Pigeon Prohibition?

A human pigeon perch.

Pigeons are also a problem. Some people hate them and call them flying rats. And their feces corrode statues and public monuments. Which is why the city government recently banned pigeon feeding in Plaza Bolivar.

But other people love pigeons: They like to feed pigeons, run through crowds of pigeons and watch them scatter, even to put corn on themselves and become human pigeon roosts.

A pigeon selfie.

That's why the city's anti-pigeon rules are futile. The other day, post-pigeon ban, the buying and selling of corn and pigeon feeding were going on as normal.

All of which makes me ask: If Colombia cannot enforce a prohibition on its main plaza, amidst its government buildings, then how can it ever expect to do so in remote rural areas?

The answer is that it cannot, which is why drug prohibition has failed and likely always will.

Pigeon corn for sale.

Fighting for food!

Pigeons' droppings corrode public monuments.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Duque Kills the Minimum Dose

Got any weed on you? Police search young men in Bogotá's historical center. 

The 'minimum dose' of drugs - supposedly the amount a user needed for his own consumption - was the object of many jokes and much derision, as well as criticism from police and conservative politicians as get-out-of-jail-free card for drug dealers. And cops didn't often respect this 'right' to carry drugs in the first place.

But the minimum dose rule did keep a lot of otherwise law-abiding people out of jail, saving them

lots of grief and society lots of money.

Authorities' hopes that prohibiting the minimum dose will reduce crime or drug consumption aren't borne out by experience. Instead, the prohibition will open more opportunities for police corruption and ruin the lives of many young people, especially poor ones, because they have a dependancy or just prefer getting high by smoking rather than drinking.

And, police will waste lots of time and effort pursuing people for a lifestyle choice while real criminals go free.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The March for Legal Marijuana

A few scenes from today's march for legal marijuana - at least for medical purposes.

Leading the marijuana army.

For years, one was allowed to carry up to onegram of cocaine and five grams of marijuana 'for personal use.' The law was reversed during Alvaro Uribe's presidential term because some police said that dealers escaped justice by carrying only that small amount.

'Yes to the personal dosis.' (And then, for sure, we'll stop at our medical dosis.

Something's in the air.

The police, more used to arresting and shaking down those they catch with pot, escort the protesters.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Time to Round Up Glyphosate?

Glyphosate being sprayed over Colombia. (Photo; Wikipedia)

A World Health Organization panel recently labeled glyphosate, the main ingredient in the Round-Up pesticide, as a 'probable carcinogen.'

The evidence is not clear, as this New York Times article points out, and, in contrast, the German government recently ruled that the herbicide was safe. Glyphosate manufacturer Monsanto also insists the herbicide is benign.

But there's enough reason to feel concerned about using glyphosate, the world's most popular herbicide and to wear a mask and gloves while spraying it in the back yard.

Composition of the mixture sprayed over coca fields.
(Photo; U.S. State Department)

Unfortunately, however, that's not an option for many Colombian campesinos potentially exposed to glyphosate, which is sprayed from aircraft in a concentrated form to try to kill coca leaf plantations. Unfortunately, sometimes wind blows the herbicide onto homes, food crops and bodies of water, possibly leading to ingestion by people. Some reports have linked glyphosate to skin problems and miscarriages. And Ecuador worries enough about the impacts of herbicide spraying in border areas to have filed suit in international court against Colombia.

Glyphosate's effects are contested. While glyphosate does kill plants, coca leaf farmers have learned how to deal with it, by spreading a protective coating over their crops' leaves, harvesting the leaves when they see spray helicopters approaching, hiding coca plants between rows of food plants, or replanting quickly after spraying. According to some reports, there is even a 'Round-up ready' variety of coca bush.

A child's drawing shows coca leaf
spray planes killing animals. (Image: Daily Kos)

The loud and prominent coca spraying campaign has also generated lots of resentment against the United States throughout Latin America.

And while glyphosate spraying has been a component of Colombia's aggressive coca eradication campaign, Peru and Bolivia which do not allow spraying have also reported reducing their own coca leaf plantations. Moreover, it's not clear that reductions in coca leaf plantations have affected supplies in the United States and Europe. Cocaine prices are reportedly dropping in the United Kingdom, and higher drug prices in the United States may be due to a crackdown on precursor chemicals. It also appears clear that reducing supply is a much less effective way to combat drug consumption - since it drives up prices - than is reducing demand.

