COLEGIO INTERAMERICANO DE DEFENSA
DEPARTAMENTO DE ESTUDIOS
CURSO XXXVIII
THE UNITED STATES
NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY (NDCS) AND ITS EFFECTS ON LATIN AMERICA
COUNTER-DRUG PROGRAMS
Tcnel ARNALDO CLAUDIO
ESTADOS UNIDOS
WASHINGTON, DC., MAYO DE 1999.
Large International drug trafficking
organizations are responsible for the majority of all illegal drugs entering
the United States every year. The 1998,
White House National Drug Control Strategy indicates that approximately 300
metric tons of cocaine, 13 metric tons of heroin, vast quantities of marijuana
and smaller amounts of other illicit drugs to include methamphetamines were
brought into the US in 1997. The August
1998 Semiannual Interagency Assessment of Cocaine Movement estimated that 151
metric tons (MT) of cocaine arrived in the US in the first six months of 1998.
These large quantities of illicit drugs entering the US place a tremendous
burden on our society today. For
example, the social costs of drug use (as stated by US Drug C-Zar, Barry
McCaffrey during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, on March
4, 1998), was estimated of over $67 billion a year, including $46 billion in
crime, $6.3 in AIDS- related costs and $8 billion in illness-related costs.
Additionally, these international drug
organizations/syndicates also poses an enormous threat to democratic
institutions and their financial resources can easily corrupt all sectors of
society. In Latin America, and
specifically in the Andean Ridge countries of Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, 100%
of all cocaine that enters the United States is cultivated and produce,
therefore, viewed by the United States Government (USG) as the center of
gravity in the international effort in combating drug trafficking.
The United States National Drug Control Strategy is the absolute
foundation for the United States Government’s commitment to encounter the
cultivation, production, trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs both
domestically and abroad.
This
research project has the purpose of illustrating the USG’s commitment to combat
illicit drugs and to promote cooperation among the nations of Latin America in
decreasing illicit drug cultivation, production and trafficking. Research focused on the US NDCS evolution,
its goals and objectives, the US problem of illegal drug use, consequences of
illegal drug use and drugs as they are related to crimes. Furthermore, it
illustrates the USG’s supply-reduction strategy and its effects on the
counter-drug efforts in Latin America with emphasis in the Andean Ridge
countries of Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru and the effectiveness of the USG and
the Andean Ridge Countries cooperation to: 1) eliminate illegal drug
cultivation and production; 2) destroy drug-trafficking organizations; 3)
interdict drug shipments; 4) encourage international cooperation and 5)
safeguard democracy and human rights.
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The United States National Drug
Control Strategy (NDCS) and Its
effects on Latin America Counter-Drug Programs. |
“Supply reduction is an
essential component of a well balanced strategic approach to drug control.”
The 1999 NDCS
Large International drug trafficking organizations are responsible for the majority of all illegal drugs entering the United States every year. The 1998, White House National Drug Control Strategy indicates that approximately 300 metric tons of cocaine, 13 metric tons of heroin, vast quantities of marijuana and smaller amounts of other illicit drugs to include methamphetamines were brought into the US in 1997. The August 1998 Semiannual Interagency Assessment of Cocaine Movement estimated that 151 metric tons (MT) of cocaine arrived in the US in the first six months of 1998. These large quantities of illicit drugs entering the US place a tremendous burden on our society today. For example, the social costs of drug use (as stated by US Drug C-Zar, Barry McCaffrey during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, on March 4, 1998), was estimated of over $67 billion a year, including $46 billion in crime, $6.3 in AIDS- related costs and $8 billion in illness-related costs.
Additionally, these international drug organizations/syndicates also poses an enormous threat to democratic institutions and their financial resources can easily corrupt all sectors of society. In Latin America, and specifically in the Andean Ridge countries of Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, 100% of all cocaine that enters the United States is cultivated and produce, therefore, viewed by the United States Government (USG) as the center of gravity in the international effort in combating drug trafficking.
The United States National Drug Control Strategy is the absolute foundation for the United States Government’s commitment to encounter the cultivation, production, trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs both domestically and abroad. This research project has the purpose of illustrating the USG’s commitment to combat illicit drugs and to promote cooperation among the nations of Latin America in decreasing illicit drug cultivation, production and trafficking. Research focused on the US NDCS evolution, its goals and objectives, the US problem of illegal drug use, consequences of illegal drug use and drugs as they are related to crimes. Furthermore, it illustrates the USG’s supply-reduction strategy and its effects on the counter-drug efforts in Latin America with emphasis in the Andean Ridge countries of Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru and the effectiveness of the USG and the Andean Ridge Countries cooperation to: 1) eliminate illegal drug cultivation and production; 2) destroy drug-trafficking organizations; 3) interdict drug shipments; 4) encourage international cooperation and 5) safeguard democracy and human rights.
