*Afghan Stability Advantage*

International crackdowns have failed production is on the rise in Afghanistan CIS Newswire, 5/8/13 (Russias military newswire, Foreign military force in Afghanistan fails to make anti-terrorism
breakthrough, drug trafficking grows Putin, Russia & CIS Military Newswire, 5/8/2013, Proquest, JKahn) MOSCOW. May 8 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin forecasts a possibility of exacerbation

1ac Afghan Instability

in Afghanistan and says the international forces have failed to make a breakthrough in fighting terrorism and drug trafficking in that country. "There are all grounds to believe we may face an exacerbated situation in Afghanistan in the near future ," Putinsaid at a meeting of the Russian Security Council on Wednesday. "The foreign military contingent, whose backbone is American forces, has not achieved a breakthrough in the fight against terrorist and radical groups as yet; on the contrary, their activity has intensified lately," he stated. "Besides, there has been a drastic increase in drug production in Afghanistan and formation of stable drug trafficking routes to other countries; unfortunately, Russia is amongst them ," the president remarked. "International terrorist and radical groups do not conceal their plans to export instability ,"
Putin said. "They are trying to spread subversive activity into the territories of neighboring Central Asian countries and Russia," the president said. "Such

developments are fraught with serious risks to us: an increase in drug trafficking and transboundary crime, uncontrolled flows of refugees, migrants, and fundamentalism," he stressed. The international forces "have done practically nothing to eradicate drug production in Afghanistan," the president
said. "Alas, Russian proposals to the effect have been neglected," he said. Meanwhile, the 2014 will be difficult for Afghanistan, Putin said. He said that the country would have presidential and provincial elections and, "what is especially important, the bulk of the foreign military contingent will be pulled out next year."

Drugs cause Afghan instability fund the Taliban Inkster, 12 (Nigel, Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Drugs: A war lost in Afghanistan, Foreign Policy, 5/29/2012, http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/05/29/drugs_a_war_lost_in_afghanistan, JKahn) The May 20 NATO summit in Chicago was dominated by the issue of Afghanistan. Amidst all the talk about
withdrawing international combat troops by 2014, funding the Afghan National Security Forces beyond 2014, and a doubtful political settlement with the Taliban, one

subject was absent from the formal agenda: drugs . Yet in few other countries is the drugs trade so entrenched as it is in Afghanistan. Accounting for between one-quarter and one-third of the national economy, it is an integral part of the insecurity blighting Afghan life for the past 30 years. Debate may continue for years as to whether the Western intervention in Afghanistan has made the world safer or more insecure in the post-9/11 era. But it has not only done nothing to reduce global supplies of illicit opium; rather, it has made the problem worse . The international drugs-control regime, in place
since the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs came into effect, rests on prohibiting use in consumer countries and reducing supply in producer states. In Afghanistan, the source of around 60 per cent of the planet's illicit opium and 85

per cent of heroin, the latter objective may never be achieved to any meaningful degree. The boom years for
Afghan poppy cultivation began in the 1970s, thanks to political instability in Southeast Asia's fertile 'Golden Triangle' and bans on the crop in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan. The Soviet invasion in late 1979 gave local warlords an incentive to plant opium poppies to fund their insurgency against Moscow. In the three decades since, with few other sources of income, opium production has come to provide for up to half a million Afghan households. The poppy is a hardy, drought-resistant plant, much easier for farmers to grow than saffron and more profitable than wheat. Both have been offered as alternative crops, but with only limited take-up. The criminal networks that have sprung up around the drugs trade provide farmers with seeds, fertiliser and cash loans; in short they offer an alternative welfare system. The principal growing regions, the southern Pashtun-dominated provinces of Helmand and Kandahar,

are also Taliban strongholds . For all these reasons, NATO efforts to eradicate opium - either

by aerial spraying or manually- have alienated the population . Indeed, they have often had to be abandoned in the face of popular resistance. Crop disease did more to reduce opium production in 2010 than NATO's counter-narcotics strategy. The United Nations recently reported there had been a 61 percent rebound in opium production in 2011, and prices were soaring. This is a worrying trend, which seems set to continue after NATO troops leave. Drug seizures, while rising, still account for less than 5% of opium produced. As a general rule, the United Nations estimates, law-enforcement agencies need to interdict about 70% of supplies to make the drugs trade less financially attractive to traffickers and dealers. In any circumstances, this is an extremely challenging objective. In the large swathes of Afghanistan where the central government and security forces wield no control, it is completely unrealistic. Meanwhile, no major trafficker has yet successfully been prosecuted due to a widespread culture of impunity. Alternative approaches have been proposed. Most recently, in May 2012, Tajik Interior Minister Ramazon Rakhimov proposed that opium

should be purchased directly from Afghan farmers to either be used in the pharmaceutical industry or to be destroyed. He also called on other countries to do the same in a move he deemed essential to fight drug trafficking and narcotics-fuelled terrorism. But this option was tried in 2002 when the United Kingdom had the lead on narcotics reduction, and had to be abandoned in the face of evidence that the purchasing programme constituted a perverse incentive to increase production. Licit production of opium for medical purposes may be a long-term option for Afghanistan, but not while current conditions of high insecurity and pervasive corruption persist. In the West, the drugs scourge is mostly thought about in terms of the lives lost, opportunities wasted and the social disruption created through addiction. In fragile and impoverished nations such as Afghanistan, drugs

create a shadow state, fuelling institutional corruption, instability, violence and human misery. The Taliban, which banned the planting of opium in 2001, was deriving an estimated U.S. $125 million per year from the business by 2009. It has been an equally important revenue stream for former warlords whose inclusion in the administration of President Hamid Karzai NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has done little to oppose. Such individuals have a powerful vested interest in state weakness to the obvious detriment of good governance and institution-building. And all these actors are likely to maximise revenues from opium production in the run-up to the 2014 NATO/ISAF drawdown to hedge against an uncertain future. A trade in which so many have vested interests will never be unwound simply or swiftly. What drives it is its huge profitability, a consequence of continuing Western demand . No-one can confidently predict the consequences
of changing the drugs prohibition regime. The current approach has not achieved the 1961 Single Convention's objectives. But has had the unintended consequence of perpetuating and increasing corruption and instability in parts of the world least equipped to deal with the consequences. Perhaps our collective experience in Afghanistan should serve as the basis for a serious rethink of global drugs policy? This would involve a cost/benefit analysis of current policies , scenario planning of the impact of alternative approaches and a much greater focus on demand reduction in consumer states. The issue of narcotics needs to be taken out of the silo it currently inhabits and looked at in the wider context of

international security and development. Instability in Afghanistan creates a nuclear crisis Rubin, 11 (Joel, Director of Policy and Government Affairs, Ploughshares Fund, former congressional aide and diplomat, fellow
at the State Department in both Near Eastern Affairs and Political-Military Affairs, Masters degree in Public Policy and Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelors degree in Politics from Brandeis University, Huffington Post, 77/2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-rubin/middle-east-nuclear-threat_b_891178.html, JKahn) The national security calculus of keeping U.S. forces in Afghanistan has shifted. Any gains that we made from keeping 100,000 American soldiers in harm's way are now questionable, especially since al Qaeda has been dealt a significant blow with the killing of Osama bin Laden. President Obama's decision to end the surge by late next year only reinforces this reality. Yet many of the

underlying sources of conflict and tension in South and Central Asia will remain after an American withdrawal. In a region that has deep experience on nuclear matters -- with nuclear aspirant Iran bordering Afghanistan on one side and nuclear-armed Pakistan and India on the other -- the United States must

take into account the potential for regional nuclear insecurity caused by a poorly executed drawdown in Afghanistan. As much as we may like to, we can't just cut and run. So as the United States draws down its forces, we must take care to leave stable systems and relationships in place; failure to do so could exacerbate historic regional tensions and potentially create new national security risks. It is therefore essential that Washington policymakers create a comprehensive nuclear security strategy for the region as part of its Afghanistan withdrawal plans that lays the groundwork for regional stability. We have only to look to our recent history in the region to understand the importance of this approach. In the 1980s, the U.S. supported the Mujahedeen against the Soviet Union. When that conflict ended, we withdrew, only to see the rise of al Qaeda -- and its resultant international terrorism -- in the 1990s because we didn't pull out responsibly from Afghanistan. Our choices now in Afghanistan will determine the shape of our

security challenges in the region for the foreseeable future. And we can't afford for nuclear weapons to

become to South and Central Asia in the 21st century what al Qaeda was in the 1990s to Afghanistan. To avoid such an outcome, several key objectives must be included in any Afghanistan withdrawal plan. First, current levels of regional insecurity -- which already are extremely high -- will continue to drive tensions, and quite possibly conflict, amongst the regional powers. Therefore, we must ensure the implementation of a regional approach to military withdrawal. These efforts must bring all relevant regional players to the table, particularly the nuclear and potentially nuclear states. Iran and all the countries bordering Afghanistan must be part of this discussion. Second, the United States must be mindful to not leave a governance vacuum inside Afghanistan. While it is clear that the current counter-insurgency policy being pursued in Afghanistan is not working at a pace that meets either Western or Afghan aspirations, it is still essential that Afghanistan not be allowed to implode. We do not need 100,000 troops to do this, and as the Afghanistan Study Group has recommended, credible political negotiations that emphasize power-sharing and political reconciliation must take place to keep the country intact while the United States moves out. Third, while the rationale for our presence in Afghanistan -- to defeat al Qaeda -- has dissipated, a major security concern justifying our continued involvement in the region -- potential nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan -- will remain and may actually rise in importance. It is crucial that we keep a particularly close eye on these programs to ensure that all is done to prevent the illicit transfer or ill-use of nuclear weapons. Regardless of American troop levels in Afghanistan, the U.S. must maximize its military and intelligence relationships with these countries to continue to both understand their nuclear intentions and help prevent potential conflict. We must avoid a situation where any minor misunderstanding or even terrorist act, as happened in Mumbai in 2008, does not set off escalating tensions that lead to a nuclear exchange. Ultimately, the U.S. will one day leave Afghanistan -- and it may be

sooner than anyone expects. The

key here is to leave in a way that promotes regional stability and cooperation, not a power vacuum that could foster proxy conflicts. To ensure that our security interests are protected

and that the region does not get sucked in to a new level of insecurity and tension, a comprehensive strategy to enhance regional security, maintain a stable Afghanistan, and keep a watchful eye on Pakistan and India is essential. Taking such steps will help us to depart Afghanistan in a responsible manner that protects our security interests, while not exacerbating the deep strategic insecurities of a region that has the greatest risk of arms races and nuclear conflict in the world.

Afghan heroin exports to North America are trafficked through Mexico Gmora, 11 special reports journalist for El Universal, citing Edgardo Buscaglia, a fellow at the Autonomous Technological
Institute of Mexico (Doris, Mexican Cartels Buying Afghan Heroin, Borderland Beat, 5 January 2011, http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/01/mexican-cartels-buying-afghan-heroin.html)//BI

1ac Heroin

Mexican cartels have established business alliances with gangs operating in places like Afganistn and Turkey, in order to obtain and smuggle drugs to supply Europe and North America, according to investigator Edgardo Buscaglia, a fellow at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). In an interview with EL UNIVERSAL, Buscaglia confirmed that Mexican narcotraffickers operate like multinational emissaries "to establish contacts and place operatives that can deal with the Turkish and Indian criminal organizations in order to facilitate the production and sale of drugs," specifically heroin. Buscaglia says that according to his investigation, these criminal groups operate on an international level, and their bases of operations are located in Mxico. It is in the interest of these Mexican groups (specifically the Sinaloa alliance) that they open smuggling routes for the distribution of heroin to the U.S. market. Furthermore, they are not only focusing on the movement of Afghan heroin through Mexico; they are also taking positions of power as major players in the international world of the heroin trade," according to Buscaglia, who is also the director the International Center of Legal and Economic Development. Strategic Global Alliances According to Buscaglia, the strategic alliances between the cartels of Mxico and the Middle Eastern group becomes potentially closer to being a fact with each passing rumor. It is not as if (Joaqun) El Chapo Guzmn (Loera) himself travels to

Turkey, it is up to his emissaries to maintain good relations in that country. They keep the flow of heroin packages and money that belongs to the Sinaloa cartel moving to their appropriate destinations. Money and heroin make its way to Chicago, or New York. It is like the concept of outsourcing labor: the Mexican cartels receive the product from their overseas

suppliers and they distribute the merchandise locally," Edgardo Buscaglia explained to his interview with El Universal. The shipments that arrived to Canad and the U.S. are very profitable to the criminal groups of the southern hemisphere, but the product itself is produced in Afganistn, where 90% of the worlds heroin supply comes from, says Buscaglia. The Mexican groups arrive to the Turkish and Afghan markets with contacts established by emissaries or companies where cartel members hold minor positions. Often, the exporters themselves come with the credentials of being overseas suppliers and representatives of people in
the business of illicit services, he explained.

<insert solvency> Drugs cause Afghan instability fund the Taliban Inkster, 12 (Nigel, Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Drugs: A war lost in Afghanistan, Foreign Policy, 5/29/2012, http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/05/29/drugs_a_war_lost_in_afghanistan, JKahn) The May 20 NATO summit in Chicago was dominated by the issue of Afghanistan. Amidst all the talk about
withdrawing international combat troops by 2014, funding the Afghan National Security Forces beyond 2014, and a doubtful political settlement with the Taliban, one

subject was absent from the formal agenda: drugs . Yet in few other countries is the drugs trade so entrenched as it is in Afghanistan. Accounting for between one-quarter and one-third of the national economy, it is an integral part of the insecurity blighting Afghan life for the past 30 years. Debate may continue for years as to whether the Western intervention in Afghanistan has made the world safer or more insecure in the post-9/11 era. But it has not only done nothing to reduce global supplies of illicit opium; rather, it has made the problem worse . The international drugs-control regime, in place
since the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs came into effect, rests on prohibiting use in consumer countries and reducing supply in producer states. In Afghanistan, the source of around 60 per cent of the planet's illicit opium and 85

per cent of heroin, the latter objective may never be achieved to any meaningful degree. The boom years for
Afghan poppy cultivation began in the 1970s, thanks to political instability in Southeast Asia's fertile 'Golden Triangle' and bans on the crop in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan. The Soviet invasion in late 1979 gave local warlords an incentive to plant opium poppies to fund their insurgency against Moscow. In the three decades since, with few other sources of income, opium production has come to provide for up to half a million Afghan households. The poppy is a hardy, drought-resistant plant, much easier for farmers to grow

than saffron and more profitable than wheat. Both have been offered as alternative crops, but with only limited take-up. The criminal networks that have sprung up around the drugs trade provide farmers with seeds, fertiliser and cash loans; in short they offer an alternative welfare system. The principal growing regions, the southern Pashtun-dominated provinces of Helmand and Kandahar,

are also Taliban strongholds . For all these reasons, NATO efforts to eradicate opium - either

by aerial spraying or manually- have alienated the population . Indeed, they have often had to be abandoned in the face of popular resistance. Crop disease did more to reduce opium production in 2010 than NATO's counter-narcotics strategy. The United Nations recently reported there had been a 61 percent rebound in opium production in 2011, and prices were soaring. This is a worrying trend, which seems set to continue after NATO troops leave. Drug seizures, while rising, still account for less than 5% of opium produced. As a general rule, the United Nations estimates, law-enforcement agencies need to interdict about 70% of supplies to make the drugs trade less financially attractive to traffickers and dealers. In any circumstances, this is an extremely challenging objective. In the large swathes of Afghanistan where the central government and security forces wield no control, it is completely unrealistic. Meanwhile, no major trafficker has yet successfully been prosecuted due to a widespread culture of impunity. Alternative approaches have been proposed. Most recently, in May 2012, Tajik Interior Minister Ramazon Rakhimov proposed that opium should be purchased directly from Afghan farmers to either be used in the pharmaceutical industry or to be destroyed. He also called on other countries to do the same in a move he deemed essential to fight drug trafficking and narcotics-fuelled terrorism. But this option was tried in 2002 when the United Kingdom had the lead on narcotics reduction, and had to be abandoned in the face of evidence that the purchasing programme constituted a perverse incentive to increase production. Licit production of opium for medical purposes may be a long-term option for Afghanistan, but not while current conditions of high insecurity and pervasive corruption persist. In the West, the drugs scourge is mostly thought about in terms of the lives lost, opportunities wasted and the social disruption created through addiction. In fragile and impoverished nations such as Afghanistan, drugs

create a shadow state, fuelling institutional corruption, instability, violence and human misery. The Taliban, which banned the planting of opium in 2001, was deriving an estimated U.S. $125 million per year from the business by 2009. It has been an equally important revenue stream for former warlords whose inclusion in the administration of President Hamid Karzai NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has done little to oppose. Such individuals have a powerful vested interest in state weakness to the obvious detriment of good governance and institution-building. And all these actors are likely to maximise revenues from opium production in the run-up to the 2014 NATO/ISAF drawdown to hedge against an uncertain future. A trade in which so many have vested interests will never be unwound simply or swiftly. What drives it is its huge profitability, a consequence of continuing Western demand . No-one can confidently predict the consequences
of changing the drugs prohibition regime. The current approach has not achieved the 1961 Single Convention's objectives. But has had the unintended consequence of perpetuating and increasing corruption and instability in parts of the world least equipped to deal with the consequences. Perhaps our collective experience in Afghanistan should serve as the basis for a serious rethink of global drugs policy? This would involve a cost/benefit analysis of current policies , scenario planning of the impact of alternative approaches and a much greater focus on demand reduction in consumer states. The issue of narcotics needs to be taken out of the silo it currently inhabits and looked at in the wider context of

international security and development. Instability in Afghanistan creates a nuclear crisis Rubin, 11 (Joel, Director of Policy and Government Affairs, Ploughshares Fund, former congressional aide and diplomat, fellow
at the State Department in both Near Eastern Affairs and Political-Military Affairs, Masters degree in Public Policy and Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelors degree in Politics from Brandeis University, Huffington Post, 77/2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-rubin/middle-east-nuclear-threat_b_891178.html, JKahn) The national security calculus of keeping U.S. forces in Afghanistan has shifted. Any gains that we made from keeping 100,000 American soldiers in harm's way are now questionable, especially since al Qaeda has been dealt a significant blow with the killing of Osama bin Laden. President Obama's decision to end the surge by late next year only reinforces this reality. Yet many of the

underlying sources of conflict and tension in South and Central Asia will remain after an American withdrawal. In a region that has deep experience on nuclear matters -- with nuclear aspirant Iran bordering Afghanistan on one side and nuclear-armed Pakistan and India on the other -- the United States must

take into account the potential for regional nuclear insecurity caused by a poorly executed drawdown in Afghanistan. As much as we may like to, we can't just cut and run. So as the United States draws down its forces, we must take care to leave stable systems and relationships in place; failure to do so could exacerbate historic regional tensions and potentially create new national security risks. It is therefore essential that Washington policymakers create a comprehensive nuclear security strategy for the region as part of its Afghanistan withdrawal plans that lays the groundwork for regional stability. We have only to look to our recent history in the region to understand the importance of this approach. In the 1980s, the U.S. supported the Mujahedeen against the Soviet Union. When that conflict ended, we withdrew, only to see the rise of al Qaeda -- and its resultant international terrorism -- in the 1990s because we didn't pull out responsibly from Afghanistan. Our choices now in Afghanistan will determine the shape of our

security challenges in the region for the foreseeable future. And we can't afford for nuclear weapons to

become to South and Central Asia in the 21st century what al Qaeda was in the 1990s to Afghanistan. To avoid such an outcome, several key objectives must be included in any Afghanistan withdrawal plan. First, current levels of regional insecurity -- which already are extremely high -- will continue to drive tensions, and quite possibly conflict, amongst the regional powers. Therefore, we

must ensure the implementation of a regional approach to military withdrawal. These efforts must bring all relevant regional players to the table, particularly the nuclear and potentially nuclear states. Iran and all the countries bordering Afghanistan must be part of this discussion. Second, the United States must be mindful to not leave a governance vacuum inside Afghanistan. While it is clear that the current counter-insurgency policy being pursued in Afghanistan is not working at a pace that meets either Western or Afghan aspirations, it is still essential that Afghanistan not be allowed to implode. We do not need 100,000 troops to do this, and as the Afghanistan Study Group has recommended, credible political negotiations that emphasize power-sharing and political reconciliation must take place to keep the country intact while the United States moves out. Third, while the rationale for our presence in Afghanistan -- to defeat al Qaeda -- has dissipated, a major security concern justifying our continued involvement in the region -- potential nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan -- will remain and may actually rise in importance. It is crucial that we keep a particularly close eye on these programs to ensure that all is done to prevent the illicit transfer or ill-use of nuclear weapons. Regardless of American troop levels in Afghanistan, the U.S. must maximize its military and intelligence relationships with these countries to continue to both understand their nuclear intentions and help prevent potential conflict. We must avoid a situation where any minor misunderstanding or even terrorist act, as happened in Mumbai in 2008, does not set off escalating tensions that lead to a nuclear exchange. Ultimately, the U.S. will one day leave Afghanistan -- and it may be sooner than anyone expects. The

key here is to leave in a way that promotes regional stability and cooperation, not a power vacuum that could foster proxy conflicts. To ensure that our security interests are protected

and that the region does not get sucked in to a new level of insecurity and tension, a comprehensive strategy to enhance regional security, maintain a stable Afghanistan, and keep a watchful eye on Pakistan and India is essential. Taking such steps will help us to depart Afghanistan in a responsible manner that protects our security interests, while not exacerbating the deep strategic insecurities of a region that has the greatest risk of arms races and nuclear conflict in the world.

Drug trafficking destroys stability and funds the insurgency Blanchard, 09 (Chris, analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs for the Congressional Research Service, Afghanistan: Narcotics and U.S. Policy, Congressional Research Service, 4/21/2009, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl32686.pdf, JKahn) Opium poppy cultivation and drug trafficking have eroded Afghanistans fragile political and economic order over the last 30 years. In spite of ongoing counternarcotics efforts by the Afghan government, the United States, and their partners, Afghanistan remains the source of over 90% of the worlds illicit opium. Since
2001, efforts to provide viable economic alternatives to poppy cultivation and to disrupt drug trafficking and related corruption have succeeded in some areas. However, insecurity , particularly in the southern province of Helmand, and

Drugs Kills Stability

widespread corruption fueled a surge in cultivation in 2006 and 2007, pushing opium output to all-time highs. In
2008, poppy cultivation decreased in north-central and eastern Afghanistan, while drug activity became more concentrated in the south and west. National poppy cultivation and opium production totals dropped slightly in 2008, as pressure from provincial officials, higher wheat prices, drought, and lower opium prices altered the cultivation decisions of some Afghan poppy farmers. Some experts have questioned the sustainability of rapid changes in cultivation patterns and recommend reinforcing recent reductions to replace poppy cultivation over time. Across Afghanistan, insurgents,

criminal organizations, and corrupt officials exploit narcotics as a reliable source of revenue and patronage, which has perpetuated the threat these groups pose to the countrys fragile internal security and the legitimacy of its democratic government. United Nations officials estimated that the export value
of the 2008 opium poppy crop and its derived opiates reached over $3 billion, sustaining fears that Afghanistans economic recovery continues to be underwritten by drug profits. The trafficking of Afghan drugs also appears to provide

financial and logistical support to a range of extremist groups that continue to operate in and around Afghanistan, including resurgent Taliban fighters and some Al Qaeda operatives . Although coalition
warned that drug-related

forces may be less frequently relying on figures involved with narcotics for intelligence and security support, many observers have

corruption among appointed and elected Afghan officials creates political obstacles to progress. President Obama stated in March 2009 that Afghanistans economy is undercut by a booming narcotics trade that encourages criminality and funds the insurgency . Afghan President Hamid Karzai has identified the opium economy as the single greatest challenge to the long-term security, development, and effective governance of Afghanistan. Congress appropriated approximately
$2.9 billion in regular and supplemental counternarcotics foreign assistance and defense funding for Afghanistan programs from FY2001 through FY2009. In March 2009, Obama Administration Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Richard Holbrooke called U.S. counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan to date the most wasteful and ineffective program I have seen in 40 years in and out of the government. The Obama Administration and Members of the 111th Congress may consider options for reorganizing counternarcotics efforts as part of new efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

Drugs are a threat to overall stability Blanchard, 09 (Chris, analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs for the Congressional Research Service, Afghanistan: Narcotics and U.S. Policy, Congressional Research Service, 4/21/2009, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl32686.pdf, JKahn) In spite of ongoing international efforts to combat Afghanistans narcotics trade, U.N. officials estimate that Afghanistan supplies over 90% of the worlds illicit opium.1 Afghan, U.S., and international officials have stated that opium poppy cultivation and drug trafficking constitute serious strategic threats to the security and stability of Afghanistan and jeopardize the success of post-9/11 counterterrorism and reconstruction efforts . Since 2001, counternarcotics policy has emerged as a focal point in broader,
recurring debates in the executive branch and in Congress about the United States strategic objectives and policies in Afghanistan. Relevant concerns include the role of U.S. military personnel and strategies for continuing the simultaneous pursuit of counterterrorism and counternarcotics goals, which may be complicated by practical necessities and political realities. Coalition forces pursuing regional security and counterterrorism objectives may rely on the cooperation of security commanders, tribal leaders, and local officials who may be involved in the narcotics trade. Similarly, U.S. officials and many observers believe that the

introduction of a democratic system of government to Afghanistan has been accompanied by the election and appointment of narcotics-associated individuals to positions of public office. Efforts to combat the opium trade in Afghanistan face the challenge of ending a highly-

profitable enterprise fueled by international demand that has become deeply interwoven with the economic, political, and social fabric of a war-torn country. Afghan, U.S., and international authorities are

engaged in a campaign to reverse the unprecedented upsurge of opium poppy cultivation and heroin production that occurred following the fall of the Taliban. U.S. officials continue to implement a multifaceted counternarcotics initiative that includes public awareness campaigns, judicial reform measures, economic and agricultural development assistance, drug interdiction operations, and more robust poppy eradication. The Obama Administration and the 111th Congress may consider options for modifying U.S. counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan in order to meet the challenges posed by the Afghan opium economy to the security of Afghanistan and the international community. Questions regarding the likely effectiveness, resource requirements, and implications of new counternarcotics strategies in Afghanistan may arise during the first session of the 111th Congress as such options are debated.

The drug trade undermines security and the Afghan rule of law Blanchard, 09 (Chris, analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs for the Congressional Research Service, Afghanistan: Narcotics and U.S. Policy, Congressional Research Service, 4/21/2009, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl32686.pdf, JKahn) Breaking the Narcotics-Insecurity Cycle Narcotics trafficking and political instability remain intimately linked in Afghanistan . U.S. officials have identified narcotics trafficking as a primary barrier to the establishment of security and consider insecurity to be a primary barrier to successful counternarcotics operations. The
narcotics-trade fuels three corrosive trends that have undermined the stability of Afghan society and limited progress toward reconstruction since 2001. First, narcotics proceeds can corrupt police, judges, and government officials and

prevent the establishment of basic rule of law in many areas. Second, the narcotics trade can provide the Taliban and other insurgents with funding and arms that support their violent activities . Third, corruption and violence can prevent reform and development necessary for the renewal of legitimate economic activity. In the most conflictprone areas, symbiotic relationships between narcotics producers, traffickers, insurgents, and corrupt officials can create self-reinforcing cycles of violence and criminality (see Figure 4) Across Afghanistan, the persistence of these trends undermines Afghan civilians confidence in their local, provincial, and national government institutions.

Opium production has shifted to Afghanistan Fuller, 07 (Thomas, Southeast Asia Correspondent for The New York Times, No Blowing Smoke: Poppies Fade in Southeast
Asia:, 9/16/2007, New York Times, Proquest, JKahn) As a result, the Golden Triangle has been eclipsed

Opium Afghanistan key

by the Golden Crescent -- the poppy-growing area in and around Afghanistan that is now the source of an estimated 92 percent of the world's opium , according to the United Nations. Much of the growth in opium production there is in areas controlled by the Taliban, which United States officials say uses revenue from opium and heroin to finance itself. This shift to Afghanistan has had major consequences for the global heroin market: a near doubling of
opium production worldwide in less than two decades. Poppies grown in the fertile valleys of southern Afghanistan yield on average four times more opium than those grown in upland Southeast Asia. A striking aspect of the decline of the Golden Triangle is the role China has played in pressing opium-growing regions to eradicate poppy crops. A major market for Golden Triangle heroin, China has seen a spike in addicts and H.I.V. infections from contaminated needles. The area of Myanmar along the Chinese

border, which once produced about 30 percent of the country's opium, was declared opium-free last year by the United Nations. Local authorities, who are from the Wa tribe and are autonomous from Myanmar's central government, have banned poppy cultivation and welcomed Chinese investmentin rubber, sugar cane and tea plantations, casinos and other
much more connected

businesses. "China has had an underestimated role," said Martin Jelsma, a Dutch researcher who has written extensively on the illicit drug trade in Asia. "Their main leverage is economic: These border areas of Burma are by now economically it's quite clear that, for any investments they want to attract, cooperation with China is a necessity." Myanmar remains the world's second-leading source of opium but is a distant second; its production declined by 80 percent over the last decade. Insurgents have long used opium to help finance civil wars in the Golden Triangle. But some are now working to

to China than the rest of Burma," he said, using the former name for Myanmar. "For local authorities

destroy the crop. At least one faction of the Shan State Army, a group that long had ties to the heroin business, says it is

leading eradication efforts. Kon Jern, a military commander for the group, which is based along Myanmar's border with northern Thailand, says he is cracking down because government militias and corrupt officials profit from opium. " They sell the drugs,

they buy weapons, and they use those weapons to attack us," he said. The United Nations credits Myanmar's

central government with leading the eradication effort in Shan areas. In Laos, where the political situation is more stable, the government began a crackdown in the 1990s to increase its international credibility and because officials realized their own children were at risk, said Leik Boonwaat, the representative in Laos for the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime. Laos finally outlawed opium in 1996. The government, Mr. Boonwaat said, also saw that opium did little to help poor farmers who grew poppies. "It's mostly the organized crime syndicates that made most of the profits," he said. The amount of land cultivated in Laos for opium has fallen 94 percent since 1998. The country now produces so little opium that it may now be a net importer of the drug, the United Nations says. Yet experts warn that the reductions may not hold unless farmers develop other ways to make a living. Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, an opium specialist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, says it took Thailand 30 years to wean opium farmers from poppy production, a transition led by the Thai royal family, which encouraged opium-growing hill tribes to use their cooler climate to produce coffee, macadamia nuts and green vegetables. But, he said, "In Laos and Burma, we've had a very quick decrease." He asked, "Is it going to last?" Four years ago farmers in Banna Sala, an isolated Laotian hamlet of several hundred ethnic Hmong, grew opiumpoppies with impunity. No longer. And some farmers are angry. "They stopped me from growing opium, so I don't have money to send my children to school," said one villager, Jeryeh Singya, 34, who has seven children. She once bartered the opium she grew for soap, salt and clothing. "If they let me grow it I would," she said. Mr. Kon, the rebel commander in Myanmar, says farmers are finding it difficult to switch crops. "If they change and grow other kinds of plants nobody comes to buy their products -- the transportation is not good," he said. Experts say that to stay free of opium, isolated villages that depended on it will need assistance and investment for better roads, schools and clinics. But Myanmar, which is run by a military junta, poses a dilemma for Western countries. The United States has an embargo on trade with Myanmar. The European Union has suspended trade privileges and defense cooperation, limiting its aid to humanitarian assistance. "This policy of boycott and isolation has, of course, meant that only very little development aid and humanitarian assistance is flowing into the country," said Mr. Jelsma, the Dutch expert on drugs. "That makes the chances of the sustainability of this decline very questionable."

High opium production in Afghanistan drives a surge in Russian drug usethis causes a rapid explosion of HIV infection Transatlantic Partners Against Aids 2003 (10 Percent Russian Adults May Have AIDS By 2010 Sept 16,
http://www.rense.com/general41/10p.htm) Since the early-1990s, drug use in Russia has exploded. Russia's Ministry of Health estimates that drug use soared by 400 percent between 1992 and 2002. According to numerous studies, drug users in Russia represent a larger share of the total population when compared to other countries. There

Opium Russia HIV

is a direct connection between injecting drug use and HIV. Given the widespread use of shared has spread swiftly through Russia's drug subculture in the past five to seven years, representing over 80 percent of all reported cases of HIV infection with a known mode of transmission. HIV has already begun moving rapidly from that sub-culture to people who have no direct contact to drugs, often through unprotected sex. Russia is wedged between opium-producing Afghanistan and major drug markets in Western Europe, making heroin and other opiates easily accessible. Russia's long and porous
needles and other equipment, HIV southern border, manned by underpaid and overworked customs inspectors, border guards, and Interior Ministry officers, is especially susceptible to drug trafficking and transport of illicit goods. The demand for illegal drugs has increased over the past decade, driven by a combination of factors, including the difficulties of Russia's ongoing economic and political transition, deteriorating education and healthcare systems, and a nationwide shortage of social services and recovery programs for drug users. Illegal drug use is especially rife among Russia's youth. In May 2003, Russia's Minister of Education reported that 4 million young people between the ages of 11 and 24 were using illicit drugs, and that about a million of them were drug dependent; around the same time, an Education Ministry survey reported that 8 percent of Russian youths bought illegal drugs every day. Both

statistical and anecdotal evidence indicate that drug use among young people in Russia continues to climb. This trend, together with a shortage of high-quality condoms and a lack of information about safer sex, suggests that conditions are ripe for the virus to spread rapidly among Russia's non-drug using youth.

Afghan opium reinforces AIDs in Russia and Central Asia Abdullah 7 (Khalil, New American Media, April 19, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=bb9928f1b2c847b4485 b957df8aef2b4)
Intravenous drug use (IDU) is emerging as a significant driver for the second wave of the international HIV/AIDS pandemic, according to Dr. Chris Beyrer, a leading authority on the disease. This wave is driven, in part, by record world levels of opium production, particularly in Afghanistan , and is compounded by the virtual absence of

Opium Russia AIDs

effective HIV/AIDS treatment programs in public health systems. Beyrer, a leading epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, presented his findings to a group of ethnic media journalists who were co-hosted by New America Media and the Open Society Institutes Washington, D.C. office. The good news, Beyrer said, is that there is evidence of the slowing and decline of new infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa and South America. However, Iran, Nepal, Indonesia, Central Asia, Vietnam, North Korea, Russia, and the Ukraine are among those countries that are almost certain to experience an epidemic that will overwhelm their current capacity to adequately cope or contain the disease . Beyrer noted that, while HIV/AIDS is most often associated in the American publics mind with sexual activity, intravenous drug use adds another unique set of challenges to public health systems, particularly where those systems are relatively fragile or, as in some developing countries, virtually non-existent. Data gathered in 2004 on Russia, for instance, showed that 87 percent of registered HIV cases were the result of intravenous drug use. Nine countries within the former Soviet Unions orbit typically showed well over 50 percent of registered cases attributable to IV drug use. Beyrer pointed out that well-known drug trafficking land routes correlate with projected second wave epidemics, but countries in the path of drug shipping are also at risk. Thus, in West Africa, Ghana and Nigeria are potential second wave countries, while the island of Mauritius off of Africas east coast, is sufferi ng an alarming increase in IV drug use-driven HIV cases as smuggled drugs head toward Tanzania and Kenya, two countries that also made the list as emerging epicenters. Quite simply, the flood of heroin through a country whether it is the eventual

destination or not tends to increase the number of users there who quickly determine that needle injection is the best method to derive the desired effects of the drug. Beyrer also emphasized that, in some

countries, the spread of HIV/AIDS is accelerated by needle sharing among prison populations. Iran is a prime example. Beyrer cited 2005 data that showed only 10,000 cases of HIV/AIDS being reported to the Iranian ministry while the estimated drug user population ranged between two to four million people. Yet, there was a 15.2 percent prevalence of HIV among male intravenous drug users attending drug treatment in Tehran in 2005 and the disease was strongly associated with a history of shared drug use injection in prison rather than sharing outside of prison. Additional evidence showed that IV drug use was responsible for 8 5 percent HIV/AIDS transmission among drug users in Iran.

Opium trade undermines Afghan stability ZUNES 2006 (Stephen, Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy In Focus Project. He is a professor of politics, Foreign Policy in Focus, Oct
13, http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3597) Aside from the impact of increased opium production on addicts and their societies worldwide, this resumption of large-scale

Opium Afghan stability

Afghan opium production is a significant threat to Afghanistan's stability, since it is one of the major sources of the warlordism that has wreaked such havoc on the country. And, despite cracking down on opium production while in power, the Taliban are now taxing poppy growers to finance as much as 70% of their renewed military operations. As in Colombia, the ongoing violence since the United States launched its war five years ago has resulted in all sides taking advantage of the drug trade to advance their power and influence.

Opium supply is keycrop shift solves AVERT.ORG 2007 (HIV prevention, Harm Reduction and Injecting Drug Use, July 16, http://www.avert.org/injecting.htm) Supply Reduction This method of prevention is practised globally against all forms of illegal drug use. It focuses on halting the drug supply routes by: * Seizing illegal drugs through customs operations. * Arresting drug trafficking groups to break up supply routes through law enforcement. * Encouraging producers of drug crops, such as opium poppies, to grow alternative crops. When used alongside the other two approaches supply reduction can be effective in limiting the drugs available on the street. This results in higher street prices, which may dissuade some people from drug use.

Opium Key Drug

AIDS Russian military

AIDS will destroy Russian conventional readiness by reducing draft quality FROLOV 2004 (Vladimir, deputy staff director of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Russian State Duma, Reversing the Epidemic:
Facts and Policy Options, http://europeandcis.undp.org/hiv/?english)

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Russia could further lower the already poor quality of the per-sonnel currently entering the Russian army and other uniformed services. During the 2002 draft only 11 percent of those drafted were
deemed fully fit for military duty.The rest had service limitations due to health reasons.One in five draftees had just basic pri-mary school education 217. During the spring

2003 draft, every fourth new serviceman had finished less than nine years of school,and thus could not be sent for the advanced military training required for operating modern combat equipment.The draft was able to fill only 96 percent of the available positions in combat units 218. Demographic trends through 2045 do not augur well for maintaining a large Russian army, as AIDS will further decrease the available pool of young healthy male inductees. The social impact of the epidemic, including the destruction of families and growing numbers of orphans,must also be taken into account. From this perspective,the decre-asing quality of human resources available to the Russian military could undermine mili-tary discipline and combat cohesiveness. AIDS kills the best personnelthats key to conventional power FROLOV 2004 (Vladimir, deputy staff director of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Russian State Duma, Reversing the Epidemic:
Facts and Policy Options, http://europeandcis.undp.org/hiv/?english)

AIDS will reduce combat readiness for units through expedited retirement of experien-ced and well trained personnel, additional spending on training replacements,and ine-vitably lowered standards of combat training. A generally less combat ready and less operationally effective force will result. These trends will be inconsistent with the Russi-an governments plans to significantly improve the combat training of the Russian Armed Forces and raise overall levels of combat readiness of the fully equipped and deployed units.

Reducing Russian conventional power causes nuclear reliancethis causes nuclear war LAMBERT AND MILLER 1997 (Stephen and David, USAF Institute for National Security Studies, Russias Crumbling Tactical
Nuclear Weapons Complex: An Opportunity for Arms Control April www.usafa.af.mil/inss/OCP/ocp12.pdf)

Russia military nuclear war

To compensate for Russias current conventional weakness, Russian strategists have explicitly sought to extend the threshold for escalation downward,28 thereby increasing the likelihood of tactical nuclear release in the face of hostilities. Thus there are two distinct concepts at work: (1) the procedure of pre-delegating the launch codes; and
(2) the operational doctrine of lowering the nuclear threshold. These trends are corroborated by interviews with Russian officials familiar with nuclear weapons strategies. Dr. Nikolai Sokov, an expert on the Soviet delegation to START I as well as other US-Soviet summit meetings, affirms that with such a doctrine in place, one cannot rule out that a

local commander could individually take the authority to launch a weapon.29 The assumption that the Russian weapons control system is more stable during peace-time is also suspect. Due to the lack of technical safeguards, especially on air-delivered weapons (cruise missiles and gravity bombs), individual attempts to acquire these weapons even during times of peace are possible. Moreover, the lack of adequate locking mechanisms on these weapons would then make them deliverable, with a full nuclear yield, even without launch authorization. Media attention has been overwhelmingly dedicated to the apex of the control system; this focus seems to pre-delegation carries with it the dangers of a premature weapons release or the employment of a nuclear weapon because of the judgment of a local military commander.
found at the apex, but at the lower echelons of the command system. The Russian practice of

be at least partially misplaced. While it is largely true that the absence of a stable political system and the reliance on a control system with the potential for sudden shifts in allegiances could cause a breakdown of control, the most important dangers of misuse of Russias nuclear weapons are not to be

The impact is state collapse, economic decline, genocide, and nuclear war Ambrosio 2005 (Thomas, The Geopolitics of Demographic Decay: HIV/AIDS and Russias Great Power Status, Paper presented at the International Studies Association Annual Conference in Honolulu, March 2005)
Russias staggering drug use, endemic poverty, and collapsing health care system make it a prime candidate for an HIV/AIDS explosion, one with serious socioeconomic and strategic implications. When coupled with Russias already declining population (especially amongst ethnic Russians), HIV/AIDS has the potential to further weaken Moscow on the world stage and alter the demographic balance within the country, thus fueling fears of further ethnic conflicts on Russian soil. At worst, HIV/AIDS could lead to a social and demographic disaster, threatening any political and economic progress in the coming decades. At best,
American intelligence officials, some of the social consequences of HIV /AIDS

HIV/AIDS will be an accelerator of Russias already serious socioeconomic problems. The importance of HIV/AIDS in Russia to American policymakers is quite serious. According to the Clinton administrations National Security Council, the spread of HIV/AIDS wa s deemed an indirect threat to U.S. national interests. In a January 2000 report released by the National Intelligence Council, which usually represents a consensus amongst

have a strong correlation with the likelihood of state failure in partial democracies and the rise of instability. Russias strategic location at the heart of Eurasia, not to mention its thousands of nuclear weapons, makes the prospects of Russian instability -defined in the report as revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, genocides, and disruptive regime transitions -- a disturbing prospect.

