October 8, 2001

Washington Wages a Selective Drug War

by Garry Leech

Most of the more than $2 billion the United States is currently spending to fight the drug war in the Andean region is going to the Colombian military and an aerial fumigation campaign that is devastating the food crops and livelihoods of impoverished peasants. Washington's militaristic policies have also resulted in a controversial shoot-down policy of "suspect" planes in Colombia and Peru that has killed innocent people. Furthermore, the White House uses its unilateral drug certification process to coerce Latin American countries into cooperating with Washington's war on drugs or face the risk of economic sanctions. However, such tactics are nowhere to be seen with regards to U.S. drug policy in Europe, where Belgium and the Netherlands are the leading manufacturers, and Russians (and Israelis) the principal traffickers, of the club drug Ecstasy (MDMA), the drug of choice for America's youth.

Following the recent seizure of 85,000 Ecstasy tablets in Colorado and California, the new head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Asa Huthinson, declared that Ecstasy is "the number one drug problem of our youth in urban areas." Hutchinson's statement is supported by the fact that more than 3.3 million hits of Ecstasy were seized by U.S. Customs officials last year, a dramatic increase over the 400,000 hits seized in all of 1997.

But unlike cocaine and heroin, Ecstasy is not produced by poor Third World peasants struggling to survive. According to the U.S. State Department's Narcotics Control Report for 2000, "The U.S. DEA estimates that large amounts of Ecstasy tablets seized in the U.S. in 2000 came from or through the Netherlands." The report goes on to say that the DEA "will continue to monitor this problem closely."

And regarding Belgium's role in the drug trade, the report states, "The increase in the incidence of trafficking in MDMA/Ecstasy, which began in 1999, continued unabated in 2000." The availability of the drug became evident last year when mobster Sammy "the Bull" Gravano admitted to selling 25,000 hits of MDMA a week.

In July, Dr. Donald Vereen Jr., Deputy Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), testified before the U.S. Senate Government Affairs Committee about the growing use of Ecstasy among young Americans. "The migration of Ecstasy from the rave scene into our neighborhoods and schools poses a direct threat to the health of our children and the safety of our communities," said Dr. Vereen.

The deputy director went on to declare, "We take the threat of Ecstasy seriously, and are making a concerted effort to warn youth and their parents. Through satellite broadcasts, targeted websites, new public service announcements and informational briefings with entertainment writers, directors, and producers, we are educating youth, parents, and community leaders about the dangers of this drug."

The ONDCP's strategy of combating Ecstasy through education, while welcome, stands in sharp contrast to the militaristic policies used in the war on cocaine and heroin. There are no calls for massive amounts of military aid to wage war against the European drug traffickers. And unlike the strategy of shooting down planes and aerially fumigating illicit crops in South America, there are no calls from Washington hawks for air strikes on the drug processing labs located on the outskirts of Brussels and Rotterdam. In fact, the DEA, while admitting that European trafficking in MDMA "continued unabated in 2000," only intends to "monitor this problem closely."

Apparently, Washington only wages its drug war in America's inner cities and in poor developing countries. European nations are about as likely to become targets of a U.S. militaristic drug war offensive as white middle and upper class suburban drug users are of having their front doors busted open by a heavily armed police narcotics SWAT team.

The war on drugs has primarily targeted poor people of color whether they reside in the United States or in the Third World. And despite repeated studies showing there is little difference in the level of drug use between blacks and whites in the United States, 74 percent of those in prison for drug offenses are African-American.

A similar discrepancy exists between developed and developing nations targeted by the DEA. The trafficking page of the DEA's website contains sections on Colombia, Mexico, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Nigeria. There is no special section focusing on Belgium or the Netherlands despite the fact that, according to the ONDCP, "MDMA is produced in clandestine laboratories the majority of which are located in Europe." Even the DEA itself admits that, "Clandestine laboratories operating throughout Western Europe, primarily in the Netherlands and Belgium, manufacture significant quantities of the drug in tablet, capsule, or powder form."

Of the 18 major drug operations conducted by the DEA over the past decade, all of them targeted U.S. cities or traffickers in Third World countries such as Colombia, Mexico, Pakistan, Nigeria, Thailand and Burma. Not one of these operations targeted drug traffickers in Europe despite the rapid growth in MDMA use in the United States during the same time period.

It is evident that Washington's drug policies are both hypocritical and illogical. The United States is intent on escalating its drug war in Colombia despite the fact that cocaine use has been declining for much of the past decade--primarily because aging baby boomers are abstaining. In the meantime, Ecstasy has become the new drug of choice for America's youth.

According to one study, 11 percent of high school students surveyed in 2000 reported they had used MDMA. This figure is more than double the number that had tried cocaine. And in New York City, one in four adolescents surveyed said they had used Ecstasy. If Washington's drug warriors were truly concerned with the welfare of America's children then Ecstasy, not cocaine, would be the principal target of the drug war.

Ecstasy and other club drugs are primarily manufactured and consumed in developed countries, and yet Washington's drug war focus continues to be Colombia and other Third World nations. Obviously, Washington has an ulterior motive for waging its seemingly futile drug war in the developing world and not in Europe, and that motive has more to do with economics than the welfare of America's youth.

Waging its drug war in the Third World provides the United States with a post-Cold War excuse for maintaining the domestic defense contractor industry, while justifying Washington's intervention in the internal affairs of developing nations--sometimes militarily, as was the case in the 1989 Panama invasion and in the Andean region today. Furthermore, Washington uses its drug war policies to impose its political will on governments that cannot afford the economic sanctions that result from de-certification.

As long as the drug war continues to serve foreign and domestic policy goals in the post-Cold War world, Washington will continually refuse to see drug use for what it really is: a health problem. The drug war, along with the neoliberal economic policies mandated by the IMF and free trade agreements, helps provide U.S. corporations with greater access to the natural resources and cheap labor of developing countries. Washington is well aware that the same bullying tactics will not work in western Europe.

This article originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).

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