Ricardo Soberón Garrido INTERVIEW

Ricardo Soberón Garrido, internationally recognized analyst of drugs and safety issues. Professor at the University of Lima, Peruvian expert on regional drug geopolitics explains in detail why he is convinced that the current repressive policy against illegal trade in drugs is a failure. "Our democracy and our institutions also have deteriorated as a result of this repressive policy."

"There is a global drug problem: there are national problems which must be addressed in national terms because one of the tricks which has been based international system has been to make us think that the problem is global, the response is global, and that no one can question the international paradigm, "he says. "You have to allow countries to adopt their own priorities. Where should increase prices, increase prices where should suppress selectively repress selectively where should liberalize consumption and penalize any drugs, do so. There is a global drug problem: there are national problems which must be addressed in national terms because one of the tricks which has been based international system has been to make us think that the problem is global, the response is global and no one can question the international paradigm. "

- Why from international organizations do not recognize that this policy has failed, or at least has not produced the expected results?

The language of diplomacy is very subtle things to say and obviously United Nations and many of its instances depend on international cooperation, particularly the United States. This is the case of WHO, Unesco, from various organizations. If your staff do not reproduce the speech in serious danger of seeing their budgets cut.

- Who is interested in maintaining this pattern of repression?

Fundamentally, business sectors and military apparatus of the United States. In the business arena obviously international pharmaceutical companies seeking to continue to maintain the monopoly control of the situations of neurosis, psychosis, different types of diseases from their own medications and not letting people have more natural outputs. Militarily we are showing a process of privatization of war, particularly Latin America. Organizations and security agencies and law enforcement apparatus of U.S. military technology are interested in feeding the police and armed forces of our countries, and their intelligence services to entrust new missions, among others, control of drug trafficking, flight tracking and monitoring suspicious vessels suspected, the return of migrants, etc.. There are also other actors involved ideologically in some cases we can speak of sectors of the Catholic Church, very conservative, who are unable to accept individual formulas very impaired consciousness.

Also from the American Conservative movement and support for those positions that are lobbying in Congress.

- How do you analyze the links between drug trafficking and terrorism in Latin America?

By sharing enemies, geographic settings, social target, both of which shared decision-making usufruct to another for some benefits. That happened in Peru, Colombia, the Balkans and the Middle East. But it can lead to terrible confusion of two phenomena that resemble causalities are completely different: a, drug trafficking, strictly capitalist land supply and demand, another terrorism, due to different criteria of understanding the world. That is a terrible error of distortion. No doubt is another element that has been functional from this war on drugs is that for the first time an international consensus was reached to bring the equation: drug equal to terrorism. Because that is not new nor is it only after September 11, 2001. Attempts to try to link drugs to terrorism coming from the '70s, and yet there was much resistance from academic, political, operational, in order to make this balance. Today, drugs equals terrorism at all levels.

Imagine the highest office of the United Nations was the United Nations Programme for International Drug "(UNDCP, for its acronym in English) and is now the Office on Drugs and Crime United Nations , where the word " crime "refers primarily to drug offenses and crimes of terrorism. And beyond that, on the streets today are beginning to criminalize social behaviors that are related to critical reactions against drug policy. At least in my country, adopted a project for which any social opposition to compulsory eradication measures of coca leaf are criminalized with sentences of between 8 and 12. Obviously we can not be naive to say that there is no alliance situations and relationships. And in fact, that is, to have the ability as leaders to enact sensible policies to address this convergence between drug trafficking and terrorism as appropriate.

The fundamental point of view is to show that two phenomena are completely different socially and economically. Drug trafficking is a phenomenon that responds to business logic as any other local, regional, hemispheric, global. The drug dealer is going to make the best possible manner the mechanisms of integration, free trade zones, hidroviales networks, and any other instrument that is designed to promote regional trade. Moreover, the Andean Community can fail, Mercosur may fail, relations between the two institutions can fail, but the drug has responded in the best way possible at this stage. Because if not which explains, among other factors, since 2000 the boom of the appearance and presence of cocaine base and cocaine hydrochloride in cities like Buenos Aires, Rio and Sao Paulo, from Bolivia or Peru. Drug trafficking, in this context, has responded commercially. I was just in the triple border between Brazil, Peru and Colombia. The Amazon river is a fundamental axis for the output of cocaine to Manaus and Belem do Pará. And in return, those same boats bring weapons and precursors for the FARC and trafficking groups, and this is supported by people of the Brazilian federal police.

- What impact on public space can bring this kind of repressive policies in the field of illegal drugs?

One is the reduction of living spaces and exercise of rights. Every time you think more about the setting of standards for wiretapping, the increase in cases of flagrante delicto to arrest people without warrant, to increase the customs and immigration administrative controls to prevent the free movement of people, in intrusively penetrating the spaces of free personal privacy, for example, in the workplace to determine if a person has consumed a substance. If one takes into consideration all these various mechanisms that exist, we find that the individual, the man in the street, ever going to find space under the exercise of rights, more likely to be threatened by the Big Brother that is the State , which incidentally is reduced in certain areas but increases their ability to act also fueled by technological tools that let you know now what does or does not do a person up in your privacy. That's a very specific and concrete results.

- The answer must be the same for different types of drugs?

To be realistic, any changes must be gradual and incremental. There will be total paradigm shifts. I support a gradual process of dismantling the criminal program is based on the separation of legal and illegal because it is a distortion, it is a mistake. We must rethink the concept to talk rather than substance uses. There will be possible uses, acceptable uses, problematic uses, uses not socially acceptable, potentially dangerous uses. That seems to me a new approach to start working.

- Should start with the decriminalization of marijuana possession for personal use?

It is the most immediate. What should offer less resistance in the light of statistical evidence. But ultimately I just I can not stay with a plant. It is possible that the repressive criminalization plants. Not applicable.

Source Liberadamaría