The latest report that glyphosate could be carcinogenic is no reason to ban the chemical. But it does provide yet another reason to consider shelving a dubious anti-drug campaign.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Female Solution?

Where are they off to? DEA agents on the move. (Image: YouTube screen grab)

United States Drug Enforcement Agency guys reportedly attended sex parties sponsored by Colombian narcotraffickers.

In early 2013, Honduras' ambassador in Bogotá resigned after revelations of sex parties with prostitutes inside the embassy.

A few years ago, US Secret Service agents started an international scandal by hiring prostitutes in Cartagena during the run-up to an international summit meeting in Cartagena.

The key factors here? Machismo and testosterone.

A New York Daily News cover about the
Cartagena Secret Service scandal.

Hiring prostitutes and attending sex parties may or may not be wrong, depending on your moral code.
But they certainly do generate scandal, and they can place agents in compromising situations and make them vulnerable to blackmail and extortion.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution to these male-generated problems: Hire only female agents and officials.

Women are of course not immune to sexual improprieties. But the endless parade of prominent men apologizing and resigning for involving their private parts with the wrong people suggests to me that there's something uniquely male behind this.

On the other hand, removing men from all responsible positions in government, business and even science might be difficult. And the U.S. government's solution: imposing a zero tolerance policy for paying for sex, might also be unrealistic, considering how ingrained the sex-and-partying culture appears to be.

Or, perhaps U.S. government bureaucrats believes they can re-engineer human nature and stop thos macho guys, far from wives and girlfriends, from noticing exotic women?

Perhaps a more realistic policy would be to accept commercial sex as a realistic part of male behavior, legalize and destigmatize it, so that it ceases to become a potential source of blackmail and extortion. That might, at the same time, also improve working conditions for the prostitutes involved as well as making it possible to ensure that those working women are not also on the tab of spies, narcos or terrorists.

And, while they're in the business of decriminalizing behavior, why not also consider decriminalizing drugs, as well. That would eliminate the whole need for those corruptible DEA agents in the first place.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Coca Leaves Finally Get a Little Respect

Coca leaves and other products for sale on a Bogotá plaza. The salesman said these were imported from Peru.

Altho technically banned, Colombia's indigenous peoples
 cultivate and market coca leaf products.

For thousands of years, coca leaves have been chewed by Andean indigenous peoples, who also attribute to them religious significance. But then Europeans took coca leaves home and figured out how to extract a drug, which millions of people, particularly north Americans, proceeded to get themselves addicted to.

In 1961, to protect addicts in rich countries, the United Nations prohibited cultivating and chewing the leaves.

The prohibition seems wildly unfair. After all, even during U.S. alcohol Prohibition, grapes were still legal (and were marketed with instructions about how to turn them into an inebriating liquid). Coca leaves contain such a tiny amount of the cocaine alkaloid that they give users just a slight pick-me-up.

Vendors claim that coca products
cure all manner of ailments.

In 2009, to protest the U.N. prohibition, Bolivian Pres. Evo Morales, a one-time coca farmer who still heads a coca farmers organization, withdrew his country from the United Nations Convention on illegal drugs. The prohibition, he said, equated traditional coca leaf farmers with "narcotraffickers and drug users."

The other day, the U.N. readmitted Bolivia - with a special clause permitting coca leaf chewing. Incredibly, 15 countries objected to the exception for coca leaf chewing. And leading the opposition was, of course, the United States.

It's a tiny crack in the drug prohibitionism, and it begins to repair a huge historical double standard. After all, the same 1961 treaty which prohibited indigenous peoples' ancient traditions also included a specific exception for the Coca Cola Company, which adds a cocaine-free coca leaf extract to its soft drink.

But the exception doesn't include the other Andean nations, including Colombia, where indigenous people chew coca leaves and many people buy teas, cookies, ointments and drinks made from the leaves. And, there's of course no mention of the many millions of people all over the world who would surely like to try such coca leaf products, whose makers claim they provide all sorts of health benefits.

