Translated by Amanda Coe
In a public hearing about the position that the Mexican government will bring to the special session of the UN General Assembly on prohibited drugs, the representative to Mexico of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Mazzitelli, said yesterday, “the war on drugs declared 35 years ago is over.” He stressed that the problem with addictions falls within the scope of public health and noted how important it is to recognize the rights of users, who should see themselves as sick rather than criminal.
What the international official said fully corresponds to what members of a commission of medical experts recently confirmed in terms of drug policies based on prohibition that directly and indirectly contribute “to lethal violence, disease, discrimination , forced displacement, and unnecessary physical pain, and undermine peoples’ right to health.” In those conclusions, Mexico is presented as an example of the catastrophic scenarios induced by the war declared on drugs by Felipe Calderón at the start of his term: a disproportionate increase in murders and human rights violations, as well as an affectation to public health, human rights, and development.
The evaluation falls short. Anti-drug strategies that have been adopted in our country since the seventies were passed due to pressure from Washington, and have led to a bloody crisis in the administration of Felipe Calderón and which continues so far in the present one. Not only have they failed to reduce drug use in United States, but they have also skyrocketed use in Mexico; left tens of thousands dead and disappeared; contributed to entire regions falling under the control of criminal organizations; seriously undermined the integrity of institutions, especially police departments and agencies of the justice system; destroyed the social fabric in states such as Tamaulipas, Michoacán and Guerrero; generated a grave human rights crisis in the country; caused astronomical corruption; and eroded society’s confidence in political processes, authorities, and the country itself.
Reassuringly, in the span of a few months global power centers—who participated in varying degrees and, in one way or another, in the imposition of prohibitionist policies across the world—have undertaken a significant and rapid change and are now trying to formulate a more sensible and ethical conception of the phenomenon, separating, first, the problem of public health from strategies to pursue drug trafficking.
Hopefully this trend will strengthen and we will soon be able to start implementing a drug policy focused on education, prevention, and treatment of addictions, instead of on police and military operations. In the near future, Mexican society should undertake an extensive critical review of the tragedy caused by adhering to the letter of what the US dictates in anti-drug matters and the monumental short-sightedness that has spelled disaster. Spanish Original