During his campaign for the presidency of Colombia in March 2002, then-candidate Alvaro Uribe announced that he supported the U.S.-backed, multi-billion dollar anti-drug campaign known as Plan Colombia, “because if we do not defeat drugs, they will destroy our ecology, our rule of law, our productive culture, and the future of our youth.” Plan Colombia is based on the principle that the best way to control drugs is by complete drug prohibition, an approach that means an escalation and intensification of the “war on drugs.” In short, in the context of Plan Colombia, legalization of drugs is a non-issue.
But presidential candidate Luis Eduardo Garzón of the leftist Social and Political Front, who placed third in this year’s elections, had declared that if he became president, he would legalize drugs, while Senator Noemi Sanín, another presidential candidate, called for an international conference to address failed anti-drug strategies. And just a year earlier, there had been serious efforts in Colombia to promote some form of legalization: In August 2001, Senator Viviane Morales (Liberal) introduced a bill to legalize the cultivation, production, distribution and consumption of psychoactive substances under the control of a state monopoly. Similarly, Senators Juan Manuel Ospina (Conservative) and Rafael Orduz (independent) reported the joint drafting of another bill to suspend chemical eradication of Colombian coca and opium poppy fields and to exempt small farmers who grow the crops from criminal charges. Finally, during the Thirty-first General Assembly of Governors, departmental leaders requested that the central government lead a broad international debate on drug legalization.
Amidst these pronouncements and proposals spanning the entire Colombian ideological spectrum, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson rejected the idea of legalization and indicated that this could create “many problems with the international community.”
The 2001 legalization efforts were nothing new or shocking in Colombia, however: They should be understood as part of an internal Colombian debate that goes back to the 1970s. Since then, many influential Colombians, including leading politicians, intellectuals and businessmen have supported some form of drug legalization, most often arguing that legalization would be the most practical way of reducing the negative effects of the drug industry and of taking advantage of the income produced by the industry. Some of the protagonists have changed over the years, but one main factor continues to limit the viability of the debate: The United States will not allow Colombia to legalize the lucrative international business of drugs; instead Colombia is to continue waging the “war on drugs” until the last Colombian falls.
In the 1970s, Colombia was a large-scale marijuana exporter, though it had not yet become a major actor in the international cocaine trade. In that era, a key protagonist of the legalization debate was Ernesto Samper Pizano. Samper was to serve as Colombia’s president from 1994 to 1998—with his term shadowed by evidence that his presidential campaign had been funded by drug traffickers. But he became familiar with the debate on legalization not through contacts with the trade but rather during his postgraduate studies in economics at New York’s Columbia University. Legalization was then on the public agenda in the United States: Between 1973 and 1979, 11 states, representing a third of the U.S. population, had decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Among them, Alaska had gone further and legalized cultivation as well as use of small quantities of the drug. Even in the U.S. Congress, there seemed to be a less punitive and obsessive atmosphere concerning drugs. In August 1978, Congress adopted the Percy Amendment, which prohibited government support for eradicating foreign marijuana plantations with herbicides if the practice created risks for U.S. consumers. In March 1979, Samper, at the time head of Colombia’s then-powerful and influential National Association of Financial Institutions (ANIF), proposed that Colombia should “study the legalization of marijuana as a serious alternative for its regulation…[placing] its cultivation, sale and consumption within the laws and norms that govern our economy, our society and our government.”
In this same era, Colombia’s Comptroller General, Aníbal Martínez Zuleta, also stated he was in favor of considering the legalization of marijuana, as was the president of the Bogotá Stock Exchange, Eduardo Góez, and the former president of the Supreme Court, Luis Sarmiento Buitrago. The former Liberal mayor of Bogotá, Bernardo Gaitán Mahecha, and retired general José Joaquín Matallana leaned in favor of legalization as well, as did the well-known coffee sector leader Leonidas Londoño and the then-president of the Colombian Senate, Héctor Echeverri Correa, among many others.