So, for the foreseeable future, these leaves, which could provide another export for Colombia and help relieve the country's beleaguered farmers, will remain technically prohibited.

Related Blogposts:

Taking a Courageous Stand Against...Leaves

Good Riddance to 'La Mata que Mata!'
By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Bloody Trail Connecting Bogotá to Beirut?

Beirut, Lebanon. Allegedly, Colombian cocaine money flows thru here. 

'Outlaw it and outlaws will profit from it.' That oft-proven rule is why yesterday's New York Times story about the Lebanese organization Hezbollah profiting from Colombian cocaine is no surprise.

Money launderer?
Photo: Page Lebanon

After all, in recent years Colombian traffickers have smuggled lots of their product into Europe via Africa. And you can bet that multinational consumer giants like Cargill aren't doing the shipping. That's why the illegal drug trade seems like a logical revenue opportunity for outlawed groups like Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

Washington recently blacklisted and shut down the Lebanese-Canadian Bank for allegedly hosting accounts used by Hezbollah money launderers. But this Lebanese blogger points out that several of Lebanon's much larger and notoriously secretive banks are also suspected of money laundering.

So, it's likely that the closing of this single bank affects only a sliver of the region's money laundering - and the Times article even reports that many suspicious accounts were simply transferred to other banks.

Decriminalizing drugs would deprive Hezbollah of much of its cocaine income. (But Washington should also recognize that it needs to engage Hezbollah, not demonize it. Hezbollah is a state-within-a-state, with its own army and health services and a big role in Lebanon's government. Hezbollah  clearly plays an important role in Lebanese society, and it won't go away anytime soon.)

Hunting down dirty money. 

I saw aspects of Hezbollah's South American connection 2002, when I interviewed Lebanese businessmen in Paraguay's Ciudad del Este, a border city infamous for smuggling of drugs, weapons and people. Many of the Lebanese traders there expressed support for Hezbollah and told me that they sent money to the organization - altho only to support its charitable works, of course. A few years after my visit, one of the men I'd inteviewed on the Brazilian side was arrested on terrorism financing charges. The story I was working on was hooked to suspicions that the 9-11 Al Qaeda attacks in New York might have been planned in the region - but no evidence for that ever appeared.

Yesterday's New York Times story also reported that Hezbollah is in the African diamond smuggling business. Diamonds are great for smuggling, because they're so small, valuable and difficult to trace. Slip a few dozen diamonds into a toothpaste tube and you've got thousands of dollars hidden in your bathroom kit. Many African diamonds are known as 'blood diamonds' because their sale finances civil wars and insurgencies.

Certifiied diamonds and emeralds for sale in central Bogota. 

Here in Bogotá, I've met many traders in emeralds, one of Colombia's most characteristic exports. But stores here also sell diamonds - altho no diamonds are mined in Colombia. Dealers tell me that most diamonds are smuggled into Colombia, probably from Africa. While diamonds are legal, many African diamonds are not, because they finance violence. On the other hand, cocaine, because it's always illegal, is by nature 'blood cocaine.'

Paid for by cocaine and diamonds? An African child soldier.

It seems inevitable that, when you've got two black market products heading in different directions, they'll be exchanged for each other. So, Colombian cocaine, which finances so much violence here, appears to also finance violence in Africa.

Decriminalizing drugs would reduce violence in Latin America and in Africa as well.

Some might say there's a contradiction here, since diamonds, a legal product, also finance violence. But only a small proportion of the world's diamonds finance violence, while the great majority of cocaine does.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Un-Decision On the Minimum Drug Dosage

A minimum dose?

Colombia's Constitutional Court has decided to not decide on the legality of carrying a 'minimum dosage' of drugs.  It ruled the other day that a lawsuit aiming to legalize possession of small amounts of drugs was incorrectly written, and must be rewritten and resubmitted.

