Of the Bronx and Drug Prohibition

Winder, 28, lived as a crack addict in El Bronx for 4 years.

Winder starting smoking pot at age 8, got kicked out of his home by his evangelical father as a young teen, spent four years in prison, and then fled from his hometown of Huila to Bogotá, where he ended up living for four years in El Bronx, the notorious central Bogotá street full of crack addicts, thieves and prostitutes.

But altho Winder, now 28, who ultimately sought help in a government rehabilitation program, lost family and years of his life to drugs, he opposes drug prohibitionist policies.

"It's just a game to arrest the small guys," he argues. "The big fish always get away."

Reproduction of Bronx rooms
with gambling machines.

And in prison, he recalls, "there were more drugs than ever. Just more expensive."

I met Winder in the Museo Nacional, where he was recalling his time in El Bronx to museum guests who came to see a scale model of the street, whose real version was demolished about two years ago.

Recyclers' carts in El Bronx.

Colombia's new conservative President Ivan Duque hopes to reduce illegal drugs' damage by intensifying drug prohibitionism. However, as Linder's story seems to show, harsh punishment might not do much to reduce drug use, but does turn victims like him into criminals. Winder entered and left prison as a drug abuser. It was only afterward, when he 'hit bottom' that desperation motivated him to change his life. In the meantime, society spent a lot of money incarcerating him.

Winder also complained that few of the Bronx's residents recieved support and rehabilitation. A prohibitionist policy which treats drug abuse as a crime instead of a medical condition only makes it more difficult to provide assistance.

On my home from the museum, I passed some police searching a group of young men on a plaza near

´What's that in your pocket?' Cops search young
men on Plaza Santader in central Bogotá.

the Gold Museum. The stop and searches which convert so many youth into criminals don't seem to do much to control drugs, but are a tremendous tool for cops to squeeze bribes out of people.

Later on, I played basketball in a park in La Candelaria where troubled kids called nieros sit in the stands smoking and drinking dubious substances. Drug prohibitionism doesn't seem to have done much to cut off their supplies.

Another ex-Bronx resident, now in rehabilitation.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Galán Jr. Vs. Galán Sr.

Senator Juan Manuel Galán stands in front of a photograph of is father, Luis Carlos Galán, who was assassinated in 1989 by narcotraffickers.

When presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán was assassinated in 1989 by a conspiracy led by drug cartel Pablo Escobar, Galán became a symbol of the fight against drug traffickers.

But today his son, Senator Juan Manuel Galán, is betraying his father's memory, some say. After

'...it was prohibitionism which assassinated my father...'
Sen. Juan Manuel Galán, in El Tiempo.

all, the elder Galán was murdered by drug traffickers. In contrast, the younger Galán is sponsoring a bill in Congress to regulate medical marijuana, and he advocates the legalization and regulation of all drugs, including cocaine.

But, in an interview in today's El Tiempo, Juan Manuel argues that, in a sense, it wasn't only the narcotraffickers who shot down his father in Soacha in 1989.

"With the passing of years, I've reached the conclusion that it was (drug) prohibition which assassinated my father," Galán said. "It was prohibitionism which fed the narcotrafficking mafias, making them feel strong enough to intimidate and corrupt the state and assassinate anybody who got in their way."

Agree with him or not, the younger Galán's viewpoint - and the very fact that it fits into the mainstream political conversation - shows how the drug control landscape has been transformed from the days when the War on Drugs and 'Just say NO' were the only policy options permitted.

Juan Manuel Galán predicts that eventually all drugs, including cocaine, will be legal and regulated. He may be proved right. But that day's still a long way away, and before it comes many more Colombians will be the victims of drug-related killings.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Shortcut to Legalization?

Soon to stock marijuana? A drugstore on Plaza San Victorino.

Pres. Santos' endorsement of medical marijuana is a step forward - but a tiny one - reducing the harm from Colombia's drug economy.

Along with reducing suffering, Santos cited weakening the criminal enterprises which traffic drugs as a reason for legalizing marijuana for therapeutic uses. That's absurd, since only a tiny fraction of a fraction of Colombia's pot smokers use the drug for medical reasons. And, since whatever legal drug scheme is likely to be complex and cumbersome, a lot of those people will likely continue buying their pot on the black market.