Evolution of the U.S National Drug Control Strategy
National Drug Control Strategies have been produced every year since its first in 1989. Each defined demand reduction as a priority. In addition, the strategies increasingly recognized the importance of preventing drug use by youth. However, it is important to noticed that various strategies affirmed also, that no single approach could rescue the nation from the cycle of drug abuse and that drug prevention, education, and treatment must be complemented by supply reduction actions abroad, on our borders, and within the United States.
Each strategy also shared the commitment to maintain and enforce anti-drug laws. All the strategies, with growing success, tied policy to a scientific body of knowledge about the nation’s drug problems. The 1996 Strategy was a break-through that established five goals (with goals 4 and 5 targeting the international effort) and thirty-two supporting objectives as the basis for a coherent, long-term national effort. These goals remain the heart of the 1999 Strategy and will guide federal drug-control agencies over the next decade. In addition, the goals will be useful for state and local governments and the private sector.
Goals of the 1998 U.S. National Drug Control Strategy:
Goal 1: Educate and enable
America’s youth to reject illegal drugs as well as alcohol and tobacco.
Goal
2: Increase the safety of America’s citizens by substantially reducing drug-
related crime and violence
Goal
3: Reduce health and social costs to the public of illegal drug use.
Goal 4: Shield America’s air, land,
and sea frontiers from the drug threat. (International effort)
Goal 5: Break foreign and
domestic drug sources of supply. (International Effort)
Democratic: The USG
domestic challenge is to reduce illegal drug use and its criminal, health, and
economic consequences while protecting individual liberty and the rule of law.
The USG international challenge is to
develop effective, cooperative programs that respect national sovereignty and
reduce the cultivation, production, trafficking, distribution, and use of
illegal drugs while supporting democratic governance and human rights.
Outcome-oriented: The Strategy must ensure accountability.
Performance Measures of Effectiveness: A System for Assessing the Performance
of the National Drug Control Strategy details long and mid-term targets that
gauge progress toward each of the Strategy’s goals and objectives.
Comprehensive: Successfully addressing the devastating drug
problem in America requires a multi-faceted, balanced program that attacks both
supply and demand. Prevention, education, treatment, workplace programs,
research, law enforcement, interdiction, and drug-crop reduction must all be
components of the response. Former “Drug
Czar” William Bennett laid out in the 1989 National Drug Control Strategy a
principle that still applies today: “…
no single tactic—pursued alone or to the detriment of other possible and
valuable initiatives—can work to contain or reduce drug use.” We can expect no
panacea, no “silver bullet,” to solve the nation’s drug-abuse problem.
Long-term: No short-term solution is possible to a national
drug problem that requires the education of each new generation and resolute
opposition to criminal drug traffickers. The strategy must be philosophically
coherent and consistently followed.
Wide-ranging: The strategy must response to the drug problem and
must support the needs of families, schools, and communities. It also must
address international aspects of drug
control through bilateral, regional, and global accords.
Realistic: Some people believe drug use is so deeply embedded
in society that we can never decrease it.
Others feel that draconian measures are required. The 1998 Strategy
rejects both these views. Although the strategy cannot eliminate illegal drug
use, history demonstrates that it can control this cancer without compromising
American ideals.
Science-based: Facts, based in science and data collection,
rather than ideology or anecdote must provide the basis for rational drug
policy.
General (ret) Barry McCaffrey, U.S. White House, Drug Policy Office
Director states, the metaphor of a “war on drugs” is misleading. “Although wars are expected to end, drug
control is a continuous challenge. The moment we believe we are victorious and
drop our guard, the drug problem will resurface with the next generation. In
order to reduce demand for drugs, prevention efforts must be ongoing. The chronically addicted should be held
accountable for negative behavior and offered treatment to help change
destructive patterns. Addicts must be helped, not defeated. While we seek to
reduce demand, we also must target supply.
Cancer is a more appropriate metaphor for the nation’s drug problem.
Dealing with cancer is a long-term proposition. It requires the mobilization of
support mechanisms—medical, educational, and societal—to check the spread of
the disease and improve the prognosis. The symptoms of the illness must be
managed while the root cause is attacked. The key to reducing both drug abuse
and cancer is 1revention coupled with treatment.”