Carrying a 'minimum dosage' of drugs was legalized in 1994 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that personal drug use was part of the "free development of the personality" guaranteed by Colombia's 1991 Constitution. But opponents of the minimum dose, led by then-Pres. Alvaro Uribe, argued that it promoted drug use and made it hard to arrest drug dealers, who kept only the minimum dose amount on their persons. In Dec. 2009, Congress prohibited the minimum dose, altho it didn't specify punishments for violators and decreed only medical attention for addicts.

The law had depenalized the possession of 20 grams of marijuana or 2 grams of bazuco - a cheap form of crack cocaine - among other drugs.

As a result, today it's common to see police patting down and taking away young men for carrying a bit of pot. But how illegal drug consumption has changed is unclear - I can't find any up-to-date statistics on trends in Colombian drug consumption. According to this 2010 story, Colombian young people consume drugs at a higher rate than the youths neighboring nations. For example, the survey also found that 2.5% of Colombian university students acknowledged using cocaine, compared to a half percent or less in the other countries.  But this applies to both illegal drugs and to alcohol and could reflect economic and cultural differences: Bolivia and Ecuador are substantially poorer than Colombia and those two nations and Peru are much more indigenous. And some of the numbers look doubtful to me: can it really be true that only 11.5% of Colombian university students had used marijuana during the past year - but 90% had consumed alcohol? Or could it be that, because pot was then illegal, many students feared admitting using it?

A 'free development of the personality' strikes me as a rotten way to justify the use of hard drugs such as cocaine and crack. Some people can handle them, but the brilliant singer Amy Winehouse freely developed her personality to death at age 27, and every day I see the wreckage of alcohol and drug addiction wandering Bogotá's streets. Legalizing and regulating drugs is the least-bad policy not because drugs are good, but because users tend to obtain them anyway. And prohibition just turns people with problems, like Winehouse, into criminals. If Winehouse's vices were legal ones, perhaps she would have been more open about her problems and obtained help sooner - perhaps. We just don't know.

If prohibitionism places some barriers against drug consumption, they aren't many, and studies have shown that treatment and education are much more cost effective and humane ways to discourage use. And imprisoning people for using drugs can ruin lots of lives and cost society lots of money, whereas its effect on dissuading users is questionable. However, the legal status of the minimum dosage is really marginal to the broader  impacts of prohibition, which drives the drug trade's huge profits into the coffers of outlaw organizations, such as Colombia's guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug cartels.

Leaders ought to try not only depenalizing the minimum dosage, but legalizing drugs generally, to take them out of the hands of criminals.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Profession Like Any Other?

Prostitutes wait for clients on a Bogotá plaza. 

A woman who worked as a prostitute in a Bogotá dance club became pregnant and was fired from her job. She sued, claiming that the firing was illegal and that the club owed her health benefits. And a court recently ruled in her favor, that prostitutes, like other employees, deserve job protection and benefits.

Even among femenists, there's debate about whether prostitution should be legal. Is it inevitably demeaning to women? Does it have to be dangerous? Can a person make a free, mature decision to become a prostitute, or are women and girls ultimately forced into it? Does legal adult prostitution serve as a cover for child prostitution and human trafficking?

In Colombia, as in much of Latin America, prostitution is legal, altho here it's supposed to be restricted to certain neighborhoods known as 'tolerance zones,' which are defined here and conditions for the sex industry here. In passing thru central Bogotá's tolerance zone, in the Santa Fe neighborhood, the women standing in the doorways and walking the sidewalks don't appear particularly oppressed to me. I see them chatting and joking to each other and waving to prospective customers cruising by on motorcycles or in taxis. 

But appearances may be one thing, reality another. And, who knows what goes on inside the buildings?

In my very limited contacts with prostitutes, as a journalist, I've heard about different kinds of cases. In Ecuador, where prostitution is also legal, I interviewed a young woman who as a teenager had been lured into a brothel and held there as a sex slave before managing to escape. With the help of an anti-human trafficking organization, she'd prosecuted the brothel owner, altho I don't recall how the case ended up in Ecuador's corrupt and disfunctional court system. When I interviewed her she was administering another brothel, where she said the women were treated well. The abuse she'd suffered still haunted her, but evidently she thot well enough of the profession as to have stayed in it.