Medicine?
(Photo: California Finest)

But this is a step forward in recognizing that cannabis is not some evil, beyond-the-pale thing. (And is in line with long-time worldwide legal medical uses of cocaine and heroin.) And it brings Colombia a bit closer to the sort of regulated marijuana market being introduced in Uruguay and the U. S. states of Colorado and Washington. Certainly, it jives with Santos' repeated statements that prohibitionism should be reconsidered.

Is that right?
(Photo: Obrag.org)

And perhaps Colombia will find a California-style shortcut to legal cannabis use. After all, in the Golden State - which just happens to be a huge marijuana grower - medical marijuana has morphed into de facto marijuana legalization. All you have to do is find one of the many amenable doctors eager to prescribe marijuana for such conditions as headaches, insomnia or sore knees. Let's hope so.

Santos endorsed a medical marijuana bill introduced into Congress by Sen. Juan Manuel Galan, who father Luis Carlos Galán was assassinated on orders of drug lord Pablo Escobar. How would Colombia administer this? Designating companies to grow and process marijuana? Or would the government farm the stuff, as Uruguay is doing? Would pot be sold in pharmacies?

And how would Colombia handle the inevitable downside? After all, marijuana certainly has medical benefits, but smoking a lot of it can do bad things to people, particularly to young people. Can the state send that message while at the same time offering pot as medicinal?

Medicine, man? (Photo: Wikipedia)

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Escobar in an Alternate History

Escobar dead on a rooftop in 1993.

Pablo Escobar, who made himself one of the world's richest men by exporting Colombian cocaine to the United States and and other nations, was gunned down on this day two decades ago.

Which got me thinking...What would have happened if f cocaine had been legal back then? First of all, Escobar would not likely have been in the business. Escobar, after all, started off as a small-time criminal. Some say that Escobar's first criminal undertaking was stealing headstones from cemeteries, scraping them clean, and reselling them.

Pablo in the slammer.

Instead, some ambitous conventional businessman with lots of greed and few scruples would have entered the business. Mexican Carlos Slim comes to mind - not because he's particularly unethical, but because for many years Slim invested in the cigarrete industry. Instead of car bombs and kidnappings, Colombians would have been dulled to death by corporate meetings.

But that's not what happened. Instead, cocaine was illegal 20 years ago, meaning that only outlaws profited from it. As we all know, much of Colombia, particularly Medellin, descended into chaos and bloodshed.

And what has prohibitionism accomplished? Probably the best measure is how much it has raised retail prices by choking off supply. By that simple measure, the War on Drugs has failed.

You can't read this chart, but the upper column shows that inflation-adjusted cocaine street prices have dopped from $278 per gram in 1990, to $195 in 2000 and to $169 today.

There probably are multiple reasons for cocaine's price drop, including consumers' shifts to other drugs (some of which are more addictive and harmful than cocaine.)

But the fact is that, 20 years after what was arguably law enforcement's greatest blow against drug trafficking, the industry continues rolling on.

The DAS building in Bogotá, bombed by Escobar in 1989.

A poster on a Bogotá street features Escobar.

A man places a music player on the tomb of Luis Carlos Galan, perhaps Escobar's best known assassination victim. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Drug Policy Sanity Breaks Through?

Juan Manuel Santos receives the OAS drug report from OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza yesterday in the Casa de Nariño.

The report is in, and it's not what Washington wanted.

An Organization of American States report presented yesterday in Bogotá recommends drug decriminalization.

“Decriminalization of drug use needs to be considered as a core element in any public health strategy,” concluded the OAS group.

The U.S. government had declared itself open to discussing alternative drug war strategies - just as long as it was clear that only option would be more prohibition.

Predictably, Washington's response to this latests report was to play the same old broken record.

"Any suggestion that nations legalize drugs like heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine runs counter to an evidenced-based, public health approach to drug policy and are not viable alternatives,” said a U.S. government drug policy spokesman.

What evidence is that? More than a decade ago, Portugal decriminalized possessing all drugs, and observers generally consider the experiment a success. On the other hand, the violence fueled by drug prohibition is undeniable evidence of prohibition's failure.

The U.S. position looks increasingly absurd when two U.S. states have legalized marijuana and the drug is de-facto legal (in the guise of 'medial marijuana') in more than a dozen other states - and those U.S. states haven't collapsed into anarchy.

Colombian Pres. Juan Manuel Santos was present at the report's presentation and welcomed its ideas.

"This was what we wanted," Santos said, "empirical evidence without prejudice, and now the real work begins, which is the discussion at the political level. Let it be clear that no one here is defending any position, neither legalization, nor regulation, nor war at any cost.

Many Latin Americans have long believed that Washington insisted on the futile War on Drugs as an excuse to meddle in Latin America. I believe rather that the U.S. insists on these policies for domestic reasons - it doesn't look good to retreat in any kind of war.

But as the U.S.'s position becomes more untenable, it only makes conspiracy theories look more believable.

A U.S. official recently warned that countries should take into consideration the impacts on other countries of their domestic drug policies. That's fair enough. So, is the U.S. looking at the epidemic of violence which its own prohibitionist policies have unleashed across Latin America?
How will this report affect drug policy? I expect it to nudge forward efforts underway, most notably in Uruguay, to legalize marijuana. The report itself observed that the region has little support for legalizing cocaine - even tho cocaine trafficking fuels much of the region's violence. But, in the same way that some call marijuana the 'gateway drug' for drug abuse, perhaps it will also be a gateway for legalization.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Coca Leaves Grow in La Candelaria

Juan and a cabinet of coca leaf products.

Coca leaf products - the legal kind - seem to be proliferating in La Candelaria. I'm not sure whether this is due to more interest, more tourists, or because stores have become less wary about products associated with but totally different from cocaine.

Clean yourself with coca. Here's coca soap.

Already, several local health food restaurants and handicrafts stores carry coca leaf products, which carry a bit of panache and challenge the vision of the-world-according-to-George-Bush-and-Alvaro Uribe.

The most recent addition is the small Nasa Tul Coca Café on Calle 12D just above Carrera 3, where almost everything on sale contains coca leaf. They've got coca leaves, crackers, medicine - even rum and coca leaves with chocolate (another native Colombian product).

The store is run by a young couple, Yudith and Juan, who is indigenous and a native of Cauca Department, which is also the source of the café's coca leaf. They work with Coca Nasa, which Juan said is the oldest and biggest coca leaf product maker in Colombia.

Get drunk on coca rum. 

Coca Nasa has in the past made other products, such as coca wine and a soft drink. But they ran into problems, at least in part due to the leaf's continuing stigmatization. That's despite - or maybe because of - the makers' claims that coca leaf can treat many of your ills, ranging from rheumatism and diabetes to weariness and PMS. I wouldn't count on that. But Andean indigenous people have chewed coca leaves for millenia with no bad effects except yellow teeth and lots of swear swear it helps with altitude sickness.

I've drunk coca tea and chewed leaves quite a few times, with no noticeable effects, either good or bad. But, who can say? Perhaps I'd be worse off if I'd never tried them.

'The coca leaf is culture.'

Coca Nasa waged a long legal battle with the Coca Cola Company for the right to use the word 'coca', Juan said. And - amazingly - Coca Nasa ultimately won, according to Juan. However, soon after that the company encountered obstacles in getting its products into large businesses like supermarkets. Juan blames that on Coca Cola, but I recall a decree being issued prohibiting the selling of coca leaf products outside of indigenous territories. The decree came out, no doubt totally coincidentally, just a few days before U.S. Pres. George W. H. Bush visited Bogotá.

Juan also told me that Coca Nasa was behind the lawsuit which got the annoying, and even slanderous, 'La Mata que Mata,' ad removed from radio and television. The notorious ad featured the cloying voice of a little girl, who implored Colombians not to cultivate coca leaf, 'La mata que mata' - 'The plant that kills.' The ad portrayed all growers of coca leaf, whether they went into tea or cocaine, as killers.

A coca leaf balm. 

