Legalizing Cocaine Is the Only Way to End the Drug War

A Panamanian National Aeronaval Amenity officer guards tons of cocaine divided into hundreds of packages bound for the United States at the Aeronaval headquarters in Panama City on November Photo by Martin Bernetti AFP via Getty Images I was never that into cocaine preferring the euphoria promised by MDMA or the relaxation offered by cannabis but back in a cocaine-serving lounge bar Course in La Paz Bolivia was the talk of the backpacking circuit and the scarcely-believable novelty of the place was alluring At Direction bags of cocaine are served on silver platters and a friend and I got incredibly high that night Too high perhaps though it was all undeniably good fun But as soon as my first-person dispatch for Vice from the lively dusk-till-dawn session went viral I feared that I perhaps shouldn t have glorified the use of a moreish drug that typically leaves a trail of violent destruction in its wake I tried to get my byline removed from the story but it proved impossible as the article had already been translated into several languages As the years passed however with cocaine becoming both unprecedentedly popular and increasingly affordable despite the billions spent on the war on drugs to avoid these exact outcomes I ve come to realize that accepting that adults take cocaine and legally regulating the drug is the only sensible path forward Establishments like Course the world s first cocaine bar might just represent a more enlightened peaceful future for us all After all U S -led leadership around the world have tried everything else and to great human cost Coca fields across the Andes where cocaine s main ingredient grows have been sprayed with harmful herbicides like glyphosate harming the local Indigenous people for whom coca holds unique spiritual and nutritional value and killing anything that tries to grow in the contaminated soil Consumers and traffickers of cocaine have been imprisoned en masse helping to create a prison industrial complex which serves as a university of crime for its incarcerated and a fertile recruitment ground for armed drug gangs The war on drugs is not just a political metaphor in numerous places it s a full-blown militarized conflict with vast numbers of casualties It has fueled unparalleled bloodbaths in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed across the world notably in Colombia Mexico and the bulk lately Brazil where a police raid on a cartel-controlled favela in Rio led to more than deaths in one night in late October This was a slaughter not an operation one bereaved mother stated The Guardian They came here to kill Related License to Kill Trump s Extrajudicial Executions In the international waters around the U S the legally indefensible and barbarian campaign the Trump administration is waging against boats suspected of trafficking drugs from Latin America has killed at least people in extrajudicial airstrikes Such boats if certain of them are indeed carrying drugs would mostly be ferrying a popular white powder which numerous people appear to have an insatiable appetite for As President Donald Trump acknowledged in before becoming a politician legalizing drugs is the only way to end the war on drugs After all people want to sniff cocaine You have to legalize drugs to win that war Trump announced in Cocaine was first extracted from the coca leaf in by a young German chemist Friedrich Gaedcke A meager decades later it was identified as a highly effective local anesthetic Cocaine was then vaunted as a nerve food wonder drug by pharmaceutical companies and psychologist Sigmund Freud who initially claimed it was a panacea for depression Then it was widely used as both a medicine and as a recreational drug Pope Leo XIII was such a fan of one cocaine-infused tonic wine as a mental fortifier when prayer was insufficient that he awarded its creator a Vatican gold medal President Ulysses S Grant Thomas Edison and Queen Victoria were also partial In Coca-Cola launched as a brain tonic and intellectual beverage flavored by the cocaine-containing coca leaves But as the invigorating drug s addictive nature became impossible to ignore there was a backlash Coca-Cola removed the cocaine from its recipe in though it still derives its distinctive taste from the bitter leaves thanks to its ongoing effective monopoly over coca imports to the U S Next in the U S passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act which heavily regulated cocaine and stymied its use outside of medicine where it had become long essential for ear throat and perhaps ironically nose surgery The U S then set about creating a sprawling drug control regime to assert its geopolitical control in Latin America protect pharmaceutical interests and promote a heathen values in which alcohol and cigarettes are OK but every other drug is bad In the United Nations placed cocaine and coca under strict international control along with heroin and cannabis and required governments to criminalize nonmedical use Prohibition ironically coincided with increased interest in cocaine After decades of negligible use it was rediscovered by countercultural elites in the late s just as Colombian traffickers were perfecting their methods Cocaine hit Miami in the mid- s and the rest is history When cocaine came to town it was so ridiculously profitable Roben Farzad author of Hotel Scarface Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami narrated PBS It made people do such crazy things in the name