I also accompanied the students to the shutting down of a legal brothel which had illegaly employed young girls. The adult prostitutes there were furious that their employer was being shuttered: "How will I feed my children?" one demanded  - but expressed no sympathy for the young girls forced into prostitution against their wills.

Prostitutes in Bogotá's Santa Fe neighborhood,
where prostitution is depenalized. 

In the recent ruling in Bogotá, the court pointed out that denying the legal rights of prostitutes would only favor the interests of the brothel owner, "with grave consequences for the prostitute," and "it also appears contrary to the principle of constitutional equality...and restricts fundamental rights, such as dignified treatment, the free development of the personality, right to earn a living and that to a just compensation for work."

The court said that not giving prostitutes benefits "also treats unfairly a minority social group that has been traditionally discriminated against."

Previous court rulings have also held that prostitution is a profession and that prostitutes have a right to work.

I also spoke to a young woman who works as a prostitute on a plaza in central Bogotá. It's outside of the designated tolerance zone, but the police seem oblivious of the many prostitutes. I met her thru one of the men renting cell on the plaza, whom I asked whether he knew a prostitute who would be willing to tell me her story.

"How about her?" he said, indicating the apparently healthy young woman seated beside him. I was surprised, both because of her appearance and her very normal dress. But she smiled cheerily at me, unashamed. For me, a person who believes that prostitution probably should be legal but has always seen prostitutes as stigmatized outsiders, I was taken aback by her openness about her profession.

This young woman, who is only 22, and is nicknamed Jeje, has been working as a prostitute for about three years. She had worked in a shop near the plaza, but didn't like having to fulfill a schedule or being supervised. While a shop employee, men propositioned her and so when she lost that job, she fell into 'the world's oldest profession.'

"You don't have to be at work at 7 a.m. You don't have a boss bossing you around. If you don't feel good, you don't have to work," she said. "And how else could I make this amount of money in so short a time?"

Most of the other prostitutes got there "for the easy money," Jeje says. In fact, in Colombia prostitutes are known as "women of the easy life."

Most of her clients are decent, Jeje says, altho there are exception "who treat you like garbage." Some resist using condoms, which she said she insists on, but none has ever forced her to have unprotected sex. Still, she acknowledged, condoms sometimes break or fall off.

That produces risks not only for the prostitute and client. A 2009 survey found that 41% of clients of prostitutes in Bogotá don't use condoms with their wives or girlfriends, potentially infecting them with diseases.

And there are other dangers - from the environment. While working the plaza, Jeje's sniffed glue, altho she hasn't become addicted, and smokes marijuana regularly.

"When you're amidst shit, some of its sticks to you," she says.

Jeje estimated that half the prostitutes on the plaza are drug addicts. The police sometimes harass the sex workers, she says - but not because they're prostitutes, but because of the drug use.

But Jeje can earn typically 40,000 pesos in twelve hours, altho that varies greatly. Yet, it's a decent income for a person with only a ninth grade education and no inclination for more studies.

But she knows she can't be a prostitute forever; "When I'm 50, who's going to ask for me?" So she says that, besides raising her son, who is three, she's saving money to open a business one day.

Jeje feels pity for the older women working the plaza - and for the many underage girls. She'd never want a young relative of her own to become a prostitute. For that matter, she doesn't let her family know her profession and hopes that her three-year-old son never finds out.

If his friends knew "they'd call him an hijo de puta (son of a whore)," a common insult in Colombia.

And, when evangelical Christians have accosted her and the other prostitutes, she says "I know it's wrong."

Men walk near the El Oasis brothel in the Santa Fe neighborhood. 

Yet, from this young woman's experience it's not clear to me why her profession is wrong - except from a religious perspective. Certainly, it has many particular dangers. But if prostitution were completely regulated and prostitutes given psychological and health support, then they might be more assertive about protecting themselves from disease and violence. As a prostitute, she's also been exposed to drugs. But is this because of prostitution's inherent nature or because, as a stigmatized profession, sex workers are pushed into such an environment?

Jeje acknowledged that if she could earn as much in a formal job, she'd prefer it. And if Jeje had more education, then she might be able to obtain such work. But Colombia is a long way from educating everybody.

And, if it did, I suspect that prostitution would continue - just more expensively.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours