And Now, How The Narcs Created
Crack -- In Belize
See
How the Narcs Created Crack(Ed. note: One of the problems with the "social sciences" is
that is usually not possible to use societies in experiments. Consequently, it is
difficult to prove a particular theory. It is necessary to wait and watch to see if
similar policies or events will produce similar results in other places.
In 1986, I wrote that the crack cocaine epidemic was created by the suppression of
marijuana as the Reagan administration escalated the so-called "war on drugs" in
the early 1980s. Although the CIA’s involvement in cocaine smuggling added some to
the supply, and the corruption opportunities for the local police were enhanced by the
switch to crack, I argued that the crack epidemic was simply the result of the economics
of contraband.
Intensified enforcement created incentives for both users and sellers to switch to less
bulky substances.
Marijuana is the bulkiest of the illicit drugs and crack is one of the least bulky.
[Incidentally, urine testing has much the same effect.] All of this happens to fit in
nicely with the prohibitionist agenda, in which the suppression of marijuana has the
highest priority.
Meanwhile back in Belize, DEAland insisted that they suppress the local marijuana crop as
cocaine was literally floating by on its way from Colombia, and guess what happens next.
On the other hand, in Holland, the Dutch decide not to suppress marijuana, and guess
what does not happen. As in most countries, cocaine is readily available there, and
generally you will not be arrested for having it, but they never had a crack epidemic.
Conclusion, suppress marijuana and you will have a hard drug epidemic.
Don’t suppress marijuana, and you will not have a hard drug epidemic. Regardless
of your hard drug policy.
This is an excellent article that illustrates perfectly the counterproductive nature of US
marijuana policies, but it cannot quite reach the obvious conclusion, although it
describes the actual mechanism. This illustrates the working of the prohibitionist
paradigm. We cannot see what cannot be... even if it is.)
From the San Francisco Chronicle
chronletters@sfgate.com
http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
October 5, 1998
By Edward Hegstrom Chronicle Foreign Service
BELIZE’S QUIET DESPAIR
Tiny coastal nation plagued by misery brought by crack cocaine addiction.
(Ed. note: Belize is the former British Honduras on the Atlantic
side of Central America. Most of the population is descended from African slaves. It is
the only English speaking country in the region. It has the world’s second largest
coral reef.)
Orange Walk, Belize
The center of this little town looks so wholesome that you expect to see Andy Griffith
come whistling around the corner. There’s a small white church near the town hall and
a shaded park where girls in school uniforms gather after class to gossip and giggle.
But the wholesome image is only a facade. Trouble lies just around the corner.
A town of 14,000 nestled into the sugar cane fields of northern
Belize, Orange Walk is overrun by crack cocaine addicts known as "sprungheads"
because of their notoriously volatile personalities.
The sprungheads loiter on the side streets smoking $2.50 rocks of crack as fast as they
can scrounge or steal the money to buy them. The most desperate addicts hang out in the
cemetery, sleeping on top of tombs or at an adjacent crack house. "We’re here
all the time, always looking for the next hit," said Chris Garland, one of a
half-dozen addicts gathered in the cemetery one recent morning.
"Cocaine just messed up my whole life," said Leroy Young, combing his white
beard from his perch atop a tomb.
Once a successful cabinetmaker with a family and enough money to visit London, the
62-year-old Young now lives alone in a crack-house room barely large enough to stretch out
his lengthy frame.
He coughs regularly, a symptom of chronic bronchitis. His hazel brown eyes show
desperation, his waist has shriveled away and his once-powerful arms have gone flabbier
than chicken wings.
Orange Walk wasn’t always like this. Although marijuana has
been grown and smoked here for decades, crack cocaine only really blossomed in the past
few years, changing Belize dramatically.
The tiny country, which was once relatively free of crime outside the capital city of
Belmopan, is now overrun by drug-related crime and misery, the sort
of problems formerly associated only with inner cities of the United States.
"People used to say cocaine gringo problem," said Miguel Segura, an officer
in the Belize Force. "But now we have all the same problems: Broken homes, crime,
violence, even gangs." It’s not just Belize. Thanks to
changes in the international flow of drug trafficking, crack cocaine addiction has
suddenly become a problem all along Central American Atlantic Coast, experts say.
Colombian traffickers increasingly use the poorly patrolled coastline between Costa
Rica and to transport drugs bound for Mexico and then on to the United The trade has
inadvertently introduced cocaine to remote coastal villages where it was never seen
before.
Bales of cocaine sometimes wash ashore by accident, dumped by boats fleeing authorities
or spilled while being transferred from one ship to another. The drug is also left behind
as payment to local middlemen.
Wherever the coke winds up, people try it. Like a nasty virus, cocaine refuses to
respect political boundaries or cultural traditions, destroying lives indiscriminately.
There are now crackheads; among the blacks of eastern Costa Rica,
the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua, the Spanish-speaking fishermen of Honduras, the Garifuna
Indians of Guatemala and the Creole-speaking people of Belize.
Alarmed by the trend, the Organization of American States put together a special task
force last year to combat the addiction now sweeping through Central America’s seven
nations.
"Everything we’re seeing indicates an increase in drug use throughout the
region," said Anna Chisman, who coordinates the OAS’ Atlantic Coast
drug-prevention program from Washington, DC.
Belize has been particularly hard hit, which some believe is
related to the country’s longtime acceptance of marijuana.
(Ed. note: If that is the case, why did the problem not
begin until after the suppression of marijuana, as he describes below?)
Belizeans see themselves as kin of the Jamaicans, and so smoking the milder drug has
long been an accepted part of the local Rastafarian culture.
By the mid-1980s, exports of "Belize Breeze" made the country the
fourth-largest marijuana producer in the world, according to the U.S. State Department.
The drug became so socially accepted that semi-professional soccer teams were typically
funded by their own private pot farms.
In Orange Walk, the export of marijuana was practically uncontrolled. Smugglers
began using the main highway just outside town as a night landing strip for drug planes.
Workers with flashlights politely stopped cars along the highway so the planes could land
and be loaded with pot.
Unable to control the smuggling through traditional policing, the desperate government
eventually resorted to putting metal posts along both sides of the highway, so planes
could no longer land without clipping their wings.
Despite the heavy use and the lucrative exports,
marijuana never brought much violence or even petty crime to Belize.
"People who smoke ganja remain calm," said Segura, the police official.
"But people who smoke crack do crazy things. They leave their family. They steal.
They kill."
Gangs modeling themselves after Southern California’s Crips and Bloods now prowl
the streets of Belize City, and drive-by shootings are becoming routine.
People accustomed to small-town tranquility have had to quickly revise their
lifestyles. Door locks have been reinforced, bars added to windows, fences built. Many
Belizeans no longer hang their laundry outside to dry, fearing that a crack addict will
steal it.
"The crime here is no worse than what you would see in Houston or Dallas,"
said Chris Heaton, a police officer from Plano, Texas, who recently spent two weeks
patrolling Belize City as part of an exchange program. "But you have to remember that
Belize City has a population of 50,000," he added, compared with more than a million
in the Texas cities.
Ironically, many Belizeans say a well-intentioned U.S.
drug eradication program is partially to blame for the explosion of local cocaine use.
In the late 1980s, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency brought in aircraft to spray
herbicide on the Belize marijuana crop. The program was so effective that the local ganja
supply dried up almost overnight.
"After the spraying, people were looking for another drug," said Francis
Vaizar, head of the government’s National Drug Abuse Control Council. "They
switched to cocaine."
Cocaine flowed so freely through Belize that the State Department decided to place
economic sanctions on the government last year, lumping Belize with Colombia as countries
that did not cooperate sufficiently in the war on drugs.
The sanctions were lifted early this year after Belize officials seized more than two
tons of cocaine over the previous several months.
The transition from marijuana to cocaine is particularly
strong in Orange Walk, which once served as the heart of pot-growing country. The
region’s location along the border with Mexico made it perfect for smuggling.
The social acceptance of pot has now transferred to cocaine and crack, creating a
strangely surreal small-town scene. Unlike in Belize City, police have managed to keep
Orange Walk from becoming overrun with violent crime. But petty crime is pervasive, and
the smoking and dealing of crack are tolerated.
Just around the corner from the picturesque central square, at least three bars openly
sell crack over the counter, according to Victor Pollard, the government’s local drug
counselor.
Walking farther up a side street, Pollard points to well-kept homes with new paint
jobs. The owners, who he says are well respected, deal crack from their porches.
The police accept bribes to allow the dealing to continue. The
problems are so ingrained that Pollard sometimes wonders how long he will be able to keep
up his morale in the losing battle.
See
The Corruption Of
Prohibition From Mexico To the UK -- 2 Articles
"I’ve got so much into this, but sometimes I just want to quit," he
lamented. "The place is so corrupt, and it will never change."
Supported