Paradoxically, Coca Cola reportedly buys tons of Bolivian coca leaves, which it uses in Coca Cola, after removing the cocaine alkaloid. One of the world's best-known corporations can export coca leaves to the U.S. in contravention of United Nations rules, but Juan said that when Coca Nasa sent boxes of coca tea to Chicago they disappeared in the mail. Figure that one out.

Bogotá's prohibition against coca leaf sales has been enforced only irregularly, as demonstrated by the many shops in La Candelaria and other places selling coca leaf products. Juan said that INVIMA, Colombia's equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has refused to register products made from coca leaves. However, he said they do have indigenous registries, which he said are the legal equivalent.

In any case, Juan pointed out that "all of Colombia is indigenous territory. The Muiscas lived here" in what is now Bogotá (and some still do).

If coca leaf is ever to become an industry, it will have to overcome one big obstacle: The United Nations list of controlled substances, which includes cocaine, marijuana, heroin - and coca leaves.

The Colombian government, tired of the nation being equated with cocaine - even tho Colombia continues to produce most of the world's supply of the drug - perhaps would like to discourage all things coca leaf. But coca leaves and coca leaf products, grown sustainably, could turn into a valuable export for Colombia and the whole Andean region.

Bolivian Pres. Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and one-time coca leaf farmer who still heads Bolivia's coca-growers' association, recently withdrew his country from the United Nations drug convention in protest, and then reentered after Bolivia was excluded from the coca leaf prohibition. But the prohibition still applies to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the rest of the world, even tho coca leaves cannot be equated to cocaine.

Coca crackers in a small shop/cafe a few doors south
of La Plaza del Chorro de Quevedo.

Juan made a parallel between coca leaves and grapes.

"You've eaten lots of grapes, haven't you?" he asked. "Have they ever made you drunk?"

In any case, he said,

"We want to show the positive side of Colombia culture," he said, "the

The coca leaf products industry has also had internal problems. Juan said that one company, despite an indigenous name, does not provide benefits to native people and that its leaves "are of dubious origin." Coca Nasa has sued them, he said.

Nasa Tul Coca Cafe is located at: Calle 12D No. 3-84, in La Candelaria.
Cel: 310-883-2069.

You can also find coca tea and other coca leaf products in La Candelaria at: 

- The cooperative restaurant/grocery/hostel on Calle 15 by the corner of Carrera 3.

- Quinua and Amarantho Restaurant on 11th St. just above Carrera 3.

- The little store/cafe on Carrera 2 a few doors south of La Plaza del Chorro, beside Masaya Hostel.

Related Posts:

The Benefits of Coca Leaves

Taking a Courageous Stand Against...Leaves

Coca Leaves Finally Get a Little Respect

Good Riddance to 'La Mata que Mata!'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The War on Drugs at Forty: A Dealer's Opinion

This month is the 40th anniversary of the War on Drugs, declared by U.S. Pres. Richard M. Nixon in June 1971.

Back then, Colombia was a minor exporter of marijuana. While Washington has battled against drugs, Colombia's become the world's biggest exporter of cocaine. Aggresive erradication has reduced Colombia's cocaine crop in recent years, but coca leaf acreage has increased in Peru and Bolivia. During the last decade, violence has also decreased in Colombia - but escalated in Mexico.

Domestically, Colombia has also shifted toward prohibitionism. From the mid-1990s until a year and a half ago, it was legal to carry a 'personal dosis' of any drug for one's own use. That right was reversed by Congress after politicians complained that it made it hard to arrest dealers.

I asked a small-time marijuana dealer on Bogotá's Seventh Ave. what he thot about the War on Drugs - and got some surprising opinions.

He stands on a Seventh Ave. sidewalk with a bunch of trinkets in front him spread on a plastic sheet. The trinkets mean income and also provide a cover activity. When police approach, he scoops his trinkets up in the plastic and retreats to a corner.  

This guy, now 35, has been selling pot since he was 12, and he believes it's good that drugs are prohibited. If they were legalized, he says, "everybody would start smoking them and kill themselves."

That argument is disputable: alcohol and tobacco are legal, but not everybody consumes them. And, lots of people consume pot and even cocaine and manage their habits. The dealer does allow that getting high "means a good time," but still feels bad about his profession.