Afghan instability will crush NATO DALE 2007 (Helle, director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, Afghanistan a
True Test for NATO, Feb 22, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed022207a.cfm) While the attention of Washington is focused on Iraq, the other military front in the struggle against militant Islam is warming up. Afghanistan has until now shown better promise of success than Iraq. Yet there are clear signs that this spring will be an intensely challenging time for the Afghan government and for the NATO coalition forces operating to support it. We are being warned that a Taliban spring offensive is in the works, and how

Afghan Stability NATO

NATO responds will be crucial, both for the future of Afghanistan and for NATO as well. The demise of the NATO alliance has been pronounced any number of times since the end of the Cold War (and before for that matter), and the search for reasons for its continued relevance has been on ever since the disappearance of the Soviet Union. As Europe and the United States have found growing areas of disagreement, particularly in public opinion, the cohesive tissue represented by NATO has become at once both more important and harder to protect. Furthermore, in the context of growing EU ambitions to have its own foreign policy and its military chain of command and missions, as distinct from those of NATO, it is an alliance that is under strain. Here, Afghanistan takes on crucial importance. It really is a test case for NATO's future out of area operations, a fact that no NATO

member would dispute. It is, therefore, a matter of considerable puzzlement and concern that NATO allies that have contributed to the roughly 35,000 strong NATO stabilization in Afghanistan have also taken steps to undermine the mission. (The United Sates has 13,000 troops, of which 9,000 are not operating under NATO command.) This is not very much compared the 162,000 troops in Iraq and certainly not in comparison with the size of Afghanistan. In addition the Taliban, al Qaeda and their various allies have sanctuaries in Waziristan across the Pakistani border. Their activities have doubled in 2006 as compared to the year before. The brunt of the fighting in the dangerous areas of Afghanistan is borne in addition to the Americans by the British, the Canadians, the Danes, the Dutch and the Poles. Though many other NATO countries have contributed, this in no way looks today like an alliance built on the "three musketeers principle," a fact that is of considerable frustration to those who have stepped up to the plate. As President Bush stated last week in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, "For NATO to succeed, member nations must provide commanders on the ground with the troops and the equipment they need to do their jobs... As well allies must lift restrictions on the forces they do provide so NATO commanders have the flexibility they need to defeat the enemy wherever the enemy may take a stand. The alliance was founded on this principle: An attack on one is an attack on all. That principle holds true whether the attack is on the home soil of a NATO nation, or on allied forces deployed on a NATO mission abroad. By standing together in Afghanistan, NATO forces protect our own people, and they must have the flexibility to be able to do their job." A similarly strong message was delivered by Sen. John McCain in Munich the week before, as he challenged NATO members to lift the caveats on their troop deployments that are preventing them from acting effectively and cohesively. He also agitated for more troops, at least matching the projected U.S. troop increase of 3,000. Both speakers noted that we need this to provide stability to increase the size of the Afghan military standing currently at 30,000, less than half of what is needed. Mr. McCain was explicit about the meaning of Afghanistan for the future of NATO, and his analysis is spot on. "Failure

in Afghanistan risks reversion to its pre-9/11 role as a sanctuary for al Qaeda terrorists with global reach, a defeat that would embolden Islamic extremists, and the rise of an unencumbered narcostate... If NATO does not prevail in Afghanistan, it is difficult to imagine the alliance undertaking another "hard security" operation -- in or out of area and its credibility would suffer a grievous blow." In the world of the 21st century with its less predictable international environment and its asymmetrical threats, preserving alliances is as important as ever, for the United
States and Europe alike.

Afghan instability creates Pakistan instability Foust, 09 (Joshua, fellow at the American Security Project, security editor for the Atlantic, senior intelligence analyst for the

Afghan Stability Pakistan

U.S. military, civilian military adviser in Afghanistan, futurist for the Army Intelligence and Security Command, 8/27/2009, Registan, http://registan.net/2009/08/27/the-case-for-afghanistan-strategic-considerations/, JKahn) It is possible that scaling back American influence in the country merely to that of an advisory and arms dealing rolemuch as the Soviet Union did post-1989might be effective. Indeed, it very well might for a little bit. But this is where it becomes impossible to ignore Pakistan (and not just for the shallow reason that al Qaeda is hiding in an ungoverned space in the Northwest). Pakistan

has not lost its fundamental strategic rationale for supporting the original Taliban: a hedge against Iran, strategic depth against India, and a training ground for Kashmiri insurgents. In fact, it could be easily argued

that a big reason Kashmir has calmed down is that all the crazies were too busy fighting in Miram Shah and Kandahar and Khost and Ghazni to go plant bombs in Srinagar. And lest anyone think it is appropriate to write off the India-Pakistan conflict as somebody elses problem, it is never somebody elses problem when nuclear weapons are involved. As Jari Lindholm reminded, India and Pakistan have come a hairs breadth from nuclear conflict twice over Kashmir. And like it or not, it is a compelling and vital

American interest to prevent nuclear conflict in South Asiawhich makes fixing Afghanistan in some way also a vital American interest. Regional security is one of those topics that gets mentioned casually by many pundits but never really articulated. It is by far Ahmed Rashids most convincing argument, that supporting stability in Central and South Asia is a compelling interest not just for the U.S., but for the West in general. When it comes to Pakistan, the big danger is not in a Taliban takeover, or even in the Taliban seizure of nuclear weaponsI have never believed that the ISI could be that monumentally stupid (though they are incredibly stupid for letting things get this far out of hand). The big danger, as it has been since 1999, is that insurgents, bored or underutilized in Afghanistan, will spark another confrontation between India and Pakistan, and that that confrontation will spillover into nuclear conflict. That is worth blood and treasure to prevent. When Afghanistan was a sanctuary for destabilizing elementswhether Chechens training to go fight Russia, Juma Namangani training to go fight Tashkent, or even Osama bin Laden training his men to go fight Americathe region as a whole was a serious security concern. The reason why so many books and articles condemning the Clinton
administrations stand-offish attitude have been so popular is because that message resonateshow could you not have seen this coming? While things have undoubtedly become more violent, they are also, in a way, more ordered. The insurgency in

Afghanistan is a difficult and frustrating enemy to fight, more so the insurgency in Pakistan. But both are identifiable, and
are capable therefore of being defeated or delegitimized. The fact that the U.S. has chosen not to do this is the topic for another post (and the source of the tremendous frustration and borderline burnout Ive been struggling with the last few months). But right now, the major security concerns are compelling, they are fairly clear to me at least, and I am completely baffled as to why even the war supporters cannot articulate them. So, let us summarize the strategic goals of the Afghanistan War: A basic minimal stability

in Afghanistan, such that neither the Taliban nor al Qaeda is likely to develop a staging ground for international attacks, whether against neighboring countries or the United States and Europe; The permanent

delegitimization of Pakistans insurgents, such that they can no longer push Pakistan and India toward nuclear conflict; I fi nd both of those convincing reasons to stay and do things right.

Afghan instability brings in Pakistan Gregorian, 01 (Vartan, Ph.D. in history and humanities from Stanford University, Tarzian Professor of Armenian and

Caucasian History and Professor of South Asian History at the University of Pennsylvania, president of Brown University, fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Brandeis University, Phi Beta Kappa Ford Foundation Foreign fellow, fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Yearnings of the Pashtuns, the New York Times, 11/15/2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/opinion/the-yearnings-of-the-pashtuns.html, JKahn)

As the Taliban's position in Afghanistan continues to crumble, the political future of the Pashtuns -- a plurality of Afghans and a majority within the Taliban -- has become a crucial issue. All sides recognize that it must be resolved if reconstruction of Afghanistan is to begin. To develop an effective strategy, the United States will need to

understand some of the Pashtuns' past and aspirations, and in particular how these have affected Afghan-Pakistani relations. About 13 percent of Pakistan's population speaks a version of Pashto, the Pashtun language. The Pakistan-Afghanistan border -- the Durand line -- was drawn by the British more than a century ago but Pakistan's Pashtuns feel little separates them from their Afghan cousins. The border was considered by the British as binding, by successive Afghan governments as imposed and by Pashtuns as ''a line drawn on water.'' Negotiations today with Afghanistan's Pashtun leaders have been taking place on both sides of the line. Based on its objections to the Durand border, Afghanistan cast the sole vote against Pakistan's entry into the United Nations. From 1893 on, British India's and later Pakistan's policies toward Afghanistan have been greatly influenced by anxiety over the Afghans' claim to a ''Pashtunistan'' that would unite the Pashtuns of both countries and give Afghanistan easier access to the Indian Ocean. In the 1950's, the Soviets supported Afghanistan as it constantly agitated Pakistan on the question of Pashtun self-determination. In 1971,

when East Pakistan broke away and became Bangladesh, Pakistani strategists faced the grim prospect of their shrinking country being squeezed between a hostile India and an expansionist, Soviet-backed Afghanistan. The insecurity of Pakistan -- a very young state -- reached alarming heights. It only got worse with the Soviet Union's increasing involvement in Afghanistan. The Iranian revolution of 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provided Pakistan with a unique opportunity to assert leadership in the region and neutralize the Pashtunistan issue. It did so by backing the resistance to Soviet rule and doing so in the name of Islam. Having artfully gathered the right list of enemies, Pakistan was able to count on the political, financial and military help of the United States, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states and the Islamist mujahedeen. Pakistan's turn to Islamization was meant to stabilize Pakistan itself as much as to redirect Pashtun militancy and undermine the Soviet Union's exploitation of it. Pakistan envisioned itself as a bulwark of Sunni Islam against Iran's Shiite fundamentalism, India's policies in Kashmir and Soviet atheism to the north in Central Asia. Saudi Arabia was Pakistan's great backer in this effort, which brought fundamentalist Wahhabism forcefully to the area; Pakistan's other backers, like the United States, went along with it for reasons of their own. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistan aided various Pashtun factions in the Afghan civil war, finally supporting the Taliban -- a movement emanating primarily from Pakistan's religious schools, established under President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and his successors, and guided by Pakistan's intelligence services. By supporting the Taliban, Pakistan thought to solidify its position as the dominant foreign power in Afghanistan. The country provided a training ground for Pakistani surrogates to prepare for their war in Kashmir and a safety valve for draining the energies of Pakistan's own fundamentalists. The Islamist, explicitly antitribal appeal of the Taliban also had the great benefit of neutralizing the Pashtunistan issue. The Taliban, however, were restive protgs -- and Al Qaeda offered backing without all the Pakistani strings attached. The Taliban thrived not only in Afghanistan but in Pakistan, especially through their ideological cohorts (again, mostly Pashtun) in the cities of Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi. These remain vital centers of Pashtun activism. After Sept. 11, with options and allies in short supply, Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf agreed to cooperate with the United States against the Taliban. Both countries now face the thorny issue of the Pashtuns. Wiping out the

Taliban won't end the prospect of Pashtunistan -- it may even energize it . If a government dominated by the
Northern Alliance denies the Pashtuns power in Afghanistan proper, they will exert power elsewhere. Taliban forces could retreat into Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province and form alliances with their Pashtun cousins. If, on the other hand, Pashtuns

were to become a dominant power in Afghanistan in the post-Taliban era, Pakistan could face a revival of Afghan interest in expanding into Pakistani territory. Pakistan cannot afford any movement that threatens to fragment it, and it cannot withstand simultaneous challenges in Kashmir and Afghanistan. Nor can it afford a civil war between disappointed fundamentalists and disappointed nationalists -- particularly given its possession of nuclear weapons .

NATO nuclear
NATO collapse causes nuclear war DUFFIELD 1994 (John Duffield, Assistant Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, POLITICAL
First, they underestimated the extent to which external SCIENCE QUARTERLY 109, 1994, p. 766-7) Initial analyses of NATO's future prospects overlooked at least three important factors that have helped to ensure the alliance's enduring relevance.

threats sufficient to help justify the preservation of the alliance would continue to exist. In fact, NATO still serves to secure its members against a number of actual or potential dangers emanating from outside their territory. These include not only the residual threat posed by Russian military power, but also the relatively new concerns raised by conflicts in neighboring regions. Second, the pessimists
failed to consider NATO's capacity for institutional adaptation. Since the end of the cold war, the alliance has begun to develop two important new functions. NATO

is increasingly seen as having a significant role to play in containing and controlling militarized conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe. And, at a deeper level, it works to prevent such conflicts from arising at all by actively promoting stability within the former Soviet bloc. Above all,
Most importantly, NATO

NATO pessimists overlooked the valuable intra-alliance functions that the alliance has always performed and that remain relevant after the cold war.

in the past. By damping the security dilemma and providing an institutional mechanism for the development of common security policies, NATO has contributed to making the use of force in relations among the countries of the region virtually inconceivable. In all these ways, NATO clearly serves the interests of its European members. But even the United States has a significant stake in preserving a peaceful and prosperous Europe. In addition to strong transatlantic historical and cultural ties, American economic interests in Europe as a leading market for U.S. products, as a source of valuable imports, and as the host for considerable direct foreign investment by American companies remain substantial. If history is any guide, moreover, the United States could easily be drawn into a future major war in Europe, the consequences of which would likely be even more devastating than those of the past, given the existence of nuclear weapons.

has helped stabilize Western Europe, whose states had often been bitter rivals

Afghan government intervention has failed Blanchard, 09 (Chris, analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs for the Congressional Research Service, Afghanistan: Narcotics and U.S. Policy, Congressional Research Service, 4/21/2009, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl32686.pdf, JKahn)

US key

The January 2009 UNODC winter opium assessment predicts further consolidation of poppy cultivation in the southern and western provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Nimroz, Farah, Dai Kundi, Uruzgan, and Zabol. Over 90% of Afghanistans opium will likely be produced in these seven provinces, according to UNODC. Nevertheless, UNODC expects some decrease in overall cultivation and suggests that four provinces, Herat, Baghlan, Faryab, and Badakhshan, could become poppy-free in 2009. Higher prices for crops such as wheat, lower opium prices, pressure from government officials, and the persistence of drought are credited as encouraging farmers to concentrate limited resources into the cultivation of non-poppy crops. Survey data suggests that

government intervention remains less influential in southern and western provinces, although Afghan media reports suggest that eradication and interdiction operations were taking place across southern Afghanistan in early 2009. Farmers surveyed also suggested that the effectiveness of alternative development programs varies across the
the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) generally cooperates with the international community in implementing its national counternarcotics strategy. However, more political will and effort, at the central and provincial levels, is combat trafficking in coming years. The report also concludes that the

country, and many reportedly emphasized the need for programs to extend beyond district centers to more remote or grass roots areas. The 2009 State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for Afghanistan states that: required to decrease cultivation in the south, maintain cultivation reductions in the rest of the country, and Afghan government has been unwilling or unable to fully implement [its National Drug Control Strategy] and has, in some cases, failed to provide adequate support to provincial leaders who have shown greater willingness to take serious steps to combat narcotics cultivation, production, and trafficking in their provinces. In April 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called corruption in Afghanistan a cancer that eats away at the confidence and the trust of the people in their government. 8 The 2009 INCSR report concludes that many Afghan government officials are believed to profit from the drug trade, and narcotics-related corruption is particularly pervasive at the provincial and district levels of government.

The Afghan heroin market is massive --- bigger efforts have the potential to bring it down Nam, 9 (Moses, Senior Associate in the International Economics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. ix-x, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) The fact that drugs rule the war in Afghanistan is an interesting paradox that says much about our times. The paradox is that while the situation in Afghanistan should be a drug warriors dream, the drug trade creates a nightmare for the worlds mightiest military machine. In the pages ahead, Dr. Paul Kan
expertly dissects this paradox and in the process unveils a situation that needs urgent attention and innovative thinking. He starts f1om the obvious notion that to successfully tackle drug production it is indispensable to have a detailed knowledge of the geography and other characteristics of the producing region as well as a deep understanding of the trade logistics that link the producing area with consumer markets often located continents away That is the case of Afghanistan, a country that produces

Solvency Afghan Heroin

over 90 percent of the poppies that feed the worlds heroin market. We know how difficult it is to do business in a rugged, landlocked, war-tom, and very poor country with paltry infrastructure like Afghanistan. This is especially true of any business whose success rests on complex transportation and distribution logistics. Yet, Afghanistan is home to

some of the worlds most imaginative, audacious, ruthless, and profitable export business organizations: drug traders. Hence another paradox: Developing any kind of profitable, exportoriented business in Afghanistan is close to impossible. Unless it is the drug business. In Afghanistan, the source country is not only well known, but has a large external military presence that could arguably do something about the poppy crop. Indeed, it has been mandated to do so. Furthermore, it is an international military presence composed by the armies of countries that adhere to the global anti-narcotics regime. However there isnt a nation in NATO with forces in Afghanistan that seeks to overturn the international ban on illicit drug trafficking. These forces have been there for years and they will likely be an abiding feature of the Afghan institutional landscape for the foreseeable future. This confluence of circumstances could not be more conducive to eradicating a major supplier of the global drug tradea
sustained international military presence, backed by nations opposed to drug trafhcking, that operates freely inside the borders of a country that grows the overwhelming majority of crops used to produce a dangerous narcotic. Yetand here is the paradoxthe trade thrives, and may very well contribute to the defeat of one historys largest and most successful military alliances.

US international drug leadership is critical to resolve conflict with Iransolves proliferation and Afghan heroin Bommer 2006

Afghan Heroin US Key

(Ashley, Chief of Staff to Richard Holbrooke, Vice-Chairman of Perseus LLC and former US chief representative at the United Nations, International Herald Tribune, June 20) In the growing confrontation between the United States and Iran, there is one area which has been overlooked and could provide an area of mutual cooperation: the fight against drugs. The Afghanistan-Iranian border has become the narco- gateway to much of the world. It is an open door to up to 90 percent of the world's $65-billion opium trade. That is at once a threat to the West, and, until now, an unseized opportunity for real dialogue with Tehran.
Approximately 4,100 metric tons of poppy grown in Afghanistan is refined in factories throughout the country that turn the raw gum into heroin, morphine and opium. Then it is driven across the Iranian border and smuggled to South Asia, Central Asia, Europe and North America. The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) lists Iran as the world's fastest growing opium addiction state. With 4 million regular users, its society is being crippled. In an interview in The Washington Post last September, the director of the Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies said that 20 percent of the adult population is "somehow involved in drug abuse." Iran has spent more than $900 million building trenches, drug posts and watch towers on its side of the Afghan border. But not much has been done on the Afghan side. According to Major Michael Adelberg of the U.S. Army, from the Office of Security Cooperation-Afghanistan, the only physical barriers on the border are 69 mud huts! Drug smugglers and the Taliban are taking advantage of this nonexistent security. UNODC estimates that gross annual profits to Afghan traffickers now range up to $2.14 billion. The security forces responsible are the Afghan National Police. Stationed in those mud huts without boots and uniforms, many have not been paid since last summer. Seventy percent are illiterate. With just five weeks of training by U.S. advisors, they are incapable of ground-air coordination. They are, an American adviser told me, "just out there eating rice." More disturbing, their commanders appear to be involved in the drug trade. Last week, President Hamid Karzai promoted 85 men to the rank of one- and two-star police generals. These positions include provincial police chiefs who are the most powerful government officials in the provinces. According to an American official in Kabul, at least 13 of these have poor human rights and criminal records. Yet all have been asked to head the police in drug-producing or drug-trading areas. Many of the border towns are off-limits. In Nimroz, which members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces call "Mars" (no one goes there, and those who do are shot), cultivation of poppies increased last year more than a thousand-fold. In the neighboring province of Farah, it has increased by almost 350 percent. The opium produced and transformed into morphine and heroin in western Afghanistan leaves the country via Iran. Because prices are high along the western border, northern Afghan opium is being routed towards markets in the southern Helmand province and elsewhere along the Iranian border for export. Helmand province has the highest levels of opium poppy cultivation in all of Afghanistan. It is also the most significant province in terms of heroin processing and trafficking. Without improved security, the drug problem will continue to escalate . Thus the incentives offered to Tehran to halt

its nuclear program should include an aggressive antinarcotics campaign along the Iranian-Afghan border
- new border posts, fences, watchtowers and trenches. In addition, the United States must adequately train the Afghan National Police and provide support for it with ISAF or coalition troops; it must provide equipment for the border posts, including vehicles; it must not allow the police to be led by thugs. The West and Iran do have a common interest, to eradicate the drug

trade along the Afghan-Iranian border.

Drug cooperation is a form of moderate engagement that would spill over to enhance future cooperation

Spillover

TALWAR 2001

(Puneet, served on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, joined staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Foreign Affairs, July/August)
Given this uncertainty, the United States must avoid appearing to take sides in the oNGOing power struggle. But this does not mean that Washington has no range of movement. In fact, the Bush administration has a choice of three broad options to follow in its Iran policy. One path would be either to simply continue with the Clinton approach (that is, basic containment but with some limited exceptions) or to try to reinvigorate it. A second option could be called "moderate engagement" and would involve

helping Iran form better international ties while leaving key portions of the U.S. sanctions regime intact. This track could eventually lead Iran to moderate its more objectionable behavior and thus clear the way for improved U.S.-Iranian relations and the elimination of sanctions. A third option would be for Washington to take
significant steps toward dismantling the sanctions regime now, with the hope that this preemptive move would jump-start a rapid rapprochement. Maintaining the status quo might seem appealing to Bush officials, given the unpredictable and politically risky situation. But more of the same is unlikely to yield any progress with Iran in the foreseeable future. After eight years, there is no evidence that the current approach will ever convince Iran to modify its behavior. In fact, by limiting the

potentially positive impact of outside influences, containment is likely to do more harm than good.

Persisting with this unpopular policy will generate significant friction with American allies in Japan and Europe. But without their support, the attempt to isolate Iran will never succeed. If the administration chooses to move away from containment and pursue moderate engagement, it could do so in a number of ways. The United States could seek cooperation with Iran on one of several limited issues, such as the effort to stop narcotics trafficking . In the last decade, Iran has taken several thousand casualties in battles with drug traffickers along its eastern frontier and has

requested assistance from the international community. Even without creating formal diplomatic ties, the United States could help out indirectly through the United Nations Drug Control Program. In addition, Washington could
support American nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that could provide humanitarian assistance to the two million Afghan and Iraqi refugees now living in Iran. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Iran today hosts the largest refugee population in the world. This large influx has strained Iran's resources and created social tensions that U.S. aid could help alleviate.

Moderate engagement is criticalUS-Iran relations must start small to eventually spill over into effective cooperation

TALWAR 2001 (Puneet, served on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, joined staff of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Foreign Affairs, July/August) In light of these many factors -- U.S. domestic

political constraints, the uncertainties surrounding the pace of political evolution in Iran, and the international unpopularity of containment -- moderate engagement emerges as the most sensible policy. Washington should make important but limited gestures toward Iran
while offering to go much further if Iran reciprocates. Even if the Bush administration does decide to pursue this policy, however, it should have realistic expectations about the troubles ahead. Both sides have already suffered too much from frustrated expectations of the other. Washington should not expect Tehran to end its more objectionable policies anytime soon -- certainly not as a direct response to U.S. overtures. Even with the international community pressuring Iran, it is unlikely to moderate its stance unless its national interests compel it to. Thus Iran is unlikely to withdraw its support for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah or Hamas, which oppose peace in the Middle East, until a comprehensive settlement is struck that sidelines Palestinian radicals and causes Syria to ask Iran to withdraw from the scene. Likewise, Tehran is unlikely to rein in its WMD programs without broad regional talks on the subject and the promise of a safer neighborhood. After all, Iran has had good reason to fear one of its neighbors in particular: Iraq, which has used chemical weapons against Iran in the past. Given these realities, the Bush administration must separate

the question of restoring political ties from the objective of encouraging Iran's moderation and integration
as a responsible member of the international community. The latter can be achieved without the former and is so important to U.S. interests that it is worth pursuing on its own. Moderate engagement would encourage Iran's collaboration with multilateral institutions, help its integration with the global trading system, and give it far stronger incentives to improve its

behavior than has the containment policy. Moderate engagement would also bring the United States into closer alignment with its allies, decreasing friction and improving the chances for a more effective common approach. Meanwhile, moderate engagement would begin a gradual process of laying the groundwork for an eventual rapprochement once Iran's domestic political situation permits it to move forward. Many Iranians now recognize that the best way to secure their country's future is by making a positive contribution to international peace and security. A new U.S. policy would strengthen their hand, helping them do just that.

U.S.-Iranian cooperation is both feasible and effectiveboth countries have a strong incentive to fight the drug trade in Afghanistan LEE 2006 (Rensselaer Lee is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and president of Global Advisory Services,
Baltimore Sun, July 6) Though increasingly at odds on nuclear proliferation and other issues, the

Iran cooperation solves

United States and Iran have strong incentives to cooperate in one area of mutual concern: containment of Afghanistan's $2.8 billion opium and heroin business, the world's largest. Iran's interest in the matter is obvious: About 60 percent of Afghan opiate exports (opium, morphine and heroin) cross into Iran each year en route to consumers in Russia, Europe and Iran itself. An estimated 3 million Iranians, 4 percent to 5 percent of the entire population, consume opiates, the largest percentage of any country. Accordingly, Iran has to spend as much as $800 million each year, or 1.3 percent of its budget, on drug control, about twice as much in relative terms as the United States. The U.S. interest relates largely to its nation-building objectives in Afghanistan, which are under constant threat from the centrifugal forces unleashed by the drug trade. As many observers have noted, access to drug-related funds supports the pretensions of assorted regional warlords and

renascent Taliban insurgents, hampering the central government's ability to extend its writ beyond Kabul. Additionally,. Because of Afghanistan's difficulties in suppressing the drug traffic, which now accounts for an estimated one-third of the country's total (licit and illicit Afghanistan's role as pre-eminent supplier of heroin to the European market heightens

the interest of Washington's coalition partners in containing Afghan drug flows) gross domestic

product, U.S. officials see stepped-up enforcement on the borders of neighboring states as a near-term necessity. Washington provides some law enforcement assistance to Pakistan and to Central Asian states. But a containment strategy is

unlikely to work effectively unless coordinated with Iran, which is the transit country of choice for Afghan drug smugglers. Iran also might be brought into a long-term partnership with the coalition in scaling back Afghan poppy cultivation, the source of more than 90 percent of the world's opiates - for example, by contributing to underfunded crop substitution and alternative programs for poppy farmers. Some currents of U.S. official opinion might welcome direct engagement with Iran on drugs. This year, the State

Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs issued a glowing report on Iran's anti-drug performance. The report cited "overwhelming evidence" of Iran's commitment to ensure that drugs leaving Afghanistan don't reach its citizens and its "sustained national political will" in combating drug production and trafficking. Of course, the United States lacks direct diplomatic ties with Iran and maintains no counter narcotics presence or initiatives in that country. Yet the absence of

such ties does not preclude a relationship on drugs. For example, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana includes a

Coast Guard "drug information specialist"; Cuba and the United States cooperate in maritime interdiction operations; and agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration visit the island to interview and extract information from foreign drug traffickers held in Cuban prisons. A U.S.-Iranian dialogue on drugs wouldn't necessarily solve Iran's drug abuse problems or mitigate the burgeoning authority crisis in Afghanistan. Also, Iran and the United States might differ in their expectations of the type of political order that should take shape in that country. Yet even a modicum of cooperation in an area of significant

international concern would be a major step forward. Unlike the Cuban case, in which diplomacy is hostage to entrenched domestic interests, such cooperation might lay the groundwork for improved relations in other areas, or at least create a better atmosphere for more consequential exchanges on nuclearstrategic issues. Iran And Afghanistan Are Key To The World Heroin Market SAMII AND TARZI 2004 (Bill and Amin, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 6-24-2004,

http://www.payvand.com/news/04/jun/1166.html) The international community will mark the International Day Against Drug Abuse on 26 June. Global

opium cultivation is down, but increased cultivation in Afghanistan and higher opium yields led to a 5 percent increase in illicit global opium production between 2002 and 2003. Indeed, Afghanistan leads the world in opium production, and Iran leads the world in seizures of opiates, according to the "World
Drug Report 2004" released on 25 June (http://www.unodc.org/unodc/world_drug_report.html). Therefore, the fate of the world heroin market depends on events in Southwest Asia.

Reducing the supply of drugs solvesit drives up street prices and dissuades users from shooting up AVERT.ORG 2007
(HIV prevention, Harm Reduction and Injecting Drug Use, July 16, http://www.avert.org/injecting.htm) Supply Reduction This method of prevention is practised globally against all forms of illegal drug use. It focuses on halting the drug supply routes by:
drugs through customs operations. alternative crops. * Arresting drug trafficking groups to break up supply routes through law enforcement. * Seizing illegal

Supply reduction solves

* Encouraging producers of drug crops, such as opium poppies, to grow

When used alongside the other two approaches supply reduction can be effective in limiting the drugs available on the street. This results in higher street prices, which may dissuade some people from drug use.

Iran is the key avenue for afghan drugs to reach eastern Europe CHOUVY 2003

Iran key to Afghanistan

(Pierre-Arnaud, research fellow at the CNRS, France. He studies the geopolitics of illicit activities especially illicit drugs - and conflicts in Asia, Janes Intelligence Review, March 1, http://www.pa chouvy.org/JIR3.htm) Iran is arguably the main route for Afghan opiates trafficking, across Khorasan or Baluchestan va Sistan provinces. In Khorasan in 1998, opiate seizures by Iranian authorities accounted for about 40% of all such seizures worldwide, with the country as a whole accounting for 85% of worldwide opiate seizures. Iran shares borders with both Afghanistan and Pakistan and is a strategic outlet for Afghan opiates on their way to the main consumer market, Europe. A 2,440km-long coastline also makes Iran a natural springboard for maritime drug trafficking, towards the
United Arab Emirates and east Africa. Along Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iranian borders are manned by 30,000 law enforcement personnel, equipped with elaborate countertrafficking infrastructures such as patrol roads, concrete dam constructions, ditches, sentry points, observation towers, barbed wire, electrified fences and even electronic surveillance devices. Iran says it spends US$400m annually on anti-drug operations and has so far invested $800m in efforts to increase control over the Afghan border. In Iran, as well as in Pakistan, anti-drug trafficking operations are characterised by their extreme violence: drug traffickers are typically armed with weapons such as rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and large-scale battles are regularly waged with Iranian law enforcement authorities. In Khorasan alone, in 1999, 285 drug traffickers and 33 members of the Iranian armed forces were killed during such engagements. In November 1999, 35 policemen were killed in Baluchestan va Sistan while making an assault on Pakistani drug traffickers. During 20 years of anti-drugs operations Iran has lost 2,700 men on active duty. Iran's anti-trafficking efforts have been subsidised by the UK, Germany and Switzerland. The USA, in a 1999 report, recognised that, although Iran was "a major transit route for opiates smuggled from Afghanistan and Pakistan", it was pursuing "an aggressive border interdiction effort". Despite its efforts, Iranian authorities claim that 65% of the trafficking in Afghan opiates goes through its territory. As opium

production is concentrated in southern Afghanistan, the Iranian route remains the major route through to Turkey and eastern Europe, where heroin laboratories are known to operate, and thence to the EU.

Mexican drug cartels buy Afghan heroin Holt, 11 staff writer at the New American, citing Edgardo Buscaglia, investigator and fellow at the Autonomous Technological
Institute of Mexico (Kelly, Mexican Cartels Buy Afghan Heroin Drug Wars Claim 507 in 14 Days, The New American, 18 January 2011, http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/north-america/item/10622-mexican-cartels-buy-afghan-heroin%E2%80%94-drug-wars-claim-507-in-14-days)//BI According to Borderland Beat (BB) Jan. 5, Mexican drug cartels have formed elaborate and strategic

Mexico internal link

alliances with Middle Eastern drug traffickers, and those supply chains are also being used for arms trade and

money laundering. BB obtained the report from El Universal, a major Mexican newspaper, and added that Mexican groups are also making inroads into European Union markets. Ninety percent of the world's heroin supply comes from

Afghanistan, and the shipments destined for Canada and the U.S. are very profitable to criminal groups in Mexico. Edgardo Buscaglia, investigator and fellow at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, told El Universal that Mexican drug traffickers establish business alliances with gangs in places such as Afghanistan and Turkey and operate like multinational emissaries. With bases of operation in Mexico, the interest of these Mexican groups (specifically the Sinaloa alliance) that they open smuggling routes for the distribution of heroin to the U.S. market. Furthermore, they are not only focusing on the movement of Afghan

groups work on an international level "to establish contacts and place operatives that can deal with the Turkish and Indian criminal organizations in order to facilitate the production and sale of drugs," specifically heroin. Buscaglia explained, It is in the

heroin through Mexico; they are also taking positions of power as major players in the international world of the heroin trade. It is not as if [Joaqun] El Chapo Guzmn [Loera] himself travels to Turkey; it is up to his emissaries to maintain good relations in that country. They keep the flow of heroin packages and money that belongs to the Sinaloa cartel moving to their appropriate destinations. Money and heroin make [sic] its way to Chicago, or New York. It is like the concept of outsourcing labor: the Mexican cartels receive the product from their overseas suppliers and they distribute the merchandise locally. Joaquin Guzman-Loera, known as El Chapo (Shorty), heads the international drug trafficking organization known as the Sinaloa cartel, named after the Mexican State of Sinaloa on the countrys west coast. Rated by Forbes as one of the richest and most powerful people in the world, El Chapo is Mexicos top drug kingpin. Buscaglia continued, The Mexican groups arrive to the Turkish and Afghan markets

with contacts established by emissaries or companies where cartel members hold minor positions. Often, the exporters themselves come with the credentials of being overseas suppliers and representatives of people in the business of illicit services. When the heroin bound for the North and Central American markets arrives, these emissaries often exchange drugs for arms, or for other items. Nothing is out of the
question, it really just depends on the region.

AT: Afghan Instability Adv

NATO forces insure Afghan stability Sediqi, 12 (Rafi; 10/16/12; http://tolonews.com/en/afghanistan/7967-nato-says-new-framework-assures-afghan-stabilityafter-2014-) KD Some Nato forces

Afghan Instability No impact

will remain in Afghanistan after 2014, assuring ongoing stability as the alliance moves from a combat role to a training mission, Nato-led Isaf spokesman Brig. Gen. Gunter Katz said in Kabul on Monday. Addressing fears of rising insecurity once foreign forces leave in 2014, Katz emphasised the ongoing support of the international community towards Afghan security forces. "Afghanistan will stay stable after 2014. The commitment from the international community at the Chicago and Tokyo summit shows that Afghanistan will be supported in the future as well," Katz said at a briefing in Kabul. Nato civilian spokesman Dominic Medley made similar remarks, saying that the framework for Nato's post-2014 engagement in Afghanistan was decided on last week in Brussels. "Nato defence ministers and the ministers from potential operational partners concluded the first stage of planning for that new mission. This will guide the military experts as they take the planning process forward. It is expected to agree on a detailed outline early next year, and to complete the plan well before the end of 2013," Medley said Monday in Kabul. "This new mission will not be a combat mission. It will be a mission to train, advise and assist," he added. He pointed out that Afghan security forces are already responsible for security of 75 percent of the Afghan people and that they will lead all the military operations by the first half of 2013. "International community and Nato are committed towards Afghanistan and promised billions of dollars to the country. Afghan forces will be supported in the future and their training mission will continue," Medley added. Alt causes to instability Tadjdeh, 13 (Yasmin; 6/18/13; http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=1184) KD While major military operations may be coming to an end in Afghanistan, the forces remaining there will face an uphill battle piecing the country back together, analysts said June 17. U.S. military units tasked with rebuilding infrastructure and countering insurgencies face myriad hurdles, from tighter budgets, to a lack of national policy to growing tensions within the populace. "Stability is in the eyes of the locals. The only stability definition that matters is what locals perceive. In rural and tribal lands the definition of stability very often changes dramatically from village to village, from tribe to tribe," said Howard Clark, a senior intelligence officer at the Department of Homeland Security and advisor to Special Operations Command. Even in noncombat situations, troops stationed on foreign soil can be destabilizing, Clark said during a discussion at the American Security Project, a Washington, D.C.-based national security think tank. "Our very presence in Muslim lands causes instability, bringing insurgent attacks on local populace and materializing violent extremism," Clark said. "Even when we're defending the lives of civilians or providing humanitarian aid, this narrative recruits, this narrative grows [and] motivates most violent extremists ." Another major issue is the money that the United States brings in to fund stability operations, Clark said. Taliban militants often shake down local businesses for money earned from development contracts, he said. While
insurgents also raise cash by selling narcotics making Afghanistan one of the largest producers of illicit drugs in the world the money raised by skimming off of stability operations funds is greater, he said. " The money the Taliban actually

squeezes from our contracts eclipses even their funds made from opium and heroin," said Clark.
Furthermore, Afghanistan's government is rife with corruption. Citizens are disillusioned that money is funneled into failed or corrupt programs. Their disappointment can lead them to seek refuge with insurgents, he said.

Multiple obstacles to Afghan instability DOA, 13 (Daily Outlook Afghanistan great news service specific to Middle East issues; 4/17/13;
http://outlookafghanistan.net/national_detail.php?post_id=7124) KD WASHINGTON - A top American general based in Kabul on Tuesday said

Afghanistan's stability was threatened by militant safe havens in Pakistan and corruption and weak institutional capability of the Afghan government. Insurgencys sanctuaries in Pakistan, the limited institutional capacity of the Afghan government and endemic corruption remain the greatest impediments to long-

term stability and sustainable security in Afghanistan, General Joseph Dunford, Commander of US and NATO forces in

Afghanistan, told US lawmakers. Testifying before the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee on the current situation in Afghanistan, Dunford said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would continue to work

with the Afghan government to address Afghanistan's challenges in order to deliver effective governance to

its people. Dunford said even as Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) was developing its capabilities, but it would require support from the US and the international community in foreseeable future. However, he called the worst worried the continuation of safe havens inside Pakistan. Despite this degradation, safe havens in Afghanistan and sanctuaries in

Pakistan continue to provide Taliban senior leadership some freedom of movement and freedom of action, facilitating the training of fighters, and the planning of operations, he said. The Afghan Taliban and all its sub-groups, including the Haqqani Network, remain capable of conducting high profile attacks, though counterterrorism pressure has degraded this ability, he said. However, the Taliban remain firm in their
conviction that ISAFs drawdown and perceived ANSF weakness, especially when supplemented with continued external support and with sanctuary in Pakistan that the Taliban exploit, will translate into a restoration of their pre-surge military capabilities and influence, he added. Dunford said the majority of ISAF bases have been transferred to the ANSF or closed, and construction is complete on the majority of ANSF bases. The US will redeploy 34,000 troops by February 2014, and the ANSF have grown to nearly 352,000 personnel. Afghanistans populated areas are increasingly secure, and the ANSF have successfully maintained security gains in areas that have already been transitioned, he said. Still, the ANSF will continue to need

training, advising, and key combat support from ISAF, including close air support, logistics, and intelligence, through the end of the ISAF combat mission in December 2014, he told the lawmakers. In
his remarks Senator James M Inhofe alleged President Barack Obama was making a mistake by deciding on troop levels without defining the underlying objectives, strategy, and mission. This is backwards, he said. Strategy drives troop requirements; not the other way around. Decisions on objectives should depend on our objectives. Without some

continuing level of US and international support, civil war and fragmentation are likely to engulf Afghanistan and destabilize the region providing a breeding ground for extremism and threatening the security of Pakistan and its nuclear weapons, he said. (Pajhwok) No impact to Afghan instability its inevitable but empirically doesnt escalate Finel, 9 (Dr. Bernard I. Finel, Atlantic Council contributing editor, is a senior fellow at the American Security Project, Afghanistan is Irrelevant, Apr 27 http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/afghanistan-irrelevant)
attacks on American soil. This

It is now a deeply entrenched conventional wisdom that the decision to abandon Afghanistan after the Cold War was a tragic mistake. In the oft-told story, our abandonment led to civil war, state collapse, the rise of the Taliban, and inevitably terrorist

narrative is now reinforced by dire warnings about the risks to Pakistan from instability in Afghanistan. Taken all together, critics of the Afghan commitment now find themselves facing a nearly unshakable
U.S. national security. And Pakistans problems have little to do with the situation across the border. First, the

consensus in continuing and deepen our involvement in Afghanistan. The problem with the consensus is that virtually every part of it is wrong. Abandonment did not cause the collapse of the state. Failed states are not always a threat to

collapse of the Afghan state after the Soviet withdrawal had little to do with Western abandonment. Afghanistan has always been beset by powerful centrifugal forces. The country is poor, the terrain rough, the population divided into several ethnic groups. Because of this, the country has rarely been unified even nominally and has never really had a strong central government. The dominant historical political system in Afghan is warlordism. This is not a consequence of Western involvement or lack thereof. It is a function of geography, economics, and demography. Second, there is no straight-line between state failure and threats to the United States. Indeed, the problem with Afghanistan was not that it failed but rather that it unfailed and becameruled by the Taliban. Congo/Zaire is a failed state. Somalia is a failed state. There are many parts of the globe that are essentially ungoverned. Clearly criminality, human rights abuses, and other global ills flourish in these spaces. But the notion that any and all ungoverned space represents a core national security threat to the United States is simply unsustainable. Third, the problem was the Taliban regime was not that it existed. It was that it was allowed to
fester without any significant response or intervention. We largely sought to ignore the regime refusing to recognize it despite its control of 90% of Afghan territory. Aside from occasional tut-tutting about human rights violations and destruction of cultural sites, the only real interaction the United States sought with the regime was in trying to control drugs. Counter-drug initiatives are not a sound foundation for a productive relationship for reasons too numerous to enumerate here. Had we recognized the Taliban and sought to engage the regime, it is possible that we could have managed to communicate red lines to them over a period of years.

Their failure to turn over bin Laden immediately after 9/11 does not necessarily imply an absolute inability to drive a wedge between the Taliban and al Qaeda over time. Fourth, we are

now told that defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan is imperative in order to help stabilize Pakistan. But, most observers seem to think that Pakistan is in worse shape now with the Taliban out of power and American forces in Afghanistan than it was when the Taliban was dominant in Afghanistan. For five years from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and the Islamist threat to

Pakistan then was unquestionably lower. This is not surprising actually. Insurgencies are at their most dangerous in terms of threat of contagion when they are fighting for power. The number of insurgencies that actually manage to sponsor

insurgencies elsewhere after taking power is surprising low. The domino theory is as dubious in the case of
Islamist movements as it was in the case of Communist expansion. There is a notion that everything changed on 9/11. We are backing away as a nation from that concept in the case of torture. Perhaps we should also come to realize that our pre-9/11 assessment of the strategic value and importance of Afghanistan was closer to the mark that our current obsession with it. We clearly made some mistakes in dealing with the Taliban regime. But addressing those mistakes through better intelligence, use of special forces raids, and, yes, diplomacy is likely a better solution than trying to build and sustain a reliable, pro-Western government in Kabul with control over the entire country.