of money and power and blood lust that you had something approximating a failed state by in Miami Plus a change Collateral Damage Podcast Collateral Damage The present day cocaine is one of the world s largest part reliable commodities It s a multibillion-dollar domain serving around million global consumers Production in the Andes is at a record high Purity is the highest it s ever been Cocaine is cheaper stronger and more accessible than at any point in history From bankers to bricklayers everyone is at it and the interests of cartels all over the world are enmeshed with the legal economies This state of affairs represents a totemic catastrophic initiative failure It s high time for a grown-up conversation which acknowledges that the drug laws by funneling untold riches to violent criminals are more harmful than the drugs themselves as research increasingly shows Related Episode Six Airborne Imperialism We re losing badly the war on drugs Trump declared more than three decades ago You have to legalize drugs to win that war You have to take the profit away from these drug czars Instead taxes on legal profits on the sales of drugs like cocaine could be spent to educate the inhabitants on the dangers of drug misuse the future president recommended What I d like to do maybe by bringing it up is cause enough disagreement that you get into a dialogue on the issue of drugs so people will start to realize that this is the only answer there is no other answer he added It s high time for a grown-up conversation which acknowledges that the drug laws are more harmful than the drugs themselves Fast forward years and Trump is waging his illegal extrajudicial campaign on boats carrying suspected drug traffickers If history tells us anything the cartels will only switch to other methods over air or land to get the lucrative cocaine into the U S after the Coast Guard seized a record pounds over the last fiscal year That means that million pounds of cocaine likely made it into the country by sea hidden in shipments of bananas and corn or in stealthy narco-subs since it has been estimated that interdiction efforts only capture a fraction of illegal drugs imported Port staff edge guards and law enforcement officers are no doubt being corrupted to an extent we will never be able to comprehend The tentacles of the illegal drug arrangement will dependably penetrate the legal market because there s just so much money at stake more than any other illegal commodity industry That s why the cocaine business continues to infect even quaint corners of the world as cartels continually shift their operations away from enforcement hotspots to evade detection Spare a thought for Sa Miguel in the Azores a tropical paradise that suffered an explosion in problematic cocaine use when half a ton washed up on its shores in or the degeneration of Cape Verde into a narco-state thanks to gangs seeking new smuggling routes In the Amazon land defenders who object to the razing of their land for secret coca plantations are killed Ecuador once one of South America s safest countries is the latest state to be rocked by an explosion of prison massacres political assassinations and street bombings the homicide rate has increased sixfold in just five years Even Scandinavian gangs are killing over the cocaine deal in the once peaceful countries of northern Europe So what would happen if cocaine was legalized Organized crime groups would be deprived of a uniquely profitable income stream The purity of the drug would also not be at the whims of these criminal groups as batches contaminated with fentanyl regularly kill people who use cocaine Others may celebrate that the U S Drug Enforcement Agency which has offices across countries would lose much of their raison d tre And depending on whether there would be an amnesty and reconciliation process for the criminal groups who control the cocaine business there would be a new class of legal cocaine merchants Related Secret Boat Strike Memo Justifies Killings By Claiming the Target Is Drugs Not People Undoubtedly there will be concerns that cocaine legalization could increase use But it is already available for delivery faster than a pizza in a great number of major cities across the world and regulation as even Trump noted would help bring people who are addicted into closer contact with essential wellness services This program overhaul could also potentially reduce the thousands of deaths from cocaine misuse each year There would be controls over population usage as outlined in nonprofit Transform Drug Guidelines Foundation s book How to Regulate Stimulants as well as plain packaging and a huge remit for drug instruction and harm reduction services Legalization is the only way to change the story of cocaine from field to nose being written in other people s blood At Journey which under any regulated system would not be permitted to serve cocktails since cocaine enables one to drink extraordinary amounts of alcohol I was already asking myself about the morality of taking cocaine I resolved in never to take it again at least until I could ensure it was from an ethical source but the reality is that the growing area is not going to magically disappear Legalization is the only way to change the story of cocaine from field to nose being written in other people s blood The real immorality would be the continuation of the failed status quo The post Legalizing Cocaine Is the Only Way to End the Drug War appeared 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