the equation to focus on food.

The Washington Post reports that more than 73 percent of Americans ages 15 and older are overweight or obese. This is an issue that affects far more Americans’ health than drug abuse. If one were to try to lose weight, there are two ways to do so. One is to focus on supply, such as placing locks on refrigerators. However, the dieter can still have food delivered. There are countless restaurants and supermarkets nearby. So, there are always temptations and access to food, hence locking the fridge might be emotionally satisfying, but it’s essentially useless.

The same concept can be applied to limiting drug supply. If you have ever flown over Colombia’s magnificent Andean Mountain landscape, you quickly realize that locating and eradicating the coca crop is a fool’s errand. It’s too mountainous, too green, and heavily jungled to even make a dent in curtailing production. There are not enough drug sniffing dogs, airplanes, or DEA agents in the world to stop supply. The best prohibition can hope for is interdicting drug shipments, temporarily driving up the price of the product. In this scenario, Rubio’s constituents pay more, while the drug lords make the same profit. High profile, drug busts create sensationalistic news segments, but have virtually no impact on the Drug War.  

Like the refrigerator with the lock, if you cut off one avenue for drug cartels, they will find others. This includes airplanes, walking across the border, speed boats, tunnels and even submarines. So, what’s the point of the Drug War if it’s enriching violent, illegal cartels while doing nothing to stop access at parties in Rubio’s hometown?

Colombia is a staunch ally of the United States and a highly capitalistic society. The people elected Petro, not because they want communism, but to address the crushing inequality created by decades of right wing governments. While there is a desire to shrink the yawning gap between rich and poor, there is little appetite for Marxist repossession of property or stifling entrepreneurship. Most Colombians want access to capital to start new businesses, not Petro taking over businesses already in existence.  

Tragically, if Republicans win control of Congress, they may be poised to demonize Colombia to advance their political propaganda. The GOP can’t handle a successful socialist leaning government in Latin America. They desperately want all progressive governments to flunk and to falsely portray leaders like Petro as new versions of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro. These Republicans reason, “if inequality is lessened in Latin America, then people might demand fairer treatment in the United States.”

The Republican Party will lie about Colombia and distort its reality. Posing as anti-drug warriors, they will move to isolate and punish this country unless they give into unreasonable Republican demands. For example, conservatives have a history of forcing Colombia to spray cancer-causing herbicides on coca fields. Aside from not stopping the supply, it has poisoned the environment, sickened residents, and led to pockets of anti-American sentiment.

Ironically, if Republicans move to penalize Bogota, they will create the worst of both worlds. The result of such an irrational policy would be to increase inequality and turn more Colombians against the United States. Red China – an actual communist regime with designs on global domination – would be thrilled to step-in to fill the void. Or maybe totalitarian Russia expands its footprint on the continent by befriending Colombia?

The disastrous result is less U.S. influence, a threat to national security, exacerbating poverty to the point where voters are radicalized and elect real communists or fascists and turning a friend into a foe. Oh yeah, Sen. Rubio’s “conservative” voters would still be able to satisfy their insatiable appetites and fill their noses with Colombia’s white gold.

Petro is correct, there really is no advantage to continuing the failed policy of prohibition. The upshot is unrest and instability in Latin America, and U.S. consumers becoming sick or dying when illegal drugs are cut with fentanyl or laxatives. If Sen. Rubio is truly concerned with stopping cocaine, he’d work on cutting demand in South Beach, rather than supply in South America.

Tragically, Petro may have spoken out too soon. Perhaps he should have waited until after the U.S. midterms. (Albeit there was strong domestic pressure to use the U.N forum to address the catastrophic Drug War) If Republicans oversee Washington, they will need a Latin American bogeyman, and will likely have no scruples about falsely demonizing Petro as a demented cross between Fidel Castro and Pablo Escobar.

It would be a geopolitical disaster that would harm the United States and Colombia. But contemporary Republicans have no problem elevating parochial partisan concerns above the national interest. In portraying Petro as a monster, they may enact monstrous policies that might have negative, unforeseen consequences.

So, beware of GOP smear campaigns against Bogota, because they say more about the moral character of the GOP than they do about the direction of our southern neighbor. While Republicans claim to hate communism, their propaganda against Colombia is positively worthy of Pravda.