Many of this guy's strongest critiques are directed at basuco, a cheap and highly addictive form of crack cocaine. He knows of a businessman who became addicted to basuco and now lives on the street, scavenging food from trash cans.

When I point out that, despite prohibitionary laws, drugs are still easily available, this dealer points out that the law at least reduces consumption because "people have to consume it in secret." That's generally true, despite the occasional aroma of pot in Bogotá's air.

Coincidence? U.S. incarceration rates and the drug war. 

Finally, I ask him whether legalization would be good for him personally, as a businessman. Certainly it would, he says. He's been arrested about ten time for selling pot and once spent three years in prison. "Prison is really hard," he recalls.

But then I point out that, if drugs were legal, they'd be produced and sold like tobacco and alcohol, by big companies and stores. The illegal groups which traffic drugs and dealers like him would be out of business.

That wouldn't be so good for him, he agreed.

My pot dealer acquaintance seems like a nice guy. He's good natured, not violent and expresses concern about his clients, altho he doesn't go out of his way to pay taxes on his income. But much of the illegal drug industry is violent and unethical and resolves its differences at gunpoint. If drugs were legalized, my acquaintance would lose his street sales - but so would those huge outlaw groups which have done so much damage to Colombia and across the globe.

The billions spent by the U.S. and other nations battling drug production, trafficking and use have raised illegal drug prices and made them more difficult to obtain, cutting use. But the war has also funneled huge wealth to outlaw groups, and financed waves of violence in Colombia during past decades and more recently in Mexico and Central America. It's also ruined untold numbers of lives of users incarcerated or killed. My dealer acquaintance's criminal record, for example, most likely bars him from ever getting a formal job.

That's the pro- and con- of drug legalization: more access, and likely more use, but less violence and more taxes paid. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Lance Armstrong Scandal and Drug Prohibition

Champ Lance: Did he beat the system
as well as the competition?

The mounting evidence that cycling superstar Lance Armstrong doped his way to his Tour de France victories certainly says a lot about Armstrong's character.

But it also contains a message about drug prohibition. After all, Armstrong likes to boast that he's the most drug tested athlete in history and that he's never failed a test. And he's certainly lived under lots of scrutiny from the media, competitors and cycling authorities.

Yet, if we believe the testimonies of Armstrong's ex-teammates Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton, as well as lots of other evidence, Armstrong doped routinely throughout his racing career, and so did many other top bike racers.

If authorities could not stop a man who lived in the spotlight from using prohibited substances, what's the chance that they can stop the whole population? Especially when performance-enhancing substances like EPO and steroids are much harder to find than heroin, cocaine and marijuana. 

U.S. Postal Service racing team,
featuring Lance Armstrong. A
laboratory creation?

Of course, the factors in favor and against prohibition in sports and the general population are very different. Drugs like cocaine and heroin are banned primarily because of their dangers to users' health and the way they affect people's behavior. But if performance-enhancing drugs dramatically affected health or behavior, they wouldn't work for athletes in the first place.

If police and judges simply decriminalize drugs, use will likely increase, and some users will enjoy themselves and others will wreck their health. But law enforcement costs and lots of other damaging impacts, such as the funding of criminal organizations, will decrease.

Will the best doper win?

On the other hand, if sports authorities just give up and allow unrestricted use of performance boosters, it could undermine the very nature of sports. Instead of competing by training and strategy, athletes will outdo each other by using more expensive and sophisticated laboratory techniques.

Of course, it's always possible that, against all evidence, Armstrong is clean, as he has always insisted, and that there's a huge conspiracy against him. But that wouldn't change much, since it's clear that the sport is packed full of cheaters.

Just imagine Real Madrid defeating Barcelona in a dramatic match, and the reporters rushing to interview, instead of the coaches and players, laboratory technicians, who analyze the substances each teams' players used.

'Well, Barcelona injected themselves with Substance A, which made them run faster. But Real Madrid popped B pills, which made them stronger. Next time, Barcelona had better take the pills - or both drugs."

Prohibitionism doesn't seem to work wherever it's tried. Do the arguments in its favor outweigh those against it?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours