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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
August 27, 2007
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| May 27, 2007 |
Plan Columbia: The War on Drugs – Sanho Tree |
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| Sanho Tree in Colombia |
Plan Columbia: The War on Drugs – Sanho Tree
Plan Colombia refers to the controversial United States legislation aimed at controlling drug smuggling by supporting different drug war activities in Colombia, and a wider aid initiative originally proposed by Colombian President Andres Pastrana Arango. Plan Colombia was conceived between 1998 and 1999 by the administration of President Andres Pastrana Arango with the goals of social and economic revitalization, ending armed conflict and creating an anti-drug strategy. The most controversial element of the anti-narcotic strategy is aerial fumigation to eradicate coca plants used to make cocaine. This activity has been greatly criticized because it destroys legal agricultural crops and has adverse health effects on civilians exposed to the herbicides. |
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| Children play near their school, which has been sprayed with herbicides |
As part of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the governments of the European Union are giving over 200 million dollars to Plan Columbia and a further 1.3 billion dollars is being contributed to the plan by the United States government. On the 56th Global Voyage between Mexico and the United States, Sanho Tree, a Fellow and Director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. gave talks on his project to end the US's domestic and international ‘War on Drugs’ by replacing it with policies that promote public health and safety as well as economic alternatives to the prohibition drug economy. |
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| A child stands by a lone surviving papaya plant |
During a lecture onboard Peace Boat, Mr Tree explained that the current ‘War on Drugs’ and Plan Colombia have not successfully addressed social welfare related needs such as employment, infrastructure development, and healthcare, and he believes that without tackling these issues the ‘War on Drugs’ is a losing battle. “Even if we accept the United States government’s argument that Plan Colombia has brought a 50 per cent reduction in coca growing in six years, either Colombia has returned to [the 2002] level of cultivation, or the 'reductions' reported in 2002 and 2003 were false due to poor measurement.” There has evidently been little or no change since Plan Columbia’s inception. |
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| Contaminated river – a community's water supply |
Why the ‘war on drugs’ policies can not succeed:
Extreme poverty – according to United Nations and World Bank figures, an estimated one fifth of the human race survive on less than $1 a day. About half of the planet lives on less than $2 a day. This is the type of poverty that exists in rural Colombia.
High demand from wealthy nations such as the USA and some European countries. The drug problem is not caused by producing drugs, but by the fact that demand drives the economy. In the United States not enough money is spent on addicts- they are untreated unless they have money for private health insurance. The only way these addicts can receive help is if they get arrested and get put into prisons.
United States policy tries to stop the supply of drugs. The economics of drug prohibition – as the supply for these drugs becomes limited it boosts the costs higher. |
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| A mother shows the adverse effects on her baby’s skin |
Sanho Tree’s stance on the ‘War on Drugs’
“The war on drugs now causes more harm than the drugs themselves. In the United States we must ask why they choose drugs, self-medicate a lot more than their counterparts and other developed countries. Many people in the USA think their lives won’t improve and their best days are behind them. Because of economical globalization a lot of manufacturing trades have left for China or Mexico and will not come back. Many middle class people who used to have good paying jobs now work for half of what they used to. When people believe tomorrow won’t be a better day, you have societal issues such as drugs. Many take drugs to feel better because their life is very painful and depressing. So the best way to solve this problem is to build a healthy society, but this requires a lot of investment, and many politicians prefer a ‘get tough’ approach.” |
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| A baby’s skin reacts to the aerial fumigation |
The waiting list for prisons
In 1980s the United States had less than a million people in prisons, and now there are 2.2 million inmates. This rapid growth has a lot to do with drug crimes. There are about nine million prisoners on the this earth, meaning that the United States holds a quarter of the prisoners on this planet. Meanwhile there are still problems and yet we haven’t addressed why the problems actually exist. |
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