Monday, August 25, 2003

Bolivia: Drug War Casualties Graham Gori's AP report in yesterday's New York Newsday on life in Bolivia during the drug war... Ibuelo Alto, Bolivia - One morning in April, Hilaria Perez Prado began her day as always: hoping soldiers wouldn't burst from the jungle and tear her farm to pieces. They did come, though.  They trampled her fields.  And then one shot her in the chest as they left. He goes on to relate how Washington has spent $470 million on "Plan Dignity." They yanked out more than a billion plants.  Bolivia went from supplying half of the United States' cocaine demand - the crop brought an estimated $500 million into this country of 8 million people each year - to supplying very little.  American diplomats called Plan Dignity their most successful anti-narcotics mission ever in South America. But bananas, manioc root and other crops urged on peasant growers haven't proved profitable because few buyers come to these isolated regions, and farmers have begun drifting back to coca.  Coca production in Bolivia is up 23 percent since 2001, the White House Drug Policy Office says. So anti-drug efforts have been intensified, bringing an escalation in tensions and conflict between soldiers and peasants. Farmers plant homemade land mines in coca fields and put rat poison in low-hanging fruit in hopes soldiers will eat them.  Troops sometimes resort to gunfire. The farmers are hungry. Stanley Schrager, former director of the narcotics section at the U.S.  Embassy in La Paz, isn't sympathetic to the argument that farmers must grow coca to survive. "There is an idea out there - I call it the myth of the innocent coca farmer - that he is simply trying to put food on the table to feed his kids," Schrager said.  "But in reality he is at the beginning of a chain of events that ultimately leads to the drug trade and drug addiction in the United States, and thus bears some responsibility for the ruined lives which are the result." Thus the drug warriors exhibit, at the expense of the farmers, their lack of understanding of the failure of supply reduction. If you want to see what supply reduction looks like graphically, click here. 8:10:09 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

New Links and Blogging Milestones... It's been an interesting day, coming out of a delightful weekend in my blog world. First, I met Jeff Trigg of RandomActOfKindness, a very bright and articulate defender of civil liberties who has a category on Decriminalization. Well, I met him in the blogosphere, but it was still great, and nice to discover that he's in my home state. Check his site out. Jeff was nice enough to link to me, which generated some other connections, including another interesting local blog - Bill Dennis' Peoria Pundit. Bill has the fascinating pedigree of a "former liberal Democrat, former member of Libertarian Party, now small-'L' libertarian and anti-idiotarian media critic." Bill was kind enough to link to me as well Anyway, partly as a result of this Illinois blogaround over the weekend... somehow, blogdex decided that Drug WarRant was an element of "the most contagious information currently spreading in the weblog community" and listed me in the top 50 this morning. This resulted in a spike of visitors today (Hey, I'm new enough to consider 50 or 60 new visitors a major spike!) and... I got my first nasty, incoherent email today, from a process server who didn't like my views. Thus ends my first month as a blogger. I think I've made it! 6:45:20 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []