INTERVIEW Ricardo Soberón Garrido

Ricardo Soberón Garrido, recognized international affairs analyst and drug safety. Professor at the University of Lima, Peruvian expert in 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 no world drug problem: there are national problems which must be addressed in national terms because one of the tricks which has drawn the 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 make 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 no world drug problem: there are national problems which must be addressed in national terms because one of the tricks which has drawn the 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. "

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

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

- Who is interested in maintaining this repressive scheme?

-Primarily sectors of business and military apparatus of the United States. In the business arena obviously international pharmaceutical companies seeking to continue to maintain monopoly control of the situations of neurosis, psychosis, different types of diseases from their own medications and not letting people have more natural outputs. In the military we are witnessing a process of privatization of war, particularly in 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, tracking and monitoring of suspicious flights of suspect vessels, the return of migrants, etc.. There are other actors ideologically concerned, in some cases we 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 make decisions mutually shared usufruct to certain benefits. This 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, land strictly capitalist supply and demand, another terrorism, due to different criteria of understanding the world. That is a terrible error distortion. It is certainly another factor that has been functional from this war on drugs is that first 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 70's, and yet there was much resistance from academic, political, operational, 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 the policies of drugs. At least in my country, adopted a project for which any social opposition to compulsory eradication measures of coca leaf are criminalizables sentences of between 8 and 12. Obviously we can not be naive to say that there is no alliance situations and relationships. And indeed, for that matter, have the ability as leaders to enact sensible policies to address this convergence between drug trafficking and terrorism that apply.

The fundamental point of view is to point out two phenomena which are socially and economically quite different. 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 way integration mechanisms, free zones, hidroviales networks, and any other instrument that is designed to promote regional trade. Moreover, the Andean Community may fail, Mercosur may fail, the relations between both institutional frameworks may fail, but the drug has responded as best as possible in that scenario. 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 river axis central to the output of cocaine to Manaus and Belem do Para. And in return, those same boats bring weapons and precursors for the FARC and drug 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?

A, reduction of social 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 into 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 spaces under 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 further fueled by technological tools that let you know now what it does or what a person does not even within their personal privacy. That's a very specific and concrete results.

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

To be realistic, any change must be incremental and gradual. 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-use. There will be possible uses, acceptable uses, problematic uses, uses not socially acceptable, potentially dangerous uses. That strikes me as a new criterion 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. You can not criminalize the repressive system plants. Not applicable.

Source Liberadamaría