War on drugs in the global south – Standing in the way of development
By Nazlee Maghsoudi for IDPC. The room was full at “How the war on drugs impedes economic development,” an event organised in New York City by Open Society Foundation’s Global Drug Policy Program in partnership with the Permanent Mission of Colombia to the United Nations and the Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations. The intention of the event was to foster open dialogue and debate about the links between drug policy and development, particularly in preparation for joint advocacy at the 2016 UNGASS. Speakers discussed the costs of the war on drugs and the negative effect prohibitionist drug policies have had on the development of countries in the global south.
Alejandro Madrazo Lajous (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica) argued that we have underestimated the cost of the war on drugs by excluding constitutional costs from the tally. These costs arise from undermining key constitutional commitments that exist in political communities, and have had a very real impact on day-to-day life in Mexico. The curtailment of rights, for example, is a constitutional cost that is borne when certain groups give up some of their rights. This is apparent when fighting the war on drugs, as it is not uncommon for drug offenders (particularly low-level drug traffickers) to be denied due process and therefore not receive all the legal rights they are owed. A second constitutional cost is the conflation of functions, such as using the military to do police work. The real impact of this cost is most evident in the lethality index, a ratio that demonstrates how lethal the force used by law enforcement is by calculating how many people were killed compared to how many people were injured by the police. The lethality index in Mexico has risen to levels similar to war zones since the military were employed as policemen, and now stands at an average of 7.3! When altering the relationship between the military and citizens, the specific training of the military and how it contrasts with that of police is often not considered. Since the military are trained to kill the enemy rather than do police work, this example of how constitutional costs play out on the street should not be unexpected. Changing core political commitments in order to fight the war on drugs is problematic not only because this essentially leads to a change in the identity of communities, but also because they are often changed without any explicit discussion or acknowledgement. Fundamentally altering the constitutional commitments agreed upon in a society without making an active and inclusive choice to do so is simply unacceptable.
Drug Policy Debate Radar 