Legalization soon became synonymous with amnesty for income illegally obtained from contraband or drug trafficking. Both the Popular Colombian Association of Industrialists (ACOPI)—which brings together small and medium-sized producers—and the Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, CONFECAMARAS, advised the government to legalize funds stemming from the illegal economy so that they would become part of the country’s wealth. The gradual legalization of the illicit underground economy was backed by the majority of producers’ organizations and by several congresspersons. The basic argument was similar to that for legalizing marijuana: Money from illegal activities should be legalized for practical reasons of socio-economic advantage; to cover the budget deficit, fiscally strengthen the state, improve the regional finances of the departments and reactivate the growth of the legal economy.
In September 1980, Samper modified his original position on legalization to reflect this new emphasis: In the face of the power attained by the illicit economy, he proposed that the drug mafias be “recognized” and socially “reoriented” by legitimating them and their income. Otherwise, he said, the mafias would “derail” Colombian society. He proposed “institutional escape valves” to prevent underground “capital and its owners” from “destroying us and our institutions or having them buy them and us, which, for all intents and purposes, is the same thing” by allowing the holders of illegally obtained fortunes to publicly acknowledge ownership and legally invest their funds. In short, from his initiative for consideration of marijuana legalization, Samper went on to explicitly propose—as ACOPI and CONFECAMARAS had implicitly done the—possible legalization of the drug traffickers.
A year later, in the context of growing social and political corruption linked not only to the marijuana business, but also to the then-ascendant cocaine industry, Samper again began promoting marijuana legalization. But public support for this proposal did not grow; this was largely due to its categorical rejection by the Colombian government and by U.S. officials in Bogotá and Washington. The administrations of Colombian President Julio César Turbay (1978-1982) and U.S. President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) showed themselves to be militantly prohibitionist.
In this period, the Colombian debate over the legalization of drugs and/or the legalization of drug traffickers was, basically, pragmatic. No one defended legalization based on a philosophic concept of the individual and his or her right to use drugs without interference from the state, or according to liberal economic arguments about the unquestionable goodness of the free market, as legalization proponents were doing in the United States and elsewhere. Ernesto Samper, like the majority of Colombians who supported his position, seemed motivated by fundamentally practical desires: to control the political impact of the business of illegal drugs, economically incorporate the income created by this illegal business and socially incorporate an emerging violent class.
Former president Alfonso López Michelsen (1974-1978) declared in 1981 that, “what Ernesto Samper says is very true, whether we agree with legalization or not.” In any case, said López Michelsen, “a sense of guilt about the underground economy” did not aid in analysing the situation in a scientific way. According to the ex-president, Colombians “must take a stance and not hide behind moral concepts in order to talk about clandestine dollars and emerging citizens.”
As of 1982, however, discussion of legalization began to fade. Samper made sporadic declarations on the subject and Carta Financiera, the institutional publication of ANIF, disseminated national investigations on the topic. Their specific effect on public policy, though, was non-existent. Towards the mid-1980’s, talk of legalization practically disappeared. Instead, the question of the day was whether or not Colombian nationals should be extradited to the United States to stand trial on drug trafficking or other charges, as required by a 1979 treaty between the two nations. Many Colombians were vehemently opposed to extradition; forums in favor of legalization were eclipsed by those against extradition.
Shortly thereafter, the dramatic escalation of narcoterrorism—assassinations of public figures, officials, judges and journalists by the drug traffickers— produced a temporary resurgence of the debate over legalization. In this case, it was journalist Antonio Caballero who most forcibly articulated a pro-legalization position: For him, it should be “total and universal.” The production, traffic and consumption of drugs should be entirely legalized. This position represented a significant shift from the debate in the 1970s. It had fewer pragmatic aspects and was built on a philosophic and political vision critical of prohibition. In addition, it tried to take into account the totality of the phenomenon of drugs and sought to make the business of drug production transparent and more in accord with free market principles. Ultimately, it was directed towards a head-on rejection of U.S. anti-drug policy, within and beyond U.S. borders.
