Toward Global Drug Reform

The Global Social Forum Special Thematic Meeting on Democracy, Human Rights, Wars, and Drug Trafficking is now over, its participants have scattered to the four winds, and the search for meaningful results will now begin. According to event organizers, more than 4,700 people from some two dozens countries came to Cartagena for a week's worth of panels, workshops, roundtables and speeches on topics ranging from the micro (such as creating a space for women in village politics and the economics of small-plot coca cultivation) to the macro (such as the role of the United Nations in defending human rights and the impact of anti-drug policies on society, economy, and the environment).

As noted last week, much of the forum was informed by a harsh critique of US foreign policies, especially as they play out in Colombia. But participants also went beyond mere critique as, in panel after panel, people came together in search of solutions to the problems inflamed by the ongoing civil war cum drug war cum war on terrorism in Colombia. The backdrop was the gleaming beachfront high-rises and colonial-era fortresses of old Cartagena, but the subject matter of the forum was nuts and bolts activism, whether on how to organize youth in urban slums, how media activists could confront established news outlets with preordained agendas, or how to build authentically democratic social movements in an atmosphere of war and intimidation.

And old clashes sometimes generated new heat, most notably when Human Rights Watch director Jose Miguel Vivanco used the occasion of a panel on the UN and human rights to rip into Cuba's human rights record. Not only did Vivanco's denunciation of the recent execution of three hijackers and the imprisonment of nonviolent dissidents draw hisses and boos from some in the crowd, it also drew a stern rebuke from the Cuban ambassador to Colombia. Vivanco and the ambassador exchanged angry mutual accusations over whether Cuba allowed access to its prisoners, but much of the crowd was clearly on the side of the embattled Castro government.

The drug-related sessions of the forum were, for the most part, less controversial and less acerbic, as the critique of prohibitionism has gained increasing acceptance, even in the nominally Catholic and conservative countries of Latin America. For those with some experience with drug policy, there was little new in terms of global revelations; instead, there was a filling in of detail. A panel of Brazilian harm reductionists, to give one example, showed how prohibition and the drug trade work in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the cannabis fields of the Brazilian northeast, while Spanish Basque activist Martin Barriuso explained how drug reformers were able to make serious advances in Spain despite a regressive political atmosphere. Similarly, Dutch social scientist Peter Cohen, noting the loud calls for "peace with coca," told the audience it must also seek peace with cocaine instead of demonizing the powder.

While much, if not all, of the discussion at the forum focused on Colombia and the brutal conflict fueled by US military hardware and the illegal drug profits created by prohibition, it was the drug trafficking axis organized by the Mama Coca collective (http://www.mamacoca.org -- see the interview below with Dario Gonzalez Posso as well as last week's interviews for more) where drug reformers, peasants, organizers and academics from Latin America, Europe, Asia, and North America came together in an effort to move toward reform on a global level. Some 60 or 70 people met on Wednesday, June 18 to see whether they could reach a consensus on how to move forward.

"We would like to present a proposal to form a global commission on drug policy," said Mama Coca cofounder Dario Gonzalez Posso as he introduced the plan. "We need to evaluate these anti-drug policies. After three decades of drug war, it is time to present alternatives and come up with new models. There are precedents for this sort of commission," Gonzalez Posso added, "such as the meeting on human rights and international law in Colombia that took place in Costa Rica in 2001. This commission was to present its results to the UN, and we hope to do the same," he explained.