By Jorge Rolón Luna
In 1875, the Mayor’s Office of San Francisco (USA) issued a ban on opium dens, marking, perhaps, the initiation of an offensive model against consciousness-altering substances that is still in force today. 147 years later, the same country that initiated, promoted, globalized, and escalated to limits of irrationality without parallel in history “its” war on drugs, partially passed a bill that was unfathomable only a short while ago. Through the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2020 la Ley de Oportunidad, Reinversión y Expugnación de Delitos Marihuana, the bastion of the warlike approach to a human trait, all too human, such as overcoming the state of consciousness – the Spanish philosopher Antonio Escohotado dixit in his now classic General History of Drugs – is one step away from legalizing marijuana at the federal level. Soon, it seems, the US will remove cannabis from the federal Controlled Substances Act, which will allow states to legalize cannabis, its production and sale, without federal interference. As of today, 37 U.S. states have already legalized medical use and 19 (18 plus the District of Columbia) have legalized recreational use of cannabis.
Between these two historical moments mentioned above, many things have happened, most of them horrible: millions of dead, hundreds of thousands of disappeared, overloaded judicial systems and collapsed prison systems, gross and systematic human rights violations, authoritarianism, corruption, state capture by drug trafficking organizations, huge financial and human resources squandered, economic distortions, destruction of the rule of law, among others.
And all for nothing. It was never even close to winning a war that was impossible to win in the first place. There are more and more drugs and their use has become an uncontrolled pandemic. In Mexico alone, between 2006 – the year of the beginning of former President Calderon’s “war on drugs” – and mid-2021, 350,000 people died and 72,000 were missing. On the other hand, in the flagship of this “war” (USA), in 1970 there was one overdose death per 100,000 inhabitants, a figure that reached 20 per 100,000 in 2019, despite the astronomical sum of more than a trillion dollars invested. Undoubtedly, the portrait of an absolute failure due to its null results and its very high cost in lives, money, and democratic deterioration.
Paraguay is the first cannabis producer in South America, the second in Latin America after Mexico and the fourth in the world. And we are still not taking advantage of a product with important medicinal uses and for various purposes such as food (see hemp), with an endless productive, employment and revenue potential if its production and marketing were legalized. Let’s see what is happening in this regard in the U.S. In 2020 it generated $17.9 billion in business, in 2021 it created 340,000 jobs and it is estimated that by 2025 it will raise about $100 billion in taxes. The potential of cannabis for the Paraguayan economy is unestimable.
Paraguay, as it could not have been otherwise, has bowed to this global imperative, which has its other side in the international system and which had its founding moment in the 1909 conference of the International Opium Commission in Shanghai. Following external mandates, the country has waged its own “war on drugs” and as could not be otherwise, the expected results were never obtained. However, there were terrible consequences, such as the deterioration of living conditions in large border regions, narco-politics, contract killings, the decomposition of the security forces, the consolidation of transnational criminal organizations, the overcrowding of our prisons, the contamination of the justice system, the surrender of the political system, the suffocation of the rule of law, among others.
The example of the failure of our “war on drugs” is the case of the “sicariato”, a marginal phenomenon in our country until a few years ago. Hitmen are established, undeniable and expanded to a large part of the national territory. In 2021, 180 hitman attacks were registered throughout the country, 32% more than in 2020, representing an attack every two days.
While the country becomes a “neuralgic center for the production and distribution of transnational trafficking” and it is becoming increasingly violent due to the growing violence of drug traffickers and the security forces, politics is going down the drain due to the also undeniable links between the illegal drug business and vast sectors of the ruling party, something that has also affected opposition actors, although in an infinitely smaller proportion and without the impudence shown by the governing party. Local governments in border areas have representatives of this business directly installed in positions or financed by the drug money, discouraging citizen involvement as well as citizen demands and participation. In some places, it is risky to run for public office without the approval of the drug lords, according to credible testimonies that are confirmed by attacks against candidates and municipal officials in the run-up to last year’s elections.
At the same time, Paraguay is the first cannabis producer in South America, the second in Latin America after Mexico and the fourth in the world. And we are still not taking advantage of a product with important medicinal uses and for various purposes such as food (see hemp), with an endless productive, employment and revenue potential if its production and marketing were legalized. Let’s see what is happening in this regard in the U.S. In 2020 it generated $17.9 billion in business, in 2021 it created 340,000 jobs and it is estimated that by 2025 it will raise about $100 billion in taxes. The potential of cannabis for the Paraguayan economy is unestimable.
It is true that an eventual legalization, the decriminalization of cannabis will not be enough to reverse all the violence that exists today around this business. But, it is possible to see that nobody loses or nothing is lost in seriously discussing this issue. The country will be able to reduce its social conflict, deflate its overcrowded prisons and open the doors to an economic activity that can create jobs, tax revenues and savings that could be used to treat addiction. Isn’t it about time?
*Lawyer, researcher and former director of the Security Observatory of the Ministry of the Interior. Author of the book of short stories “Los sicarios”.
Cover image: Mamá Cultiva Paraguay