But a change in official drug control strategy was not under consideration in either Colombia or the United States. In this context, initiatives in favor of legalization were perceived in both countries as a kind of desertion from the “war on drugs.” Both Bogotá and Washington justified their policies, in part, in terms of the demands of public opinion which demanded an “iron fist” against drugs. For example, an August 1986 ABC network survey indicated that 24% of the U.S. population was in favor of the legalization of small quantities of marijuana, while 75% was against it; only 4% of those surveyed supported the legalization of all drugs. A survey taken in Colombia in September 1988 indicated that only 25% of those interviewed were in favor of marijuana legalization, while only 18% of those interviewed were in favor of the legalization of cocaine.
And so at the end of the 1980’s, the Colombian legalization debate quieted once again. In both internal and international forums, President Virgilio Barco (1986-1990) vehemently opposed legalization; he firmly continued the “war on drugs” in the face of escalating narcoterrorism and the gradual social, economic and political consolidation of the traffickers’ power.
The Colombian legalization debate that began at the end of the 1970’s and flourished at the beginning of the 1980’s had some specific characteristics that severely limited its impact: First of all, it was limited to a small part of the population, mostly intellectuals and politicians, almost all of them men. Second, government officials at all levels invariably rejected legalization as an option. Third, the debate was only sporadic, with voices in favor of legalization heard mostly at especially violent moments. This occasional nature gave intensity to the proposals but also prevented the creation of a solid and lasting political and social coalition that could deepen the discussion internally and project it to the outside world. Finally, the idea of legalization was, in part, linked to external phenomena. In the 1970s, Colombian proposals for marijuana legalization were based on the fact that in the United States a number of states had de-penalized personal use. Later on, during the 1980s, Colombian initiatives favorable to legalization in Colombia used some European experiments in drug decriminalization as points of reference.
But the official U.S. position on this matter was constant and unyielding. U.S. government officials attended seminars, distributed publications and sponsored meetings to stress that Washington absolutely rejected any proposal in favor of legalizing drugs. The U.S. government was using its entire weight to transmit a message to Colombians: no to legalization. In spite of this, at the beginning of the 1990s the legalization debate was reopened in Colombia, this time with some innovations. In the presidential elections of 1990, Conservative presidential candidate Alvaro Gómez Hurtado suggested that legalizing drugs on a worldwide level was the only way to confront the drug problem. Although Gómez was defeated by César Gaviria (president 1990-1994), the topic had been made an issue in the country’s main electoral contest, which gave it an unprecedented dynamic. The Gaviria administration rejected the idea of legalization, but it promoted a so-called “policy of submission” for drug traffickers: They would be handed over to the law, those who confessed would be given reduced sentences. All would be guaranteed trial within Colombia; the new constitution of 1991 expressly prohibited the extradition of nationals.
Five months after Gaviria’s inauguration, in December 1990, the prestigious and private Universidad de los Andes published a book on the drug phenomenon that included four “proposals for action to combat drug trafficking.” One of them was to “explore the partial de-penalization of the problem.” But a few months later, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Thomas E. McNamara gave a talk against legalization at the same university. His conclusion was forceful: “All societies have moral precepts which allow them to distinguish between what is right what is not, between good and evil. All societies are dedicated to promoting good and eradicating evil. By defining these priorities the concern over the legalization of cocaine is not hard to resolve. We cannot legalize it.”
In the meantime, drug trafficker violence had at least temporarily abated, and the space created by a relatively less intense “war on drugs” in Colombia allowed for a broader relaunching of the legalization debate. Well-known journalists, such as Antonio Caballero, Daniel Samper and Antonio Panesso, insisted on the relevance of legalization. Famous intellectuals, such as Gabriel García Márquez, supported the position. Distinguished academics, like Alvaro Camacho Guizado, Hernando Gómez B., Jorge Child, Ricardo Vargas, Ricardo Sánchez and Rodrigo Uprimmy, considered the virtues of the idea. Certain politicians, particularly Conservatives, such as senators Enrique Gómez Hurtado and Mario Laserna, declared themselves in favor of this alternative. Neither the Colombian nor the U.S. governments were inclined to legitimate this view. But leading drug trafficker Pablo Escobar’s escape from prison in 1992 (he had turned himself in the previous year), the resurgence of narcoterrorism, the limits of the “policy of submission” and the remarkable failures of the anti-drug policy of the United States and their effects in Colombia, stimulated the deepening of the legalization debate.
The content and scope of this renewed Colombian debate were different than they had been in the past. In 1993-1994, the legalization debate was no longer one in which pro-legalization initiatives from various members of Colombian society would be met by outright rejection from the government. In 1993, Conservative presidential hopeful Rodrigo Llorente said he was in favor of “gradually de-penalizing the consumption” of drugs. The same year, Congressman and retired military officer Guillermo Martinezguerra, proposed a bill in which the Colombian government would convoke a United Nations convention to establish the gradual de-penalization of drugs. A senate commission presented a report in favor of the progressive drug de-penalization at the end of that year.
None of these initiatives was successful, but government declarations that favored legalization rather than harsher enforcement notably increased. In two different 1993 encounters, one in Bogotá and the other in Baltimore, Attorney General Gustavo de Greiff indicated that the prohibition and interdiction of narcotics had been a complete failure and showed himself inclined to support a study of the possibility of legalizing drugs. Similarly, in May 1994, the Constitutional Court modified the law concerning personal drug consumption, saying sentencing should be “based on a framework of human dignity, personal autonomy and the free development of one’s personality.”
Given his historical position, when Ernesto Samper was elected president in 1994, it was expected that his administration would adopt a less prohibitionist internal and external anti-drug policy. But this was impossible: The ever present ghost of the “narcocassettes” that revealed massive drug trafficker contributions to his presidential campaign and the reality of Washington’s coercive diplomacy—which became evident through the 1996 withdrawal of Samper’s U.S. entry visa and the 1996 and 1997 decertification of Colombia as a cooperative partner in U.S. drug control efforts—made Samper promote further criminalization of drugs rather than their legalization. His administration was marked by an unprecedented increase in chemical drug crop eradication, greater involvement of the Colombian armed forces in drug control, and the constitutional reinstatement of extradition.
During the second half of the 1990s, however, the Colombian legalization debate underwent another interesting change: The debate somehow lost its learned character, and new voices in favor of legalization were heard that did not represent the elite or the intelligensia or come from the central government: The mayor of Barranquilla, the priest Bernardo Hoyos Montoya, declared his support for drug legalization. Monsignor Belarmino Correa Yepes, Apostolic Vicar of San José del Guaviare in the department of Guaviare, suggested de-penalizing cultivation of coca and consumption of cocaine. At a national governors summit, the governors of the departments of Meta, Tolima, César, Arauca and Guaviare, proposed the legalization of drugs.
A woman’s voice was finally heard: On several occasions independent Congresswoman Ingrid Betancourt pointed out the importance of studying the feasibility of the legalization of drug consumption. Respected economic and cultural magazines, not just the traditional weeklies and institutional publications that had in the past taken up the subject of legalization, dedicated special editions to the topic. Simultaneously, various departments of the country’s principal public university, the National University of Colombia, held conferences and published reports on the errors and horrors of the “war on drugs” and the relevance of analyzing the legalization of narcotics.
Finally, even Colombia’s main guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) joined the controversy. In March 2000, the FARC pronounced itself in favor of the legalization of drugs “as the only way to eliminate drug trafficking.”
The concrete effect of this proliferation of proposals and opinions was nil, however. Neither the Samper administration nor that of Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) altered the direction of a policy which stressed further criminalization. The U.S. government, addicted to prohibition, would only be satisfied if Colombia continued to be obsessively committed to the “war on drugs.” And now, with new president Alvaro Uribe committed to deepening that war, only a resounding failure of that strategy, marked by an abysmally high social cost, will help to reopen this essential debate once again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juan G. Tokatlian is the director of Political Science and International Relations at the Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina. Translated from Spanish by Victoria Furio.