The world is facing a pandemic of drug abuse that inflicts staggering costs on our societies. Illegal drugs kill and sicken people, sap productivity, drain economies, threaten the environment, and undermine democratic institutions and international order. The United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) estimates the annual value of the international drug trade at approximately five hundred billion dollars.
To confront this menace in the United States, the USG developed a comprehensive, balanced, and integrated national strategy consisting of the five goals and thirty-two objectives mention above. The USG first priority is to reduce the demand for illegal drugs: to educate youth to reject illegal drugs and to reduce the health and social costs of illegal drug use. In support of this demand-reduction effort, the United States spend over $5 billion in 1998 for drug prevention and treatment in schools and prisons. Presently, the Office of the National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is conducting a $195 million mass media campaign to change the attitudes of adolescents towards drug abuse.
Efforts in the United States will have an effect on other nations: as the United States continues to reduce demand for cocaine and heroin, traffickers will seek new markets. The UNDCP documents that the United States now consumes only 2 percent of the world’s heroin. Traffickers have taken note of the potential for increased global demand and are aggressively looking for new markets. . Illegal drug use rates are 50 percent lower than 1979’s historic high level. In 1997, overall drug use remained stable, and use among youth stopped increasing after five years of rising rates. An estimated 13.9 million Americans (6.4 percent of the U.S. household population aged twelve and over) were current drug users. This figure represents a significant change from 1979 when the number of current users was at its highest recorded level—twenty-five million (or 14.1 percent of the population). Despite this dramatic drop, approximately 34 percent of Americans twelve and older have used an illegal drug in their lifetime; of these, more than 90 percent used either marijuana or hashish, and approximately 30 percent tried cocaine. Fortunately, sixty-one million Americans who once used illegal drugs have now rejected them.
The consequences of illegal drug use have also been devastating within the United States. The USG estimate that in the last ten years, drug use has cost the US society more than 100,000 dead and some $300 billion. Each year, 500,000 US citizens go to hospital emergency rooms because of drug-induced problems, and 14,000 suffer drug-related deaths.
US citizens from every social and economic background, race, and ethnic group are concerned about the interrelated problems of crime, violence, and drugs. They are especially concerned about the increased use of drugs by young people. Today, dangerous drugs like cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine are cheaper and more potent than they were at the height of our domestic drug problem fifteen or twenty years ago. In 1997 in Arizona, 90 percent all homicides were related to methamphetamine. No nation can afford such devastating social, health, and criminal consequences.
The demand for illegal drugs lies at the heart of the global drug problem. The United States is a substantial part of the demand side of the drug equation. However, over the past two decades, the United States has made more progress in this area than on any other public health issue. Has stated, the number of Americans who are casual drug users has dropped by 50 percent since 1979, from twenty-five million to twelve million. The number of casual cocaine users has dropped over the past decade from six million to 1.5 million Americans in 1998. The U.S. National Drug Control Strategy recognizes that demand and its associated profits are the impetus for the drug trade; USG efforts have been prioritized accordingly. Therefore, the USG’s number one counter-drug goal is to prevent the sixty-eight million Americans under eighteen years of age from becoming a new generation of addicts. The USG find it unacceptable that drug-use rates have doubled among our youth since 1992; therefore it must reverse this trend. In November 1997, the USG kick off the largest anti-drug media campaign in history. This program will spend up to 350 million dollars a year (counting federal and matching industry funds) to change social attitudes toward illegal drugs.
While the U.S. can’t arrest its way out of the drug problem, it will continue to uphold to strict drug laws. A million and-a-half Americans are now behind bars, many for drug-law violations. More than a million additional Americans are arrested every year for drug offenses. Incarceration is entirely appropriate for many drug-related crimes. There must be strong incentives to stay clear of drug trafficking, and prison sentences can motivate people to obey the law. Our challenge is to address the problem of chronic drug use by bringing drug testing, assessment, referral, treatment, and supervision within the oversight of the U.S. criminal justice system. The USG is doing so by increasing the number of drug courts that oversees treatment and rehabilitation for drug-law violators and will increase federal spending on youth drug prevention by 21 percent in the next fiscal year. The USG is investing in dramatically expanding community-based anti-drug coalitions. The USG goal is to increase the number of U.S. towns and cities that have private-public anti-drug coalitions from 4,300 to more than 10,000.
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