Here are seven alt causes to Afghani stability Kjrnet and Torjesen, 8 (Heidi, Department of Russian and Eurasian Studies @ Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, *AND Stina, Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 2008, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Afghanistan and regional instability: A risk assessment, http://www.nupi.no/content/download/3781/57112/version/2/file/Report-Kj%C3%A6rnetTorjesen.pdf) The regional context of Afghanistan poses a range of challenges for the countrys stabilisation process: Pakistan Pakistans central government has lacked control of developments in the areas bordering Afghanistan (Baluchistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province), making President Musharraf unable to implement the US-encouraged crackdown on Pakistani Taleban supporters. The Pakistani border areas have become a key source of weapons, equipment and new recruits for antigovernment militant groups in Afghanistan, while PakistanAfghanistan bilateral relations remain, as so often
before, strained. The Pakistani election results from February 18 2008 give grounds for cautious optimism. Nevertheless, the serious challenges stemming from Pakistan will continue in the short to medium term for Afghanistan. IranUS tensions The

standoff between Iran and the USA over Irans nuclear programme has introduced difficulties in IranAfghan relations. Iran remains an important supporter of the Westernbacked Hamid Karzai government. Nevertheless, in the face of US pressure, Iran is beginning to demonstrate, according to some reports, its ability to destabilise Afghanistan and derail Washingtons Afghan campaign, as a means of enhancing its overall leverage regarding the USA.1 Geopolitical rivalries Geopolitical rivalries in the region preclude any optimal coordination of support to Afghanistan by neighbours and great powers . These tensions include the longstanding conflict between India and Pakistan as well as the serious Russian and Chinese unease over the US and NATO military presence in the region. Regional trade difficulties Security concerns and post-Soviet bureaucratic inertia prevent

Afghanistans northern neighbours from fully endorsing the vision, promoted by the USA and other nations, of Afghanistans economic recovery being facilitated by denser integration into regional trade and communication links. Uzbekistan The government of Uzbekistan is highly authoritarian and deeply unpopular. Large-scale political and social upheaval remains one likely future scenario for the country. Upheaval in Uzbekistan would pose a serious challenge to the stability of Afghanistans northern and
western territories, including Mazar-e-sharif and possibly Meymaneh, where Norwegian troops are stationed. The German-run ISAF base located in Termez in Uzbekistan near the UzbekistanAfghanistan border, and Mazar-e-sharif would be particularly vulnerable in case of upheaval in Uzbekistan. Drugs Drugs production and trafficking constitute one of Afghanistans

central domestic challenges, but drugs trafficking can also be seen as a regional problem. The large-scale criminal activities and incomes associated with regional drug flows are undermining the states of the region: in this way Afghanistans neighbours Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in particular are becoming weaker, more criminalised, more unstable and less able to act as constructive partners for Afghanistan. Water Afghanistans northern neighbours have a lengthy history of water disputes. If Afghanistan in the medium or long term decides to claim its legitimate share of the regions water resources as it may well do in order to further its economic development then watersharing in the region will become even more difficult. Bilateral and multilateral relations between and among the Central Asian states have been severely strained at times, although fully fledged water wars have remained a
remote prospect.

Afghan collapse wont spill over Silverman 9 (Jerry Mary, Ph.D. in International Relations and Project Specialist Ford Foundatoin, Sturdy Dominoes, The National Interest, 11-19, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=22512) Many advocates of continuing or racheting up our presence in Afghanistan are cut from the same domino-theory cloth as those of the Vietnam era. They posit that losing in Afghanistan would almost certainly lead to the further loss of the entire South and central Asian region. Although avoiding explicit reference to falling dominos, recent examples include S. Frederick Starr (School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins
University); Sir David Richards (the UKs relatively new Chief of the General Staff); and, in The National Interest, Ahmed Ra shid. The fear that Pakistan and central Asian governments are too weak to withstand the Taliban leads logically to the proposition just as it did forty years agothat only the United States can defend the region from its own extremist groups and, therefore, that any loss of faith in America will result in a net gain for pan-Islamist movements in a zero-sum global competition for power.

Unfortunately, the resurrection of falling dominos as a metaphor for predicted consequences of an American military withdrawal reflects a profound inability to re-envision the nature of todays global political environment and Americas place in it. The current worry is that Pakistan will revive support for

the Taliban and return to its historically rooted policy of noninterference in local governance or security arrangements along the frontier. This fear is compounded by a vision of radical Islamists gaining access to Pakistans nuclear arsenal. Those concer ns are fueled by the judgment that Pakistans new democratically elected civilian government is too weak to withstand pressures by its most senior military officers to keep its pro-Afghan Taliban option open. From that perspective, any sign of American dithering would reinforce that historically-rooted preference, even as the imperative would remain to separate the Pakistani-Taliban from the Afghan insurgents. Further, any significant increase in terrorist violence, especially within major Pakistani urban centers, would likely lead to the imposition of martial law and return to an authoritarian military regime, weakening American influence even further. At its most extreme, that scenario ends with the most frightening outcome of allthe overthrow of relatively secular senior Pakistani generals by a pro-Islamist and anti-Western group of second-tier officers with access to that countrys nuclear weapons. Beyond Pakistan, advocates of todays domino theory point to the Talibans links to both the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Islamic Jihad Union, and conclude that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan would encourage similar radical Islamist movements in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In the face of a scenario of increasing radicalization along Russias re latively new, southern borders, domino theorists argue that a NATO retreat from Afghanistan would spur the projection of its own military and political power into the resulting vacuum there. The primary problem with the worst-case scenarios

predicted by the domino theorists is that no analyst is really prescient enough to accurately predict how decisions made by the United States today will affect future outcomes in the South and central Asian region. Their forecasts might occur whether or not the United States withdraws or, alternatively, interstate and domestic political realities throughout most of Southeast Asia in 1975. Although it is

increases its forces in Afghanistan. Worse, it is entirely possible that the most dreaded consequences will occur only as the result of a decision to stay. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the earlier domino theory falsely represented true that American influence throughout much of Southeast Asia suffered for a few years following Communist victories in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, we now know that while we viewed the Vietnam War as part of a larger conflict, our opponents focus was limited to the unification of their own country. Although border disputes erupted between Vietnam and

Cambodia, China and the Philippines, actual military conflicts occurred only between the supposedly fraternal Communist governments of Vietnam, China and Cambodia. Neither of the two competing Communist regimes in Cambodia survived. Further, no serious threats to install Communist regimes were initiated outside of Indochina, and, most importantly, the current political situation in Southeast Asia now conforms closely to what Washington had hoped to achieve in the first place. It is, of course, unfortunate that the transition from military conflict in Vietnam to the welcome
situation in Southeast Asia today was initially violent, messy, bloody, and fraught with revenge and violations of human rights. But as the perpetrators, magnitude, and victims of violence changed, the level of violence eventually declined.

Regional cooperation will prevent escalation Innocent and Carpenter 9 (Malou, Foreign Policy Analyst Cato Institute and Ted Galen, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Cato Institute, Escaping the Graveyard of Empires: A Strategy to Exist Afghanistan, http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/escapinggraveyard-empires-strategy-exit-afghanistan.pdf) Additionally, regional stakeholders, especially Russia and Iran, have an interest in a stable Afghanistan. Both countries possess the capacity to facilitate development in the country and may even be willing to assist Western forces. In July, leaders in Moscow allowed the United States to use Russian airspace to
transport troops and lethal military equipment into Afghanistan. Yet another relevant regional player is the Collective Security Treaty Organization, made up of Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, and Belarus. At the moment, CSTO appears amenable to forging a security partnership with NATO. CSTO secretary general Nikolai Bordyuzha told journalists in

March 2009 of his blocs intention to cooperate. The united position of the CSTO is that we should give every kind of aid to the antiterror coalition operating in Afghanistan. . . . The interests of NATO and the CSTO countries regarding Afghanistan conform unequivocally.83 Mutual interests between Western forces and Afghanistans surrounding neighbors can

converge on issues of transnational terrorism, the Caspian and Central Asia regions abundant energy resources, crossborder organized crime, and weapons smuggling. Enhanced cooperation alone will not stabilize Afghanistan, but engaging stakeholders may lead to tighter regional security. Afghan stability resilient Robichaud 7 (Carl, Program Officer The Century Foundation, Buying Time in Afghanistan, World Policy Journal, 11-8, http://www.tcf.org/publications/internationalaffairs/RobichaudWPJ.pdf) Afghanistan is increasingly seen as Iraq in slow motion. It is not. The headlines of car bombs and casualty tolls echo each other, but mask deep differences in each society and in the dynamics of each insurgency. As Iraq has descended into civil war, Afghanistans center has held. The government remains weak, but power holders and the public show no appetite for a return to internecine fighting. The insurgency remains solvent because of safe havens across the border in Pakistan, but has been unable to expand upon its toehold in Afghanistan or offer a compelling alternative to the status quo. In the short-run, the only way Afghanistan could capsize is if the ballast of international support is withdrawn. Unfortunately, this scenario seems increasingly likely. The Taliban are fond of saying that the Americans have watches, but we have time. A quarter of the United States public now favors a pullout from Afghanistan in the next year if things do not improve, and an additional 40 percent believes troops should be withdrawn as quickly as possible, if a basic level of stability is achieved. Polls in Canada, Britain, and the Netherlands the NATO countries which are shouldering the alliances military burden in the volatile Southsuggest about half of those surveyed want troops withdrawn within a year. In Germany, two thirds of the public now opposes its military contribution, and in February a dispute over Afghanistan collapsed the center-left Prodi government in Italy. National leaders continue to assert that we cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan, but many of their constituents believe they already have.
1 2

Afghanistan is stable no collapse Boot 9 (Max, Fellow in National Security Studies Council on Foreign Relations, Yes We Can, The Weekly Standard, 3-23, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/274efbdb.asp) Fears of impending disaster are hard to sustain, however, if you actually spend some time in Afghanistan, as

we did recently at the invitation of General David Petraeus, chief of U.S. Central Command. Using helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and bone-jarring armored vehicles, we spent eight days traveling from the snow-capped peaks of Kunar province near the border with Pakistan in the east to the wind-blown deserts of Farah province in the west near the border with Iran. Along the way we talked with countless coalition soldiers, ranging from privates to a four-star general. We also attended a tribal shura or council-a fantastic affair straight out of an earlier century-to sample opinion among bearded Afghan elders. What we found is a situation that is cause for concern but far much of the

short of catastrophe-and one that is likely to improve before long. To start with, north, center, and west remains relatively secure. Attacks have increased in those areas but are still extremely low. Figures showing large increases are deceptive because the total numbers to begin with were so small and because most of the attacks produced few if any casualties. For instance, the Brookings Afghanistan

Index shows a 48 percent increase in attacks last year in Regional Command-Capital, which encompasses Kabul and its environs and has a population of more than 4 million people. But the total (157 attacks in 2008) would have represented just four days of violence in Baghdad in the summer of 2006. (Overall civilian casualties in Afghanistan, while rising, are still 16 times lower than the comparable figure for Iraq in the pre-surge year of 2006.) As these figures suggest, while the capital of Iraq was a war zone, the capital of Afghanistan is remarkably peaceful. Entire weeks go by without an insurgent attack, and the streets bustle with cars and pedestrians. Coalition officials drive around in lightly armored SUVs, something that would have been unthinkable in Baghdad. We asked officers at NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in the middle of Kabul whether they took any incoming rocket or mortar fire. Such attacks were an almost daily occurrence in the Green Zone in Baghdad for years, with numerous personnel being killed only yards away from the U.S. ambassador's office. But at ISAF they could remember only a single ineffectual attack back in September 2008. The idea that Kabul is under siege is a

figment of the news media's imagination based on hyped reporting of a few isolated attacks. ISAF officers

suggested to us that the recent insurgent raids on three government buildings, which generated so much negative publicity, were actually good news, because Afghan security forces, who have assumed lead responsibility for operations in much of the capital, were able to handle the crisis on their own. Commandos from the Afghan National Police Crisis Response Team stormed into the Justice Ministry within hours and killed all the attackers, who had hoped to carry out a protracted Mumbai-style siege. Other would-be suicide bombers were rounded up before they could set off their explosives. Equally impressive progress is being made in Jalalabad, a city of perhaps 400,000 in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province. Violence is low; U.S. troops don't even patrol the city, leaving that job to the Afghan National Security Forces. The Afghan army, police, and border police coordinate their activities through a "fusion" center which responds to an emergency phone number that residents can call in case of trouble. Economic development is booming, spurred by "Nangarhar Inc.," a development plan overseen by a U.S.-run Provincial Reconstruction Team in cooperation with local officials. "Nangarhar has progressed light years in the last six or seven years," says Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Daniel, who commands a battalion based in Jalalabad.

NATO strong and resilient Trueblood 4 (Tad, National Security Analyst and Fmr Military Officer with 20 Years Experience, Not Your Fathers NATO, 4-1, http://www.southernutah.com/Articles/World_Affairs/Document.2004-04-01.2317) Not your father's NATO Last Updated: 2004-04-01 10:34:15 March 31, 2004 -- A wimpy, eleven-syllable organization with longhaired troops and a Madison Avenue logo has proved more resilient than it seemed. The authoritarian Warsaw Pact crumbled and was swept into historys dustbin, while the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has expanded its membership and mission. Remember the Warsaw Pact? What a cool name, pact. Nobody has pacts anymore. The western world prefers multisyllabic constructs like coalition and organization. Lots of room for bureaucracy and politics in a multisyllabic outfit. But what could be more solid than a pact? Surely not some wimpy, eleven-syllable organization with longhaired troops and a Madison Avenue logo. Well, turns out those multisyllabic bureaucracies are more resilient than they seem. The authoritarian Warsaw Pact crumbled and was swept into historys dustbin, while the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has expanded its membership and mission. Pact, schmact! Looks like acronyms come out on top. The transformation of NATO didnt happen overnight, however, and for several years in the 1990s it looked like the alliance had lost its way and was headed towards stodgy irrelevance. There was much debate and consternation over NATOs post-Cold War role, or if it even had a role. Formed under U.S. leadership in 1949 to counter the looming military threat the Soviet bloc posed to Western Europe, the quintessential free-world alliance didnt seem so essential after the Soviet Union evaporated. Whats an alliance to do after its adversaries go away? Two things, actually. First, figure out a way to co-opt your old adversaries. Second, find some new adversaries. In that first area, NATO has been amazingly successful. On Monday, NATO announced the accession of 7 new members--all of which used to be communist countries. Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia were once Warsaw Pact members, while
Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were actually part of the USSR itself. These new members join Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which became NATO members in 1999. Though largely underappreciated, this is a geopolitical shift of monumental proportions. Since the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, NATO has expanded eastward (preceded by free enterprise, economic reform, and democracy) to include all the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe and now some former Soviet Republics. In finding new adversaries--by which I really mean finding valid missions--NATO has had mixed success. Of course there were the Serbs and their aggressive aims in the Balkans, which kept NATO busy on peacekeeping and peacemaking missions in Bosnia, then in Kosovo. But containing a tinhorn dictator like Milosevic cant really provide the raison de etre for a grand, multi-spectral alliance. Working against instability and terrorism in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa seems to fit the bill. In the old NATO, it was inconceivable to think that military units under NATO command might be deployed out of Europe for actual operations. In the new NATO, its becoming the central mission. European governments, and their NATO representatives, realize that the more trouble brews out-of-area, the more likely the trouble will come home to roost

NATO No Impact

Afghanistan is NATOs first major out-of-area operation. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (hows that for multisyllabic?), or ISAF, has 6,500 troops from 35 NATO and non-NATO nations. ISAFs main objective is to promote stability and security in the war-torn country, and mainly leaves the Taliban and al-Qaida hunting to the U.S. forces. However, ISAF troops have been in clashes and suffered casualties there. In fact, German soldiers, who make up the core of the ISAF, have seen their first combat outside Europe since WWII. And its likely there will be more NATO operations in strange places. The possibility of NATO taking on large chunks of the security mission in Iraq is being actively discussed--with U.S. support. There have even been suggestions that a NATO presence in Israel might be the only way to enforce a peace plan there. No, its sure not your fathers NATO anymore. NATO collapse doesnt cause war Conry 95 (Barbara, Foreign Policy Analyst Cato, Cato Policy Analysis, The Western European Union as NATOs Successor, 9-18, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-239.html) Europe after NATO: Bogus Nightmare Scenarios It is inaccurate to suggest, as NATO partisans often do, that the only alternative to Atlanticism is a return to the dark ages of the interwar era: nationalized European defenses, American isolationism, xenophobia,

demagoguery, and the other evils associated with the rise of Hitler and World War II. Former U.S. senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.) warns that weakening NATO will have dire consequences. "As we have thrice before in this dreadful century, [we will] set in motion an instability that can only lead to war, shed blood, and lost treasure. Pray that we are wiser."(4) Lawrence di Rita of the Heritage Foundation similarly defends NATO as an "insurance policy" against a future world war. "If keeping 65,000 young Americans in Europe will prevent 10 times that many new headstones in Arlington cemetery once the Europeans turn on themselves again-as they have twice this century--then it's a small price to pay."(5) Such alarmism underestimates the significance of 50 years of economic and political cooperation among the West European powers and the role of pan-European institutions such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It also ignores the fact that a viable institutional alternative to NATO--the Western European Union--already exists. With the proper resources and recognition on the part of Washington and the Europeans that an independent European defense is essential in the post-Cold War era, the WEU is a promising alternative to Atlanticism. Far from being a lame second choice to NATO or defense on the cheap, a robust WEU would be superior to NATO in many ways, better suited in the long run to protecting European and, indirectly, American interests. U.S. will remain in Europe without NATO Menon 3 (Rajan, Professor of International Relations Lehigh University and Senior Fellow Council on Foreign Relations, The End of Alliances, World Policy Journal, 2(20), 6-22) Nor will the lack of alliances require the United States to disengage from parts of the world where it was entrenched militarily. America can be involved in Europe and Japan and on the Korean peninsula in a variety of ways without being bound by formal defense treaties. Think of the Marshall Plan or the Truman Doctrine, neither of which required us to enter into long-term military alliances. Or consider Israel, which is invariably referred to as an ally, even though there is no formal alliance between it and the United States. Yet it is hard to think of a country with which we have ties that are as extensive and deep. The commonly heard argument that the end of NATO will inevitably erode the American position in Europe is hardly persuasive. To return to Lord Ismay, the Germans are "down" (in the sense that they are integrated into the EU and have used cooperation as the watchword for dealings with their neighbors for over 50 years); the Russians are "out" (the idea that Russia, mired in innumerable domestic problems, poses a threat to the Baltic states or the states of East-Central Europe is farfetched, as evidenced by the very small proportion of their budgets that these states have devoted to defense spending since 1991); and the United States can remain "in" Europe and contribute to its stability in many ways without stationing thousands of troops there. As for Japan and South Korea (or a reunified Korea), they too can pursue their interests and protect their territory through many means without maintaining formal military alliances with the United States. These are the wealthy centers of global capitalism. They have the resources to do more for their own defense and, when independent efforts do not suffice, they can form alignments and even alliances with their neighbors, just as states have done for centuries. What they lack is willpower and confidence, which have been diminished by 50 years of dependence on the United States and supplanted by strategic solipsism. While the claim that the end of American-led alliances will promote German hegemony or Japanese militarism is so commonplace as to be seemingly beyond challenge, it ignores the changes that have occurred within Germany and Japan, and in Europe and East Asia over the past half-century. It consigns the United States to maintaining obligations that are now of questionable worth in a world of new challenges. And it smacks of hubris in implying that without an American presence that takes the form of military pacts, these regions will be consumed by upheaval because the countries within them are incapable of managing their own affairs. The end of America's alliances with its present partners need not--indeed, will not-culminate in estrangement, let alone enmity, between us and them. The ties,

interconnections, and dependencies that have developed over the decades on multiple fronts are too numerous and substantial for that to happen. The conclusion that our Cold War alliances will fade away is emphatically not a call for isolationism, which is neither desirable nor possible in an interdependent world. Alt causes A) Macedonia Greenberg 1 (Robert, NATOs Credibility in Macedonia, Foreign Policy in Focus, 8-1, http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/297) Macedonia has received little in return for its support of NATO. Government officials in Skopje have accused NATO of failing to protect Macedonia's northern border with Kosovo, repeatedly providing NATO with documents on the flow of arms and Albanian militants from Kosovo. NATO has countered that the protection of the Macedonian border with Kosovo is not part of the alliance's mandate in Kosovo. Nevertheless, NATO maintains that it has beefed up patrols along the Kosovo-Macedonia border. But NATO, which has a massive presence in Kosovo, contends that it is virtually impossible to prevent infiltration of the border, given the area's rugged terrain. NATO now promises to collect the same weapons that it let slip through from Kosovo into Macedonia. The cynics would argue that it is in NATO's best interest to underreport the number of Albanian arms in Macedonia. After all, admitting the possibility that as many as 85,000 arms have been smuggled into Macedonia would further damage NATO's reputation and credibility. B) NATO expansion Menon 3 (Rajan, Professor of International Relations Lehigh University and Senior Fellow Council on Foreign Relations, The End of Alliances, World Policy Journal, 2(20), 6-22) To some, this verdict may seem odd. NATO, after all, has been expanding. Already an alliance of 16 states in 1991, it added the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1997; and in November 2002, it approved the entry of 7 other states: the 3 Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), plus Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Alas, expansion--not all that uncommon as an organizational response to uncertainty of purpose--promises to make NATO less coherent without making it much more powerful or relevant. (9) The admission of many new members of diverse backgrounds will make decisionmaking, which NATO's unanimity rule already makes cumbersome, even more complicated. Furthermore, the new members from EastCentral Europe, the Baltic region, and the Balkans do not appreciably increase the alliance's military clout or reduce its major deficiencies, such as an anemic power-projection capability. Nor will expansion be a cure for NATO'S decreasing utility for American security needs.

Afghanistan opium shifts production away from Burma Fuller, 07 (Thomas, Southeast Asia Correspondent for The New York Times, No Blowing Smoke: Poppies Fade in Southeast
Asia:, 9/16/2007, New York Times, Proquest, JKahn) As a result, the Golden Triangle has been eclipsed

Burma Turn 1NC Shell

by the Golden Crescent -- the poppy-growing area in and around Afghanistan that is now the source of an estimated 92 percent of the world's opium , according to the United Nations. Much of the growth in opium production there is in areas controlled by the Taliban, which United States officials say uses revenue from opium and heroin to finance itself. This shift to Afghanistan has had major consequences for the global heroin market: a near doubling of
opium production worldwide in less than two decades. Poppies grown in the fertile valleys of southern Afghanistan yield on average four times more opium than those grown in upland Southeast Asia. A striking aspect of the decline of the Golden Triangle is the role China has played in pressing opium-growing regions to eradicate poppy crops. A major market for Golden Triangle heroin, China has seen a spike in addicts and H.I.V. infections from contaminated needles. The area of Myanmar along the Chinese

border, which once produced about 30 percent of the country's opium, was declared opium-free last year by the United Nations. Local authorities, who are from the Wa tribe and are autonomous from Myanmar's central government, have banned poppy cultivation and welcomed Chinese investmentin rubber, sugar cane and tea plantations, casinos and other
much more connected

businesses. "China has had an underestimated role," said Martin Jelsma, a Dutch researcher who has written extensively on the illicit drug trade in Asia. "Their main leverage is economic: These border areas of Burma are by now economically it's quite clear that, for any investments they want to attract, cooperation with China is a necessity." Myanmar remains the world's second-leading source of opium but is a distant second; its production declined by 80 percent over the last decade. Insurgents have long used opium to help finance civil wars in the Golden Triangle. But some are now working to

to China than the rest of Burma," he said, using the former name for Myanmar. "For local authorities

destroy the crop. At least one faction of the Shan State Army, a group that long had ties to the heroin business, says it is

leading eradication efforts. Kon Jern, a military commander for the group, which is based along Myanmar's border with northern Thailand, says he is cracking down because government militias and corrupt officials profit from opium. "They sell the drugs,

they buy weapons, and they use those weapons to attack us," he said. The United Nations credits Myanmar's

central government with leading the eradication effort in Shan areas. In Laos, where the political situation is more stable, the government began a crackdown in the 1990s to increase its international credibility and because officials realized their own children were at risk, said Leik Boonwaat, the representative in Laos for the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime. Laos finally outlawed opium in 1996. The government, Mr. Boonwaat said, also saw that opium did little to help poor farmers who grew poppies. "It's mostly the organized crime syndicates that made most of the profits," he said. The amount of land cultivated in Laos for opium has fallen 94 percent since 1998. The country now produces so little opium that it may now be a net importer of the drug, the United Nations says. Yet experts warn that the reductions may not hold unless farmers develop other ways to make a living. Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, an opium specialist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, says it took Thailand 30 years to wean opium farmers from poppy production, a transition led by the Thai royal family, which encouraged opium-growing hill tribes to use their cooler climate to produce coffee, macadamia nuts and green vegetables. But, he said, "In Laos and Burma, we've had a very quick decrease." He asked, "Is it going to last?" Four years ago farmers in Banna Sala, an isolated Laotian hamlet of several hundred ethnic Hmong, grew opiumpoppies with impunity. No longer. And some farmers are angry. "They stopped me from growing opium, so I don't have money to send my children to school," said one villager, Jeryeh Singya, 34, who has seven children. She once bartered the opium she grew for soap, salt and clothing. "If they let me grow it I would," she said. Mr. Kon, the rebel commander in Myanmar, says farmers are finding it difficult to switch crops. "If they change and grow other kinds of plants nobody comes to buy their products -- the transportation is not good," he said. Experts say that to stay free of opium, isolated villages that depended on it will need assistance and investment for better roads, schools and clinics. But Myanmar, which is run by a military junta, poses a dilemma for Western countries. The United States has an embargo on trade with Myanmar. The European Union has suspended trade privileges and defense cooperation, limiting its aid to humanitarian assistance. "This policy of boycott and isolation has, of course, meant that only very little development aid and humanitarian assistance is flowing into the country," said Mr. Jelsma, the Dutch expert on drugs. "That makes the chances of the sustainability of this decline very questionable."

Sustained drop in heroin revenue is key to regime change in Burma ISMI, 1

(Asad, Ph.D. in War Studies from the University of London, CCPA Monitor, March, http://www.asadismi.ws/burma.html)
Friedland and the environmental disasters and mercenaries joining with a military junta that killed

Burmese junta form a powerful combination. Here is a Canadian mining investor linked to major 10,000 people in 1988 (to crush a student uprising) and has turned Burma into a vast slave labour camp, as well as the world's leading heroin

exporter. The SPDC refused to hand over power to Aung San Suu Kyi when her party won the 1990 elections and has held her under

house arrest since then. According to the United Nations, torture,

summary executions, slave labour, rape, forced displacement, and oppression of minorities are commonplace in Burma. The junta has incorporated drug trafficking into the country's permanent economy, so that Burma now supplies 60% of
the world's heroin and 80% of that drug sold in Canada. Under the SPDC, Burma has more than doubled drug exports. Foreign investment is used to launder profits from the junta's drug trafficking. The money generated by heroin, foreign investment and tourism finances

the SPDC's arms purchases (mainly from China) with which it maintains its iron-fisted

rule.

Survival of the current Burmese government will eventually result in prolif and nuclear war
Selth, 7 (Andrew, Research Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, Burma and Nuclear Proliferation: Policies and perceptions, Regional Outlook Paper No. 12, 2007, www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/18240/regional-outlook-volume-12.pdf) The regime has long been subject to harsh criticism from Western leaders. Implicit in most of these comments has

been a demand for regime change. In 2003, for example, US Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to the thugs who now rule Burma and his successor has labelled Burma an outpost of tyranny to which the US must help bring freedom. In 2005, President Bush told an international audience that the Burmese people want their liberty and one day they shall have it. In his 2006 State of the Union speech, immediately after references to the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, Burma was ranked alongside Syria, Iran and North Korea as places where the demands of justice, and the peace of the world, require their freedom. In the UK, Prime Minister Blair has been reported as saying that the SPDC was a loathsome regime that he would love to destroy. Also, senior members of Congress have repeatedly characterised the SPDC as repressive and illegitimate and in 2007 a leadin g UK parliamentarian told a visiting Burmese minister that Burma was a pariah state ruled by a wicked regime. In stark contrast, public comments about Burmese opposition figures like Aung San Suu Kyi have been uniformly complimentary and supportive. To an

isolated, insecure and fearful group of military officers in Burma, all these statements could be interpreted as evidence of an intention to impose political change on Burma, against which they needed to prepare. Also, global developments over the past few decades have sharpened Burmas concerns that it might fall victim to a larger, more powerful state. In the past, this fear was focused on China but the worry is now that, in a post-Cold War world dominated by the US, the Western democracies will be able to impose their liberal, democratic and humanitarian agenda on Burma. Since 2002, there have been numerous calls for Burma to be

included in President Bushs axis of evil. The armed interventions in Haiti, Panama, Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan a nd Iraq (twice) are all viewed as examples of the USs determination, unilaterally if necessary, to intervene in the affairs of other states and overthrow regimes whose policies are inimical to Washington. The 1999 multinational operation in East Timor, where a separatist movement was able to win independence from its parent state, is cited by members of Burmas military hierarchy as another example of the way in which the US and its allies are forcibly reshaping the world order. In this process, the UN is seen as unwilling or unable to defend the interests of its smaller and weaker members. It is always difficult to determine what Burmas military leadership is thinking, particularly with regard to matters of national security. However, faced with these perceived threats, the regimes strategic planners seem to have fallen back on Burmas traditional strengths both real and imagined. These include Burmas armed forces, its highly varied geography and the patriotism of its people. Developments in Burmese military doctrine suggest that, faced with an invasion by modern armed forces, the regime would attempt first to deter an assault with the threat of high casualties. It would next mount a conventional defence of Burmas borders, followed by a prolonged guerrilla war conduct ed by the population at large. Large numbers of Burmese citizens would be mobilised as militia units, to sap the will of an invader until a counter-offensive could be organised or external assistance arrived. The regime clearly recognises that it could not win a direct forceon-force confrontation with a coalition like that which attacked Afghanistan or Iraq, but it seems to feel that it could force an enemy to think twice about invading, and then buy time until the international community forced a ceasefire. This doctrine, however, has two major flaws, which must be recognised by the SPDCs more honest and clear-sighted strategic planners. The first is that the

support of the Burmese people cannot be relied upon. The majority are intensely patriotic, but they owe their loyalty to the country not necessarily to the military government. There are many, both ethnic Burmans and members of the minority races, who would welcome the downfall of the current regime. Also, the SPDCs plan to appeal to the

international community must now be looking very weak. The Bush Administration and its allies have demonstrated a preparedness to invade another country despite the lack of an immediate or obvious threat, and in the face of strong opposition from both their critics and traditional partners, including in the UN. Also, in 2007 a move to censure Burma in the UNSC was only prevented by the SPDCs new allies, China and Russia. Any faith that the regime might have had in support from that institution must now be severely undermined. Direct assistance from China is possible but, given the regimes suspicion of Beijings long terms aims, any help from that quarter would be a mixed blessing. It is in these circumstances that a nuclear deterrent could have some

appeal to Burmas leaders. Of concern to strategic analysts is the possibility that the SPDC may have drawn the same conclusions from the 2003 Iraq War that North Korea seems to have done, and will seek to acquire a nuclear weapon as a bargaining chip to protect itself against the US and its allies. According to one report, some Burmese generals admire the North Koreans for standing up to the United States and wish they could do the same. The SPDC could argue that North Koreas possession of a nuclear retaliatory capability has been the main reason why
the US and its allies, or the UN, have not taken tougher action against Pyongyang, despite its long record of provocative behaviour. Viewed from this perspective, the possession of nuclear weapons has given North Korea a higher international profile, a stronger

position at the negotiating table and the proven ability to win concessions (including funds, food aid, fuel oil and technical assistance) from the international community. Irans nuclear weapons program may have a different outcome, but there are reportedly a few generals in Burma who feel that the SPDC should at least consider the benefits of such an approach. Possession

of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles would be more than symbolic. If Burmas military government ever felt seriously threatened, it is not difficult to imagine a situation in which it might actually consider using them. For example, faced with an imminent invasion, and with Kuwaits role in the Iraq war in mind, any ballistic missiles
acquired from Pyongyang could be aimed at Thailand, a US ally and Burmas nearest enemy. This might help dissuade the Thai government from allowing its territory to be used as the launching pad for a major ground and air assault against its western neighbour. SRBMs may not be very accurate but, if launched from a Burmese site near the Thai border, they could easily

reach greater Bangkok, a city of nearly nine million people. Even if armed only with a conventional warhead, such a threat would certainly concentrate the minds of Thai leaders. If it possessed WMD, Burma would have the option of visiting even greater destruction upon its neighbour.

Shan rebels have cracked down production is decreasing Asia News Monitor, 12 (citing Myanmar authorities, Myanmar (Burma): Myanmar claims progress on fighting drugs,
7/12/2012, Asia News, Monitor, Proquest, JKahn)

Uniqueness

Myanmar authorities on Monday hailed progress in their war on drugs after an unprecedented multi-million dollar seizure at an narcotics factory in eastern Shan state, the Bangkok Post reports. Suspects lined up behind drugs and drug making equipment in Laukkai. Police detained nine suspects with 73 kilograms (161 pounds) of "ice" crystal methamphetamine and 274 kilos of liquid meth along with drug-making equipment and a pistol during a raid on a house in Laukkai on July 9, state media reported. Officials said the haul was worth an estimated $3.7 million. " It's our biggest ice seizure in history. It's a part of our crackdown on the chemical ingredients and factories," a senior official at the home affairs ministry, who did not want to be named, told AFP. Synthetic drug production and poppy cultivation for opium is prevalent in Myanmar's remote border areas, where armed ethnic minority rebels
have used the profits from narcotics to fund their operations. President Thein Sein's reformist government has signed peace accords with a number of armed groups as part of sweeping reforms since taking power last year. Myanmar has said it aims to

eradicate illegal drugs by 2014. The country, which is slowly emerging from decades of military rule, is the world's second-largest opium poppy grower after Afghanistan. Shan state is a major source of methamphetamine tablets, according to the UN, which estimates that global seizures of amphetamine-type stimulants nearly tripled between between 1998 and 2010, reflecting fast-growing demand. In May the government and Shan rebels together agreed to wipe out drug production in the vast northeastern state. A drug control official said the recent raid had posed "many difficulties and risks". He
added: "We have no experience like this in the past raiding a factory which produces ice and other stimulants."

Resettlement efforts have disincentivized production Brunnstrom, 2k (David, Correspondent, EU foreign affairs and NATO for Reuters, Army moves out opium growers to
beat skeptics: Myanmar committed, 1/17/2000, National Post, Proquest, JKahn) WAN HUNG, Myanmar - An ethnic army in Myanmar battling skepticism

about its commitment to stamp out the narcotics trade says it is relocating 50,000 opium growers to force them to kick their drug- producing habit. The United Wa State Army (UWSA) said hill farmers and their dependents were being

trucked 160 km south from homes on the Chinese border to an area of Myanmar's Shan state near Thailand to grow longans, a tropical fruit. Myanmar's military government, which organized a weekend visit for journalists to opium growing areas of Shan state, said the program, which started in November, showed that the UWSA was serious about its vow to eradicate opium by 2005. "We intend to move 50,000 people in a three-year period," Kyin Maung Myint, a UWSA liaison officer , told reporters. He said 10,000 had already been moved and the number would rise to 20,000 by March. Officials of the Myanmar government and the UWSA admitted that not all those being trucked south were happy to go, but said each family would be allocated two hectares to farm. Wan Hung, where they are being resettled, was once controlled by Khun Sa, a notorious drug lord wanted in the United States for heroin trafficking who surrendered to the government in 1996. Narcotics experts outside Myanmar say the UWSA, which has 20,000 armed troops and agreed to a ceasefire with Yangon in 1989, has stepped

into Khun Sa's shoes to become the main producer of opium, heroin and amphetamines in the "Golden Triangle" narcotics region where

Myanmar, Laos and Thailand join. According to the U.S. State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports, the drug-trafficking armies, such as the UWSA, with whom the government has negotiated ceasefires but not permanent peace accords, remain heavily into the heroin trade. Myanmar officials said global organizations such as the United Nations should help fund their initiative to move families. "We have told the people of the Wa area that poppy growing will be banned and they can no longer grow poppy," said Khin Maung Myint. "Once you have an alternative crop, they have to move down south here," he said. "They have been persuaded and some we have urged to move, but with some we have to insist." He said about 600 families were arriving in Wan Hung each day and have built homes in a temporary resettlement area. Colonel Kyaw Thein, of Myanmar's counter-narcotics agency, said those being moved were mostly ethnic Wa, but included members of other hill tribes also living in the region, which is suitable

for few crops except opium. Yangon, which rejects allegations by the United States and other project. "I think it will result in a very significant reduction in production," said Kyaw Thein. "It will be a very big achievement." He said Myanmar's estimates
countries that it is doing too little to eradicate drugs, was pleased with the for opium production for the season to April, 1999, were slightly less than U.S. intelligence estimates of just over 1,000 tons. The UN Drug Control Program estimates 1,200 tons. Ten tons ofopium can be processed into one ton of heroin. Myanmar officials have complained that U.S. experts blamed overly dry weather for a sharp 38% fall in output last year and insist their eradication efforts should be given more credit. In an effort to prove their point on Saturday, they flew journalists by helicopter to watch ethnic Lahu tribes people and soldiers use bamboo sticks to slash down opium poppies. Leaders of the UWSA themselves, who narcotics experts outside Myanmar say have diversified into mass-production of methamphetamines now flooding into Thailand, said their anti-drug pledge should be taken at face value and supported financially by the international community.

Burma could seek nuclear weaponsrecent policy changes increase the risk

Prolif Possible

Selth, 7

(Andrew, Research Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, Burma and Nuclear Proliferation: Policies and perceptions, Regional Outlook Paper No. 12, 2007, www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/18240/regional-outlook-volume-12.pdf)

Before 2000, the idea that Burma might one day become a nuclear power was considered fanciful.
Indeed, so unlikely was it seen to be that major military institutions in two Western countries used such a scenario as the basis for classroom training exercises. As a test of strategic analytical skills, these institutions asked their students military officers and civilians from a wide range of countries to consider the implications of Burma, supplied with nuclear

weapons and ballistic missiles by another pariah state, precipitating an international crisis. In one case, the threat was

immediate, with the notional nuclear-armed missiles aimed at a neighbouring country allied with the United States (US). In the other case the threat was less direct, and formed the basis of an attempt by Burmas military government to exercise leverage over other countries, mainly through the United Nations (UN). In both exercises, the students were asked to assess the dangers posed by Burmas actions and to consider how the international community might respond. After 2000, however, these fictional

scenarios seemed to be coming true. That year, Burma announced that it planned to purchase a nuclear reactor from Russia. Given Burmas instability and low level of technical development, this was itself a cause for concern. When the Russian deal appeared to break down in 2003, there were fears that Burma had turned to North Korea to acquire nuclear technology and possibly also nuclear weapons. At the same time there was

speculation that, even if Burma did not want its own nuclear weapons, it could be enlisted to support North Koreas nuclear p rogram and perhaps even to hide a few North Korean weapons from the US and international monitoring agencies. These stories, which were given wide circulation in the news media, followed reports that the Rangoon regime was trying to purchase some ballistic missiles from Pyongyang. The Burmese government strongly denied that it was seeking to acquire any strategic weapon systems, but suspicions clearly remain. As with so many issues relating to Burmas security, and security policies, the real picture is

difficult to discover and interpret. There is very little hard, verifiable information available to test perceptions, and to put the rumours and sensationalist press reporting into a clear perspective. This problem is compounded by the highly charged atmosphere that often surrounds consideration of Burma-related issues. The public its possible interest in acquiring nuclear weapons (and the missiles to deliver them) all demand careful and objective analysis. For, if the news reports are true and Burma does indeed pose a nuclear proliferation risk, there would appear to be little that the international community can do to dissuade Burmas military leadership from its present course. Burma is seeking nuclear weapons now

debate tends to be dominated by Burmese expatriates, foreign activists and specialist academics, many of who have strong personal views and specific policy agendas. Yet Burmas approach to global disarmament, its plans for a research reactor and

Green & Mitchell, 7

(Michael Green is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Senior Adviser and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Derek Mitchell is a Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Strategy at CSIS, Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec) Worse, the SPDC appears to have been taking an even more threatening turn recently. Western

intelligence officials have suspected for several years that the regime has had an interest in following the model of North Korea and achieving military autarky by developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Last spring, the junta normalized relations and initiated conventional weapons trade with North Korea in violation of UN sanctions against Pyongyang. And despite Burma's ample reserves of oil and gas, it signed an agreement with Russia to develop what it says will be peaceful nuclear capabilities. For these reasons, despite urgent problems elsewhere in the world, all responsible members of the international community should be concerned about the course Burma is taking.

Burmese drug trade causes deforestation and destroys biodiversity

Huang, 98 (Cheng-Chia, American University Trade and Environment Database, TED Case Studies, Vol. 8 No. 1, http://www.american.edu/ted/opium.htm) Other environmental problems include deforestation and pollution. In order

Impact BioD

to satisfy the huge demand for heroin in the world, Burma has increasingly cut its forests year by year. The deforestation has resulted in soil erosion, wildlife loss, and will also increase global temperature. Moreover, the process of opium into heroin did a serious ecological destruction in the Burma border. For example, it has been found that rivers across the Burma border carried many chemical elements and soil resulting from dumping of chemicals and deforestation. It is estimated that there were 870 bird species and 263 mammals, including 94 species of bats in the Burma border, particularly the Shan State. Recently, the number of species are decreasing because of deforestation.
For example, the tiger population is estimated to be fewer than 500. Species closer to extinction include the Thai crocodile, the mouse deer and the Kouprey, a large herbivore similar to the elk, of which fewer than 200 remain. [3] The Sarus crane, another native in this area, has not been sighted for 20 years. [4] Therefore, forest destruction has by no means been the sole cause of wildlife loss in the Shan State.

Its a key biodiversity hotspot

Conservation International, 7

(Biodiversity Hotspots: Indo-Burma, http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/hotspots/indo_burma/Pages/default.aspx) Encompassing more than 2 million km of tropical Asia, Indo-Burma is still revealing its biological treasures.

Six large mammal species have been discovered in the last 12 years: the large-antlered muntjac, the Annamite muntjac, the grey-shanked douc, the Annamite striped rabbit, the leaf deer, and the saola. This hotspot also holds remarkable endemism in freshwater turtle species, most of which are threatened with extinction, due to overharvesting and extensive habitat loss. Bird life in Indo-Burma is also incredibly diverse, holding almost 1,300 different bird species, including the threatened white-eared night-heron, the grey-crowned crocias, and the orange-necked
partridge.

Deforestation causes extinction Watson, 6

(Captain Paul, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has a show on Animal Planet, Last Mod 9-17, http://www.eco-action.org/dt/beerswil.html) The facts are clear. More plant and animal species will go through extinction within our generation than have been lost thorough natural causes over the past two hundred million years. Our single human generation, that is, all people born between 1930 and 2010 will witness the complete obliteration of one third to one half of all the Earth's life forms, each and every one of them the product of more than two billion years of evolution. This is biological meltdown, and what this really means is the

end to vertebrate evolution on planet Earth. Nature is under siege on a global scale. Biotopes, i.e., environmentally

distinct regions, from tropical and temperate rainforests to coral reefs and coastal estuaries, are disintegrating in the wake of human onslaught. The destruction of forests and the proliferation of human activity will remove more than 20 percent of all terrestrial plant species over the next fifty years. Because plants form the foundation for entire biotic communities, their

demise will carry with it the extinction of an exponentially greater number of animal species -perhaps ten times as many faunal species for each type of plant eliminated. Sixty-five million years ago, a natural cataclysmic
event resulted in extinction of the dinosaurs. Even with a plant foundation intact, it took more than 100,000 years for faunal biological diversity to re-establish itself. More importantly, the resurrection of biological diversity assumes an intact zone of tropical forests to provide for new speciation after extinction. Today, the tropical rain forests are disappearing more rapidly

after the age of humans, the Earth will remain a biological, if not a literal desert for eons to come. The present course of civilization points to ecocide -- the death of nature. Like a run-athan any other bio-region, ensuring that

way train, civilization is speeding along tracks of our own manufacture towards the stone wall of extinction. The human passengers sitting comfortably in their seats, laughing, partying, and choosing to not look out the window. Environmentalists are those perceptive few who have their faces pressed against the glass, watching the hurling bodies of plants and animals go screaming by. Environmental activists are those even fewer people who are trying desperately to break into the fortified engine of greed that propels this destructive specicidal juggernaut. Others are desperately throwing out anchors in an attempt to slow the monster down while all the while, the authorities, blind to their own impending destruction, are clubbing, shooting and jailing those who would save us all. SHORT MEMORIES Civilized humans have for ten thousand years been marching across the face of the Earth leaving deserts in their footprints. Because we have such short memories, we forgot the wonder and splendor of a virgin nature. We revise history and make it fit into our present perceptions. For instance, are you aware that only two thousand years ago, the coast of North

Africa was a mighty forest? The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians built powerful ships from the strong timbers of the region. Rome was a major exporter of timber to Europe. The temple of Jerusalem was built with titanic cedar logs, one image of which adorns the flag of Lebanon today. Jesus Christ did not live in a desert, he was a man of the forest. The Sumerians were renowned for clearing the forests of Mesopotamia for agriculture. But the destruction of the coastal swath of the North African forest stopped the rain from advancing into the interior. Without the rain, the trees died and thus was born the mighty Sahara, sired by man and continued to grow southward at a rate of ten miles per year, advancing down the length of the continent of Africa. And so will go Brazil. The precipitation off the Atlantic strikes the coastal rain forest and is absorbed and sent skyward again by the trees, falling further into the interior. Twelve times the moisture falls and twelve times it is returned to the sky -- all the way to the Andes mountains. Destroy the coastal swath and desertify Amazonia -- it is as simple as that. Create a swath anywhere between the coast and the mountains and the rains will be stopped. We did it before while relatively primitive. We learned nothing. We forgot. So too, have we forgotten that walrus once mated and bred along the coast of Nova Scotia, that sixty million bison once roamed the North American plains. One hundred years ago, the white bear once roamed the forests of New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces. Now it is called the polar bear because that is where it now makes its last stand. EXTINCTION IS DIFFICULT TO APPRECIATE Gone forever are the European elephant, lion and tiger. The Labrador duck, gint auk, Carolina parakeet will never again grace this planet of ours. Lost for all time are the Atlantic grey whales, the Biscayan right whales and the Stellar sea cow. Our children will never look upon the California condor in the wild or watch the Palos Verde blue butterfly dart from flower to flower. Extinction is a difficult concept to fully appreciate. What has been is no more and never shall be again. It would take another creation and billions of years to recreate the passenger pigeon. It is the loss of billions of years of evolutionary programming. It is the destruction of beauty, the obliteration of truth, the removal of uniqueness, the scarring of the sacred web of life To be responsible for an extinction is to commit blasphemy against the divine. It is the greatest of all possible crimes, more evil than murder, more

appalling than genocide, more monstrous than even the apparent unlimited perversities of the human mind. To be

responsible for the complete and utter destruction of a unique and sacred life form is arrogance that seethes with evil, for the very opposite of evil is live. It is no accident that these two words spell out each other in reverse. And yet, a reporter in California recently told me that "all the redwoods in California are not worth the life on one human being." What incredible arrogance. The rights a species, any species, must take precedence over the life of an individual or another species. This is a basic ecological law. It is not to be tampered with by primates who have molded themselves into divine legends in their own mind. For each and every one of the thirty million plus species that grace this beautiful planet are essential for the continued well-being of which we are all a part, the planet Earth -- the divine entity which brought us forth from the fertility of her sacred womb. As a sea-captain I like to compare the structural integrity of the biosphere to that of a ship's hull. Each species is a rivet that keeps the hull intact. If I were to go into my engine room and find my engineers busily popping rivets from the hull, I would be upset and naturally I would ask them what they were doing. If they told me that they discovered that they could make a dollar each from the rivets, I could do one of three things. I could ignore them. I could ask them to cut me in for a share of the profits, or I could kick their asses out of the engine room and off my ship. If I was a responsible captain, I would do the latter. If I did not, I would soon find the ocean pouring through the holes left by the stolen rivets and very shortly after, my ship, my crew and myself would disappear beneath the waves. And that is the state of the world today. The political leaders, i.e., the captains at the helms of their nation states, are ignoring the rivet poppers or they are cutting themselves in for the profits. There are very few asses being kicked out of the engine room of spaceship Earth. With the

rivet poppers in command, it will not be long until the biospheric integrity of the Earth collapses under the weight of ecological strain and tides of death come pouring in. And that will be the price of
progress -- ecological collapse, the death of nature, and with it the horrendous and mind numbing specter of massive human destruction.

*Uniqueness*

Cocaine Solved now

Pannunzis arrest dramatically solves the cocaine issue the most powerful drug broker in the world! Nine News, 7/6/13 global news network ('World's biggest cocaine dealer' deported
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2013/07/06/14/24/italian-mafia-boss-caught-in-colombia) // czhang Roberto Pannunzi was detained in Bogota with a fake Venezuelan identity card in a joint operation

by Colombian police together with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). "He is the biggest cocaine importer in the world," said Nicola Gratteri, deputy chief prosecutor in Reggio Calabria in southern Italy. "He is the only one who can organise purchases and sales of cocaine shipments of 3000 kilos and up." "Pannunzi is the only one who can sell both to the 'Ndrangheta and to Cosa Nostra. He is definitely the most powerful drug broker in the world," he said. The 'Ndrangheta is based in Calabria and is a major player in international drug trafficking. The Sicilian mafia is known as Cosa Nostra. Gratteri said Pannunzi was being be a lynchpin between the Medellin drug cartel and the 'Ndrangheta.

deported since "an extradition order would have taken several months". He is expected to land at Rome's Fiumicino airport later on Saturday. In April, Colombia captured another suspected top mafioso, Domenico Trimboli, alleged to

Columbia Drugs Low

Columbia cracking down now Gallahue, 12 (Patrick, contributor to the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, B.A. in East Asian Studies from Long Island University, LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Narco-Terror: Conflating the Wars on Drugs and Terror, University of Essex, 2012, http://projects.essex.ac.uk/ehrr/V8N1/Gallahue.pdf, JKahn) If Afghanistan represents an attempt to incorporate the war on drugs into an ongoing armed conflict, then Colombia moved in the opposite direction . The Colombian government recast its internal armed conflict (with armed groups who profited from the drug trade) as a war on terror . In fact, lvaro Uribe, President from 2002 to 2010, denied the existence of an armed conflict at all in his country, instead referring to the crisis as a matter of terrorism.82 As the emphasis shifted from armed conflict to terrorism, 83 President Uribe put drug control under the purview of the military and Plan Colombia a multi-billion dollar anti-drug aid package from the United States branched out from counter-narcotics to embrace counter-terrorism: After the 9/11 attacks the US, for the first time, allowed the Colombian government to use all past and present counterdrug aid to wage war against the insurgents. Colombian guerrilla groups and paramilitaries alike were being referred to in the same breath as international terrorist organisations linked to Al Qaeda.

Demand Inevitable
Demand for drugs is inevitably going to be high and global Carpenter, 9 vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books, including Bad Neighbor Policy: Washingtons Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (Ted Galen, Troubled Neighbor: Mexicos Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States February 2, 2009

Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/troubled-neighbor-mexicos-drug-violence-poses-threat-unitedstates) // czhang Drug warriors in both Mexico and the United States repeatedly rationalize unpleasant revelations regarding corruption. For example, when No Ramrez was arrested, Thomas Schweich, former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, stated: I find the whole situation encouraging. If you are a corrupt official, you are no longer immune to prosecution no matter how high up you are. It shows a lot of political will on the part of Caldern. 61 The bizarre logic that the worse things get, the better they really are is not confined to the corruption issue; it extends to the surging violence as well. A recent article in the Economist noted that at least 4,000 people had been murdered in 2008 in incidents involving traffickers. Officials say that is a sign that government pressure [on the drug gangs] is having an effect. 62 The reality is that bad developments are usually just bad developments, and they point surprising that supply-side

to a deterioratingnot an improvingsituation. It is not antidrug initiatives have failed in Colombia and other countries and are now failing in Mexico. The global trade in illegal drugs is a vast, extremely lucrative enterprise,
estimated at $320 billion a year, with Mexicos share of that trade generally thought to be about $2535 billion. 63 The

United States is the largest single retail market, but U.S. demand is not the only relevant factor.
The American market is actually relatively mature, with overall consumption not substantially different from what it was a decade or two decades ago. The main areas of demand growth are in Eastern Europe, the successor states of

the former Soviet Union, and some portions of the Middle East and Latin America. According to
the United Nations, there has been a noticeable increase in the consumption of opiates throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, especially the former Soviet states. In Western Europe, the principal increase has been in the use of

cocaine. 64 In the Middle East, even such a politically authoritarian and religiously conservative society as Iran is witnessing a surge in both drug trafficking and drug use, especially of heroin. That problem has is robust and is likely to remain so.

reached the point that the Supreme Leaders representative in one province has labeled drug abuse and trafficking to be the Iranian societys thorniest problem. 65 The bottom line is that the demand for illegal drugs on a global basis

Victory impossible high consumer demand and empirical proof Carpenter, 9 vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books, including
Bad Neighbor Policy: Washingtons Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (Ted Galen, Troubled Neighbor: Mexicos Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States February 2, 2009 Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/troubledneighbor-mexicos-drug-violence-poses-threat-united-states) // czhang Robust Consumer Demand Makes Victory Impossible That sobering reality has ominous implications for the

strategy that advocates of a war on drugs continue to push. Their strategy has long had two major components. The first is to shut off the flow of drugs coming from drug-source countries, through

various methods of drug crop eradication, developmental aid to promote alternative economic opportunities, interdiction of drug shipments, and suppression of money-laundering activities. The second component is to significantly reduce

demand in the United States through a combination of criminal sanctions, drug treatment programs, and anti-drug educational campaigns. At best, efforts at domestic demand reduction have achieved only modest results, and the supply-side campaign has been even less effective. Moreover, with global demand continuing to increase, even if drug warriors succeeded in their goal of more substantially reducing consumption in the United States, it would have little adverse impact on trafficking organizations. There is more than enough demand globally to attract and sustain traffickers who are
willing to take the risks to satisfy that demand. And since the illegality of the trade creates a huge black market premium (depending on the drug, 90 percent or more of the retail price), the potential profits to drug trafficking

organizations are huge. 66 Thus, the supply-side strategy attempts to defy the basic laws of economics, with predictable results. It is a fatally flawed strategy, and Washingtons insistence on continuing it causes serious problems of corruption and violence for a key drug-source and drug-transiting country such as Mexico. Thus, the notion that the solution to the violence in Mexico is to win the war on drugs is as much a chimera as the

other two so-called solutions. Given the healthy state of global demand, there impact.

is no prospect of endingor even substantially reducingthe trade in illegal drugs. There is only one policy change that would have a meaningful

Heroin High Now

Columbian heroin production high now --- they dominate the U.S. market Forero, 3 (Juan, and Tim Weiner, Latin American Poppy Fields Undermine U.S. Drug Battle, The New York Times, 6/8/03,
proquest, Tashma)

After steadily expanding its market in recent years, white Colombian heroin now dominates east of the Mississippi ; brown Mexican heroin rules to the west. The pattern signals an alliance between Colombian and Mexican traffickers, one American official said. With improving purity and lower costs has come increasing use. The number of hard-core users in the United States rose to nearly a million last year, from 600,000 a decade ago, said the Drug Enforcement Administration. In New York
State, 32,000 people were admitted to state-licensed drug treatment centers for heroin addictions last year, up from 29,000 in 1997. The government's National Household Survey on Drug Abuse also determined that the number of 18- to 25-year-olds who had used heroin in the last month rose to 67,000 in 2001 from 26,000 in 2000, which some experts say shows more young people are

finding the new, high-power heroin more palatable. A peasant in San Roque, Colombia, harvests poppies to refine into heroin, a drug that is finding a new class of users in the United States. (Marcelo Salinas for The New York Times)(pg. 1); An extract from poppy buttons, which are increasingly cultivated in Latin America from Peru to Mexico, is the basic ingredient for heroin.; In the Colombian province of Tolima, [Fernay Lugo], 29, harvested poppies for a heroin industry that sends most of its product to the United States. (Photographs by Marcelo Salinas for The New York Times)(pg. 16)

Myanmar Drugs High

Myanmars drug trade is at the highest volume in years AP, 3/25/13, (Associated Press, published in Indian Express, Rising drug trade threatens Myanmar's aspirations,
3/25/2013, Indian Express, Proquest, JKahn) Deep in the lawless mountains of the Golden Triangle, sloping

fields of illegal poppies have just been scraped dry for opium . This is the peak season for producing drugs here, and in Myanmar's nascent era of democratic change, the haul has only gotten bigger. Opium, its derivative heroin and methamphetamines are surging across Myanmar's borders in quantities that the United Nations and police in neighboring countries say are the highest levels in years . Two years after replacing a long-ruling military junta, the civilian government is still struggling to get a
foothold in its war against drugs. The trade is centered in a remote, impoverished area where the government has little control and where ethnic armies have waged civil wars for decades wars financed with drug money. The Associated Press was granted rare access to Myanmar's drug-producing hub in the vast, jungle-clad mountain region of northeastern Shan state, deep in a cease-fire zone that was closed to foreigners for decades. It's a land dotted with makeshift methamphetamine labs and tiny, poor villages where growing opium is the only real industry. The trip was part of a U.N. mission allowed only under armed police escort. President Thein Sein has signed cease-fire agreements with a patchwork of rebel groups in the region, but the

peace is extremely fragile and sporadic fighting continues . Cracking down on drug syndicates or arresting poor opium

farmers risks alienating the ethnic groups he is courting for peace talks. "To stop the drug problem, we need peace. And that is what the government is trying to achieve now,'' said police Col. Myint Thein, head of the Central Committee for Drug Abuse and Control, which controls the country's drugpolicy. "But that is just one of so many challenges. This is a very difficult task. It will take time.'' Foreign aid that could help combat drugs is just beginning to trickle back into the area, which is rife with corruption. But the

toughest task may be transforming the destitute rural economy, filled with poor farmers who view growing opium

as the best way to provide for their families. Dozens of those farmers live in Thon Min Yar, a village in southern Shan state that is far in every sense fromMyanmar's postcard-perfect pagodas and colonial relics. So obscure it does not appear on maps, it is an image of dirt-road squalor and government neglect. Its 73 bamboo huts have no electricity or running water. Its people have no access to health care, no job prospects, not enough food and no aspirations other than survival. Toddlers and teens get a one-sized-fits-all education in a one-room schoolhouse. Almost everyone in Thon Min Yar is an opium farmer. My father and my grandfather grew opium. I have no other way to make money,'' said 28-year-old Peter Ar Loo, a father of two. He does not smoke opium, but sometimes he envies the life of an addict. They seem more carefree, he said. But he added, "Using opium only benefits one person. Selling it helps my whole family.'' Opium farmers like Ar Loo are not the people getting rich from the drug trade. They are among the poorest people in one of the world's least-developed countries. In a good year, Ar Loo makes about $1,000 from an acre-sized field of poppies. That doesn't include business expenses which he calls ``paying respects'' _ a roughly 15 percent opium tax doled out to local authorities who turn a blind eye in exchange. Police control the towns, government soldiers patrol the roads and ethnic armies rule the mountains. All of them get a cut. "We give to the Shan militia, the police and the army,'' Ar Loo said. There is a law that bans growing opium poppies, but he said no one in his village has ever been arrested. ``We get permission from the local authorities, explaining that we need to do this to feed our children.'' The government says it wants farmers to grow corn and other legal crops, but many poppy farmers say the terrible mountain roads mean getting legal crops to market is almost impossible. Opium is different: The buyers come straight to your fields. Ar Loo's poppy field is a 30-mile trek into the jungle, an inconvenient location he chose after police launched an anti-narcotics campaign a year ago and warned farmers to switch to legal crops _ or face arrest. "The farmers are just finding fields deeper in the mountains,'' shrugged Ar War, chief of a nearby community called Yar Thar Yar, or Beautiful View Village. Pointing at mist-shrouded jungles controlled by ethnic armies, he added, ``It's harder for police to find them there.'' And even with the campaign, part of the central government's new anti-narcotics effort, police may not be looking that hard. The payoffs continue. The Golden Triangle is defined by the area where Shan state meets the borders of Thailand and Laos. It was the world's top opium-growing region for years, but in the 1990s, Afghanistan became the top producer and drug syndicates here began

focusing more on methamphetamines. Now heroin and methamphetamines are both on the rise. In Thailand, authorities last year seized a record 82.2 million

methamphetamine tablets, a 66 percent increase from the year before. "These drugs are not produced in Thailand. They are from Myanmar,'' said Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubumrung, who has vocally called on Myanmar to step up its policing efforts. `` If Myanmar cooperates, that's the end of the drug story . It's better than it used to be, but still far from perfect.'' Authorities in Singapore, Laos and elsewhere in Southeast Asia also reported record hauls that the U.N. says are predominantly from Myanmar. Myanmar's poppy cultivation, meanwhile, has more than doubled since 2006, according to the U.N. Office on Drugsand Crime. Myanmar produced an estimated 690 tons of opium in 2012, a 17 percent jump from the year before. No one can say for sure what is driving the overall increase in Myanmar's drug production, but Ar Loo, who doubled his poppy production last year, said his motivation was inflation. "Food prices are going up. Gasoline is more expensive,'' he said. ``If the military or police force us to stop immediately, there will be problems. Because people will not have enough to eat.'' Experts offer other explanations _ notably that cash-strapped ethnic armies are planning for the future. Many rebels are resisting a government demand to form a joint patrol force with the army by 2015 but need more strength and leverage at the negotiating table. "It's an uneasy cease-fire, and most of the groups are jostling to be in a better bargaining position,'' said Leik Boonwaat, the UNODC deputy

regional director for East Asia and the Pacific. "In order to be in a better bargaining position, you need money, you need more soldiers, and the best way to do that is drugs.'' Drugs could also offer traffickers a path to greater riches once trade barriers are lifted. Thailand's intelligence indicates that the rebel-controlled drug syndicates are planning for when 10 Southeast Asian countries lift tradebarriers to become a single market in 2015." In 2015, these drug dealers will want to invest in legitimate businesses. So right now they are trying to boost their capital, and pumping out large amounts of drugs can help them achieve their goal,'' said Narong Rattananugul, acting head of Thailand's Office of Narcotics Control Board. Most of Myanmar's drugs are trafficked through its porous 1,100-kilometer (680-mile) border with Thailand. Narong said his country seizes drugs almost daily and added, "The

problem cannot really be solved.'' The drugs that exit the Golden Triangle ripple across all of Asia, which is why Myanmar is seeking the world's help. "This is not just Myanmar's concern. The whole international community should cooperate in eliminating the drug problem,'' said Myint Thein, the anti-drug official. ``We cannot afford it alone.''

Foreign funding has been trickling back into the country, now that most sanctions imposed during military rule have been lifted. The United States just reactivated a poppy yield survey in Shan state that was discontinued in 2004. The European Union and Germany have contributed $7 million for U.N. anti-drug projects over the next two years. But that is a tiny fraction of the money needed. Earlier this month, Myanmar sent a high-level delegation to the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna for the first time to highlight the link between drugs, poverty and conflict, and to ask for financial help. In October, Myanmar quietly revised a deadline the ex-junta set in 1999 to wipe out illicit drugs by 2014. It changed the date to 2019 and set a more realistic target. "Our objective is to reduce opium poppy cultivation as much as we can.'' said Myint Thein. There is no country where you have zero drugs.'' For years, soldiers with sickles were sent to destroy poppy crops, which was easy but ineffective. The government now realizes

eradication

doesn't work ,'' said Jason Eligh, the UNODC representative in Myanmar who is leading a U.N. pilot project to help farmers switch to legal crops. ``The government is starting to understand the value in admitting mistakes and admitting failure. These are small steps, but this is progress.'' After being unable to access the drug-and-conflict zone for decades, the U.N. agency was allowed to enter southern Shan state for the first time in January 2012. The breakthrough came a month after the government signed cease-fire agreements with different factions of the Shan State Army. Convincing farmers to try planting new crops is one of many challenges ahead, Eligh says. The farmers don't just want to eat. They need to make money,'' he said, adding that the government needs to offer farmers a path to a better life, with better roads, new schools and health centers and, most of all, peace and security. "A process has begun. Will a process continue? I don't know,'' said Eligh. "These are groups that have been killing each other for decades. We've only been talking a few months. I would say this is a fragile relationship.'' Eligh's pilot project has already persuaded some farmers to switch, but they may end up switching right back. A middle-aged farmer named Awa Wadaa grew opium for 20 years and was pulling in $3,500 a year in the five-month poppy season when the U.N. offered him a way out. In 2012, he worked year-round rotating crops of corn, potatoes and sunflowers, and earned just $500. "I don't want to grow poppies. I understand it is illegal and that drugs hurt our children,'' Awa Wadaa said. But the father of five added that without his poppy-farming income, he can't afford to keep his children in school. "If I can't find a way to make more money,'' he said, "I will definitely go back to growing poppies.''

NarcoTerror now
Narcoterrorism is at an all time high thefts of explosives, failed government attempts Thompson, 10 writer for Open Democracy, an online magazine discussing the importance of human rights and democracy (Barnard R. Thompson, The Mexican Drug War: Is it "Narcoterrorism?" Aug 17 2010
http://www.opendemocracy.net/barnard-r-thompson/mexican-drug-war-is-it-narcoterrorism) // czhang While the Mexican government has done all it can to impart an encouraging national image abroad, and to

keep the struggle against drug cartels, organized crime and other perpetrators of violence from being categorized as a war versus terrorism, said efforts would seem to have gone up in smoke. This insofar as car bombings by drug that have reached record levels. Details on the most recent car bombing, which took place in Ciudad Victoria,

lords, their henchmen or others, like the two that have been committed in recent weeks, are hard to depict as anything less than terrorism. Especially when coupled with Mexico's broader narcoterrorist violence, mayhem and deaths Tamaulipas, on August 5, at this writing have yet to be determined or made public, albeit for a police bulletin and news reports that for the most part included information from the preliminary police report. Yet the explosion that destroyed one vehicle, and damaged two adjacent patrol cars parked in a state police compound fortunately with no harm to police or bystanders, is being ascribed by authorities to a coche-bomba, a car bomb. The July 15 car bombing in Ciudad Jurez, Chihuahua, that shares the border with El Paso, Texas, was far more publicized and sensationalized, this of course because of where it occurred and due to the fact that it targeted federal police, killed three people and wounded nine. Plus it was said to be the first car bombing against Mexican security forces in their fight against drug lords and narcotraffickers. With respect to the car bombing count, the fact is since 1992 there

have been at least five "vehicle born improvised explosive devices" that exploded, three of which appeared to be part of cartel infighting that unsuccessfully targeted Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garca, a drug kingpin of the Sinaloa Cartel. The others, one in Chiapas and another in Acapulco, Guerrero, against nearby
quasi-government and military installations, were thought to be by small guerrilla groups for supposed social causes. Blame for the July 15, 2010 attack has been attributed to hit men for the Jurez Cartel, with the bomb reportedly triggered by means of a cell phone. And the explosives are thought to have been Tovex, not C-4 as reported by some. Regarding C-4 plastic explosives, spokesmen for the office of Mexico's Attorney General were adamant that it was not used. This maybe based on evidence, but too with a dose of political sensitivity related to the possibility that military-type plastic explosives, those often Tovex is a water gel explosive that has replaced dynamite almost entirely in mining, construction, oil seismic exploration, and a number of other industrial uses. And over the past decade there have been several known thefts of Tovex in Mexico. [1] Fingers

associated with terrorist bombings, covert actions and foreign intrigue, were utilized in Mexico. in most of the theft cases of the aforementioned industrial use explosives have been pointed at so-called Mexican insurgents, especially those associated with the small Popular Revolutionary Army, the EPR, and its splinter groups. Said explosives were apparently those used by the EPR in well publicized bombings of

central Mexico's natural gas pipelines in 2007. Writing on the issue in 2007, I reported: "The explosives used, which are apparently in the hands of EPR associates, were stolen in two known robberies of mining and construction firms, the first in San Luis Potos in 2003, and the second in Oaxaca in 2006. According to Mexicos Office of the Attorney General (PGR), approximately 1,900 of the stolen 'RXL-788 emulsion explosive' devices are in the hands of two EPR splinter groups, the Comando Jaramillista Morelense 23 de Mayo, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP)."[2] Yet with the stolen devices, organized crime and

drug lords too may be and/or have been involved. Furthermore, this is to say nothing of other explosives quite

possibly acquired since, by hook or by crook. Any of which may be in use today and no matter what, in the hearts and minds of people their use is terrifying. And yes today it is "narcoterrorism."

SE Asia Drugs High

The overall trends suggest production is on the rise Fuller, 09 (Thomas, New York Times and International Herald Tribune Correspondent for Southeast Asia, UN reports
released Monday, the Myanmar's output of opium is up, International Herald Tribune, 2/3/2009, Proquest, JKahn) Opium poppy cultivation inched up by 3 percent last year in Myanmar, according to a United Nations report

second consecutive annual increase that appears to signal a reversal of years of declining opium production in the so-called Golden Triangle. "Containment of the problem is under threat," Gary Lewis, the representative for East Asia of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said at a news conference Monday. "Opium prices are rising in this region," he said. "It's going to be an incentive for farmers to plant more." The Golden Triangle,
the area where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet, once produced two-thirds ofthe world's opium, most of it refined into heroin. But pressure by the Chinese government to eradicate opium in Myanmar helped lead to steep declines, with a low point of 21,500 hectares, or 53,000 acres, of poppies planted in Myanmar in 2006. Since then, opium cultivation has bounced back by around 33 percent, to 28,500 hectares last year. UN officials warn that the global economic crisis may fuel an increase in poppy production because falling prices for other crops may persuade farmers to switch to opium. Leik Boonwaat, the representative in Laos for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said corn prices had fallen by half over the past year. The price of opium, by contrast, has increased 26 percent in Laos and 15 percent in Myanmar over the same period. Farmers in the isolated highlands of the Golden Triangle are also hampered by bad roads and difficulties getting their crops to market. They often find

that small parcels of opium are easier to carry across the rough terrain. Although opium is still grown in parts of Laos,

Vietnam and Thailand, UN officials say about 94 percent of the region's opium comes from Myanmar. Most of the Golden Triangle heroin is sold within the region, Boonwaat said, but small amounts also reach the United States and Australia. Recent seizures of heroin thought to come from the Golden Triangle have been made on the Thai resort island of Phuket in Ho Chi Minh City and Yangon, Myanmar's commercial capital.

The alarming spread of HIV by heroin users in southern China

several years ago persuaded the authorities to crack down on opium and heroin trafficking. Western intelligence officials say Chinese spies are active in anti-narcotics operations in Myanmar, especially in northern areas where central government control is weak. "There's strong collaboration with Chinese intelligence," Boonwaat said. The UN report on opium poppy cultivation is based on surveys taken from helicopters and on the ground. The United States relies more heavily on satellite images to calculate opium cultivation, and its reports are sometimes at odds with those of the United Nations. The UN report did not cover methamphetamine production and distribution, which among some criminal syndicates has displaced opium and heroin in the region. In Thailand, methamphetamines remain a problem, but longstanding efforts by the royal family to substitute vegetable, coffee and macadamia nut production for opium have virtually wiped out opium production among the northern hill tribes. Afghanistan remains the world's premier source of opium, producing more than

90 percent of global supply . Afghan soil is also remarkably more fertile than the rocky, unirrigated opium fields in the Golden Triangle. The UN estimates in its 2008 report that one hectare of land yielded an average of 14.4 kilograms, or 31.7 pounds, of opium in Myanmar but 48.8 kilograms in Afghanistan. Military intervention has restarted drug violence Hindustan, 07 (The Hindustan Times, an HT Syndacate, Indo-Asian News Service affiliate, Instability fuels comeback
opium poppies in Myanmar, The Hindustan Times, 10/11/2007, Proquest, JKahn) Bangkok, Oct. 11 -- Instability, poor law enforcement and corruption

have paved the way for a 29-percent jump in opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar this year, UN experts said Thursday. After six years of successive decline

in production, opium cultivation rose this year to 27,700 hectares with yield estimated at 460 tonnes, up 46 percent compared with 2006 figures, according to the 2007 opium poppy survey by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The lion's share of the illicit crop was being grown in the southern part of Shan State, which borders Thailand. This year, opium production has increased

in both Myanmar and Thailand, two nations in the so-called Golden Triangle, but it declined 40 percent in

Laos, the triangle's third country, where the international aid community is pouring in money for crop-substitution programmes. Although the region's total output accounts for a mere five percent of the world's total and is dwarfed by Afghanistan's crop, experts said they are worried by the upward trend, especially as the increased production is taking place in Myanmar's most unstable region. "The opium-producing area is focused now in the south Shan State, where sometimes it's hard to know who controls what," said Shariq Bin Raza, the UN office's Myanmar country official. South Shan State, situated just east of the ruling junta's new capital in Naypyidaw, 350 km north of Yangon, is a patchwork of armed ethnic groups, many of which have "returned to the government fold" after signing ceasefires with the junta. "In this particular area, you also have government troops," said Xavier Bouan, the

regional illicit crop-monitoring expert for the UN agency. There have been persistent reports of collusion between Myanmar's military regime and the crime organizations controlling both the opium and much larger methamphetamine trade in the country's much-contested northeastern region. "It's a combination of corruption,

law enforcement, border control, ... any weaknesses in those areas that contribute to an increase in opium cultivation," Raza said in Bangkok. The increase has also been driven by a doubling of opium prices in neighbouring Thailand and Laos, where opiumnow fetches about 1,000 dollars per kg. Thailand's opium cultivation, although small compared with Myanmar's, shot up 31 percent this year. The increase was blamed primarily on lax law enforcement in the aftermath of the excesses of the "war on drugs" launched by the previous government of deposed premier Thaksin Shinawatra. As a result of Thaksin's war, which left 2,500 people dead from extra-judicial slayings, opium cultivation in northern Thailand declined from 800 hectares to less than 100, said Pipop Chamnirkaipong, director of the narcotics crop survey institute under Thailand's office of narcotics control board. Thaksin was overthrown by a military coup last year and is now under investigation for human rights abuses committed in his war on drugs. "It seems the new government doesn't care or doesn't direct its eye on the problem of opium because it is quite recent," Pipop said. "There are now some teenagers who have gone back to their homes and try to grow opium." He noted that opium cultivation was occurring mainly in the remote Um Koi district of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, and a government eradication programme was already under way in the area.

SE Asia Drugs Low

The Golden Triangle is a thing of the past Southeast Asia is moving away from drug cultivation Fuller, 07 (Thomas, Southeast Asia Correspondent for The New York Times, No Blowing Smoke: Poppies Fade in Southeast
Asia:, 9/16/2007, New York Times, Proquest, JKahn) THE enduring image of Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle is of brightly hill tribes and

colored poppy fields, opium-smoking heroin labs hidden in the jungle. But the reality is that after years of producing the lion's share of the world's opium, the Golden Triangle is now only a bit player in the global heroin trade. "The mystique may remain,
and the geography will be celebrated in the future by novelists," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. "But from our vantage point, we

see a region that is rapidly moving toward an opium-free status ." The decline of the Golden Triangle is a major , if little noticed, milestone in the war on drugs. The question now is whether that success can be sustained. Three decades ago, the northernmost reaches of Laos,
Thailand and Myanmar produced more than 70 percent of all the opium sold worldwide, most of which was refined into heroin. Today the area produces about 5 percent of the world total, says Mr. Costa's agency. What happened? Economic pressure

from China, crackdowns on opium farmers , and a switch by criminal syndicates to methamphetamine production, appear to have had the biggest impact. At the same time, some insurgent groups that once were financed with drug money now say they are urging farmers to eradicate their poppy fields. Shan rebels have cracked down production is decreasing Asia News Monitor, 12 (citing Myanmar authorities, Myanmar (Burma): Myanmar claims progress on fighting drugs,
7/12/2012, Asia News, Monitor, Proquest, JKahn)

Myanmar authorities on Monday hailed progress in their war on drugs after an unprecedented multi-million dollar seizure at an narcotics factory in eastern Shan state, the Bangkok Post reports. Suspects lined up behind drugs and drug making equipment in Laukkai. Police detained nine suspects with 73 kilograms (161 pounds) of "ice" crystal methamphetamine and 274 kilos of liquid meth along with drug-making equipment and a pistol during a raid on a house in Laukkai on July 9, state media reported. Officials said the haul was worth an estimated $3.7 million. " It's our biggest ice seizure in history. It's a part of our crackdown on the chemical ingredients and factories," a senior official at the home affairs ministry, who did not want to be named, told AFP. Synthetic drug production and poppy cultivation for opium is prevalent in Myanmar's remote border areas, where armed ethnic minority rebels
have used the profits from narcotics to fund their operations. President Thein Sein's reformist government has signed peace accords with a number of armed groups as part of sweeping reforms since taking power last year. Myanmar has said it aims to

eradicate illegal drugs by 2014. The country, which is slowly emerging from decades of military rule, is the world's second-largest opium poppy grower after Afghanistan. Shan state is a major source of methamphetamine tablets, according to the UN, which estimates that global seizures of amphetamine-type stimulants nearly tripled between between 1998 and 2010, reflecting fast-growing demand. In May the government and Shan rebels together agreed to wipe out drug production in the vast northeastern state. A drug control official said the recent raid had posed "many difficulties and risks". He
added: "We have no experience like this in the past raiding a factory which produces ice and other stimulants."

Chinese crackdown efforts have been successful Xinhua News, 04 (the Center for Emerging and Innovative Sciences, Rochester University, China strives to replace opium
poppies with safe plants, Xinhua News, 6/26/2004, Proquest, JKahn) BEIJING, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Planting

rice, sugarcane and rubber is being pushed as a good alternative to growing opium poppies , and in the Golden Triangle of Myanmar, Thailand and Lao, more and more opium planters have accepted this new concept proposed by the Chinese government. Replacement planting is considered a great breakthrough by the United Nations in the anti-drug fight, which has become an
important aspect of China's cooperation with neighboring Asian countries in drug control. China has rooted out opium poppies on more than 620,000 mu ( over 41,300 ha) in the Golden Triangle and helped local farmers to plant safe commercial crops, said Wang Qianrong, an official with the drug enforcement department of the Ministry of Public Security. The replacement scheme for the first time brought the poor farmers in the Golden Triangle stable income and made them capable of feeding themselves, said Wang. Some farmers who became addicted to the drug while poppy harvesting have started a new life. Even though the Chinese

government has dealt harsh blows to drug taking and trafficking, the number of drug-related crimes is still

on the rise. Latest statistics show the number of drug- taking people has reached 1.05 million in China and 90 percent of the heroin brought into China came from the Golden Triangle area bordering southwest China. In the 1990s, with support from the central government, southwest China's Yunnan Province, a major channel of drugs from the Golden Triangle area, began to implement the Green Drug Prevention Plan by replacing opium poppies with safe plants in major opium planting areas of neighboring countries. "China teaches local farmers how to plant other crops and provide seedlings," said Wang. The action is aimed to let local farmers know that they would benefit more from replacement planting than from planting poppies. Yunnan Lubao Industrial Development Co. Ltd. signed a contract on replacement planting involving 200,000 mu (over 13,300 ha) with Myanmar to help local farmers plant rice, corn, bananas and lemons and also purchase their products. The output of bananas every mu could reach 2.5 to 3 tons and the farmers could earn 400 to 500 yuan (48-60 US dollars) each mu, said Han Zheng, board director of the company. The output of lemons each mu could reach 2.5-4 tons and the average income of farmers is above 2,000 yuan (nearly 242 US dollars). By contrast, opium poppy planting is affected by the market and the income is unstable and unsafe. "The huge profit of drugs is monopolized by drug traders, and farmers who live on this could not even earn enough for food," said Han. More and more

farmers have turned from opium poppy to safe crops. The area of poppy planting has reduced from more than 100, 000 ha in 2001 to 62,000 ha in 2003. Officials with the United States spoke highly of Yunnan's practice, saying that it has proved that replacement planting can be very successful and has become a convincing evidence that the global anti-drug strategy made by the United Nations is effective. China has invested heavily in replacement
planting. It has cost 500 million yuan (60 million US dollars) in Yunnan Province alone. The replacement planting in some regions is developing towards replacement construction. More investment has gone to improvement of road and traffic, water facilities, tourism, culture and education, said Zhang Huimin, an official from Yunnan provincial department of public security. "But opium poppies are still the dominating plant in the Golden Triangle area and the fight against drugs will still take time to win," said Zhang.

Resettlement efforts have disincentivized production Brunnstrom, 2k (David, Correspondent, EU foreign affairs and NATO for Reuters, Army moves out opium growers to
beat skeptics: Myanmar committed, 1/17/2000, National Post, Proquest, JKahn) WAN HUNG, Myanmar - An ethnic army in Myanmar battling skepticism

about its commitment to stamp out the narcotics trade says it is relocating 50,000 opium growers to force them to kick their drug- producing habit. The United Wa State Army (UWSA) said hill farmers and their dependents were being

trucked 160 km south from homes on the Chinese border to an area of Myanmar's Shan state near Thailand to grow longans, a tropical fruit. Myanmar's military government, which organized a weekend visit for journalists to opium growing areas of Shan state, said the program, which started in November, showed that the UWSA was serious about its vow to eradicate opium by 2005. "We intend to move 50,000 people in a three-year period," Kyin Maung Myint, a UWSA liaison officer , told reporters. He said 10,000 had already been moved and the number would rise to 20,000 by March. Officials of the Myanmar government and the UWSA admitted that not all those being trucked south were happy to go, but said each family would be allocated two hectares to farm. Wan Hung, where they are being resettled, was once controlled by Khun Sa, a notorious drug lord wanted in the United States for heroin trafficking who surrendered to the government in 1996. Narcotics experts outside Myanmar say the UWSA, which has 20,000 armed troops and agreed to a ceasefire with Yangon in 1989, has stepped

into Khun Sa's shoes to become the main producer of opium, heroin and amphetamines in the "Golden Triangle" narcotics region where

Myanmar, Laos and Thailand join. According to the U.S. State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports, the drug-trafficking armies, such as the UWSA, with whom the government has negotiated ceasefires but not permanent peace accords, remain heavily into the heroin trade. Myanmar officials said global organizations such as the United Nations should help fund their initiative to move families. "We have told the people of the Wa area that poppy growing will be banned and they can no longer grow poppy," said Khin Maung Myint. "Once you have an alternative crop, they have to move down south here," he said. "They have been persuaded and some we have urged to move, but with some we have to insist." He said about 600 families were arriving in Wan Hung each day and have built homes in a temporary resettlement area. Colonel Kyaw Thein, of Myanmar's counternarcotics agency, said those being moved were mostly ethnic Wa, but included members of other hill tribes also living in the region, which is suitable for few crops except opium. Yangon, which rejects allegations by the United States and other countries that it is doing too little to eradicate drugs, was pleased with the project. "I think it

will result in a very significant reduction in production," said Kyaw Thein. "It will be a very big achievement." He said Myanmar's estimates
for opium production for the season to April, 1999, were slightly less than U.S. intelligence estimates of just over 1,000 tons. The UN Drug Control Program estimates 1,200 tons. Ten tons ofopium can be processed into one ton of heroin. Myanmar officials have complained that U.S. experts blamed overly dry weather for a sharp 38% fall in output last year and insist their eradication efforts should be given more credit. In an effort to prove their point on Saturday, they flew journalists by helicopter to watch ethnic Lahu tribes people and soldiers use bamboo sticks to slash down opium poppies. Leaders of the UWSA themselves, who narcotics experts outside Myanmar say have diversified into mass-production of methamphetamines now flooding into Thailand, said their anti-drug pledge should be taken at face value and supported financially by the international community.

Alt cause to surge in illegal drug trade struggling economies Wigglesworth, 13 Gulf correspondent for FT (Robin, Debt-ridden Caribbean unable to resist drug traffickers
July 14, 2013 http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/260d6b9e-eadf-11e2-bfdb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2Z9LXFLZ2) // czhang

Generic Alt Cause

The Caribbean is again becoming an increasingly important transit route for drug-trafficking into the US as South American and Mexican drug cartels take advantage of the regions economic problems to re-establish their operations. About 9 per cent of all illegal drugs that entered the US came through the Caribbean last year, about twice the rate in 2011, William Brownfield, the US assistant secretary of state, estimated last month. Experts say the surge in drug smuggling is largely caused by the regions economic and financial problems, which has left a power vacuum for drug smugglers to exploit even as Mexico has cracked down on its own cartels and increased security on the US border. The trend in recent years is that the Caribbean has re-emerged as a key drug-trafficking transit route, said Daniel Sachs, an analyst at Control Risks, a consultancy. The security forces in these islands are woefully unprepared to respond to this evolving threat, particularly in the current debt climate. Many Caribbean countries are struggling under large and swelling debt burdens, deep budget deficits and anaemic economic growth, forcing several to default in recent years. As a result, governments have slashed budgets, causing unemployment and crime to rise. International drug cartels have either set up their own operations in the Caribbean or paid local gangs to support them. This has triggered a rise in violent crime, as guns and drugs flow into countries ill-equipped to deal with hardened gangs and
cartels. Its a very big problem, said Sir Ronald Sanders, a former diplomat from Antigua and Barbuda and commentator on the region. The Caribbean was an important transit route for South American drug traffickers in the 1980s and 1990s, but security improvements, more maritime patrols and better radars shifted smuggling to Central America and Mexico. That trend is reversing. Central America remains the main transit route for drugs going to the US, but Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico and even some small statelets such as St Kitts and Nevis have become important transshipment points. Mr Sachs compares it to a balloon

effect where a squeeze on drug smuggling in Mexico has led to a swelling problem in the Caribbean. Essentially, cartels are forever probing for weaknesses and evolving with the times, he said. Government efforts to clamp down have been dramatic but ineffective. A surge in violent crime in 2011 spurred Trinidad and Tobago to
declare a state of emergency, but it only led to a temporary decline. Under US pressure, Jamaica launched a bloody military operation against drug lord Christopher Dudus Coke in 2010, arresting and extraditing him to the US, but the local murder rate has kept increasing. Governments are incapable and unwilling to tackle the root causes of the

problem lack of job opportunities, socio-economic inequalities and so on, Mr Sachs said. Because of the debt situation, even if they wanted to do something, they couldnt.

Mex - US Coop Now

Mexico-US cooperation over the war on drugs in the status quo Astorga and Shirk, 10 (Luis Astorga is a researcher at the Institute of Social Research at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM). He is also coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Economic and Social Transformations Connected with the International Drug Problem; David A. Shirk, PhD, joined the University of San Diego in July 2003. Shirks teaching covers a wide range of subject areas, mainly concentrated in comparative politics, international political economy, Latin American studies, and U.S.-Latin American relations, with a concentration in Mexico and border politics. He conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, and law enforcement and security along the U.S.-Mexican border. Shirk also directs the Trans-Border Institute, which works to promote greater analysis and understanding of Mexico, U.S.-Mexico relations, and the U.S.-Mexico border region; 1/1/10; Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies in the U.S.-Mexican Context; http://usmex.ucsd.edu/assets/024/11632.pdf) KD In recent years, however, Mexico and the United States have engaged in much closer collaboration

in counter-drug efforts. Cooperation has advanced significantly on the extradition of criminals, exchange of information, police and legal training, and the sharing of equipment and technology, thanks in large part to high-level diplomacy. During U.S. President George Bushs 2007 goodwill tour of Latin America, conversations with Guatemalan President Oscar Berguer and Felipe Caldern laid the groundwork for the development of a regional security plan to control immigration and combat drugs, arms trafficking, and transnational gangs.55 Some elements of this plan developed into what became known as the Mrida Initiative, a three-year agreement to provide U.S. support for Mexican security measures. In 2008, the U.S. Congress released the first installment of $400 million to Mexico, and though U.S. legislators

initially delayed the second installment in 2009 due to concerns about Mexican human rights violations, the Obama administration remained supportive of the policy.

Mex Drugs Low

Capture of the head of the Zetas the most terrifying cartel is the first step of Nietos plan to reduce drug trafficking AP, 13 (US federal official: Top leader of Mexicos brutal Zetas drug cartel captured Associated Press, Monday, July 15

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/us-federal-official-leader-of-mexicos-zetas-drug-cartelcaptured/2013/07/15/85376a4c-edab-11e2-bb32-725c8351a69e_story.html) // czhang MEXICO CITY Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, the notoriously brutal leader of the feared Zetas drug cartel, has

been captured in the first major blow against an organized crime leader by a Mexican administration struggling to drive down persistently high levels of violence, a U.S. federal official confirmed. Trevino Morales, known as Z-40, was captured by Mexican Marines in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican
media reported. The U.S. official who confirmed the media reports was not authorized to speak to the press and asked not to be identified. Trevinos capture removes the leader of a corps of special forces defectors who

splintered off into their own cartel and spread across Mexico, expanding from drug dealing into extortion and human trafficking. Along the way, the Zetas authored some of the worst atrocities of Mexicos drug war, slaughtering dozens, leaving their bodies on display and gaining a reputation as perhaps the most terrifying of the countrys numerous ruthless cartels. The capture of Trevino Morales is a public-relations victory for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who came into office promising to drive down levels of homicide, extortion and kidnapping but has struggled to make a credible dent in crime figures. Mexico is no longer the global hotspot for drugs Honduras and Central America Tico Times, 12 Central America's leading English-language news source (Central America replaces
Mexico as front line for drug trafficking, UN says http://www.ticotimes.net/More-news/News-Briefs/Central-America-replacesMexico-as-front-line-for-drug-trafficking-UN-says_Sunday-September-30-2012 Tico Times) // czhang

Central America is replacing Mexico as the top front for drug trafficking from South America to the United States. The change is inciting an increase in regional violence, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. "The implementation of the Mexican security strategy (beginning in 2006) increased the importance of Central American links (with the traffickers) that had begun many years ago," said the study released last week. The study cites an increase of direct major drug shipments from Central America to the United States and a decrease in shipments from Mexico to the United States. Drug trafficking
has undoubtedly contributed to the increase of violence in Central America, which has reached "extreme" levels, the study said. However it notes that gangs or "maras" remain a major cause of violent deaths in urban parts of the region. Honduras

maintains the highest homicide rate in the world with 92 killed per 100,000 in 2011. El Salvador has

a homicide rate of 69 per 100,000 citizens and Guatemala has a rate of 39 murders per 100,000. Costa Rica has the lowest homicide rate on the isthmus with 10.3 murders per 100,000. For comparison, the United States homicide rate was 4.2 per 100,000 in 2010, according to the most recent statistics. According to the UNODC, Central American countries play a key role in the transit of cocaine from South America, but "Honduras is now the most popular entry point for cocaine." "Approximately 65 of the 80 tons transported by air toward the United States lands in Honduras," where authorities found 62 secret airstrips between February and March 2012. The activity of drug trafficking in that country increased "dramatically" after the 2009 coup against former President Manuel Zelaya, as "law enforcement fell into disarray, resources were diverted to maintaining order, and counternarcotics assistance from the United States was suspended," the report adds. The Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas has expanded its presence into Guatemala, by operating in local cells made up of ex-members of elite military corps. "It is said that Los Zetas traveled 2008. Since then, the group has played a prominent role in the violence in that country," the UNODC report said. In 2010, 330 tons of cocaine entered Guatemala for the United States, according to official U.S. figures cited in the report. As for El Salvador, authorities say minimal cocaine passes through the country, which is confirmed by "radar data suggesting very few shipments go directly from South America to El Salvador." However, the official figures could be underestimating the size of the cocaine flow, the report added. Drug trafficking from Costa Rica, Nicaragua and

to Guatemala and created a local faction around

Panama, while still minor compared to Honduras or Guatemala, also has increased "significantly" in the past years, the document said.

Mexican drug abuse is soaring Villagran, 13 correspondent for CS Monitor (Laura, Jan 25, 2013, As Mexico's traffickers ship drugs north, they
leave addicts in their wake http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/0125/As-Mexico-s-traffickers-ship-drugs-norththey-leave-addicts-in-their-wake) // czhang Exponential growth in the trafficking of drugs through Mexico destined for the large consumer market to the north is were once unheard of in Mexico, but today rehabilitation centers are filled with addicts. Being

Mex Drugs High

leaving a growing number of addicts in its wake. Heroin, crack cocaine, and methamphetamines the top supplier of illegal drugs to the US has made Mexico a consumer nation, too, as cartels have sought to expand the local market over the past decade. Illegal drug use in Mexico still well below levels in the United States rose 87 percent between 2002 and 2011, according to the latest national survey of addictions. In the survey, 1.5
percent of respondents reported having consumed illegal substances in the previous year, compared with 0.8 percent in 2002. And drug rehabilitation professionals caution that higher levels of use may exist, given that the data is self-

reported. They also note that an alarming increase in drug use among women and adolescents between 2002 and 2008 has

persisted, although the survey suggests overall illegal drug use has plateaued since 2008. The reality is that in the organizations and institutions that work directly with this population, we see that [addiction] is on the rise, and that the adolescents who come here are younger and younger, says Blanca Ferreyra, who coordinates addiction treatments at the Love Life Foundation, a Mexi co City nonprofit. By 14 years old, theyve got a two- or three-year-old addiction.

Crime rate does not correlate with illegal drug trade no incentive for violence but still high rates Flannery, 13 writer for Forbes Magazine, about Latin American companies and political risk
(Nathaniel Parish, Investor Insight: Is Mexico's Drug War Doomed To Failure? 6/24/13 http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanielparishflannery/2013/06/24/investor-insight-is-mexicos-drugwar-doomed-to-failure/) // czhang Overall, crime rates have fallen even though the retail market for drugs such as marijuana,

At: Crime Rates Prove

amphetamines, and cocaine continues to function. Local authorities appear to tolerate the presence of drug dealers in certain areas as long as they stay out of the protected neighborhoods and avoid violence. In fact, according to Guerrero, one of the reasons for the relatively low level of violence in Mexico City, is the high competition in the drug sale market. The retail market for drugs in Mexico City is highly atomizeda collection of individuals rather than an oligopoly controlled by a few organized crime groups. Small-time operators have little incentive to use violence in order to gain an additional sliver of the market. Unlike in cities in other parts
of the country where cartels are fighting viciously to gain control of lucrative smuggling routes, at least until the start of 2013,

Mexico Citys retail drug market has functioned with a comparatively low amount of violence. In
2013 Mexico City has experienced a slight jump in violent crime, but the overall pattern of effective policing remains the same.

Ven Drugs High

Venezuela is a growing site for drug trafficking to the US, Europe, and West Africa State Department, 10 (Venezuela, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, U.S. Department of State, 2010,
Academic OneFile)//BI I. Summary Venezuela

is a major drug-transit country; flows of drugs to the United States, Europe and West Africa via Venezuela increased sharply in 2009. Venezuela continues to suffer from high levels of corruption and a weak judicial system. Inconsistent international counternarcotics cooperation and an increase in trafficking patterns through Venezuela enable a growing illicit drug transshipment industry.

Venezuela has not signed the addendum to the 1978 U.S.-Government of Venezuela (GOV) Bilateral Counternarcotics Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that was negotiated in 2005. Nevertheless, Venezuela continues some minimal bilateral counternarcotics cooperation with the United States. The decision by the United States and the GOV to exchange ambassadors in July 2009, following the September 2008 expulsion of the U.S. Ambassador from Venezuela, presents an opportunity to improve bilateral cooperation on counternarcotics and other issues that have been hindered by continuing tensions in the bilateral relationship. The President determined in 2009, as in 2008, 2007, 2006, and 2005, that Venezuela failed demonstrably to adhere to its

obligations under international counternarcotics agreements. Venezuela is a party to the 1988 UN Drug Convention. II. Status of Country A permissive and corrupt environment in Venezuela, coupled with increased drug interdiction efforts in the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico, has made Venezuela one of the preferred routes for trafficking illicit narcotics out of South America. While the majority of narcotics transiting Venezuela move directly to the United States and Europe, a growing portion also flows through western Africa and then onwards to Europe. The trafficking of drugs has increased the level of corruption, crime, and violence in Venezuela. Despite government claims, Venezuela remains a major transit point in the illegal drug trade Neuman, 12 Andes region correspondent for the New York Times (William, Cocaines Flow Is Unchecked in Venezuela,

New York Times, 26 July 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/world/americas/venezuela-is-cocaine-hub-despite-itsclaims.html?pagewanted=all)//BI The Venezuelan government has trumpeted one major blow after another against drug traffickers, showing off barrels of liquid cocaine seized, drug planes recovered, cocaine labs raided and airstrips destroyed. But month to

a visit this a remote region of Venezuelas vast western plains, which a Colombian guerrilla group has turned into one of the worlds busiest transit hubs for the movement of cocaine to the United States, has shown that the governments triumphant claims are vastly overstated. Deep in the broad savanna, one remote airstrip the government said it had disabled in a recent army raid appeared to be back in business. The remains of two small aircraft set on fire by the army had been cleared away. Traffickers working with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which operates with surprising latitude on this side of the border,
appeared to have reclaimed the strip to continue their secret drug flights shuttling Colombian cocaine toward users in the United States. There were no signs that soldiers had blasted holes in the runway or taken other steps to prevent it from being used again. For years, the United States has been working with friendly governments in Colombia, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and other countries in Latin

northward. But because of antagonistic relations with President Hugo Chvez of Venezuela, the reach of American drug agents, and the aid that comes with them, does not extend here. Our airspace has been taken over, said Luis Lippa, a former governor of Apure State who plans to run again as an opposition candidate in elections in December. Referring to the grip of traffickers on the border region, he said, Our national territory has been reduced. A map of flight tracks made by a United States government task force using data from long-range radar makes the point vividly: a thick tangle of squiggly lines, representing drug flights, originates in Apure, on Venezuelas border with Colombia; heads north to the Caribbean; and then takes a sharp left toward Central America. From there, the drugs are moved north by Mexicos well-established traffickers. President Obama signed a

America, spending billions of dollars to disrupt the flow of drugs

memorandum in September that designated Venezuela, for the seventh time, as a country that failed to meet international obligations to fight drug trafficking. He cited a federal report that concluded that the country was one of the preferred trafficking routes out of South America and had a generally
permissive and corrupt environment. Venezuela says that it is caught in the middle Colombia produces the drugs and the United States consumes them and that it is doing all it can to fight back. In May, the government announced that the number of illicit flights it detected had been cut in half this year, although it declined to provide data to back up the claim. We are hittin g drug trafficking hard all the time, said Ramn Carrizalez, the governor of Apure, the border state where the drug flights originate,

speaking in May at a news conference to announce the destruction of 36 hidden airfields. Very few countries are carrying out a policy like ours. But the United States says Venezuelas efforts are deeply hobbled by corruption,

particularly by ties between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, which controls much of the cocaine traffic in the region. Since 2008, the Treasury Department has

accused at least seven high-level military officers and current and former officials in Mr. Chvezs government of aiding the FARC, and sometimes exchanging weapons for drugs. Defense Minister Henry Rangel Silva was one of those singled out by Treasury officials. Venezuela dismissed the accusations as imperialist meddling. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that as much as 24 percent of the cocaine shipped out of South America in 2010 passed

through Venezuela, accounting for more than 200 tons. More than half of that left from the hidden airfields in Apure,

analysts say. They say that Venezuelas central role as a transit point for drug shipments began after Mr. Chvez halted coop eration with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in 2005, accusing its agents of spying. Around the same time, Colombia, with assistance from the United States, began to tighten control of its airspace. As a result, the traffickers jumped across the border to Apure, where an airstrip can be fashioned on the flat prairie in a few hours by dragging a log behind a pickup truck to smooth the ground. You can blow up an airfield here and it doesnt matter, said one resident, standing beside an eight-foot-deep hole that soldiers had blown in a runway near the Cinaruco River, the plains stretching out for miles. They can make another one right next to it. But perhaps the main attraction for traffickers is that the federal governments hold on large parts of Apure, the poorest state in the country, is

tentative at best.

Ven Drugs Low

Venezuela is improving anti-drug trafficking efforts AVN, 13 Agencia Venezolana de Noticias, a Venezuelan state-run news agency (Over 25 Tons of Drugs Seized by Venezuela in
2013, Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, 27 June 2013, http://venezuela-us.org/2013/06/27/over-25-tons-of-drugsseized-by-venezuela-in-2013)//BI The president of Venezuelas National Anti-Drug Office (ONA), Alejandro Keleris, announced Wednesday that a total of 25.168

metric tons of illegal drugs have been seized by authorities so far this year, is seven tons more than during the same period in 2012, Keleris said Wednesday in a live broadcast on Venezolana de Televisin. He also indicated that 4,470 arrests have been made so far this year involving drug trafficking. This shows that we have achieved cohesion among all institutions through the Anti-Drug Plan and activated the social intelligence that also helps us in combating the illicit trafficking and consumption of drugs, he said. Keleris noted that average annual drug seizures up until 2004 was 34.9 tons. However, after the suspension in 2005 of the agreement between Venezuela and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the rate of seizures increased to over 57 tons per year. This means that the public policies of the Bolivarian Government have yielded positive results, he said. He explained that this year through the Strategic Operational Command (CEO), 21 illicit laboratories and 17 airstrips have been destroyed, which were used to psychotropic substances trafficking. Similarly, since 2006, Venezuela
mostly cocaine and marijuana. This

has captured 102 drug traffickers who were sought Interpol and extradited them to other countries. National Anti-Drug Plan 20132019 During the interview, Keleris also referred to the National Anti-Drug Plan for 2013-2019. He said that it is still

being developed through popular consultations held throughout the country and that the final product should be

ready in late July. We went through a number of phases since October 2012 and are now in the final phase, which is collectin g input from people and integrating it into the National Plan, which will fulfill the instructions given by President Hugo Chvez regarding shared responsibility, he said. Keleris highlighted the good results of the first National Anti-Drug Plan for 2009-2013 from the point of view of comprehensive drug prevention through the National Addiction Care and Family Guidance Centers (COF), which currently has 36 offices. Venezuela is one of the few countries in Latin America that has a free drug

addiction treatment center. We have 36 COFs, 10 Specialized Centers for Prevention and Comprehensive Care, as well as
therapeutic centers, he said.

Venezuela recently launched surveillance drones to combat drug trafficking AP, 13 Associated Press (Venezuela launches drones to fight drug smuggling, News Daily, 30 May 2013,
http://www.newsdaily.com/article/cf3663533e05b4b1c230552378d8c82a/venezuela-launches-drones-to-fight-drugsmuggling)//BI Venezuela's government has launched three surveillance drones equipped with small cameras as

part of an initiative to curb drug trafficking. President Nicolas Maduro says the drones were built with help from Iran and will be used to monitor Venezuela's borders. Venezuela is a major drug trafficking hub . During a speech on state television Thursday, Maduro said the drones also will be used to help fight crime, which is one of the country's most pressing domestic problems. Venezuela is actively combatting the drug trade empirics prove they are more successful without US involvement Suggett, 10 Melman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, graduate of the University of Southern California San Diego,
lived and worked in Venezuela since August 2005, when he was a delegate at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas (James, Venezuela Deports Two Drug Kingpins, Calls US Drug Blacklist Abusive and Interventionist, venezuelaanalysis.com, 21 September 2010, http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5651)//BI

In the days following the release of a White House memorandum that placed Venezuela on a list of illicit drug transit and producing countries, Venezuela deported two suspected drug traffickers, confiscated 3,260 kilograms of illegal drugs, and seized four airplanes used for drug trafficking. Venezuelas National Anti-Drugs Office (ONA) and Penal, Criminal, and Scientific Investigative Unit (CICPC) worked in a team to capture Jaime Alberto Beto Marn, the chief of the Colombian Norte del Valle cartel, and Omar Guzmn Martnez, a Dominican cocaine trafficking suspect, on September 16th and August 25th, respectively. In a

nationally televised event, Venezuelan authorities escorted the two men to an airplane in Caracas to be deported to the US. Both suspects were wanted by the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL). Minister for Justice and the Interior Tarek El

Aissami said the US government had offered $5 million for information leading to Marns arrest. Meanwhile, in

separate operations, the ONA and the CICPC seized four airplanes that had been altered to avoid tracking and were being used for international drug operations from a clandestine location in Portuguesa state. The National Guard also confiscated 2.7 metric tons of marijuana and 600 kilograms of cocaine that were being transported
through Venezuela from Colombia. The deportations and confiscations all occurred since the release last Wednesday of a White House memorandum that designated Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela as major illicit drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries for the fiscal year 2011. A countrys presence on the Majors List is not necessarily an adverse reflection of its governments counternarcotics efforts or level of cooperation with the United States, the memorandum said, citing geographic, commercial, and economic factors that allow drugs to transit or be produced despite the concerned governments most assiduous enforcement measures. The memorandum highlighted the anti-drug

efforts of governments that collaborate with the US and allow a US military presence in their territory, including Afghanistan, Mexico, and Colombia. It designated Bolivia and Venezuela, countries which oppose the USs free trade polices and its military presence in Latin America, as countries that have failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements. Venezuelan authorities have confiscated a total of 46.7 metric tons of illegal drugs, seized 30 airplanes used for drug trafficking, and arrested 16 drug traffickers wanted by INTERPOL so far this year, according to the ONA. Justice Minister Tarek El-Aissami said Venezuelas record of anti-drug efforts contradict the memorandum, which he called abusive and interventionist. He accused the US government of using such

reports as diplomatic attacks against countries that do not adhere to Washington-approved policies. In an irresponsible, arbitrary and unilateral way, the Government of the United States tries to set itself up as the judge of other countries policies on drug trafficking, El Aissami said. We do not accept blackmails or pressures from any empire, he added. President Hugo Chavez suggested the timing of the memorandum, which was released a week and a half before Venezuelas National Assembly elections, had the purpose of swaying voter opinion against Chavezs United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The USs reports presented

Venezuelas anti-drug efforts in a positive light during the early years of the Chavez administration, when Venezuela was collaborating with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). But since Venezuela severed ties with the DEA in 2005 on suspicion that the agency was spying, the US government has repeatedly classified the Venezuelan governments anti-drug program as a failure. Venezuela, however, says its anti-drug efforts have improved since breaking ties with the DEA. According to ONA statistics, between the years 2002 and 2005, when Venezuela was collaborating with the DEA, a total of 6,836 people were arrested on drug-related charges and 202,562 kilograms of illegal drugs were interdicted; between the years 2006 and 2009, after Venezuela severed ties with the DEA, a total of 22,833 people were arrested on drug-related charges and 233,326 kilograms of illegal drugs were interdicted. The government also reported the destruction of dozens of drug laboratories and hundreds of clandestine airplane landing strips as well as the setup of security checkpoints in major airports since 2006. Last year, the ONA launched a national program to prevent drug consumption by programming educational and recreational activities with local communities, and launched
a program to assist business owners in avoiding the diversion of chemical substances into the hands of drug producers. Despite having severed ties with the DEA, Venezuela has endorsed more than 52 anti-drug cooperation

agreements with 38 countries.

Cuba Drugs Low

Cuba will not become a hotspot for drugs multiple reasons Ramsey, 12 writer at Insight Crime, Research analysis and investigations on organized crime in Latin America and the
Caribbean (Geoffrey, 2/2/12 Drug Fight Builds US-Cuba Bridges http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/drug-fight-buildsus-cuba-bridges) // czhang

Ultimately, it should be noted that the amount of drugs that pass through Cuba on their way to the United States pales in comparison to the countrys Caribbean neighbors, such as Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. For one thing, the 50-year-old embargo makes it very difficult for drug smugglers to bring their product into the US. Additionally, drug trafficking is one of the rare issues in which Cuban and American officials cooperate. As InSight Crime has reported, the US Interests Section in Havana has a Coast Guard representative in Havana, and leaked diplomatic cables reveal a level of engagement between the official and his counterparts in the Cuban Ministry of Interior (MININT) on the issue of drug flights from Jamaica. This cooperation seems to be having an effect on US-Cuba relations, at least as they relate to crime. While State Department officials under President Ronald Reagan publicly accused Fidel Castro of attempting to traffic drugs in order to boost the Cuban economy, the State Departments 2011 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) acknowledges that the Cuban authorities have made major inroads against the drug trade. In a rare note of praise for the Castro government, it notes that Cubas counternarcotics efforts have prevented illegal narcotics trafficking from having a significant impact on the island. Cuban drug cooperation is unnecessary status quo governments solve BBC, 12 (Sarah Rainsford, BBC correspondent in Havanah, Cuba and US find common ground in war on drugs, 9/8/2012, BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19528416, JKahn)) Cuba sits right between the world's major narcotics producers in South America and the biggest market for those drugs, the United States. The island has served as a bridge for traffickers in the past but in recent years it has been a barrier to the illegal trade. "We used to see a lot of suspicious boats here," Ardoldo
Cisneros Pena recalls of the 1990s. He is chief border guard in Cayo Cruz, where we were recently given rare access. "There were almost daily drops into the sea," he says. Small planes would bombard Cuban waters with packets of drugs, for speedboats to whisk to the US. Today, the scene is tranquil. A young border guard scans the horizon from a mint-green watchtower. A stone slab below reads "They shall not pass!" and "Viva Fidel!". 'Mortal venom' It was Fidel Castro, then president, who acknowledged a surge in the use of Cuban waters by drug-traffickers in 1999. There was a nascent narcotics market too, as smugglers' packages began washing up on the coast. The government was compelled to act against what Mr Castro calls a "mortal venom". "We have more resources now, there is a helicopter for the border guards and more commitment from the interior ministry, the military and the Cuban people too," Lt-Col Cisneros explains. Operation Ache, as the crackdown was known, also installed a new

radar and recruited hundreds of unpaid "collaborators", trained to keep their eyes peeled for suspicious parcels along the shore. The drugs planes have now gone and the main threat today is from speed-boat smugglers attempting
to traffic marijuana north. "They try to escape us but if they can't, they try to dump the drugs because they know this activity is very heavily penalised here," explains Lt-Col Mago Llanez Fernandez, who heads the team responsible for intercepting the smugglers at sea. He admits that up to 60% get away. Securing any abandoned narcotics is the priority here. But as the boats flee, Cuba

now passes real-time data to the US coastguard so they can pick up the pursuit. It is rare teamwork for two old, ideological enemies. "I think this is important for Cuba, because we're preventing the drugs reaching here, but it's also very important for the US and other countries in the area," Lt-Col Llanez points out. With its very heavily policed society, it is no surprise Communist Cuba is not a big drugs market itself. Scarce supply means even a joint of marijuana can cost up to a week's wage ($5) for a state worker. But some smugglers have begun to see potential here. "We've seen a rise in attempts by Cuban Americans to bring drugs in, especially marijuana, because the prices are high here," says police investigator Yoandrys Gonzalez Garcia. "It's not a huge amount but it concerns us and we're increasing our efforts to fight this." 'Effective' Between January and June this year, 24 attempts to traffic narcotics through the island's airports were foiled, and these figures put Cuba on course to double the interdiction rates of 2010 and 2011. The drugs were mostly destined for sale in Cuba. Police point to a surge in air traffic with the US since President Barack Obama removed travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans. Lifting limits on remittances has also given some Cubans on the island greater spending power. But the US is not the only smuggling source. Boris Adolfo Busto was arrested at Havana airport for drug-trafficking. His group was bringing in drug "mules" from Ecuador, with up to a kilo of cocaine in their stomachs. "There was a

Cuban guy involved and he said he could sell everything here, he said it'd be easy," Busto recalls when we meet at Havana's Condesa prison. He is serving a 23-year sentence. "I think the authorities are very efficient," he says forlornly, adding that "dozens and dozens" of other smugglers have since joined him behind bars. Cuba has called for a formal co-operation agreement with the US to help stamp out smuggling in both directions. It already shares intelligence with European governments, and receives funding and training. "Our communication at sea gets good results but sadly we can't say the same about air traffic," Mr Gonzalez police investigator complains of the Americans. The US and Cuba severed diplomatic ties more than five decades ago. But officials on the ground acknowledge Cuba's contribution to the common war on drugs. "[Without] a strong counter-drug stance,

Cuba would be a prime area for drug smugglers, but its efforts are very effective ," says Louis Orsini of the US
coastguard, adding that the US would find it "really challenging" if Cuba became a direct conduit for illicit narcotics. Today, though, the policy is zero tolerance and the interior ministry says nine tonnes of drugs were seized from traffickers last year and incinerated. Most were destined for the US market and beyond.

Cubas a regional leader in the war on drugs accusations of trafficking are unfounded Amuchastegui, 12 graduate of the University of Havana, Florida International University, and the University of Miami,
chief analyst in the field of Cuba's foreign policy for CubaNews since 1994, citing the State Departments 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) (Domingo, Is Castro's Cuba a budding narcostate? U.S. officials clearly suggest otherwise, CubaNews, April 2012, Informe)//BI For years, certain Cuban-American lawmakers, so-called "sources" in Miami and officials of

Florida's judicial system have repeatedly accused the Cuban government and its leaders of being involved in drug trafficking. It didn't matter that Cuba's highest-ranking defector, Brig. Gen. Rafael del Pino, denied it. Nor did it matter when top officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration, including Gen. Barry McCaffrey, spoke favorably of Cuba's cooperation with the DEA over the years. And it didn't matter that key officials at Interpol have praised Cuba's efforts at drug interdiction. The fabrication keeps getting repeated. More recently, during a Feb. 1 hearing of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, Sen. Dianne Feinstein singled out Cuba as a potential Caribbean drug smuggling leader. "I would be remiss not to
mention Cuba," declared the Democrat from California. "Just 90 miles from Florida, Cuba has the potential to be a major transshipment point for illicit drugs." Evidence? None. Primary or secondary sources to support this assertion?

None at all. Imagination? A great deal of it. A few days later, University of Nebraska political science professor

Jonathan C. Benjamin-Alvarado questioned Feinstein's statement. "It's really irresponsible for her to say that," he said. "It sets in motion that the Cuban government is doing nothing, which is absolutely not true, and it insinuates that it is descending into some sort of narcostate." A U.S. senator lying? Impossible. But perhaps this professor is a leftist or a Castro sympathizer, as some folks in Miami might suggest. Look then at the U.S. government's most recent assessment: the 2012 International

Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), submitted by the State Department. Recognition and praise for Cuba's policies against illicit drugs and trafficking can be found in every single paragraph of the 466-page report's three pages devoted to Cuba. "Bilateral interdiction efforts and GOC [Government of Cuba] intensive police presence on the ground have limited the opportunities in or around Cuba for regional traffickers," it says. "Cuba's domestic drug production remains negligible. Its counternarcotics

efforts have prevented illegal narcotics traffickers from having a significant impact on the island." According to the report, in 2011 the Cuban government interdicted 9.01 metric tons of illegal narcotics, including 8.3 metric tons in "wash-up events." That's a 360% increase from the previous year's 2.5 metric tons. In addition, government anti-drug forces reported disrupting three smuggling events and captured six traffickers (three from the Bahamas and three from Jamaica). Statistics on arrests or prosecutions were not made available, but by the U.S. government's own admission, last year Cuba reported 45 real-time reports of "go-fast" narcotics trafficking events to the U.S. Coast Guard. It said the Cuban border guard's email and phone notifications of

maritime smuggling to the United States "have increased in quantity and quality, and have

occasionally included photographs of the vessels suspected of narcotrafficking while being pursued." INCSR PRAISES 'CONTINUED COOPERATION' To combat the limited domestic production of marijuana, says the INCSR, Cuba set up

Operation Popular Shield in 2003. Efforts to prevent any domestic development of narcotics consumption remained in

effect and in 2011 and netted 9,830 marijuana plants and 1.5 kg of cocaine, compared to 9,000 marijuana plants and 26 kg of cocaine in 2010. Elsewhere, the INCSR asserts that "Cuba continues to demonstrate commitment to fulfilling

its responsibilities as a signatory to the 1988 UN Convention [and all previous agreements in this field]." Furthermore, it says, the Cuban government "continues to exhibit counternarcotics cooperation with partner nations" such as the U.S., Mexico, Jamaica and the Bahamas. In addition, the INCSR notes that "the Cuban
government presented the United States with a draft bilateral accord for continued cooperation, which is still under review." It concludes with the following paragraphs: "Cuba continues to dedicate significant resources to preventing

illegal drugs and illegal drug use from spreading on the island, so far successfully. The technical skill of Cuba's Border Guard, Armed Forces and police give Cuba a marked advantage against drug

trafficking organizations attempting to gain access to the Caribbean's largest island in both size and population. "Greater communication and cooperation among the U.S., its international partners and Cuba, particularly in the area of real-time tactical information-sharing and improved tactics, techniques and procedures," says the INCSR, "would likely lead to increased interdictions and disruptions of illegal trafficking." The status quo solves Cuban enforcement efforts have been enormously successful cooperation is unnecessary Lee, 09 (Renssaler, fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Testimony before the House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee of National Security and Foreign Affairs, Cuba, Drugs, and U.S.-Cuban Relations, 4/29/2009, https://www.fpri.org/docs/alt/testimony.20090429.lee_.cubadrugs.pdf, JKahn) The policies adopted by the Castro regime to counteract the perceived drug threat to Cuban society took several forms. One was to strengthen counter-narcotics legislation . Between 1988 and 1999 maximum penalties for drug dealing in Cubas criminal code increased from 7-15 years imprisonment to 20 years to death. Money laundering was made a crime punishable by up to 12 years in jail, and Cuban banks were compelled to adopt know your customer" rules and to maintain records of transactions of more than 10,000 pesos (roughly $10,000 equivalent) for five years. In 2003, the government tightened the screws further with a decree prescribing the confiscation of business and residential property where drugs were produced, sold, stored, or consumed , a step that precipitated
nationwide house-to-house searches to root out evidence of drug crimes. Drug interdiction efforts were expanded to deny Cuban airspace and territorial waters to traffickers. Much of the emphasis here was on clearing Cubas coast of recalos of cocai ne and marijuana and to this end the regime mobilized various social organizations youth brigades, Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, fishing collectives, tourism workers, et. al. to cooperate with the Cuban Border Guard in patrolling the islands shores. Also, to facilitate information-sharing on suspected drug shipments crossing Cuban territory, in 1999 Havana allowed the stationing of a U.S. Coast Guard officer in the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. On the demand-reduction front Cuba set up a vast network of nearly 200 mental health centers, staffed by psychologists and family physicians, which were charged with preventing the spread of drug abuse within the Cuban population. Some of these facilities provided in-house treatment and rehabilitation for cocaine and marijuana addicts. The regime mounted an extensive education and prevention campaign targeting schools and youth organizations, evidently aiming to insulate the younger generation from the scourge of drugs. By some indications, the regimes draconian drug policies seem to have worked , at least up to a point. My contacts within the Cuban public health system have told me that the average price of a gram of cocaine increased from about $15-20 in the 1999-2003 period to $90 in mid-2008, and the price for a joint of imported marijuana from $1 to $10 over the same years. Also, admissions of the numbers of new entrants into drug treatment facilities in the Havana

area have dwindled significantly since the 1990s. Now on the foreign policy front: looking back in time, narcotics-trafficking
was a focal point of conflict in U.S.-Cuban relations for most of the pre-1990 years, except for a brief period during the Carter administration. The focus gradually shifted to cooperation in the 1990s, as the Cuban leadership ostensibly severed connections to the international drug trade. Cooperation and information-sharing between the two countries have

netted a few high profile seizures, arrests, and extraditions, but all of this has occurred rather episodically , without an umbrella agreement on counter-narcotics cooperation, (although Cuba has concluded such agreements
with many other countries inside and outside the hemisphere). Such an agreed framework could set the stage for a more substantive level of engagement on drugs.

Cuba Drugs High

Increasing international pressures mean Cuba could become a trafficking hub Dominican Today, 12 (Cuba could become a hub for illegal drugs entering US, 11 February 2012,
http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/world/2012/2/11/42634/Cuba-could-become-a-hub-for-illegal-drugs-entering-US)//BI

Cuba could become a significant hub for illegal drugs entering the United States in the near future, warned a California senator who chairs a congressional caucus on international drug trafficking. According to hispanicbusiness.com, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., made the remarks while leading a hearing on what several observers consider the growing possibility that the Caribbean could become an even larger transit zone for illegal drugs. If the trend happens or is happening, it is likely because of increased pressure international law enforcement is placing on violent drug cartels in Mexico and elsewhere in Central America, these observers say. While mentioning the growing drug violence throughout the Caribbean during opening statements of the Feb. 1 hearing of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, Feinstein said Cuba should not be considered immune from the problem. "I would be remiss not to mention Cuba. Just 90 miles from Florida, Cuba has the potential to be a major trans-shipment point for illicit drugs," she said. Cubas proximity makes it likely to be a major hub for illegal drugs Antigua Observer, 12 newspaper from St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda (Senator singles out Cuba as potential drug

smuggling point February 12th, 2012 http://www.antiguaobserver.com/senator-singles-out-cuba-as-potential-drug-smugglingpoint/) // czhang WASHINGTON, CMC A leading United States senator has warned that Cuba could become a

potentially significant hub for illegal drugs entering the United States. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of

California, who chairs the US Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, issued the caveat while conducting a Senate hearing on international drug trafficking. I would be remiss not to mention Cuba. Just 90 miles from Florida, Cuba has the

potential to be a major trans-shipment point for illicit drugs, she said. Her statement comes just weeks after Cubas state-run newspaper, Granma, reported that the country last year confiscated more foreign-borne drugs than in any time during the past seven years. On Thursday, a senior University of the West Indies (UWI) fellow
warned about the impact of heightened crime on the Caribbean. In participating in an Organization of American States (OAS) Policy Round Table on Public Security in the Hemisphere, Anthony T. Bryan, of UWIs Institute of International Relations, cautioned that without the implementation of adequate measures, it wont be long before the

Caribbean is deeply enmeshed in what you see going on in Central America. Bryan underscored the

growing drug problem in the Caribbean, though he specified that it is fundamentally of marijuana. Despite the gravity of the situation, as it seems to us, I do not classify any of our countries as being narco-states, he told the OAS40th Policy Round Table. They are not there yet and, hopefully, they wont ever be there he added. A major United Nations (UN) report on citizen security within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) warned that violent crime linked to gangs has risen to threaten

economies and livelihoods, and has left most Caribbean people feeling unsafe. But the UN Development Programme

(UNDP) report, released on Tuesday, has also outlined a number of recommendations that regional governments, law enforcement agencies, civil society and non-governmental organisations can pursue to bring about a change in the situation. The report

found that less than half of the regions people felt secure, reaching as low as one in four people in Trinidad and Tobago alone. The study said two out of three Caribbean people felt confident in their police forces to control crime. Cuba could become the global hotspot for drugs Dominican Today, 12 The first and only english language online news publication in the Dominican Republic. Providing
local and international news (Cuba could become a hub for illegal drugs entering US 11 February 2012 http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/world/2012/2/11/42634/Cuba-could-become-a-hub-for-illegal-drugs-entering-US) // czhang Los Angeles. Cuba could become a significant hub for illegal drugs entering the United States in

the near future, warned a California senator who chairs a congressional caucus on international drug trafficking. According to hispanicbusiness.com, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., made the remarks while leading a hearing on what several observers consider the growing possibility that the Caribbean could become an even larger transit zone for illegal drugs. If the trend happens or is happening, it is likely because of increased pressure international law enforcement is placing on violent drug cartels in Mexico and elsewhere in

Central America, these observers say. While mentioning the growing drug violence throughout the Caribbean during opening statements of the Feb. 1 hearing of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, Feinstein said Cuba should not be considered immune from the problem. "I would be remiss not to mention Cuba. Just 90 miles from Florida, Cuba has the potential to be a major trans-shipment point for illicit drugs," she said. The U.S. has shied away from engaging Cuba on drug enforcement this precipitates trafficking Lee, 09 (Renssaler, fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Testimony before the House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee of National Security and Foreign Affairs, Cuba, Drugs, and U.S.-Cuban Relations, 4/29/2009, https://www.fpri.org/docs/alt/testimony.20090429.lee_.cubadrugs.pdf, JKahn) Yet they have not entered into a formal agreement to fight drugs even though Havana maintains such agreements with at least 32 other countries and what cooperation exists occurs episodically, on a case-by-case basis. Washington and Havana need to engage more fully on the issue, deploying intelligence and interdiction assets to disrupt smuggling networks through and around Cuba. Washington hitherto has shied away from a deeper relationship, fearing that it would lead to a political opening and confer a measure of legitimacy on the Castro regime. Yet current strategic realities in the region and Havana's own willingness to engage in such a relationship, as well as impending leadership changes in Cuba, argue for rethinking these concerns, even in the absence of formal diplomatic ties. .

Cuba - Squo Solves

Squo solves Cuban efforts two successful anti-drug operations Fernandez, 13 writer for the Granma, English language edition of the newspaper of Cuba's Communist Party (Francisco
Arias, February 14, 2013 Cubas anti-drug strategy strengthened as global challenges intensify http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cubai/14feb-anti-drug.html) // czhang

DESPITE growing international challenges and the complexity of the regions drug trafficking problem, 10 years after Cuba implemented two anti-drug operations: Coraza Popular and Ach III, the countrys strategy continues to demonstrate its effectiveness. In 2012 a minimal presence of such

illegal substances was detected internally (25kg); no suspicious flights were noted; the interception of drug-trafficking boats declined from 52 in 2011 to 24, and practically all drugs thrown overboard along the countrys coastline were collected by, or turned over to authorities (2,961kg). These outcomes reflect the success of the two operations begun in 2003 - Coraza Popular in January and Ach III in March of that year. The first was designed for the Ministry of the Interior (MINIT) and other institutions, with the support of the population, to take action against delinquent elements linked to drug trafficking and sales across the country. Ach III was directed at controlling suspicious speed boats and aircraft passing through Cuban territorial waters and airspace; confronting individuals searching for washed up parcels of drugs; the systematic inspection of uninhabited cays and coastlines determined to be at risk for illegal activity; as well as the destruction of marijuana plantings. Preventative and enforcement activities

by a variety of social and political organizations and institutions, under the direction of the National Drugs Commission, allowed the country to mitigate the impact of international drug-trafficking in neighboring waters; to frustrate attempts - fundamentally by Cubans resident abroad - to introduce drugs by air for internal distribution; to cut short the introduction of designer drugs from Europe and North America ; to address the illicit use of prescription drugs and alcohol abuse; as well as to prevent the development of marijuana cultivation. As a result of enforcement and preventative efforts, in 2012, 3,045 kilograms of drugs were confiscated (2,997kg of

marijuana, 43kg of cocaine, 2kg of hashish and small quantities of other illicit drugs). Most of these drugs were found in parcels washed up on the countrys coastline. Some 2,961kg of marijuana were discovered this way, significantly less than the 8,508kg found in 2011. Nine attempted offshore drug drops were frustrated and one speedboat was detained in waters off the northern coast of Camagey, with four Bahamian citizens aboard who had thrown a cache of drugs into the sea to be subsequently collected by accomplices in the provinces of Villa Clara, Ciego de Avila and Camagey. As tourism and travel abroad has increased, an increase has been noted in the number of international trafficking operations frustrated by airport customs personnel. The total number of incidents amounted to 42 in 2012, with 69 persons arrested (48 Cubans and 21 foreigners); 42 kilograms of drugs were confiscated (33.6kg of cocaine, 7.4kg of marijuana and one kilo of synthetic drugs known as cannabimimetics). Enforcement efforts

undertaken at the countrys borders have had an impact on internal drug-dealing. As previously mentioned, only 25kg of drugs were seized in 2012 from individuals attempting sales within the country - significantly less than the 67kg confiscated in 2011. Over the course of the year, 628 persons were
convicted of drug-related crimes, 273 (43 %) were given sentences ranging from six 6-10 years in prison, based on the severity of infractions as defined in relevant legislation. A number of organizations have collaborated closely with

institutions involved in drug abuse prevention and law enforcement. The Federation of Cuban Women

(FMC), Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), the University Students Federation (FEU) and the High School Students Federation (FEEM), have played an important role in various efforts to strengthen the systems in place to confront domestic and international challenges. For example, the 7th joint CDR-MINIT Border patrol operation reinforced the work of 306 Mirando al Mar (Watching the Sea) brigades. The Ministry of Public Health

in conjunction with CDR and the FMC continued its active monitoring efforts to identify drug users and offer timely help and treatment. As the Ministry has focused on reorganization and consolidation of health care services,
emphasis has been placed on the maintenance of multidisciplinary teams in Community and Regional Mental Health Centers which serve drug abusers and of the existing community based systems which assure needed assistance. Likewise, the confidential drug abuse telephone line, 103, offered nationally 24 hours a day, continued to provide help and advice, serving 12,285 callers in 2012. The majority of those calling sought help in stopping smoking (4,074) and dealing with alcoholism (3,820), while 1,426 callers were concerned about illicit drug use. An indication of the confidence the service has gained is that the vast majority of callers are seeking help for themselves personally. National Prevention, Detection and Enforcement Exercises focused on marijuana cultivation and other illegalities continue to take place twice a year, with the participation of the Ministries of Agriculture, Interior, Public Health, Education, Higher Education, Culture, the National Sports Institute, the Association of Small Farmers, the sugar industry, and agricultural units of the FAR and MININT, in conjunction with local government bodies, such as neighborhood Popular Councils. During the April 2012 exercises, 1,453 Popular Councils participated and in October, 2,693 were involved. Conducted were a total of 67,669 land inspections; 11,653 surprise visits to farms and plots held in usufruct or personally owned; 250,632 self-inspections; 6,451 reviews of prevention plans and 46,915 efforts to inform, train and alert the population. As part of Cubas

commitment to join with other nations in fighting drug-trafficking, agreements have been established with 33 countries and two memoranda of understanding which are yielding positive

results. Regular cooperative police contact has been maintained with 27 nations. Alerts, modes of operation, current information and valuable experiences are shared. Noteworthy 2012 accomplishments include an inter-ministerial accord with Russias Drug Trafficking Control Federal Service and the beginning of negotiations to establish similar agreements with other Latin American and European countries. In 2012, Cuba received a delegation from the International Narcotics Control Board which met with representatives from various organizations collaborating via the National Drug
document acknowledged

Commission in preventing and confronting illicit drug use and trafficking. The group confirmed the positive situation in the country. In March of 2012, a U.S. State Department report on illegal drugs control during 2011 was released. The

efforts Cuba has made to prevent drug traffickers from making inroads on the island; that the production of narcotics is minimal, and that drug use is not widespread within the country. It also recalled that the Cuban government has proposed to the U.S. an agreement to facilitate
cooperation in drug-fighting efforts, which if established could support the work of both countries.

New Cuban tech upgrade solves drug trafficking Cadena Gramonte, 13 (Radio Cadena Agramonte, news of Camagey, Cuba and the World July 10, 2013 Cuba Raises

Effectiveness in Protecting Borders http://www.cadenagramonte.cu/english/index.php/show/articles/14895:cuba-raiseseffectiveness-in-protecting-borders) // czhang Havana, Jul 10.- The General Custom House of the Republic of Cuba (AGR) raised its preparedness

and effectiveness in fighting drug trafficking, ensuring the protection of the society from air and sea borders. Moraima Rodriguez, head of the Research Department of the Directorate of Combat at the AGR, said the increasing number of Cuban and foreign travelers, and the flexibilization of recent customs regulations implemented, demand more staff training. Until June 25, about 18 cases of drug trafficking were
detected in air border, seizing 17.22 kilograms of drugs, 12.54 of cocaine, 0.91 kilograms of marijuana, and 3,77 of cannabis, and synthetic or design drugs, Rodriguez said. The AGR currently has videoproteccin cameras, modern X-ray

equipment, Ionscan, with which we have no need to disturb the passenger, and Bodyscan, recently acquired, which allows the detection of intra and extra-physical smuggling actions. The Customs' Dog technical units, trained in many specialties, are also involved in the confrontation.

Current Cuban efforts enough to solve the effects of drug trafficking State Department, 12 (2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) 2012 INCSR: Country Reports -

Croatia through Haiti BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT AFFAIRS http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2012/vol1/184099.htm March 7, 2012) // czhang 2. Supply Reduction Major transshipment trends did not change from 2010. During calendar year 2011, the GOC reported a total of 9.01 metric tons of illegal narcotics interdicted (including 8.3 MT in wash-up events), a 360% increase from the previous years 2.5 (MT). Government anti-drug forces reported disrupting three smuggling events and captured six traffickers (3 from the Bahamas and 3 from Jamaica). Statistics on arrests or prosecutions were not made available. There were no significant changes in Cubas overall counternarcotics strategy or operations in 2011. Domestic production and consumption of illegal drugs

remained very limited, and Cuba concentrated its counternarcotics supply reduction efforts by

preventing illegal smuggling through Cuban territorial waters, rapidly collecting reported narcotic wash-ups, and preventing tourists from smuggling smaller amounts of narcotics into the country. The Ministry of Armed Forces and Ministry of

Interiors combination of fixed and mobile radars, coupled with visual and coastal vessel reporting procedures make up an effective network for detecting illegal incursions of territorial air and sea by narcotics traffickers. The Cuban government attempts to interdict vessels or aircraft suspected of narcotics trafficking with Cuban assets. At sea, Cuba has had increasing success. Cuba continues to share go-fast vessel information with neighboring countries, including the United States, and has had increasing success in interdicting go-fast vessels. In 2011, Cuba reported 45 real-time reports of go-fast narcotics trafficking events to the U.S.
Coast Guard (USCG). TGFs email and phone notifications of maritime smuggling to the U.S. have increased in quantity and quality, and have occasionally included photographs of the vessels suspected of narcotrafficking while being pursued. Overseas arrivals continue to bring in small quantities of illegal drugs mostly for personal use, although the extent of this problem remains unknown.

The Ministry of Interior conducts thorough entry searches using x-rays and trained counternarcotics detection canines at major airports. Government officials detained 20 tourists, compared to 123
in 2010, for attempting to smuggle small quantities of narcotics into Cuba. To combat the limited domestic production of marihuana, Cuba set up Operation Popular Shield in 2003 to prevent any domestic development of narcotics consumption or distribution of drugs, remained in effect and netted over 9,830 marijuana plants and 1.5 kilograms of cocaine, compared to 9,000 marijuana plants and 26 kilograms of cocaine in 2010. 3. Drug Abuse Awareness, Demand Reduction, and Treatment The

combination of extensive policing, low incomes, low supply, and strict drug laws (involving up to 15-

year prison sentences) have

resulted in very low illicit drug use in Cuba. There are nationwide campaigns aimed at preventing drug abuse, and the quantity of existing programs for the general population

appears adequate given the very low estimated numbers of persons addicted to drugs in Cuba. The National Drug Commission, headed by the Minister of Justice, with representatives from the Attorney Generals office and National Sports Institute, remains responsible for drug abuse prevention, rehabilitation and drug policy issues in Cuba. According to the Cuban government, the Ministry of Health operates special drug clinics, offering services ranging from emergency care to psychological evaluation and counseling to treat individuals with drug dependencies. There are no programs specializing in drug addiction for women and children. The Government runs three substance abuse clinics that cater to foreigners, and the Catholic Church runs a center to treat addiction in Havana. The Cuban government occasionally broadcasts anti-drug messages on state run media and operates an anonymous 24-hour helpline. In addition, Cuba reports the dangers of drug abuse are a part of the educational curriculum at all levels of primary and secondary schools. 4. Corruption Cuba has strong policies in place against illicit

production or distribution of narcotic or psychotropic drugs or other controlled substances, and laundering of proceeds from illegal drug transactions. Cuba reports a zero tolerance for narcotics-related corruption by government officials and claims there have been no such corruption occurrences in 2011.

*Drug Trade Bad*

Africa Instability
Drug trade fuels African instability --- finances conflict Arnold, 5 (Guy, specialist in north-south relations who writes mainly in the areas of African history and politics, and
international affairs, former Director of the Africa Bureau, The International Drugs Trade, pg. 182-183, Routledge, Tashma) The generally weak structure of African states has meant that the deregulation of trade and the

financial markets, coupled with the growing pressures of globalization on their sovereignty and capacities, have led to an increase in corruption, violent conflict , the plunder of natural resources, and growing involvement in the drugs business. The international antinarcotics institu- tions see Sub-Saharan Africa principally as a
transit territory for drugs, al- though the cultivation of cannabis for local consumption has been a traditional activity subject to controls. By the esnly 1980s, however, there was a rapid spread of illicit cannabis crops. These were produced to supply the expanding home markets and for the intemational trade, and from the 1980s such crops have been grown extensively, especially in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. Experiments in growing the opium poppy and the coca leaf have also been carried out in Benin, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Togo in West Africa, and Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa.

By the end of the twentieth century, large quantities of the major drugs were known to transit through Africa, and most of them were destined for the huge European market. The scale of the African trade demonstrates just how quickly drugs have come to play a lead role in funding the continents various conflicts. The growth of drug trafficking mirrors the continents problems of poverty, economic failure, and debt and its inability to break this pattern except by resorting to illegal means. In the Ivory
Coast the cocoa crisis of 1988- 1989 acted as the stimulus to desperate farmers who switched to producing cannabis. The attractions of the crop are obvious: The output of 0.1 hectares (0.2 acres) of cannabis in value is equivalent to 16 tonnes (15.7 tons) of cocoa grown on 30 hectares (74.1 acres) by an owner employing l0 workers. So far, only cannabis is produced on any scale in Africa and most of this is still des- tined for domestic markets and cross-border trading rather than for export outside the continent? In the early 1990s, however, African production of cannabis escalated and much of it was for the European market. In 1993 cus- toms seizures of African cannabis only represented 1.5 percent of world seizures and a tiny share of the European consumer market. By the end of the twentieth century South Africa, Kenya, Benin, and Ghana were producing cannabis and exporting it as marijuana to Europe. Nigeria and Ghana are the main cannabis producers in West Africa, although little information, as yet, is available as far as Nigerian production is concemed. In Ghana the cannabis crop is grown throughout the country and known as "the Devil`s tobacco" or "wee," and a ganja farm may be as large as three hectares (7.4 acres) and re- ceive protection from the local police.

Instability escalates to global nuclear war Deutsch 1 (Dr. Jeffery, Founder Rabid Tiger Project, Rabid Tiger Newsletter, Vol. 2, No. 7, 11-18, http://www.rabidtigers.com/rtn/newsletterv2n9.html) The Rabid Tiger Project believes that a nuclear war is most likely to start in Africa. Civil wars in the Congo (the
country formerly known as Zaire), Rwanda, Somalia and Sierra Leone, and domestic instability in Zimbabwe, Sudan and other countries, as well as occasional brushfire and other wars (thanks in part to "national" borders that cut across tribal ones) turn

into a really nasty stew. We've got all too many rabid tigers and potential rabid tigers, who are willing to push the button rather than risk being seen as wishy-washy in the face of a mortal threat and overthrown. Geopolitically speaking, Africa is open range. Very few countries in Africa are beholden to any particular power. South Africa is a major exception in this respect - not to mention in that she also probably already has the Bomb. Thus, outside powers can more easily find client states there than, say, in Europe where the political lines have long since been drawn, or Asia where many of the countries (China, India, Japan) are powers unto themselves and don't need any "help," thank you. Thus, an African war can attract outside involvement very quickly. Of course, a proxy war alone may not induce the Great Powers to fight each other. But an African nuclear strike can ignite a much broader conflagration, if the other powers are interested

in a fight. Certainly, such a strike would in the first place have been facilitated by outside help - financial, scientific, engineering, etc. Africa is an ocean of troubled waters, and some people love to go fishing.

Africas key --- theyre a hotspot for drug cultivation Arnold, 5 (Guy, specialist in north-south relations who writes mainly in the areas of African history and politics, and international affairs, former Director of the Africa Bureau, The International Drugs Trade, pg. 184-185, Routledge, Tashma)

Africa is now a major source of cannabis for both local consumption and export to Europe. According to the Vienna-based INCB, Nigeria, Morocco, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast are the leading African producers of marijuana. Vast tracts of forest make it easy to hide marijuana plantations, The U.S. DEA has opened offices in Pretoria and Lagos, although political corruption acts to protect many of the traffickers. At the same time many Africans who see the damage that drugs do to their citizens are becom- ing
more vociferous in demanding that their own couritemarcotics agencies do their jobs properly.

Amazon
Trafficking destroys the amazon Barraca 10 Dialogo News, Drug Trafficking Damaging Amazon Basin, Dilogo is a professional military magazine
published quarterly by the Commander of the United States Southern Command as an international forum for military personnel in Latin America, (Sara, 3/12, Dialogo, www.dialogoamericas.com/en_GB/articles/rmisa/features/regional_news/2010/12/03/feature-01, JKahn)

Drug trafficking organizations are causing significant damage to the Amazon rain forest and watershed in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela, endangering the regions diverse flora and fauna and threatening the planets green lungs . In addition, the production of staple crops such as potatoes and corn has suffered as farmers have been forced to grow coca plants. Dialogo recently interviewed

environmental officials in some of the affected countries about the damage caused by illicit drug production. Colombia Illicit crop growers have started to develop mechanisms to avoid the states eradication efforts," said Vctor Nieto, a researcher for Colombias National Forest Research and Development Corporation (CONIF). "Initially, this type of crop grew in open fields, so they were easily identifiable on satellite images, and police planes could fumigate and eliminate those crops," he said. Illicit crop growers attempted strong counter-measures, Nieto said. "They sought ways to halt the advance of crop dusters and even went so far as to string high-tension aerial cables from one hill to another, so the planes would run into them and crash." But eventually farmers

settled on a different approach: cutting back natural forests , and leaving only trees that provided greater aerial coverage. "This allowed the crops to blend in with the tree canopy, making the crops more difficult to eradicate by crop dusting from the air," Nieto said. "The success of this approach encouraged the clearing of natural forests in patches or lots resulting in serious loss of forested areas, a decline in the quality of remaining forests, and interference with flora and fauna naturally found in ecological corridors associated with these forests." "Needless to say, the waste created by the processing camps residue from chemicals used to extract the active drug components is dumped into streams and rivers in the heart of the rain forest. The cans, plastic

containers and other waste are randomly discarded in rain forest. It is very difficult for other crops to compete against a business as profitable as coca production, so the community devotes is time to that," he said. Market pressures tend to foster dependence on illicit farming once it has begun, Nieto said. "Everything is affected by the market. Profitable crops increase the value of consumer products in the region and, therefore, the community near the production area has no choice but to enter the supply chain or be left out of the consumer market. "In 2009, at the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in 2009, then-president of Colombia lvaro Uribe called on participating countries to strengthen their commitment against the production, consumption and trafficking of narcotics. That commitment could involve even more meetings than were originally contemplated," Nieto said. Illegal armed groups have taken a financial stake in illicit crops, Nieto said, complicated the issue even further. "Years ago, guerrilla groups like the FARC and ELN were destroying oil pipelines as a tactic to attack the government and the interests of multinational capitalists," Nieto said, and "recent governments have invested heavily in the elimination of armed groups." A few years ago, the guerrillas undertook visibility projects, he said. Their goal was to create instability and unrest with actions such as destroying pipelines. "These ideas are no longer used, and today the armed groups only seek economic benefits for financing the war (or leaders). This, for the community, seems to be the current lesson. The international community has responded to the environmental hazards of illicit farming with programs like the UN's "Familias Guardabosques," Nieto said. The UN program develops sources of income for rural communities as an alternative to cultivating narcotics. "Then, the question was one of sustainability from a financial standpoint," he said. "It was argued that once the financial resources ran out, families would return to non-legal businesses. State resources were dedicated to the program, along with international cooperation." A new approach has gained support, Nieto said: paying communities for preserving forestland the same amount that they would gain for cutting it down. "It started with the analysis of how much money communities near forests could be earning if they harvested timber from the forests, and the data showed that after felling, removing and selling the timber, the profits were not worth the effort put into it, or the value of the existing forests," he said. The idea has been successful and implemented with great transparency, Nieto said. "Continual monitoring, which allows for assurance of conservation and new bids for mitigation of climate change and reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, seems to be the way to create sustainability of the project over time. The plan is still new and in a transitional phase, but is an excellent way to simultaneously solve several of the communitys problems. All of these programs are only playing environmental defense, however, and none have found a way to restore the damage already done according to Nieto. "There are no serious forest restoration or recovery programs, and we can only possible eradicate [illegal] crops and wait for nature to do the rest.

Cooperation is key to broader Central American drug enforcement and f regime Lee, 09 (Renssaler, fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Testimony before the House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee of National Security and Foreign Affairs, Cuba, Drugs, and U.S.-Cuban Relations, 4/29/2009, https://www.fpri.org/docs/alt/testimony.20090429.lee_.cubadrugs.pdf, JKahn)
For example, we could train and equip Cuban Border Guards and Interior Ministry operatives, we could conduct joint naval patrols with Cuba in the western Caribbean, we could coordinate investigation of regional trafficking networks and suspicious financial transactions through Cuban banks and commercial entities, and we could station DEA and FBI contingents in the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. We could also negotiate a ship-rider agreement with the Cuban authorities, and possibly even the right to pursue drug-laden vessels and aircraft seeking safe haven in Cuban territory. How far Havana and Washington would be willing to proceed in these directions is unclear, since the political barriers on both sides are formidable. Yet the prospects for more productive collaboration against the hemispheric drug threat seem a lot more promising today than in the past. In any event, failure to exploit Cuba's

Castro Regime

law enforcement and intelligence assets to good advantage leaves a major gap in U.S. defenses against drug trafficking through the Caribbean. Interdiction successes in Mexico seem likely to augment this flow down the road, a further reason to closely monitor trafficking trends in a Caribbean country only 90 miles from U.S. shores. The drug threat from Cuba seems destined to increase as the Castro regime's revolutionary order loses its hold and appeal, as the island's economic ties with the outside world
continue to expand, and as criminally-inclined Cuban nationals seek alliances with South American and Mexican drug kingpins.

Such an outcome is hardly in the best interests of the United States and other countries in the hemisphere.

Columbian Instability
Causes Colombian instability --- a FARC rise would end democracy in Colombia Wynne, 3 (Charles E., Lt Col, "COLOMBIA: MORE THAN JUST A DRUG PROBLEM, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY, NATIONAL WAR COLLEGE, http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA442515, Tashma)
The Unholy Alliance

Many naively thought the extinction of the Cali and Medellin drug cartels in the early 1990s would put an end to the lucrative illegal narcotics industry in Colombia. But that has not been the case. Instead, drug trafficking experts estimate more than 150 smaller, less visible, harder-to-find narcotics organizations are doing business in Colombia today.11 Exacerbating the problem, U.S.-sponsored
1990s, these groups have become the largest similar operations in Ecuador, Brazil, and Venezuela.13

coca plant eradication programs in Peru and Bolivia have been so successful Colombia is now the worlds leading grower of the plant from which cocaine is derived (302,500 hectares in 1999, more than double the acreage of 1995).12 In addition, since the early

supplier of heroin to the eastern United States and are running

Drug money has financed FARC growth from less than 2,000 members in 1982 to more than 20,000 members in 2001 and they now have a presence in more than 60 percent of the Colombian municipalities. Their stated goal is to raise and equip an army of 30,000 members capable of overthrowing the democratic government.14 The FARC, combined with the smaller National Liberation
Army (ELN), control or very nearly control 40 percent of the country. In addition to exorbitant drug profits, the ELN has found kidnapping and attacks on the Cano- Limon-Covenas oil pipeline to be very profitable.15 The paramilitaries are regional with a central organization to coordinate national level strategy in their fight against the insurgents. Making huge profits off illegal drugs, they have up to 8,000 armed combatants and a presence in 40 percent of Colombian municipalities. The AUC is the largest, most well known paramilitary group. 16 Shortly after September 11, the European Union joined the United States in officially designating the FARC, ELN, and AUC as foreign terrorist organizations stating they use terror as a tactic to keep the money flowing and the population and politicians in line.17 All have been accused of engaging in massacres, kidnappings, attacks on key infrastructures and being involved in every facet of narcotics trafficking, including cultivation, processing and transportation.18

Flat organizations without any democratic checks and balances, these nonstate actors are far more effective and nimble than the governments they oppose and are perfectly positioned to align themselves with international terrorist organizations. The current situation in Colombia is reminiscent of Afghanistan under Taliban control when the terrorist organization al-Qaeda used poppy cultivation
and heroin production to fill its coffers. Similarities include weak central governments, lack of sovereignty over their own territories, large-scale criminal and political violence, persistent corruption, lax banking regulations, and a lucrative renewable source of income. With more and more research showing easy access to cash being the best predictor of political violence, no matter what the motivation for the conflict, it is easy to see why international terrorists would have an interest in Colombia.19 The apprehension of two Irish Republican Army terrorists in Colombia to train the FARC indicates the insurgents have already established a working arrangement with at least one international terrorist organization. The latest U.S. national security strategy acknowledges the potential terrorist threat in Colombia when it states poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders.20 Taken together, the unholy alliance has become a major political, economic and military force that appears

to be getting stronger at the expense of the government in Bogota. What is important to note is the
challenges presented by these illegal groups are not a low-level law enforcement issue that one country alone can solve.

Drug trade destabilizes Columbia --- cocaine profits aid anti-state groups that prolong civil conflict Lee, 2 (Rensselaer W., contract researcher for the Congressional Research Service and a senior fellow at FPRI, Perverse Effects of Andean Counternarcotics Policy, Orbis, Volume 46, Issue 3, Summer 2012, pg. 537-554, sciencedirect, Tashma)

Unfortunately, the story does not end here. In international drug control, small enforcement successes often mask larger policy failures. The supposed achievements of the Andean drug war, in fact, have spawned an array of unanticipated problems for the United States, Colombia, and other countries in this hemisphere. Recent statistics show, for example, that cultivation of coca has ballooned in Colombia, largely negating the eradication achievements elsewhere in the Andes. Colombian syndicates have reportedly also succeeded in compensating for lost Peruvian and Bolivian supplies by improving leaf yields and alkaloid content. The

consequences to Colombias internal stability have been terrible: the increased concentration of upstream coca production has vastly increased the resources available to antistate groups, fueling the countrys ongoing civil conflict. The disintegration of the cartel structure has had a similar result, if for different reasons. The cartels provided a degree of order and control in the industry, but their demise has emboldened Colombias various guerrilla organizations to enter the business of refining, trading, and exporting drugs.5 Since these groups seem to contemplate the violent overthrow of the government or (minimally) a permanent partition of the country, they may represent a greater threat to Colombias survival than did the classic criminal coalitions of the 1980s and 1990s. Destroys Latin American democracy Wilhelm, 2k (General Charles E., FDCH, US Marine Corp Commander in Chief, USSC before House Committee on Government Reform Subcommittee on Crim. Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, STRATEGY AND LONG RANGE PLAN TO ASSIST COLOMBIA WITH ITS CD EFFORTS, February 15, 2000) Personal Assessment As I stated earlier, as Colombia's problems spill over into neighboring countries, they threaten the regional stability that is essential to the growth and sustainment of strong democracies and free market economies throughout the region. Drug trafficking is a major contributing factor to Colombia's internal problems. Key to global democracy Hillman, 2 Ph.D., Professor and Director, Institute for the Study of Democracy and Human Rights, St. John Fisher College (Richard S., Democracy and Human Rights in Latin Americai, Preface, p. vii) //SP Latin American experiences, especially in the areas of democratization and human rights protection, are particularly relevant for developing countries that are attempting to build stable political and economic systems in order to provide a decent standard of living and incorporate previously excluded populations into the national mainstream. The past record, of course, is far from acceptable. The advent of the twenty-first century, however, appears to be a time of great potential progress for the institutionalization of democratic human rights regimes that would reduce human pain and suffering. The number of countries in Latin America and elsewhere that are experimenting with democracy has never been greater. Clearly, the path toward fulfilling the expectations raised by these experiments is
not an easy one; it is fraught with difficult obstacles deriving from the historical legacy as well as contemporary challenges. Nevertheless, democracy and human rights have definitively entered the political lexicon and discourse throughout the world.

Extinction Diamond 95 (Larry, Senior Fellow Hoover Institution, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, December, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)

On any list of the most important potential threats to world order and national security in the coming decade, these six should figure prominently: a hostile, expansionist Russia; a hostile, expansionist China; the spread of fundamentalist Islamic, anti-Western regimes; the spread of political terrorism from all sources; sharply increased immigration pressures; and ethnic conflict that escalates into large-scale violence, civil war, refugee flows, state collapse, and general anarchy. Some of these potential threats interact in significant ways with one another, but they all share a common underlying connection. In each instance, the development of democracy is an important prophylactic, and in some cases the only long- term protection, against disaster. A HOSTILE, EXPANSIONIST RUSSIA Chief among the threats to the security of Europe, the United States, and Japan would be the reversion of Russia--with its still very substantial nuclear, scientific, and military prowess--to a hostile posture toward the West. Today, the Russian state (insofar as it continues to exist) appears perched on the precipice of capture by

ultranationalist, anti-Semitic, neo-imperialist forces seeking a new era of pogroms, conquest, and "greatness." These forces

feed on the weakness of democratic institutions, the divisions among democratic forces, and the generally dismal economic and political state of the country under civilian, constitutional rule. Numerous observers speak of "Weimar Russia." As in Germany in the 1920s, the only alternative to a triumph of fascism (or some related "ism" deeply hostile to freedom and to the West) is the development of an effective democratic order. Now, as then, this project must struggle against great historical and political odds, and it seems feasible only with international economic aid and support for democratic forces and institutions. A HOSTILE, EXPANSIONIST CHINA In China, the threat to the West emanates from success rather than failure and is less amenable to explicit international assistance and inducement. Still, a China moving toward democracy--gradually constructing a real constitutional order, with established ground rules for political competition and succession and civilian control over the military--seems a much

better prospect to be a responsible player on the regional and international stage. Unfair trade practices, naval power projection, territorial expansion, subversion of neighboring regimes, and bullying of democratic forces in Hong Kong and Taiwan are all more likely the more China resists political liberalization. So is a political succession crisis that could disrupt incremental patterns of reform and induce competing power players to take risks internationally to advance their power positions at home. A China that is building an effective rule of law seems a much better prospect to respect international trading rules that mandate protection for intellectual property and forbid the use of prison labor. And on these matters of legal, electoral, and institutional development, international actors can help. THE SPREAD OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM Increasingly, Europeans and Americans worry about the threat from fundamentalist Islam. But fundamentalist movements do not mobilize righteous anger and absolute commitment in a vacuum. They feed on the utter failure of decadent political systems to meet the most elementary expectations for material progress and social justice. Some say the West must choose between corrupt, repressive regimes that are at least secular and pro-Western and Islamic fundamentalist regimes that will be no less repressive, but anti-Western. That is a false choice in Egypt today, as it was in Iran or Algeria--at least until their societies became so polarized as to virtually obliterate the liberal center. It is precisely the corruption, arrogance, oppression, and gross inefficacy of ruling regimes like the current one in Egypt that stimulate the Islamic fundamentalist alternative. Though force may be needed--and legitimate--to meet an armed challenge, history teaches that decadent regimes cannot hang on forever through force alone. In the long run, the only reliable bulwark against revolution or anarchy is good governance--and that requires far-reaching political reform. In Egypt and some other Arab countries, such reform would entail a gradual program of political liberalization that counters corruption, reduces state interference in the economy, responds to social needs, and gives space for moderate forces in civil society to build public support and understanding for further liberalizing reforms. In Pakistan and Turkey, it would mean making democracy work: stamping out corruption, reforming the economy, mobilizing state resources efficiently to address social needs, devolving power, guaranteeing the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and--not least-- reasserting civilian control over the military. In either case, the fundamentalist

challenge can be met only by moving (at varying speeds) toward, not away from, democracy. POLITICAL

TERRORISM Terrorism and immigration pressures also commonly have their origins in political exclusion, social injustice, and bad, abusive, or tyrannical governance. Overwhelmingly, the sponsors of international terrorism are among the world's most authoritarian regimes: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan. And locally within countries, the agents of terrorism tend to be either the fanatics of antidemocratic, ideological movements or aggrieved ethnic and regional minorities who have felt themselves socially marginalized and politically excluded and insecure: Sri Lanka's Tamils, Turkey's Kurds, India's Sikhs and Kashmiris. To be sure, democracies must vigorously mobilize their legitimate instruments of law enforcement to counter this growing threat to their security. But a more fundamental and enduring assault on international terrorism requires political change to bring down zealous, paranoiac dictatorships and to allow aggrieved groups in all countries to pursue their interests through open, peaceful, and constitutional means. As for immigration, it is true that people everywhere are drawn to prosperous, open, dynamic societies like those of the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. But the sources of large (and rapid) immigration flows to the West increasingly tend to be countries in the grip of civil war, political turmoil, economic disarray, and poor governance: Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Central America, Algeria. And in Mexico, authoritarianism, corruption, and social injustice have held back human development in ways that have spawned the largest sustained flow of immigrants to any Western country--a flow that threatens to become a floodtide if the Zedillo government cannot rebuild Mexico's economy and societal consensus around authentic democatic reform. In other cases--Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan--immigration to the West has been modest only because of the greater logistical and political difficulties. However, in impoverished areas of Africa and Asia more remote from the West, disarray is felt in the flows of refugees across borders, hardly a benign development for world order. Of course, population growth also heavily drives these pressures. But a common factor underlying all of these crisis-ridden emigration points is the absence of democracy. And, strikingly, populations grow faster in authoritarian than democratic regimes.4ETHNIC CONFLICT Apologists for authoritarian rule--as in Kenya and Indonesia--are wont to argue that multiparty electoral competition breeds ethnic rivalry and polarization, while strong central control keeps the lid on conflict. But when multiple ethnic and national identities are forcibly suppressed, the lid may violently pop when the regime falls apart. The fate of Yugoslavia, or of Rwanda, dramatically refutes the canard that authoritarian rule is a better means for containing ethnic conflict. Indeed, so does the recent experience of Kenya, where ethnic hatred, land grabs, and violence have been deliberately fostered by the regime of President Daniel arap Moi in a desperate bid to divide the people and thereby cling to power. Overwhelmingly, theory and evidence show that the path to peaceful management of ethnic pluralism lies not through suppressing ethnic identities and superimposing the hegemony of one group over others. Eventually, such a formula is bound to crumble or be challenged violently. Rather, sustained interethnic moderation

and peace follow from the frank recognition of plural identities, legal protection for group and individual rights, devolution of power to various localities and regions, and political institutions that encourage bargaining and accommodation at the center. Such institutional provisions and protections are not only significantly more likely under democracy, they are only possible with some considerable degree of democracy.5 OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts
the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of

life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring

glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass

trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are

more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the

destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation

on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

Cocaine profits specifically fuel the FARC --- theyre hungry for political influence Lee, 2 (Rensselaer W., contract researcher for the Congressional Research Service and a senior fellow at FPRI, Perverse Effects of Andean Counternarcotics Policy, Orbis, Volume 46, Issue 3, Summer 2012, pg. 537-554, sciencedirect, Tashma)
The shifting pattern of coca cultivation in the Andes turned out to be a windfall for Colombias various outlaw groups, especially for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armedas Revolutionarias de ColombiaFARC), the countrys oldest and largest insurgent group. As a 2001 State Department report notes, The Colombian syndicates, witnessing the

vulnerability of Peruvian and Bolivian coca supply to joint interdiction operations in the late 1990s, decided to move most of the cultivation to Colombias southwest corner, an area controlled by the FARC.9 The resultant expansion of drug revenues benefited other outlaw organizations such as the Army of National Liberation and the rightist United Self Defense Forces of Colombia; however, the FARC appeared to be the biggest winner. As former Colombian defense minister Rafael Pardo observed, FARC is both a narcotrafficking operation and an insurgent group seeking political power. Its strongholds are the areas that grow 90 percent of the countrys cocaine.10 Drug trade fuels a Colombian civil war Chalk, 11 (Peter, Senior Political Scientist at RAND Corporation, Ph.D. in political science, University of British Columbia, M.A. in political studies and international relations, University of Aberdeen, The Latin American Drug Trade Scope, Dimensions, Impact, and Response, RAND Project Air Force, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/RAND_MG1076.pdf, Tashma)
South America and Central America

The Latin American drug trade has had a pervasive and insidious impact that has affected a wide spectrum of national, regional, and even international security interests. In Colombia, revenue from the production and trafficking of heroin and cocaine has provided FARC with sufficient operational capital to maintain an active war footing in its ongoing conflict against Bogot. Although the organization does not pose a strategic threat to the central government, its activities have undermined popular confidence in the administrations ability to project a concerted territorial presence, guarantee public security, and maintain a (legitimate) monopoly of violenceall key components of sovereign statehood. There is little question that, without access to the enormous profits availed by the drug trade, FARCs ability to achieve these debilitating effects would have been greatly curtailed.1 Compounding the situation in Colombia are the activities of reemerging paramilitary gangs. In particular, fighting and competition between these groups has contributed to an increasingly serious humanitarian crisis. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 27,000 internal refugees
were registered in the state during 2008, more than double the figure for 2007.2 These numbers make up a major proportion of the overall national displacement picture, which currently remains among the worlds worst.3

Stemming drug trafficking solves relations Lee, 09 (Renssaler, fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Testimony before the House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee of National Security and Foreign Affairs, Cuba, Drugs, and U.S.-Cuban Relations, 4/29/2009, https://www.fpri.org/docs/alt/testimony.20090429.lee_.cubadrugs.pdf, JKahn) This is the story of a Caribbean state that at one time was deeply (if selectively) involved in the international drug trade , becoming now a state for which suppressing the drug traffic seems to be a foremost national priority. This apparent transformation and accompanying tectonic shifts in the international security environment, have some important implications for U.S.-Cuban relations The United States and Cuba have a strong mutual interest in closing off trafficking routes in the
western Caribbean and in preventing attempts by Mexican and South American cocaine mafias to set up shop in Cuba proper.

Cuba Relations

Drugs Kill People

Illegal drug use kills tens of thousands in the US per year and its on the rise Muhuri & Gfroerer, 11 PhD and BA, Division of Population Surveys, Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (Pradip
K. & Joseph C., Mortality associated with illegal drug use among adults in the United States, The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Vol. 37 No. 3, pg. 155-164, May 2011, Informa Healthcare)//BI

Illegal drug use can produce numerous adverse health effects. These include unintentional death by drug poisoning, injury, and suicide; infectious diseases (e.g., vital hepatitis B & C and human immunodeciency
virus (HIV)) from injecting drugs; cardiovascular disease due to cocaine use, mental and behavioral disorders due to use of psychoactive substances; pregnancy complications, low birth weight, and short gestation due to maternal use of drugs (1,2). Globally, illegal drug use accounts for .8% of the burden in disability-adjusted life years and .4% in mortality (2). The use of amphetamines, cocaine, and opioids has been shown to cause premature mortality in many countries and regions (37). Metaanalysis of published results has revealed that illegal drug use is one of the seven modiable behavioral risk

factors contributing to mortality in the United States (8,9). Approximately 95% of all unintentional poisoning deaths that occur annually in the United States are attributed to drugs (10). Analyses of the data from the National Vital Statistics System have shown that unintentional drug-poisoning or overdose death rates have increased steadily since 1970. In 2007, 27,658 overdose deaths occurred in the United States, and the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose death was 9.2 per 100,000; the major drug categories involved in these deaths were cocaine, heroin, and opioid pain medication (such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone) (11). Although overdoses are the major cause of drug-related mortality, certain types of drugs including opioids are involved in large and increasing numbers of deaths (12). In recent years, poisoning deaths involving opioid analgesics increased considerably, but deaths involving methadone increased more rapidly than those relating to

other opioid analgesics, cocaine, or heroin (13). Overall, opioid analgesics accounted for much of the increase in the number of drugpoisoning deaths, surpassing heroin as well as cocaine in their involvement in those deaths (11,14). Analysis of the data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network has suggested similar patterns (15). Some of these studies have referred to the possibility of medical examiners increased search for opioids in poisoning deaths resulting from publicity concerning fatal poisonings involving prescription medication and their improvements in toxicological test procedures for opioids (1315). However, such reporting artefacts are considered unlikely explanations for recent increases in poisoning deaths in the United States, particularly those involving synthetic opioids (14). One study has reported a positive correlation between drug-poisoning

mortality and overall availability of opioid analgesics, particularly the sales of oxycodone and methadone, among states

in the United States in 2002 (16). However, population-based epidemiological studies examining mortality in relation to illegal drug use have been rare.

Drug usage stemming from drug trade is a systemic killer cocaine alone kills tens of thousands per year UNODC, 10 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, The global cocaine market, World Drug Report 2010, https://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2010/1.3_The_globa_cocaine_market.pdf, Tashma)
Global impact

The use of cocaine constitutes, first of all, a major health problem. Cocaine use results in tens of thousands of deaths each year worldwide. After the opiates, cocaine is the most problematic drug globally, and it is indisputably the main problem drug in the Americas. Out of the 5.3 million people who used cocaine at least once in the United States during 2008, 1.9 million also used cocaine in the previous month, of which almost 1 million were found to have been dependent on cocaine.10 In other words, out of the people who used cocaine in the previous year at least once, 18% were dependent on it. This is a higher proportion than for any other drug except heroin. Figures for the year 2007 showed that out of 1,000 people who
used crack cocaine in the previous 12 months, 116 entered treatment for substance abuse, a slightly higher proportion than for methamphetamine (102) and a significantly higher proportion than for drug use in general (30) or for the use of alcohol (6).13

Structural violence outweighs

HINTJENS 2007 [Helen Hintjens is Lecturer in the Centre for Development Studies, University of Wales, MDF Understanding Development Better]

From Johan Galtung, famous Norwegian peace guru, still alive and heads up TRANSCEND University on -line, has been working since 1960s on showing that violence is not OK. His Ghandian approach is designed to convince those who advocate violent means to restore social justice to the poor, that he as a pacifist does not turn a blind eye to social injustices and inequality. He extended therefore our understanding of what is violent, coercion, force, to include the economic and social systems avoidable if there is no war.

injustices, deaths, inequalities. Negative peace is the absence of justice, even Injustice causes structural violence to health, bodies, minds, damages people, and must therefore be resisted (non-violently). Positive peace is different from negative (unjust and hence violent) peace. Positive
peace requires actively combating (struggling peacefully against) social injustices that underpin structural violence. Economic and social, political justice have to be part of peacebuilding. This is the mantra of most NGOs and even some agencies (we will look later at NGO Action Aid and DFID as examples). Discrimination has to end, so does the blatant rule of money,

greater equality is vital wherever possible. All of this is the opposite of neo-liberal recipes for success, which in Holland as in Indonesia, tolerate higher and higher levels of social inequality in the name of efficiency. Structural violence kills far more people than warfare for example one estimate in DRC is that 4 million people have been killed in war since 1998, but NGOs estimate that an additional 6 million people have died in DRC since then, from disease, displacement and hunger, bringing the total to an unthinkable 10 million of 90 million est.
population. Since there exists far more wealth in the world than is necessary to address the main economic causes of structural violence, the real problem is one of prioritiesp. 307 Structural violenceis neither

natural nor inevitable, p. 301 (Prontzos).

Economy
Drug trade destroys the U.S. economy --- direct and indirect effects Chalk, 11 (Peter, Senior Political Scientist at RAND Corporation, Ph.D. in political science, University of British Columbia, M.A. in political studies and international relations, University of Aberdeen, The Latin American Drug Trade Scope, Dimensions, Impact, and Response, RAND Project Air Force, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/RAND_MG1076.pdf, Tashma) The narcotics trade has also significantly impeded fiscal growth and stability by diverting scarce resources away from more-productive uses. Between 1981 and 2008, federal, state, and local governments are estimated to have spent at least $600 billion (adjusted for inflation) on drug interdiction and related law enforcement efforts; factoring in costs associated with treatment and rehabilitation, the overall total rises to around $800 billion.34 If one were to also add in invisible losses brought about by curtailed job opportunities and reduced workplace productivity, the true cost would be far higher. As ONDCP has observed, this financial burden is one that is shared by all of society, either directly or indirectly through higher tax dollars.35 Drags down the global economy Naim, 5 (Moises, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, Broken Borders; Trafficking: Globalization has lowered barriers to illegal as well as legal commerce, and international smuggling now threatens to derail the world economy, Newsweek, 10/24/25, proquest, Tashma)

Last week a British sting operation code-named Bluesky busted a Pan-European ring that, according to Scotland Yard, was allegedly responsible for smuggling as many as 200,000 people into the United Kingdom during the last few years. In August U.S. officials dismantled a gang they accused of trafficking everything from drugs to forged postal stamps to millions of "supernotes"--almostperfect fake currency--as well as rocket launchers and counterfeit cigarettes into the United States. Two weeks ago a diverse group of CEOs of major multinationals including Nestle, Microsoft and GlaxoSmithKline announced that they were pooling efforts to

combat the illegal trade in counterfeit goods, which costs the world economy an estimated $630 billion per year. Yet what each bust or high-profile initiative really speaks to is the exponential growth in illicit trade across the world. While governments have spent billions since 9/11 to fortify their borders against everything from potential terrorists to illegal drugs and nuclear materials, the size and sophistication of those trafficking operations that have been rolled up has continued to increase. A study released earlier this
year by the Washington-based Institute for International Economics found that despite the cumbersome laws that many governments enacted after September 11, money launderers face only a 5 percent chance of being convicted in any given year. (Asked recently how much harder it was to move $50 million secretly now than 10 years ago, a Swiss banker smiled and replied: "The main difference is that now I charge more.") A report last month from the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States since 9/11 has stayed roughly the same since the 1990s--about half a million per year. The trade in small arms has grown into a $4 billion-a-year industry, fueling insurgencies and guerrilla wars from Iraq to Congo. This is more than a security issue: the dark trades, driven by the same globalizing forces responsible for the surge in international commerce over the last two decades, now

threaten the smooth functioning of the legitimate world. Smuggling revenues are spectacular. From 1992 to 2002 the total size of the global drug trade more than doubled to $900 billion annually. Fifteen years ago the trade in counterfeit goods was almost
insignificant; today the bootleg-CD business alone is worth $4.6 billion a year. The illicit arms trade accounts for an additional $10 billion. So does cross-border human trafficking. Stolen art is worth $3 billion each year. An illegal trade in toxic waste is estimated at $12 billion. Money laundering offers perhaps the best glimpse of the total size of the world's illicit economy. While global trade has roughly doubled since 1990, from the $5 trillion to the $10 trillion range, the amount of money being laundered worldwide has grown at least tenfold --to nearly $1.5 trillion in some estimates. Since illicit trades can thrive only with government complicity, this means that traffickers are investing huge sums to gain political influence, and not just in their home countries. Their operations have become truly multinational, weaving together global networks of political allies and generating profits on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, the sheer size of the problem is forcing entire industries--from shipping to software, banking to movies--to rethink their operations. Like those businesses, the trafficking boom owes much to globalization. In the last decade

revolutionary changes in technology and politics have reduced the obstacles that distance,

borders and government policies had imposed on the movement of goods, money and people. In

the 1990s the Internet made international coordination almost costless, and the only price that dropped faster than shipping a cargo container from Shanghai to Los Angeles was the cost of a phone call across the world. Meanwhile, governments everywhere lowered tariffs, eliminated currency controls and opened their economies to foreign traders and investors. All this has not only made the traffickers' job easier, but allowed them to internationalize. Chinese counterfeiters now contract with Cameroonian peoplesmugglers to have illegal migrants sell fake Gucci bags in Paris or New York. Ukrainian criminals trade guns to their counterparts in Colombia in exchange for cocaine. Meanwhile as the revenues of the traffickers have soared, the law-

enforcement agencies fighting them have seen their budgets dwindle as a result of widespread attempts to downsize government. In 2004 Interpol's entire budget was only $50 million--the cost of just one of the fast

ships or planes routinely used and abandoned by traffickers. And other priorities have complicated efforts to combat smuggling. Last week an audit showed that the number of criminal investigations opened by the FBI has dropped by nearly half in the last five years, a reflection of the bureau's shift toward stopping terrorism. In 2004 the agency assigned more than 2,000 fewer agents to criminal matters than the year before. All these changes have made more acute a longstanding asymmetry: national borders are a boon for traffickers and a nightmare for law-enforcement agencies. Borders allow for the price differences that yield rich profits to smugglers with the ability to transport goods across them. (While in 2004 the average annual income of a poppy farmer in Afghanistan was just $1,700, a kilo of heroin fetched more than $39,000 in the United Kingdom.) Borders also provide a convenient legal shield for smugglers once they cross over to another jurisdiction. Governments have a very hard time collaborating with other governments; their natural habitat is inside their national borders. In contrast, traffickers are most effective when operating across borders--which makes them in many ways better suited to today's world. Indeed, while some smugglers still deal in only one product--cocaine, say, or human kidneys--much of the power to dispatch goods and set prices now rests with agents, brokers, transporters and those who control the bottlenecks where profits are highest. Crime organizations in northern Mexico have long since expanded their activities from drug trafficking (which they frequently subcontract to smaller players) into new "profit centers." Their business model involves opportunistic arrangements whereby they support Ukrainian, Chinese or Middle Eastern traffickers in the smuggling of various items (including human beings), using their routes into the United States. Drugs remain a large part of the picture, but the real prize--the core competitive advantage--is the ability to sneak goods and people across the border. Of course, smuggling and international crime have always existed. But three things make this new breed of trafficking far more dangerous than ever before. First, the threat posed by the goods being smuggled has increased exponentially: think only of the black market in nuclear know-how run by Pakistani scientist AQ Khan, which stretched from North Korea to Libya, or the estimated 300 tons of unsecured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. The movement of people is one area where authorities have recognized a threat and taken strong measures to confront it--yet hardly made a dent in the flood of migrants (accompanying story). Second, companies are not only losing revenues to smugglers, copycats and fraudsters but also facing added costs--from protecting intellectual property to complying with cumbersome new regulations for shipping or international fund transfers. According to one estimate, adhering to new money-laundering laws now accounts for 10 percent of private banks' costs. And as the criminals reinvest

their profits in legitimate companies, businesses confront them aboveground, as it were--as competitors, suppliers, distributors, bankers and perhaps even partners. Finally, along with diversifying, illicit traders have cultivated political ties--and the more unstable and dysfunctional the country the better. Attempts by criminals to infiltrate governments are as old as governments themselves, of course. But never have they

had as many riches with which to buy cooperation, distraction and shelter. Last year the Lithuanian Parliament impeached President Ronaldas Paksas for taking funds from a Russian businessman with alleged ties to Russian organized crime; provincial officials from Afghanistan to Mexico have been implicated in the drug trade. It is no longer possible to understand some of the current behaviors of China

or Russia or anticipate their likely evolution without considering the enormous influence that illicit traders have gained at the highest levels of their central and provincial governments. Beijing, for instance, is not likely to crack down on the country's massive counterfeiting industry as long as military and Party officials continue to have a hand in the trade. The same is true of many countries in Africa, the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Drug trafficking is a global security threat destroys a countrys ability to compete in the international economy the US is the largest target Durbin, 13 professor of the School of Graduate and Continuing Studies in Diplomacy at Norwich University (Kirk J. Durbin International Narco-Terrorism and Non-State Actors: The Drug Cartel Global Threat
Global Security Studies, Winter 2013, Volume 4, Issue 1 http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Durbin%20Narcotics.pdf) // czhang Conclusion Narcotics and drug trafficking have become a tremendous national and international

security threat globally. A number of opinions for legalizing drugs argue it will make many of societys problems disappear. The ideas are lofty and seem to work under the best conditions in the human mind, but fail miserably in reality. Drugs are simply an addicting habit that has ensnared a number of people worldwide. The ramifications are immense in every society. It destroys self-discipline and removes ones moral compass. The evidence is over whelming. For example, The Dutch Netherlands has reconsidered its relaxing enforcement on the use of cannabis. Tourists traveling to the Netherlands to visit Amsterdams coffee shops for its hybrid cannabis have caused an economic impact on Amsterdams more traditional business in its red light district

(Associated Press, 2011, para. 11). The Netherlands has been producing hybrid cannabis that has increased in higher concentrations of Tetrahydrocannabino (THC) over the past three decades. According to the Associated Press (2011), the Dutch government has announced it will classify the hybrid cannabis as a hard drug within the same category as cocaine, and ecstasy, reporting that the hybrid weed has contributed to an increase breakdown in public health (para, 1, 5). The Dutch government is

concerned about a generation of citizens whos public health could affect the Netherlands ability to be competitive in the European Union and the global economy. The leafy green substance

has become such a tourist favorite that the Dutch government is moving to ban sales to the tourists. The Associated Press (2011) mentions the Trimbos Institute findings that the average amount of THC in Dutch marijuana is currently around 17.8 percent. It has been declining since 2004 after increasing steadily from 4 percent or so in the 1970s (para. 16). The Dutch have move beyond tobacco cigars and have become known for its hybrid cannabis. The Dutch government policies of tolerance of its use have now reconsidered its negative impact on the country. The United States is the largest market for illegal drug

consumption resulting in violence and mayhem. To the Mexican drug cartels, this country by its drug consumption finances their drug empires. Once a less violent activity of Mexicos society, trafficking

marijuana has in the last thirty years become a violent war resulting in the loss of thousands of innocent lives. Who can the people trust if not their governments? Activities with the mass slaughter of women, children, and government

officials have raised the violence to a level of terrorism. Because narcotics are the central reason for the fighting, and massive corruption, the label of narcoterrorism fits.

Failed States
Drug trade violence turns Mexico and Pakistan into failed states and destabilizes the US Broder, 9 senior editor for defense and foreign policy at Roll Call. Before joining Congressional Quarterly in 2002, he worked
as an editor at National Public Radio in Washington and as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, NBC News and the Chicago Tribune, based in Jerusalem, Beirut and Beijing. graduate of the University of Virginia and studied international relations at Harvard University. (Jonathan, Mexico's Drug War: Violence Too Close to Home 3/9/09 http://library.cqpress.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/cqweekly/weeklyreport111-000003069323.) // czhang With an approving nod from the United States, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has thrown his army into the fight against the cartels, but the well-armed gangs are fighting back. And according to some U.S. officials and experts, the Drug barons

are winning. In Washington, where policy debates involving Mexico have been confined mostly to trade and immigration for

the past two decades, sudden awareness of the Drug war has produced some alarming assessments. Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who was the Drug czar in the Clinton White House, warned recently that unless the Mexican government gains

control of the Drug gangs, the United States could, within a decade, be confronting on its southern border a narco-state meaning an area controlled by Drug cartels. The Pentagon envisions an even worse scenario: Mexico and Pakistan, it says, are the countries most at risk of swiftly collapsing into failed states those whose central governments are so weak they have little practical control over most of their territory. Beset as he is at home by the credit crisis and plunging economy, President
Obamas response to the chaos in Mexico has so far been to continue some George W. Bush administration policies while beginning a search for others. He is expected to focus on possible regional approaches when he attends a Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago next month. Experts on the region, though, say the magnitude of the Drug war in Mexico and its

danger to the United States far exceed the reach of existing federal policies, perhaps even the policies the new administration is considering, such as stepped-up military aid and regional cooperation. Uncontrolled Drug violence in Mexico, these experts say, might result in tens of thousands of refugees surging across the border, adding to the estimated 12 million immigrants already in the country illegally. U.S. Drug officials say that a narco-state in Mexico could turn the ungoverned territory along the border into a permanent springboard for Mexican Drug traffickers smuggling their goods north into California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. And economic analysts say that should the Mexican government completely collapse, it would jeopardize oil exports from Mexico, from which the United States receives a third of its supply. Any descent by Mexico into chaos, the Pentagons Joint
Forces Command wrote in November, would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.

Drug cartel causes democratic instability that turns Mexico into a failed state ONeil, 9 senior fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan foreign-policy think tank and membership organization. (Shannon, The Real War in Mexico:
How Democracy Can Defeat the Drug Cartels Source: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 4 (July/August 2009), pp. 63 -77 JSTOR) // czhang The actual risk of the violence today is that it will undermine democracy tomorrow. What has changed in Mexico in recent years is not the drug trade but that a Although an authoritarian legacy persists,

fledgling market-based democracy has arisen. power now comes from the ballot box. This transformation has coincided with the rise of Mexico's middle class, which, now nearly 30 million strong, has supported more open politics and markets. But Mexico's democratic system is still fragile . And by disrupting established payoff systems between drug traffickers and government officials, democratization unwittingly exacerbated drug-related violence. The first two freely elected governments have struggled to respond, hampered by electoral competition and the decentralization of political power. Yet in the long run, only through true democratic governance will Mexico successfully conquer, rather than just paper over, its security challenges. For the safety and prosperity of Mexico and the United States, Washington must go beyond its current focus on border control to a more ambitious goal: supporting Mexicos democracy.

Drug instability risks Mexican failed state Thoumi, Manaut, Sain, and Jcome, 10 (*Francisco E., expert at the Wilson Center, Ph.D., professor of economics and the director of the Research and Minotiring Center on Drugs and Crime at Universidad el Rosario, former research coordinator at the United National Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, **Ral Benitez, public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Humanities, professor and researcher at the North America Rsearch Center of UNAM-Mexico, CNAS Senior Fellow, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, School of Public Affairs and Washington College of Law, Ph.D in Latin American Studies at UNAM, Master of International Affairs from the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economica, ***professor at the University of San Andrs, Ph.D., University of Salvador, political science, Francine, professor of anthropology at the Central University of Venezuela, political science degree, Friedrich, Ebert, and Stiftung Research, The impact of organized crime on Democratic Governance in Latin America,
Organized crime in Colombia is today more complex, diversified and sophisticated than when the cocaine industry started. Indeed, the illegal industry has been a cata- lyst that aggravated many of the main social conflicts of the country and encouraged the growth of organized crime. Organized crime has become a great obstacle to democratic governance in Colombia. n We can say that the

Mexican state is losing the war against drug trafficking and that therefore it must radically change its strategy because of the following: the spike in executions, the exponential increase in U.S. aid, the increased presence of the armed forces in the fight against drug trafficking and in public security in high risk cities, the transformation of Jurez into the most dangerous city in the world, increasing cocaine consumption and the sentiments that Mexico could become a failed state . n The management, administration and overall control of
public security matters and, amongst these, combating organized crime, as well as the organization and running of the police system remain in the hands of the police themselves, generating a sort of police-ification of public security. In Brazil, Paraguay and to a lesser extent in Uruguay this process has also included a strong tendency to incorporate the Armed Forces in the war on organized crime, all prompted by the failings of the police system in tackling the problem.

Drug crime decreases legitimacy of Mexican government risks collapse Thoumi, Manaut, Sain, and Jcome, 10 (*Francisco E., expert at the Wilson Center, Ph.D., professor of economics and the director of the Research and Minotiring Center on Drugs and Crime at Universidad el Rosario, former research coordinator at the United National Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, **Ral Benitez, public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Humanities, professor and researcher at the North America Rsearch Center of UNAM-Mexico, CNAS Senior Fellow, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, School of Public Affairs and Washington College of Law, Ph.D in Latin American Studies at UNAM, Master of International Affairs from the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economica, ***professor at the University of San Andrs, Ph.D., University of Salvador, political science, Francine, professor of anthropology at the Central University of Venezuela, political science degree, Friedrich, Ebert, and Stiftung Research, The impact of organized crime on Democratic Governance in Latin America, Organized crime is a growing problem worldwide. In Latin America and the Caribbean groups of organized crime are undermining the states capacity to govern . In- stitutions of the political system are undercut by the so called Narcos or other non state actors. It is obvious that organized crime has adopted mechanisms of
the globalized economy such as a high degree of flexibility, the ability to quickly adjust to market changes and the use of socially weak segments of society for their means. While organized crime gets more access to and through politics,

weakened states in Latin America are put under serious pressure. The impact on recently democratized states like Mexico is severe . The role of or- ganized crime in the erosion of democratic governance is
already marked by zones of fragile statehood, the undermin- ing of political institutions, the replacement of social pol- icies by non state actors, the bribing of political actors and the illicit financing of political campaigns. But not only has the existence of

criminal activities cre- ated a threat to democratic governance . The repressive politics that often respond to organized crime activities further create a spiral of mistrust, corruption and vio- lent reactions.
High levels of violence and public inse- curity often justify the popularity of zero tolerance ap- proaches: Politics of the hard hand such as in Mexico and Colombia where the military is fighting in a war on drugs. These politics often produce human rights abus-

es and thus further undermine democratic forms of gov- ernance. The involvement of politicians and police forces or the military in illegal businesses further undermine the trust of civil society into institutions of the state.

Human Rights
Drug trade leads to human rights violations Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 70, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) As chapters 2 and 5 demonstrate, access to drug resources also increases the likelihood that warring groups will abuse the human rights of civilians uninvolved in open hostilities. Widespread drug abuse, child soldier recruitment, and atrocities against civilians breakdown informal social controls that restrict behaviors that are detrimental to civil society like drug abuse and criminality/ Such effects during conflicts mean that dealing with the aftermath of widespread human suffering serves as an additional complication for governments and outside agencies that are involved in implementing the conditions of
conflict- resolution agreements. Without coming to grips with atrocities, criminality and the brea.kdown in social norms, governments may find that popular discontent will affect newly gained but fragile political stability.

Human rights violations cause nuclear war and extinction HR Web 94 (Human Rights Web, An Introduction to the Human Rights Movement, 7-20, http://www.hrweb.org/intro.html)

The United Nations Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and UN Human Rights convenants were written and implemented in the aftermath of the Holocaust, revelations coming from the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the Bataan Death March, the atomic bomb, and other horrors smaller in magnitude but not in impact on the individuals they affected. A whole lot of people in a number of countries had a crisis of conscience and found they could no longer look the other way while tyrants jailed, tortured, and killed their neighbors. Many also realized that advances in technology and changes in social structures had rendered war a threat to the continued existence of the human race. Large numbers of people in many countries lived under the control of tyrants,

having no recourse but war to relieve often intolerable living conditions. Unless some way could revolt and become the catalyst for another wide-scale and possibly nuclear war. For perhaps the first time, representatives from the majority of governments in the world came to the conclusion that basic human rights must be protected, not only for the sake of the individuals and countries involved, but to preserve the human race.
was found to relieve the lot of these people, they

Illegal drugs are utilized as weapons --- attackers intoxicate their enemies --- that equates to extreme human rights violations Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 3, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) The presence of drugs in todays conflicts has contributed to the volatile nature of inter- national and regional security in the post-Cold War era. Drug trafficking contributes to prolonged intrastate conflicts and high levels of arms trafficking and cross border migra- tions. Intoxicated combatants have committed gross violations of human rights, adding to humanitarian catastrophes that the international community has felt compelled to limit through military intervention. Additionally, when irregular forces use the drug economy it can contribute to higher casualty figures for professional rnilitariesin September 2006, with the resurgent Taliban funded by drug profits, it became statistically as dangerous for American service members to serve in Afghanistan as in Iraq.

Human Trafficking
Winning the war on drugs is key to combat human trafficking Cota, 7/4/13 writer for the Guardian (Isabella, Central America's drug cartels turn their attention to trafficking
people The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/jul/04/central-america-drug-cartels-traffickingpeople) // czhang Across the region, a deadly combination of mass undocumented migration, poverty, and the breakdown of law

and order are proving fertile ground for a thriving and increasingly unbreakable trade in people. "We are a region in which migration is a part of the mental landscape, where leaving the country for work always is, and

always has been, an option," says Ana Hidalgo, regional counter-trafficking project manager at the International Organisation for Migration. "Human trafficking, in any of its manifestations, responds to the laws of economics worldwide, to the supply and demand in the labour market and it is amid these uncontrollable forces that the trafficker appears." Asahac, an NGO based in northern Mexico, estimates that more than half of Central American migrants trying to cross into the US

fall into the hands of trafficking or smuggling rings, or end up in sexual or forced labour. In the

past decade, Central America has become one of the most dangerous regions in the world. Mexico's widely reported drug war has left about 70,000 people dead. Honduras has a murder rate of 86 per 100,000 inhabitants San Pedro Sula is the most dangerous city in the world, with 173 murders per 100,000 people. This rise in violence has been attributed largely to the

growing power of drug cartels, who are expanding their business from trafficking drugs to trafficking people, says Marcela Chacn, Costa Rica's deputy minister of interior and police. "Why? Because a dose of drugs can be bought and consumed only once, but the same human being can be exploited in many forms over and over again throughout a lifetime," says Chacn. In 2010, 72 Central Americans were found murdered in northern
Mexico, allegedly by the hands of the Zetas cartel. The Mexican army recently rescued 165 people who had been travelling as undocumented migrants when they were kidnapped by a drug cartel near the US border. In a report on Latin America and the Caribbean (pdf) last year, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime warned that human trafficking was likely to become Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean, says her organisation believes that

an increasingly lucrative revenue stream for Central America's drug cartels. Teresa Ulloa, director of the Mexican drug cartels made $10bn last year from the enforced sexual exploitation and slavery of thousands of girls and women. "The Latin American convention remains that women are to be used for men's pleasure.

This means that if they can't access our bodies through force, they can do so with money, creating a demand for women and girls," says Ulloa. "If we could create policy on human trafficking that has gender equality at its core, then

we would be tackling demand. If there was no demand for slaves, there would be no supply." While governments across Central America have revised anti-trafficking legislation in recent years, they continue to be outpaced and outgunned by the increasing power of the cartels in controlling people trafficking across the region. "[Cartels] are organisations that have no limits," says Hidalgo. "They have amassed such power that they bend and violate the rules with reliable impunity and also, they have millions [of dollars] in resources." "It's easy to see how they can remain one step ahead of any police, especially in these countries where police forces usually lack resources and have to follow many bureaucratic steps
and rules. If these organised networks didn't exist, we would have many poor, excluded people here but we wouldn't have slaves."

Drug trafficking allows increased sex trafficking Lehti, 6 a researcher in the National Research Institute of Legal Policy in Helsinki, Finland and a Aromaa was a criminologist and the leader of the European Institute for Crime (HEUNI) a degree in political science and was previously the Institute of Legal Policy Director (Martti and Kauko
Aromaa, Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation Crime and Justice , Vol. 34, No. 1 (2006), pp. 133-227 JSTOR) // czhang

Prostitution and related trafficking have historically been closely linked to organized crime. Both are lucrative enterprises with relatively high profits and low risks. Many criminal activities, for example, drug trafficking and human smuggling, are easy to combine with them. For international drug trafficking networks, pandering is an alluring side business, in which profits equal those from the wholesale trade in mild drugs, but the risks are almost nonexistent. Trafficking, pandering, and retail sale of drugs complement one another well. Drug distribution can be concentrated on the premises where prostitutes work, and prostitutes can be used as dealers and couriers. At the same time prostitutes can effectively be brought under the control of pimps as accomplices and through drug abuse. All kinds of smuggling

enterprises can easily be combined with trafficking in prostitutes (NCIS 2002, pp. 35, 3839; see also
Junninen 2005).

LA Instability
Trafficking turns stability makes suppressing violence impossible Kleiman, 4 (Mark, B.A. magna cum laude, Haverford College, M.P.P., Harvard Kennedy School, Ph.D., Harvard, Professor of
Public Policy in the UCLA School of Public Affairs, Illicit Drugs and the Terrorist Threat: Causal Links and Implications fo r Domestic Drug Control Policy, Congressional Research Service, 4/20/2004, http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32334.pdf, JKahn)

Drug dealing can generate chaos and instability in source and transit countries by sustaining violence , both within and among groups of traffickers and between traffickers on the one hand and ordinary citizens and public authorities on the other. The growth of a criminal economy is also a potentially destabilizing factor . Drug law enforcement can create friction between law enforcement and military authorities on the one hand and ordinary citizens, including small farmers who illicitly grow drug crops, on the other. The secretive techniques of drug investigation can become entangled with the practice of authoritarian rule , as appears to have happened under the Fujimori16 government in Peru. In addition, traffickers can deliberately create chaos in order to weaken the ability of the institutions of government and civil society to interfere with their illegal business. In Colombia, for example, the Medellin Cartel attempted to use terror to deter the Colombian government
from proceeding with vigorous law enforcement measures.17 The same effects can also take place in consumer countries. The retail drug traffic, especially when it grows violent, can be a powerful source of chaos, as many American neighborhoods discovered as the crack trade spread in the 1980s and early 1990s. It has been suggested, though not demonstrated, that drug trafficking has

been used as a form of low-intensity conflict .18 The theory is that forces hostile to a given country might attempt to introduce or aggravate drug addiction problems there as a means of attack.

NarcoTerrorism
Trafficking will result in narco-terrorism which causes bioweapons attacks Flynn and Bryan, 01 (*Stephen E., Founding Co-Director of the George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland
Security and Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, **Anthony, director of the North-South Centers Caribbean Program, Terrorism, Porous Borders, and Homeland Security: The Case for U.S.Caribbean Cooperation, Council on Foreign Relations, 10/21/2001, http://www.cfr.org/border-and-port-security/terrorismporous-borders-homeland-security-case-us-caribbean-cooperation/p4844) Caribbean Regional Security Terrorist acts can take place anywhere. The Caribbean is no exception. Already the linkages

between drug trafficking and terrorism are clear in countries like Colombia and Peru, and

such connections have similar potential in the Caribbean. The security of major industrial complexes in some Caribbean countries is vital. Petroleum refineries and major industrial estates in Trinidad, which host more than 100 companies that produce the majority of the worlds methanol, ammonium sulphate, and 40 percent of U.S. imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG),

are vulnerable targets . Unfortunately, as experience has shown in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, terrorists are likely to strike at U.S. and European interests in Caribbean countries. Security issues become even more critical when one considers the possible use of Caribbean countries by terrorists as bases from which to attack the
a Caribbean port. Moreover, terrorists

United States. An airliner hijacked after departure from an airport in the northern Caribbean or the Bahamas can be flying over South Florida in less than an hour. Terrorists can sabotage or seize control of a cruise ship after the vessel leaves

with false passports and visas issued in the Caribbean may be able to move easily through passport controls in Canada or the United States. (To help counter this possibility, some
countries have suspended "economic citizenship" programs to ensure that known terrorists have not been inadvertently granted such citizenship.) Again, Caribbean countries are as vulnerable as anywhere else to the clandestine

manufacture and deployment of biological weapons within national borders . Over the years, there have been efforts to strengthen the regions security systems, particularly in countries of the English-speaking Caribbean. The stimulus has often been directed at pursuing drug traffickers and their money. However, despite the "third border" concept, the United States has paid little policy attention to the Caribbean countries as an integral part of its perimeter defence structure. Such neglect on the part of the United States, at this time, would be irresponsible. Caribbean countries should be encouraged to join an international consensus and genuine partnership to
guarantee as far as possible the security of the United States and bordering countries. (In this context, the United States will have to consider even closer collaboration with Cuba in global security considerations, despite current policy that brands Cuba as a terrorist state.) This collaboration, which is in the Caribbeans best interest, will force a review of the current policy which allows the unimpeded flow of illegal small arms to Caribbean countries, exacerbating serious crime problems, as well as the "repatriation" of sophisticated criminals who might have only the most tenuous claim to birthright or citizenship in a Caribbean country. Ironically, U.S. Customs officials have in the past argued that more vigilance in attempting to detect guns leaving their shores would slow trade. The tragedy of September 11 has illustrated that it may be worthwhile to spend time and effort intercepting the flow of small arms. Caribbean governments are taking steps to tighten security at airports and other vulnerable locales, but terrorism

is a global problem , and the region will have to decide on the right kind of approach to the issue. Many Caribbean citizens may feel that the

United States is once more trying to assert its own agenda, but the recent attacks (and those that could follow) require a sea change in Caribbean thinking about regional security. National borders are porous to terrorism no one need claim

responsibility for attacks and globalization and technology have opened up new possibilities for terrorists. The Necessity for U.S.-Caribbean Cooperation As cross-border trade has grown, security and those responsible for
providing it have been shoved aside. For example, despite trade more than tripling between the United States and Canada since the inception of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the number of customs and immigration inspectors along the border remain at pre-NAFTA levels. The U.S. Coast Guard, which is essential to port security, is at its lowest personnel level since 1964. The United States is now experiencing the dark side of a transport system in which efficiency has trumped public security. As the country mobilizes for a long struggle against terrorism, it must face some basic realities. There will continue to be

anti-American terrorists with global reach who have the capability to carry out catastrophic attacks .

Patriarchy
Women are subject to horrible conditions when drug trafficking is high they face violence and sexism Campbell 8 Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Texas (Howard,
Female Drug Smugglers on the U-S.-Mexico Border: Gender, Crime, and Empowerment Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 81, No. 1 (Winter, 2008), pp. 233-267 Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research http://www.jstor.org/stable/30052745) // czhang The growing feminization of drug smuggling has complex and contra- dictory impacts on women's lives. On the negative side,

women are sub- ject to drug violence and some male drug traffickers coerce or manipulate lovers, spouses, and relatives into collaborating in the business as mules,11 drivers, and keepers of drug stashes (Fleetwood nd.:20). Women also may be forced to conceal their husband's activities or pay off drug debts incurred by their husbands. In these instances, women take on consider- able riskincluding arrest, imprisonment (and loss of contact with chil- dren), and physical harm-yet often enjoy few of the profits of the trade. In other cases, women may be left with children and no income or emo- tional support after a husband or significant other is arrested. Inevitably, a drug trafficking lifestyle produces violence, stress and anxiety, though there are a wide range of male and female experiences that vary by race/ethnicity, class and age (on the great diversity of experience that
binary gender and other categories elide, see Butler 1990).

Any liberating aspects of illegal drug trade are overshadowed by the larger patriarchal structures Campbell 8 Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Texas (Howard, Female Drug Smugglers on the U-S.-Mexico Border: Gender, Crime, and Empowerment Anthropological
Quarterly, Vol. 81, No. 1 (Winter, 2008), pp. 233-267 Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research http://www.jstor.org/stable/30052745) // czhang

Although women may suffer disproportionately from the effects of drug trafficking, there are other scenarios in which engaging

in drug smuggling or creating a distribution organization is a vehicle for a degree of female empowerment and liberation from forms of male control and a source of excitement and adventure (Fleetwood nd.:21-22). Such women can- though not all do-adopt stylized capo roles or macho postures but use them for their own ends as women. Individual female "liberation" through trafficking, however, does little to transform a larger patriarchal cultural economy, and may even reinforce it through the promulgation of macho/a symbolism. Ultimately, women's social class position and place within drug smuggling organizations shapes the relative benefits they receive from drug trafficking such that drug smuggling frequently often leads to female victimization, especially at the lowest and middle levels of drug trafficking organizations. However, it is also, in the case of high-level and some low-
level and middle-level smugglers, a vehicle for female empowerment.

Peru Instability
Drug trade empowers Peruvian guerillas --- risks instability Chalk, 11 (Peter, Senior Political Scientist at RAND Corporation, Ph.D. in political science, University of British Columbia, M.A. in political studies and international relations, University of Aberdeen, The Latin American Drug Trade Scope, Dimensions, Impact, and Response, RAND Project Air Force, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/RAND_MG1076.pdf, Tashma) Beyond Colombia, the drug trade is helping to reenergize the SL guerrilla war in Peru, which supposedly ended in 2000. According to analysts with the Catholic University in Lima, at least two factions of the organization are currently seeking to entrench themselves in the countrys cocaine trade by acting as security subcontractors for indigenous farmers.4 These blocs allegedly employ about 350 combatants to protect farmers and their fields and, in 2008, were linked to the deaths of at least 26 people (including 22 soldiers and police), making it the bloodiest year in almost a decade. As Antezana of the Catholic University remarks, the guerrillas are now able to operate with the efficiency and deadliness of an elite drug trafficking organization.5 That destroys the Amazon rainforest --- empirically civil unrest erodes the climate Piltz, 9 (Rick, A deadly conflict in Peru over a rush to drill for oil in Amazon rainforest: how culpable is the US?, Climate Science Watch, 6/8/09, http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2009/06/08/a-deadly-conflict-in-peru-over-a-rush-todrill-for-oil-in-amazon-rainforest-how-culpable-is-the-us/, Tashma) A clash between indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest in Peru and government police has broken out in deadly violence , leaving more than 40 indigenous people and nearly two dozen police dead. At issue is whether multinational oil companies will have access to explore and drill for oil and minerals on ancestral lands under a free trade agreement forged between the Bush administration and Peru.
Thousands of indigenous people desperate to save their ancestral lands and way of life began protesting in April. On June 5 the president of Peru ordered 650 police to use tear gas and guns on the ground and from helicopters on crowds of peaceful protesters blocking a main highway.

The conflict illustrates the economics and geopolitics of oil and minerals, versus the urgent need for better stewardship over Earths natural systems. President Obama should reconsider this agreement in terms of the tradeoff between a short-term economic boon for some Peruvians at the expense of others and the US thirst for oil and minerals, versus the longer-term damage to the Amazon rainforest and the life it supports, its vast ability to sequester and store carbon, and Earths climate system. Amazon destruction ensures extinction Takacs, 96 (David, THE IDEA OF DIVERSITY: PHILOSOPHIES OF PARADISE, pg. 200-201) So biodiversity keeps the world running. It has value and of itself, as well as for us. Raven, Erwin, and Wilson oblige us to think about the value of biodiversity for our own lives. The Ehrlichs rivet-popper trope makes this same point; by eliminating rivets, we play Russian roulette with global ecology and human futures: It is likely that destruction of the rich complex of species in the Amazon basin could trigger rapid changes in global climate patterns. Agriculture remains heavily dependent on stable climate, and human beings remain heavily dependent on food. By the end of the century the extinction of perhaps a million species in the Amazon basin could have entrained famines in which a billion human beings per-ished. And if our species is very unlucky, the famines could lead to a thermonuclear war, which could extinguish civilization. Elsewhere Ehrlich
uses different particulars with no less drama: What then will happen if the current decimation of organic diversity continues? Crop yields will be more difficult to maintain in the face of climatic change, soil erosion, loss of dependable water supplies, decline of pollinators, and ever more serious assaults by pests. Conversion of productive land to wasteland will accelerate; deserts will continue their seemingly inexorable expansion. Air pollution will increase, and local climates

will become harsher. Humanity will have to forgo many of the direct economic benefits it might have withdrawn from Earth's wellstocked genetic library. It might, for example, miss out on a cure for cancer; but that will make little difference. As ecosystem services falter, mortality from respiratory and epidemic disease, natural disasters, and especially famine will

lower life expectancies to the point where cancer (largely a disease of the elderly) will be unimportant. Humanity will bring upon itself consequences depressingly similar to those expected from a nuclear winter. Barring a nuclear conflict, it appears that civilization will disappear some time before the end of the next century - not with a bang but a
whimper.

Resource Wars
Drug trade fuels resource conflicts over other commodities Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 4-6, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma)

Coming to grips with the influence of drugs in contemporary warfare is long overdue. Unique to the post-Cold War era is the proportion of wars occurring within states to wars occurring between statesfr0m 1990-2004, only four out of fifty-seven conflicts were traditional interstate conflicts." ln the rrtid-1990s an important debate centered on why some long-standing civil wars that began during the Cold War in Latin America, Central Asia, and Africa continued long after its end, while other conflicts in these areas were sparked and seemed to be both protracted and bloody One explanation is that economic agendas linked to the accessibility of natural resources, "greed," have supplanted ideologi- cal and political sources, "grievance," as causes for the outbreak and protraction of intr- astate war. Greed is a particularly persuasive argumenteven though war brings depravation to significant segments of a society in conflict, warring

parties often commit acts of predation to extract licit and illicit resources that are then funneled into legitimate and illegitimate global commerce. Armed conflicts present many participants opportunities to exploit commercial resources to pay for military operations and gain private profit." This linkage suggests one cause of prolonged conf|ictsthere is little economic incentive for a group to relinquish the profits they receive from illegal trade. Although numerous civil wars begin with a political agenda, many transform into profit-motivated violence. Paul Collier notes that "to get started, a
rebellion needs a grievance, whereas to be sustained, it needs greed.""* The greed argument is even more compelling when looking at the influence of drug trafficking on warfare because drugs have not been a cause of war since the Opium Wars during the nineteenth century Drugs have not provided the basis for any grievance that has led to widespread social, political, or economic movements that were grounds for orga- nized violence. Because of their

profitability and ease of distribution, drugs have also supported other greed-related struggles. In some cases, drugs are bartered for other illegally traded commodities, such as diamonds and timber, that are part of other resource-driven conflicts. Nonetheless, by providing funding and intoxication, drugs
also support conflicts where grievance issues, such as land distribution, resource allocation, and political rights, are at the center of the disputes. For example, drug funding and use were components of conflicts in Angola, Liberia, and Sri Lanka, but were not the central issue of the fighting.

Terrorism
Trafficking revenues fund terrorists Kleiman, 4 (Mark, B.A. magna cum laude, Haverford College, M.P.P., Harvard Kennedy School, Ph.D., Harvard, Professor of
Public Policy in the UCLA School of Public Affairs, Illicit Drugs and the Terrorist Threat: Causal Links and Implicati ons for Domestic Drug Control Policy, Congressional Research Service, 4/20/2004, http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32334.pdf, JKahn) Drug trafficking in source countries, transit countries, and consumer countries, including the United States could

contribute to the problems of terror in at least five distinct ways: Supplying cash for terrorist operations ; Creating chaos in countries where drugs are produced, through which they pass, or in which they are sold at retail and consumed chaos sometimes deliberately cultivated by drug traffickers which may provide an environment conducive to terrorist activity ; Generating corruption in law enforcement, military, and other governmental and civil-society institutions in ways that either build public support for terrorist-linked groups or weaken the capacity of the society to combat terrorist organizations and actions; Providing services also
useful for terrorist actions and movements of terrorist personnel and materiel, and supporting a common infrastructure, such as smuggling capabilities, illicit arms acquisition, money laundering, or the production of false identification or other documents, capable of serving both drug-trafficking and terrorist purposes; and Competing for law enforcement and intelligence attention. In principle, any of these might be important.

War
Drug trade fuels conflict --- profitable production areas become conflict hotspots --empirics prove Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US
Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 1, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) Warfare and drugs share many characteristicsthey prolong human suffering, bedevil political leaders, and enrich a select few. Further, they have been intertwined at vari- ous times throughout history However, the pernicious role of drugs in

organized political violence is often overlooked. Drugs have caused wars, funded military operations, been used by combatants, and have been part of the postwar political landscape by financing some legitimate political actors and parties. Drugs have corrupted militaries, toppled governments, prompted interventions, and taken thousands of lives. The insidious nature of drugs is especially visible in
t0days wars.

Contemporary wars generally involve sharp asymmetries where one party wields a superior conventional military against the irregular forces of a militarily weaker party; they are by their very
nomic, and psychological concerns} These

nature fertile environments for a variety of drug-related activities. Todays wars are structured differently from traditional, largescale interstate wars of the past. The military dimension of current conflicts is generally overshadowed by political, social, eco-

concerns are where the influence of drugs is most acutely felt by societies in conflict. It is no coincidence that some of the most persistent wars, from the Balkans to the Hindu Kush and from the Andes to the Golden Triangle, occur in areas of widespread drug production and welltraveled distribution routes. ln fact, the rate at which civil wars occur is much higher among drug producing countries than non-drug producing countries? Astonishingly, 95 percent of the worlds production of hard drugs takes place in contexts of armed conflict? Drugs are responsible for guerilla conflict --- drug profits enable wartime operations and drugs can be used as strategic psychological weapons Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US
Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 1-3, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) In many of the wars in the post-Cold War world, such as the Colombian governments ongoing struggle against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, drugs

are so deeply embedded in the politics, society, economy and daily life of a country that it is often difficult to separate counternarcotics operations from counterinsurgency campaigns. As the director of the Colombian national police declared, "one does not know if the drug trafficker is a guerrilla or if the guerrilla is a drug trafficker. The line is now blurred ; it is a brotherhood community"* Other brotherhood communities threaten the conventional military successes of
recent U.S, interventions. The 2007 poppy season in Afghanistan produced 92 percent of the worlds heroin and lined the pockets of Taliban loyalists and other warlords who opposed the American presence in the countrys Meanwhile in Iraq drug trafficking sharply increased and Iraqi drug abuse rose by 75 percent between February 2003 and july 2003. Both activities subvert efforts to build a stable nation? In some conflict situations, along with troops and

bullets, drugs have the potential to alter the course of conflicts. Following the Cold War, numerous civil wars erupted, creating new demands for funds. Without
the ideological competition of the Cold War, newly armed groups and many former clients of the superpowers have become more entrepreneurial in their quests to keep their political movements or governments viable. A variety of warring groups, such as insurgents, guerrillas, paramilitaries, militias, terrorists, and professional armies, have

found wider opportunities to generate support from illicit activities to meet varying goals, including carving out a new ethnic homeland,
overthrowing an established authority, changing the course of states domestic or foreign policy; and defeating an urban or rural insurgency.

Drugs are especially attractive to those engaged in violent conflicts for many reasons. First, drug trafficking is a highly profitable business. Estimates of the illicit global trade in narcotics are between $150 billion and $500 billion in annual sales.7 By the year 2000, drug trafficking already accounted for 2 percent of the worlds economy Drug profits can be used to pay for arms, equipment, and training, bribe governmental officials, and recruit sympathizers. Because of its participation in the cocaine trade, the FARC is the

worlds richest insurgent group with assets believed to be approximately $600 million? Second, unlike the illicit trade in diamonds, copper, and oil, commodities with a sometimes irregr- la.r availability; drug

crops are a reliable means of generating income for they can be regularly harvested in the proper conditions. Third, illegal narcotics are appealing during vio- lent conflicts because they are easy to manufacture, transport, and conceal, which allows for greater distribution and larger profits. Trade in oil, alluvial gems, and timber requires the use
of skilled labor and sophisticated technology whereas drug trafficking requires unskilled labor and limited teclmology. Most drugs are lightweight, high value commodi- ties, making profitable quantities relatively easy to move. Fourth, drugs have an

additional benefit that other commodities do notcombatants consume them for battle. Individual
Hghters can use drugs to alter their behavior ir1 ways that may seem beneficial to them in combat. Finally drugs can be a means to attack an adversarys military and society in the belief that this will lead to battlefield or ideological victory. Encouraging drug

use within the enemys military or the enemys society provides a warring group with one more weapon against its enemy. As a result of these qualities, drugs are the most fungible commodity in some of the most persistent conflicts. No checks to escalation --- drug-fueled conflicts are distinct from conventional warfare Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US
Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 5, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma)

Battlefield intoxication is also an important element when discussing the role of drugs in warfare. With civil wars now comprising the vast majority of violent clashes, very few wars are between professional militaries. account for the majority of lighting forces. As a result of diminished professionalism, narcotic usage allows for "combat narcosis ," which alters a persons fear, stress, and inhibition. Drug abuse by combatants not only presents professional militaries with operational and tactical challenges, but it has a range of effects as wellfrom public health issues to human rights abuses as well as post-conllict settlement a.t1d nationbuilding. Terms like "narcoterrorist" and "narcoguerrilla" reveal the degree to which antago- nists involved in contemporary wa.rs combine narcotraffickers activities with techniques of political violence.`These new actors have led many to argue that the nature and character of modern warfare is changing. Martin Vw Creveld argues that war has become "transformed" as we enter a "new era, not of peaceful competition between trading blocks, but of warfare between ethnic and religious groups" waged "not by armies but by groups whom we today call terrorists, guerrillas, bandits and robbers." Barbara Ehrenriech,
too, points to a "new kind of wan" one "less disciplined and more spontaneous than the old," and "one often fought by ill-clad bands more resembling gangs than armies." In a similar vein, Mary Kaldor writes about "new wars" ones centrally about "identity politics," fought in a context of globalization by a disparate range of different types of groups such as paramilitary units, local war lords, criminal gangs, police forces, mercenary groups and also regular armies including breakaway units of regular armies."" In response to such changes, some argue that the West should place greater focus on ongoing conflicts that "involve limited engagements and attrition, guerrilla warfare, terror- ism and other types of low intensity cont]icts." In many cases, the

widespread violence created by the actors involved in these types of conflicts is fueled by their active links to the drug trade. AT: Democracy Checks Democracy efforts fail --- and if they succeed, theyll inevitably backfire Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US
Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 105-106, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) Democracy Is Not an Antidote

Just as ideology has not served as a barrier to a groups participation in the drug trade, the promotion of democracy in countries that have experienced drug-fueled conflicts has not resolved the violence or ended participation in the drug trade. In fact, new democracies have proven to be highly susceptible to the infiltration of drug barons. New interest groups, which were previously locked out of power or gained power from drug activities, often become part of the political process and manipulate the government apparatus to protect their drug interests. Treasuries that are depleted by years of war need to be Hlled in order to fund needed economic, social, and political programs designed to revive the nation. Financial

institutions often lack transparency and government ministers have been largely unaccountable. For example, many local politicians in new African democracies sec cannabis revenues as useful to boost their countries balance of payments. Ravaged by years of war; citizens of newly formed democracies carve out their livelihoods through participating in the black market. In nations where
autocratic rule has been replaced by democratic institutions, there is often a reduced role for the military As a result, it often suffers budget cuts and reduced pay which create conditions for corruption. All of these elements combine to undermine new democratic institutions and practices and set the stage for the return ofthe conflict. In fact, instituting

democratic practices too quickly may worsen the drug economy. To be inclusive and resolution and nation-building efforts may force golden-parachute scenarios on a country. The insistence on quick transitions to democracy also comes with development and economic-restructuring pro- grams that often involve massive social transformation. Wide-ranging and far-reaching economic, political, and social programs may disempower locals who, as a result, resent (and perhaps resist) new modes of governance, creating opportunities for warlords and drug barons to exploit.
gain maximum consensus, conflict

*Mex Afghan Stability

Mex Economy (Trade)

Drug trade destroys the Mexican economy --- consensus of experts Gray, 10 (Colin, The Hidden Cost of the War on Drugs, Stanford Progressive, May 2010,
http://www.stanford.edu/group/progressive/cgi-bin/?p=521, Tashma) As a net effect, most

experts would agree that the illicit drug trade adversely affects the Mexican economy. Cartels undermine the rule of law. Instability alienates current investors and deters potential investors or business-owners. Government revenues fall, as taxable commodities are replaced in the economy by illegal goods that are not taxed by the government. Tourism, one of Mexicos most important exports, suffers: the U.S. military has officially discouraged travelers from vacationing in many parts of Mexico. Drug cartels often intervene in economies directly, further discouraging investment. According to the L.A. Times, the Zetas (the military arm of the Gulf Cartel) have proved to be ruthless overlords. They have kidnapped businessmen, demanded protection money from merchants, taken over sales of pirated CDs and DVDs and muscled into the liquor trade by forcing restaurant and bar owners to buy from them. Viridiana Rios of the Harvard Department of Government estimates that the cost of violence is equivalent to 1.07 billion dollars, investment losses accounts for other 1.3 billion, drug abuse generates a loss of 0.68 billion dollars, and other costs may have an impact as high as 1.5 billion dollars. Drug trade eviscerates foreign direct investment into Mexico --- acts as a brake on growth Caldwell, 12 (Deborah, senior editor for Enterprise, Crime Explodes But an Economy Booms, CNBC, 9/18/12,
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49037775, Tashma) And that is the paradox of Mexico. On one hand, the

countrys well-publicized drug killings would appear to be a clear disincentive to foreign investment. On the other hand, the economy has become an under-the-radar economic juggernaut. Its like the Mexican economy is driving with the emergency brake on , Selee said. You can only imagine if the violence werent going on, its growth could be extraordinary. You cant help think they could sustain 5 to 6 percent growth in one year. (Mexico is expected to grow at a rate of about 4 percent this year.) Violence is a key factor in Mexico's low -to-middling competitiveness ranking among the nations of the world. According to the World Economic Forum, Mexico ranked 58 out of 142 of the worlds countries in its 2010-2012 Global Competitive Index. Not surprisingly, the most problematic factors for doing business are crime, theft, corruption, and inefficient government bureaucracy. To put the

ranking in context: The United States ranks number five out of 142; but Brazil generally considered the darling of Latin American foreign investment ranks 53 out of 142 countries. Violence related to Mexicos drug trade increased dramatically after President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006 and launched a war on the cartels.Almost immediately, killings in Mexico rose as the cartels fought back. More than 47,000 people have been killed in drug violence since the start of the war on

drugs through September 2011, the last time the government released official figures. Calderon leaves office in December after his six-year term is complete. This month he acknowledged crime is a deterrent to foreign direct investment. The illegal drug industry is a negative externality for the Mexican economy promotes violence, corruption, and drug abuse Rios, 8 PhD candidate in Government and a doctoral fellow in Inequality and Criminal Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School, studying drug trafficking, violence and corruption in Mexico (Viridiana, Evaluating the economic impact of Mexicos drug trafficking industry, Graduate Students Political Economy Workshop, Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Harvard University, Spring 2008, http://www.gov.harvard.edu/files/Rios2008_MexicanDrugMarket.pdf)//BI In general, industries are perceived to be positive externalities for the economy for two reasons. First, increasing the number of industries reduces the risk of sharp economic declines (Kalemil-

Ozcan, Sorensen, and Yosha 2003). Second,

firms look for - and promote- a stable investment environment. drug traffic certainly satisfies the first condition it is helpful to diversify the economy- what differentiates drug industry from other legal industries, and what makes it a negative externality for the economy, is the type of critical resources that it needs to succeed (Beltrn and SalcedoAlbarn 2007). Instead of requiring strong political institutions and promoting a peaceful investment environment, drug traffic benefits from government corruption and tends to promote violence and public demand for drugs. This set
(Beltrn and Salcedo-Albarn 2007). Although of externalities can be classified in three main categories: the generation of violence, the promotion of corruption and the creation of local drug markets. The negative impact that violence has on economic stability has been well

documented. Actually, there are a number of ways in which violence results in direct and indirect financial costs: the loss of productivity associated with death or injury, the loss of human capital investments and the costs of medical care and legal services (UNODC 2007a). In addition, the psychological harm associated with violent experiences has a significant impact on the economy. Fear of violence can cause people to withdraw
from social interaction in order to protect themselves. This manifests itself in some very concrete ways. There are many opportunity costs involved in living a life designed around avoiding criminal vulnerability. Some people simply refuse to go out at night or to make use of public transportation, which may limit access to productive and educational activities. Violence also fosters

migration. Studies of Sinaloas migration flows -one of the major centers of drug trafficking in Mexico- has shown that drug-

related violence has generated the migration of at least 360,000 inhabitants, leaving ghost towns all around the region (Lopez 2007). Tamaulipas has experienced the same phenomenon. Residents and local business constantly leave Tamaulipas capital, tired of traffickers extortions. In the last few years, more than a dozen businesses have relocated to the US (Corchado 2007). This is

particularly hazardous for the Mexican economy because violence discourages investment.

Transnational corporations do not want to invest personnel in an environment in which they may be in jeopardy or in which they would have to pay hazardous-duty salaries (WB 2004). Although it is difficult to calculate how violence is impacting economic development, a good proxy is the study by Londoo and Guerrero (2002) which measures the economic costs of violence

and crime in Mexico12. According to the authors, total economic losses are 12.3% of the total Mexican GDP

(Londoo and Guerrero 2000, WB 2004). Of course, not all violence and crime are related to the drug business. Assuming that only a proportion of the crimes are drug related, the total cost of drug traffic goes from 0.43 to 1.43 billion dollars annually13. Second, drug traffic can also be considered a negative externality because it fosters corruption. Drug traffic is well known for corrupting authorities from all levels in the government hierarchy. The links

between traffickers and Mexican police, prosecutors, judges and politicians are not a secret (Sarmiento 1991, Blancornaleras 2002,
Fernndez Menendez 1999, Fernndez Menendez and Ronquillo 2006, Shelley 2001, and Chabat 2006). In fact, it has been documented that a significant part of drug revenues goes into the hands of corrupted politicians (Corchado 2005). Even president Calderon himself has accepted that organized crime has tried to extend its power to the political arena, either by funding, intimidating or impugning the electoral processes. The corruption of Mexican institutions by the drug industry

imposes severe economic costs. To begin with, a corrupted judicial system reduces competitiveness.

Corruption increases the cost of making business because contract compliance becomes less credible. This high uncertainty acts as a constraint for business implementation, reducing the investment attractiveness of the country and its ability to compete in the global markets. Indeed, the impact of corruption in competitiveness has proven to be very significant (Kaufmann 2005). Therefore, it is not surprising that corruption is negatively correlated with the level of aggregate investments and

economic growth. As Mauros (1995) influential paper discovered, aggregate investment is 5% lower in countries identified as

being corrupt. Assuming this estimate is correct, the perception of Mexico as a corrupt country translates into loses that go from 0.01 to 1.66 billion dollars annually (See appendix A). Corruption also generates additional negative externalities such as a

vicious cycle of increasing criminality (Beltrn and Salcedo-Albarn 2007), a reduction in free press (Kauffman 2000, Corchado 2007), a curtailment in government productivity (Kaufmann 1997), and even distortions on governmental social spending (Mauro 1995). Finally, there is still a third way in which drug traffic is negatively influencing Mexican economy: the creation of local drug demand. The negative impact of drug abuse

becomes especially clear when the inevitable spillover effect of rising consumption is taken into account (ONDCP 1998). This increase is related to the fact that drug smugglers are prone to pay their employees in kind (ONDCP 1994). Paying with merchandise not only opens the possibility to expand demand, but also avoids the difficult process of having to clean the money to bring it back from the US. Wherever drug industry is located, it promotes drug use. Mexico is no exception. Cocaine consumption has risen sharply during the last decade. The Mexican Minister of Health estimated that, from 1988 to 2002, consumption increased 375% (SSA, 2002) one of the largest prevalence increases in the world. About 3.5 million Mexicans have consumed some type of illegal drug at least once in their lives, and 16.2% of these are frequent consumers14. Considering the whole population, 3.5% have consumed marijuana, 1.4% cocaine and 0.6% inhaled drugs (SSA 2002). Drug abuse has direct economic costs in

terms of productivity and human capital losses, health care (both treatment and prevention), and government expenditure (policies to prevent or treat drug consumption). Productivity losses are related to spending time in
prison, and death or permanent lesions induced by drug consumption. The subjectivity of this type of cost makes it difficult to measure, but there have been several fairly good attempts. For example, a study of Egypt, Mexico, Namibia, Poland and Sri Lanka found that substance abusers have 2 to 4 times more accidents at work than other employees, and are absent 2 to 3 times more often (ONDCP 1998). Much more evident and identifiable are the health care costs. They involve the prevention and the treatment of drug

addicts by private and public hospitals. Finally, there are also costs associated with operating policies to prevent and control drug consumption. The best estimate of total costs of drug abuse in Mexico is the one calculated by CIDAC (2003). The latest figures available estimate drug costs to be around 0.68 billion dollars annually (CIDAC 2003). The larger share of this cost is attributed to productivity and human capital losses. In 2003 alone, productivity losses due to incarceration cost 124.63 million dollars annually, equivalent to the budget of the whole Mexican Presidential office. Moreover, the Mexican government spent 14.6 million dollars just in policies to control drug demand, money that otherwise could be spent on much needed poverty and housing relief.

Mex Economy (Violence)

Drug violence dampens Mexican economic recovery Guerrero, 11 contributor to Global Finance, citing Shelly Shetty, head of Latin American sovereigns at Fitch Ratings (Antonio, Mexico: Drug War Dents Economic Recovery, Global Finance, February 2011, violence is hindering a more dynamic rebound. The drug war has claimed more than 30,000 victims since
http://www.gfmag.com/archives/134-february-2011/11078-mexico-drug-war-dents-economic-recovery.html#axzz2Z2vFxqW1)//BI While Mexico's economy is recovering from its worst recession in 80 years, the spread of drug-related president Felipe Caldern took office in December 2006. Last year alone, more than 15,000 people were killed, a 70% increase over 2009 deaths. "The rising wave of drug-related violence appears to be dampening confidence, retail

and commercial activities, possibly weighing on a more robust investment and economic outlook," said Shelley Shetty, head of Latin American sovereigns at Fitch Ratings, when the agency

affirmed Mexico's ratings in January. Its foreign and local currency issuer default ratings are BBB and BBB+, respectively, with a stable outlook. Shetty noted that, while the economy has been aided by favorable external trade performance, namely a gradual recovery in the US, which buys 80% of Mexican exports, domestic demand remains weak amid eroding investor

and consumer confidence. Electrolux and Whirlpool cited violence among the factors influencing their decisions not to expand local operations. Tourism could also be affected, with 15 beheadings in Acapulco and another beheading and

homicide in Cancun, all within the first week of the year, raising concerns and sparking travel warnings. According to a poll of private analysts conducted by the nation's central bank in December, the government has to find a way to improve public safety in order to boost private sector spending. When asked which factors would limit economic growth this year, analysts cited "problems of public insecurity" alongside domestic and global market weakness. The same poll predicts Mexico's economy will

grow 3.6% this year, while Mexican government forecasts suggest it will top 4%. The economy expanded 5% in 2010, after plunging 6.5% in 2009. Fitch says the five-year GDP growth average was 1.5%, below the median for Mexico's ratings peers. Violence is expected to rise further, however, as drug kingpins seek to influence state elections this year, and
the 2012 presidential race. Meanwhile, some US legislators are calling for an expansion of the Mrida Initiative, a three-year, $1.3 billion US program to help Mexico tackle the drug trade because, they contend, it also poses a threat to US security.

Drug violence negatively impacts Mexican labor markets, employment, investments and income causes significant economic contraction Robles et al., 13 fourth year PhD student in Political Science with specialization in the fields of Political Methodology and Comparative Politics; with Gabriela Caldern, Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University researching violence in Latin America and evaluation of public policy programs in Mexico; and Beatriz Magaloni, Associate Professor of Political Science & Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (Gustavo, The Economic Consequences of Drug
Trafficking Violence in Mexico, Poverty and Governance, Stanford University, 19 April 2013, http://iisdb.stanford.edu/pubs/24014/RoblesCalderonMagaloni_EconCosts5.pdf)//BI One of the greatest challenges for governments in Latin America is to ensure order

and provide security. The levels of violence and crime in the region have increased in the last years with Mexico as one of the most affected countries by this crime wave. The dramatic change in the patterns of violence, especially the increased murder rate, is clearly related to structural changes in the drug trafficking business since 2006. External factors such as the increased flow of trade with the United States, the greater availability of
weapons, and the reduced cocaine supply from Colombia increased profitability substantially and attracted new competitors and suppliers into the drug trade. The increase in the market size also changed the operation and internal

organization of drug trafficking organizations from being family businesses to hierarchical organizations stratified

into regional units. The interaction of the DTOs with local and national governments has also changed with the liberalization of politics in the country and the entry of multiple political actors and several parties, making more complex the operation of the business. Finally, the intense policies of President Caldern to combat and contain organized crime have fragmented the cohesion and organization of the narco-trafficking groups. As a result of profound domestic and structural changes, the

number of people involved in drug trafficking has grown. However, unlike the market of other products that operate in a legal arena, drug cartels do not compete for prices but instead compete directly to monopolize the means of distribution into the United States through the use of force. The growing rivalries between drug trafficking factions have resulted in an unprecedented increase in the levels of violence in the country. To estimate the impact of the increasing levels of violence on economic activity is a complex activity

because the drug related violence is different in nature than common crime. Most killings correspond to strategic assassinations of members of rival organizations or clashes with authorities. Besides being focused, the drug-related violence is sporadic and has a higher volatility than common criminal violence. Moreover, there is an identification problem as this type of violence is not seen in all municipalities with drug production, distribution, or trafficking ties. This makes it difficult to isolate the economic effect of increased levels of violence on the business activities of drug trafficking organizations. This study argues that the violent

competition between rival drug organizations has a negative effect on the economy. To understand

the mechanism, we use the analogy of Olson (2001) to imagine the cartels as stationary or roving bandits depending on how they decide to integrate themselves into society. Stationary bandits, or benefactors, have the ability to maintain control over their territories over the long term and therefore have incentives to reduce predatory behavior as they look towards greater long-term gains. Roving bandits have temporary or uncertain control over their territory, which induces them to extract rents and resources from the community at the highest rate possible through extortion, robbery, and other crimes, to maximize short-term gain. The main argument of this study is that the war between cartels for control over certain trafficking routes has

been matched by a substantial increase in violence and petty crime, including theft, extortion, and kidnapping. Faced with increased competition, cartels have incentives to turn against society due to the need for greater resources to maintain their armed conflicts, and because of a need to intimidate or punish

members of rival organizations, as well as to exploit new opportunities for opportunistic crime. Following the above argument, and due to the nature of drug-related violence, we can assume that this type of violence has no linear effect on

economic performance, but instead that there is a threshold after which violence causes economic activity to significantly shrink. Below this turf-war threshold, many individuals and companies can internalize any increased costs resulting from the need for enhanced security and protection depending on their economic size and capacity. However, said adjustments have effects on the labor market, both in the supply and demand, and we can expect to find a marginal effect of violence on this area. Once the violence levels have passed into the war threshold, companies and individuals begin to change their actions in both the medium and long term, including their location, investments, and production, in the case of commercial enterprises, and their participation in the labor market and choice of profession, in the case of individuals. We can expect a significant contraction in economic activity in this range of violence that might not be adequately captured

with a linear relationship model between economic activity and violence. In our study we used two empirical strategies to estimate both the marginal effects and the threshold effects of violence on economic activity and labor. To estimate the marginal effects, we did an instrumental variable regression utilizing exogenous variation of cocaine seizures in Colombia to instrument for violence. This variable was interacted with the distance of a municipality from principle points of entry. We found substantial

negative effects on labor market participation, unemployment, decision to start a company, and income. To estimate the short-term and medium-term effects of crossing the turf-war threshold on the economy, we made use of
synthetic control group methodology consisting of building counterfactual scenarios by creating optimal weighted units of control.

We used the close correlation between GDP and electricity consumption to estimate the effect of violence on economic activity at the municipal level. We found that those municipalities that saw dramatic increases in violence between 2006 and 2010 significantly reduced their energy consumption in the years after treatment. By analyzing the threshold effect, rather than a linear effect of violence on
economic activity, the present study provides a baseline for future research to model and estimate in a more sophisticated way the relationship between violence and economic performance, in particular when we study drug-related violence

Mex Failed State

Continued trade will collapse Mexican civil and governmental systems causes a failed state Kurtzman, 09 (Joel, Senior Fellow; Executive Director, Senior Fellows Program; Publisher, The Milken Institute Review,
business editor and columnist at The New York Times, member of the editorial board of Harvard Business School, AB at the University of California, Recipient of the Eisner Memorial Award, master's at the University of Houston, recipient of a Moody Foundation Fellowship, Mexico's Instability Is a Real Problem, the Wall Street Journal, 1/16/2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123206674721488169.html)

Don't discount the possibility of a failed state next door. Mexico is now in the midst of a vicious drug war. Police officers are being bribed and, especially near the United States border, gunned down. Kidnappings and extortion are common place. And, most alarming of all, a new Pentagon study concludes that Mexico is at risk of becoming a failed state . Defense planners liken the situation to that of Pakistan, where wholesale collapse of civil government is possible. One center of the violence is Tijuana, where last year more
than 600 people were killed in drug violence. Many were shot with assault rifles in the streets and left there to die. Some were killed in dance clubs in front of witnesses too scared to talk. It may only be a matter of time before the drug war

spills across the border and into the U.S. To meet that threat, Michael Chertoff, the outgoing secretary for Homeland Security, recently announced that the U.S. has a plan to "surge" civilian and possibly military law-enforcement personnel to the border should that be necessary. Unchecked drug violence threatens Mexican government stability Chase, 12 (Colonel David Chase of the US Army, graduated from the Army War College, in charge of strategy research on the
Southern border; Military Police: Assisting in Securing the United States Southern Border; 12/3/12; http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA561048) KD In addition to negative economic effects the drug war has an even more serious consequence the direct

threat to the legitimacy of the Mexican government. Violence has created a condition of lawlessness in some

parts of the country leading to deteriorating social conditions and an inability for Mexico to police their side of the border. There is no doubt that DTO ideology is all about profit; however their activities are successfully challenging the Mexican

government and has raised serious concerns about Mexicos stability and ability to exercise sovereignty. President Calderon himself stated that DTO initiated violence presented, a challenge to the state, an attempt to replace the state.13 This lack of control is highlighted by several facts. One is that cartels are imposing their influence on local governments throughout the country. A study prepared for the Mexican Senate
entitled, Municipal Government and Organized Crime released in August 2010 found that 8% of all municipalities are completely under control of organized crime while a further 63% are infiltrated and influenced by organized crime.14 Shockingly the study found these criminal organizations often operated with logistical support from corrupt municipal

police and politicians.15 The same report also declared that DTOs have also exerted control over local businesses. A further indication of the erosion of government legitimacy are recent opinion polls showing that public support for the current Mexican government war on drugs is declining.

Mex Instability
Drug trade fuels a Mexican civil conflict and the worst forms of dehumanization Chalk, 11 (Peter, Senior Political Scientist at RAND Corporation, Ph.D. in political science, University of British Columbia, M.A. in political studies and international relations, University of Aberdeen, The Latin American Drug Trade Scope, Dimensions, Impact, and Response, RAND Project Air Force, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/RAND_MG1076.pdf, Tashma) It is in Mexico, however, that the pernicious societal impact of the Latin American cocaine and heroin trade has been greatest, contributing to what amounts to the wholesale breakdown of basic civility across the countrysomething that has been particularly evident in the northern border states.8 According to Guillermo Valds Castellanos, director of the National Security and Intelligence Center (Centro de Investigacin y Seguridad Nacional, or CISEN), more than 28,000 drug-related murders have occurred since Felipe Caldern launched an all-out offensive on the countrys cartels in 2006.9 To put these figures in

perspective, note that fewer than 4,300 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in Iraq between 2003 and 2008. The enormous human toll has triggered the formation of various self-defense forces across the border provinces. In January 2009, for instance, a group calling itself the Jurez Citizens Command announced that it was preparing to take the law into its own hands and would execute a criminal every 24 hours to bring order to the city.10 Most

killings are the work of syndicate-controlled paramilitary cells, some with professional training. Notable groups include Los Negros, Los Gueritos, Los Pelones, Los Nmeros, Los Chachos, Los Lobos, Los Sinaloa, and Los Nuevos Zetas.11 Ensuing fatalities have been linked to intersyndicate warfare, the silencing of suspected informers, the assassination of high-ranking officials, and the systematic targeting of law enforcement personnel. The latter has become increasingly

evident in line with Calderns antidrug push since 2006. In many cases, police either quit (certain towns have seen entire f orces abandon the job) or cooperate with syndicates out of straight fear. Although it is lower- and mid-ranking officers who have been mostly affected, traffickers have been prepared to direct their intimidation to the highest levels. In 2009, for instance, the police chief of Cuidad Jurez, Roberto Ordua Cruz, fled the city after his deputy, operations director Sacramento Prez Serrano, was shot. The assassination was in keeping with a cartel ultimatum that a senior official would be killed every 48 hours until he resigned.12

The specific character of drug-related murders has also become progressively more barbaric. It is not unusual for victims to be dismembered, beheaded, boiled in giant pots filled with lye (a process known as pozole after the Mexican word for stew), or even skinned.13 As one official in Tijuana candidly remarked, Criminals earn respect and credibility with creative killing methods. Your status is based on your capacity to commit the most sadistic acts. Burning corpses, using acid, beheading victims. . . . This generation is setting a new standard for savagery.14 The extent of cartel violence has begun to take on a disturbing new dimension with the deliberate targeting of ordinary civilians. A particularly bloody
attack took place in September 2008, when two fragmentation grenades were hurled into a crowd celebrating Mexicos Independence Day at the Plaza Melchor Ocampo in Morelia, Michoacn state. The atrocity, which was originally blamed on La Familia but ultimately tied to Los Zetas, resulted in eight deaths and more than 100 injuries.15 Commenting on the incident and what it might herald, Janes Homeland Security Review remarks, [The Morelia bombing] indicated that there is a disturbing evolution towards indiscriminate attacks on a large-scale using a methodology . . . which seems to be inspired more by terrorist techniques than by traditional cartel activity. . . . A new chapter in Mexicos drugs war has now opened and future attacks o n this scale must now be considered a reality of security risk.16 This assessment was borne out in February 2010, when drug traffickers stormed a party packed with teenagers in Cuidad Jurez and indiscriminately killed 14 people, eight of whom were under 20. According to the daily El Diario, one of the victims had been a witness to a multiple homicide and was due to have testified in an upcoming trial.17 Apart from fostering extreme violence, the narcotics trade has decisively undermined political stability in Mexico by feeding pervasive corruption throughout the police and administrative bureaucracy.18 Although the overall extent of the problem is unknown, its seriousness can be gauged by the following statistics: One-fifth of Mexicos entire federal police force was under investigation for corruption as of 2005.19 Between 2006 and 2008, 11,500 public servants were fined or suspended from their jobs for corruption.20 In April 2007, the Monterrey state government arrested an unprecedented 141 police officers for collaborating with the Gulf cartel and accepting kickbacks in exchange for intelligence or ignoring trafficking activities taking place in their respective jurisdictions.21 In 2008, more than 35 high-ranking security officials were detained, notably including Noe Ramrez, a former head of the antiorganized crime unit in the attorney generals office, and Ricardo Gutirrez Vargas, director for International Police Affairs at the Federal Investigative Agency (FIA).22 In 2010, nearly one-tenth of the officers in the federal police force were dismissed for failing to pass anticorruption tests.23 Evidence suggests that corruption among

police and immigration officials who are stationed in the northern border provinces is especially

acute where many are offered cash payments to cooperate with drug syndicates and threatened with physical harm if bribes are not accepted.24 This method, known as plata o plomo (silver or lead), has been
used repeatedly to avail cocaine and heroin (as well as marijuana)25 shipments into the United States, casting considerable doubt on the overall veracity and credibility of the counterdrug offensive that was initiated in 2006.26

Leads to narco terrorism Yager, 9 (Jordy, Border lawmakers fear drug-terrorism link, The Hill, 3/7/09, http://thehill.com/homenews/news/18629-border-lawmakers-fear-drug-terrorism-link) Members of Congress are raising the alarm that war-like conditions on the Mexican border could lead to Mexican drug cartels helping terrorists attack the U.S. When you havegangs and they have loose ties with al Qaeda and then you have Iran not too far away from building a nuclear capability, nuclear terrorism may not be far off, said Rep. Trent Franks (R- Ariz.), a member of the House Armed

Services committee. The Mexican drug cartels violence accounted for more than 6,000 deaths last year, and in recent months it has begun spilling over into the districts of lawmakers from the southwest region, even as far north as Phoenix, Ariz. -- which has become, Franks noted, the kidnap capital of the U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), whose district borders Mexico, said that while the situation is bad, it could easily get worse. The goal of the cartels is to make money, said Cuellar, who sits on the House Homeland Security committee. If

they can smuggle in drugs and human cargo, then certainly they can smuggle other things in, other devices to cause us harm. We have not heard

of any associations, but is there the possibility? Ill be the first to say, yeah. They have the routes, they can very easily smuggle in other things. If I was a bad guy in another country, I would go into Central America because the U.S. is not paying the proper attention. Violence reached new levels last week when the mayor of Juarez, a Mexican city with 1.6 million people that serves as a major transit point for drug smugglers, moved his family to El Paso, Texas, after receiving threats against his and their lives. The move corresponded with the resignation of the citys police chief after a drug cartel promised to kill a police officer every 48 hours if he did not step down. The citys police director of operations, a police officer and a prison guard were killed by the cartels in days prior. That was a mistake in my judgment, Franks said of the chiefs resignation. The federal government s hould have come in and said listen, were going to put a Marine division there to help you out if thats whats necessary, but narco-

terrorists are not going to tell America who to elect and who resigns.

That results in WMD terrorist attacks Anderson, 8 (10/8/2008, Curt, AP, US officials fear terrorist links with drug lords, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-08-805146709_x.htm) MIAMI There is real danger that Islamic extremist groups such as al-Qaida and Hezbollah could form alliances with wealthy and powerful Latin American drug lords to launch new terrorist attacks, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Extremist group operatives have already been identified in several Latin American countries, mostly involved in fundraising and finding logistical support. But Charles Allen, chief of intelligence analysis at the Homeland Security Department, said they could use well-established smuggling routes and drug profits to bring people or even weapons of mass destruction to the U.S. "The presence of these people in the region leaves open the possibility that they will attempt to attack the U nited S tates," said Allen, a veteran CIA analyst. "The threats in this hemisphere are real. We cannot ignore them."

Added U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration operations chief Michael Braun: "It is not in our interest to let that potpourri of scum to come together."

Extinction Corsi, 5 [Jerome. PhD in Poli Sci from Harvard, Expert in Politically-Motivated Violence. Atomic Iran, Pg 176-8//JVOSS] The combination of horror and outrage that will surge upon the nation will demand that the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage done by the attack. The problem will be that the president will not immediately know how to respond or against whom. The perpetrators will

have been incinerated by the explosion that destroyed New York City. Unlike 9-11, there will have been no interval during the attack when those hijacked could make phone calls to loved ones telling them before they died that the hijackers were radical Islamic extremists. There will be no such phone calls when the attack will not have been anticipated until the instant the terrorists detonate their improvised nuclear device inside the truck parked on a curb at the Empire State Building. Nor will there be any

possibility of finding any clues, which either were vaporized instantly or are now lying physically

inaccessible under tons of radioactive rubble. Still, the president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will suspect another attack by our known enemy Islamic terrorists. The first impulse will be to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole religion of Islam. Medina would feel attacked. Nothing would emerge intact after a war between the United States and Islam. The apocalypse would be upon us. [CONTINUES} Or the president might decide simply to launch a limited

could possibly be added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we gain? The moment Mecca and Medina were wiped off the map, the Islamic world more than 1 billion human beings in countless different nations

nuclear strike on Tehran itself. This might be the most rational option in the attempt to retaliate but still communicate restraint. The problem is that a strike on Tehran would add more nuclear devastation to the world calculation. Muslims around the

world would still see the retaliation as an attack on Islam, especially when the United States had no positive proof that the destruction of New York City had been triggered by radical Islamic extremists with assistance from Iran. But for the president not to retaliate might be unacceptable to the American

people. So weakened by the loss of New York, Americans would feel vulnerable in every city in the nation. "Who is going to be next?" would be the question on everyone's mind. For this there would be no effective answer. That the president might think

politically at this instant seems almost petty, yet every president is by nature a politician. The political party in power at the time of the attack would be destroyed unless the president retaliated with a nuclear strike against somebody. The American people would feel a price had to be paid while the country was still capable of exacting revenge.

Mex NarcoTerrorism
Unchecked drug violence leads to DTO terrorism Chase, 12 (Colonel David Chase of the US Army, graduated from the Army War College, in charge of strategy research on the
Southern border; Military Police: Assisting in Securing the United States Southern Border; 12/3/12; http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA561048) KD Violence is generated by competition among Mexicos seven different, major drug cartels. At its core this violence is created by inter of the drug trade. Another

the DTOs. Drug related violence is largely directed at people with ties to DTOs however persons not related to DTOs are also

and intra cartel fighting for control of drug trafficking routes and greater shares element that contributes is the attempts being made by authorities to combat

suffering such as migrants who refused to act as drug carrying mules, members of the press, innocent bystanders and anyone who refuses to cooperate with a DTO for any reason. Many deaths are brutal killings conducted to intimidate and in retaliation for disobedience or resistance to DTO rule. Violence is also used as a tool within organizations to strengthen leadership and impose discipline. Violence has taken the form of massacres, the killing and disappearance of Mexican journalists, the use

of torture and even car bombings which has raised concerns that DTOs may be adopting techniques used by insurgents and terrorists.5 Alarmingly DTOs are believed to be also targeting Mexican government officials. This included, in 2010, 12 Mexican mayors and a gubernatorial candidate in July of 2010.6
Since 2006 when President Calderon declared war on DTOs until the middle of 2011 an estimated 30,000 plus Mexicans have lost their lives to drug related violence.7 In addition to the killings and torture, kidnappings by DTOs are also becoming common with over one thousand kidnappings now reported annually with many times that number suspected.

Narco terrorism leads to regional violence and instability Minteh, 13 (Binneh, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at New Jersey City University and Public Policy at the Graduate School of Public Affairs, Rutgers University Newark, Narco Terrorism- A Risk Assessment of Global Terrorist Linkages to the International Drug Trade, http://academia.edu/3425556/NarcoTerrorism_A_Risk_Assesment_of_Global_Terrorist_Linkages_to_the_International_Drug_T rade, Tashma)

Implications and Threats The implications and threats of narco-terror and criminal syndicate groups on contemporary society are not conflicting at all. This is evident with experiences of Latin American nations vulnerable to these groups. In the case of FARC in Colombia, there were

trends of rising cocaine consumption and the proliferation of violence driven by organized criminal groups. A very interesting paradigm attributed to such a trend was the pattern of distribution and periods of interdictions by law enforcement agencies. It came to light that changes in marketing strategy in lower income neighborhoods, given new forms of competition, has triggered the growth of violence in most vulnerable communities (Leon and Zubillaga, 2002). In Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Brazil, terrorist and organized criminal groups have distributed weapons to interest groups as part of an agreement to defend themselves from government forces. Colombias FARC provides some of the most interesting narco-terror operational dynamics. Over the years FARC operated
along a global strategic evolutionary trajectory that has given it the leverage to maintain sustained supply of weapons through its affiliations and global networks, hence these

capabilities allowed it to unleash violence and terror across most of Colombia and other neighboring Latin American nations. Another daunting implication is the fear in consumption of cocaine and other illicit drugs may increase levels of violence due to convergence in global transformation. According to a United Nations report, regional consumption of heroin, cocaine, cannabis and amphetamine type drugs is increasing, as a side effect of West Africas growing role in the global illicit drug trade. A disturbing trend that has been reported over the

years was the high rates of consumption among members of the Security and Armed Forces. This was evident, when reports allegedly attributed the deadly violent political instability in Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea-Conakry, to both involvement in the trade, and consumption by members of the security forces.

Mex Relations
Drug violence will collapse relations Kurtzman, 09 (Joel, Senior Fellow; Executive Director, Senior Fellows Program; Publisher, The Milken Institute Review,
business editor and columnist at The New York Times, member of the editorial board of Harvard Business School, AB at the University of California, Recipient of the Eisner Memorial Award, master's at the University of Houston, recipient of a Moody Foundation Fellowship, Mexico's Instability Is a Real Problem, the Wall Street Journal, 1/16/2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123206674721488169.html) My colleague, Glenn Yago, and I calculate that if Mexico were to reduce corruption and bring its legal, economic, accounting and regulatory standards up to U.S. levels (the U.S. ranks 13th and Finland ranks first), Mexico's nominal

per capital GDP would increase by about $18,000 to roughly $28,000 a year. And it would also receive a lot more direct

foreign investment that would create jobs. And this impacts the U.S. Thanks to Mexico's retarded economic growth, millions of Mexicans have illegally moved to the U.S. to find work. Unless the violence can be reversed, the U.S. can anticipate that

the flow across the border will continue . To his credit, Mexico's President Felipe Caldern has deployed 45,000 members of his military and 5,000 federal police to fight drug traffickers. This suggests that he is taking the violence and the threat to civil government seriously. But the path forward will be a difficult one. Not only must Mexico fight its drug lords, it must do so while putting its institutional house in order. That means firing government employees who are either corrupt or not willing to do the job required to root out corruption. It will also likely require putting hundreds, or even thousands, of police officers
in jail. For degree of economic

more than a century, Mexico and the U.S. have enjoyed friendly relations and some integration. But if Mexico's epidemic of violence continues, that relationship could end if the U.S. is forced to surge personnel to the border.

Ven Iran Relations

Drug trafficking solidifies the relationship between Iran and Venezuela
Shinkman, 13 National Security Reporter at U.S. News & World Report (Paul D., Iranian-Sponsored Narco-Terrorism in Venezuela: How Will Maduro Respond?, U.S. News & World Report, 24 April 2013, http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/04/24/iranian-sponsored-narco-terrorism-in-venezuela-how-will-madurorespond)//BI At a conference earlier this month, top U.S. military officers identified what they thought would be the

top threats to the U.S. as it draws down from protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, was unequivocal about a largely unreported danger: "Narco-terrorism just on our south border: [it is] yet to be seen just how that is going to play out in our own nation, but it is an issue and it is something that our nation is going to have to deal with." "Colombia is doing particularly well, but there is an insurgency growing," Amos continued. "They have been fighting it, probably the greatest success story in this part of the world." The commandant's remarks came a week before the April 14 election where Venezuelans chose a successor to the wildly popular and charismatic Hugo Chavez, who died March 5. Amos indicated the outcome of this election would define much of future relations

between the U.S. and Venezuela, located on a continent that has rarely appeared on America's foreign policy radar in the last decade. Experts, analysts and pundits could not have predicted the election outcome: The establishment's Nicolas Maduro beat reformer Henrique Capriles by a margin of roughly 1 percent. Chavez's hand-picked successor inherited the presidency, but he would not enjoy a broad public mandate to get a teetering Venezuela back on track. The situation in the South American nation

remains dire amid skyrocketing inflation, largely due to Chavez's efforts to nationalize private industry and increase social

benefits. Maduro's immediate attention after claiming victory was drawn to remedying widespread blackouts and food shortages. One expert on the region says the new leader may need to tap into a shadow world of transnational

crime to maintain the stability his countrymen expect. "Venezuela is a really nice bar, and anybody can go in

there and pick up anybody else," says Doug Farah, an expert on narco-terrorism and Latin American crime. He compares the country to the kind of establishment where nefarious actors can find solutions to a problem. Anti-American groups can

find freelance cyber terrorists, for example, or potential drug runners can make connections with the FARC, the Colombian guerilla organization, he says. "Sometimes it creates a long-term relationship, and sometimes it creates
a one-night stand," says Farah, a former Washington Post investigative reporter who is now a senior fellow at the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center. Under Chavez, Venezuela also created strong ties with Cuba, which for decades has navigated treacherous financial waters and desperate economic straits, all while dodging U.S. influence. But the help Venezuela receives is not limited to its own hemisphere. Farah produced a research paper for the U.S. Army War College in

August 2012 about the "growing alliance" between state-sponsored Iranian agents and other anti-American groups in Latin America, including the governments of Venezuela and Cuba. This alliance with Iran uses established drug trade routes from countries in South and Central America to penetrate North American borders, all under a banner of mutual malevolence toward the U.S. The

results of this access are largely secret, though security experts who spoke with U.S. News believe the attempted assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood was carried out by Iranian intelligence operatives. "Each of the Bolivarian states has lifted visa requirements for Iranian citizens, thereby erasing any public record of the Iranian citizens that come and go to these countries," wrote Farah of countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama. He also cited Venezuelan Foreign Minister David Velasquez who said, while speaking at a press conference in Tehran in 2010, "We

are confident that Iran can give a crushing response to the threats and sanctions imposed by the West and imperialism." These relationships are controlled by a group of military elites within

Venezuela, Farah tells U.S. News. He wonders whether the 50.8 percent of the vote Maduro won in the April 14 election gives him enough support to keep the country and its shadow commerce stable enough to continue its usual business. "[Maduro] has been and will continue to be forced to take all the unpopular macroeconomic steps and corrections that are painful, but Chavez never took," Farah says. "There is going to be, I would guess, a great temptation to turn to [the elites] for money." "Most criminalized elements of the Boliavarian structure will gain more power because he needs them," he says, adding "it won't be as chummy a relationship" as they enjoyed with the ever-charismatic Chavez. U.S. officials might try to engage the new

Venezuelan president first in the hopes of improving the strained ties between the two countries. But Maduro has never been close with the senior military class in his home country, and will likely adopt a more confrontational approach to the United States to prove his credentials to these Bolivarian elites. "Maybe if he were operating in different
circumstances, he could be a pragmatist," Farah says. "I don't think he can be a pragmatist right now."

Ven - Narco-State
The Venezuela narco-democracy continues to pose a threat to US national security Chavezs death only creates more uncertainty Rava, 13 graduate of Saint Louis University with a B.A. in both Latin American and International Studies, worked at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, in Washington, DC, on topics related to Western Hemispheric security, with an emphasis on counter-narcotics and border security issues (Max, Hugo Chvez's Death Means Greater Uncertainty for Venezuela, Truth About Bills, 5 March
2013, http://truthaboutbills.com/hugo-chavezs-death-means-greater-uncertainty-for-venezuela)//BI I dont always see eye to eye with Roger F. Noriega, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise

Institute, when it comes to matters regarding Latin America. However, when I saw him speak a year and a half ago about Venezuelas role in Latin America, especially regarding it posing a threat to the United States as a narco-democracy, it was almost like looking in the mirror. I became more of a believer as his remarks continued throughout
the panel discussion and during the Q & A session. Since that time I have taken an even more keen interest in Venezuelas rol e in the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and the effects this has on hemispheric stability. Now that Hugo Chvez is deceased

we will see that while his regime posed a threat to US national security interests, the current uncertainty could be even more threatening. The majority of Venezuelan expats and many of those that still live

there are probably dancing in the streets tonight if they do not fear violent reprisals from Chavista loyalists. However, they have not yet been fully liberated. It might be the end off an oppressive era for many, but they are entering a period of uncertainty. My hope is that the opposition coalition can gather its bearings quickly and be ready for the special election that Venezuelan law mandates must be held within the next 30 days. However, they face a tough campaign against a successor handpicked by Hugo Chvez. After a crushing defeat during this past Octobers election, can the opposition come together? What if they come together and again taste the sourness of defeat? There is also the concern of the rule of law in the country. Will there be protections for the freedom of speech and expression that were curtailed under the Chvez government? The people of Venezuela must proceed in an organized and cautious fashion if they wish to move on from an era of limited liberty and oppression. I wish them the best of luck. While it is well known within some circles that corruption, drug trafficking, and collaboration with US enemies was he was very involved with the Venezuelan state oil company (PDVSA), which provided the majority of the revenue for his socialist agenda. Venezuela has the worlds largest proven oil reserves and PDVSA has deep coffers. There have been many allegations of corruption made against this state entity and its relationship with the government and the powerful armed forces branch. The

commonplace during the Chvez years, the full extent of these activities will probably soon come to light. As president,

Venezuelan armed forces are rumored to be the power behind the Venezuelan narco-state. Numerous allegations have been made against past and present ranking officers for their roles in drug trafficking activities. The allegations and rumors about these activities are not likely to die with Chvez. Conflicts often erupt over money and power, and from all indications the state oil company and armed forces could very well find themselves embroiled in various power struggles. In the international arena the

bombastic leftist firebrand showed his provocative nature by pursuing lines of credit with Russia and China. Furthermore, he publicly displayed his hatred for Israel and the Jewish people, threw his support behind Libyan dictator Mohammad Kaddafi, made public and private alliances with Iran, and, most recently, supported Syrias Bashar Al Assad. This was in addition to his consistent and unrelenting anti-American rhetoric that spared no US President, Democrat or Republican. While presiding over a

corrupt, narco-state, Hugo Chavez also made threats of war against Americas strongest ally in South America my native Colombia. It has also been documented that he enjoyed close ties with the Colombian rebel group, FARC, who are in part responsible for the continuation of Colombias ongoing civil conflict.

Under his rule, there were even rumblings of a relationship between the Venezuelan armed forces and the infamous Iranian Quds Force and Hezbollah. Even more troubling are the reports that these terrorist organizations are cultivating

relationships with the notoriously violent Latin American TCOs and other global crime syndicates, all just to the south of the United States. This poses a very clear threat to US national security. Venezuela has also been an integral part of keeping multiple leftist governments throughout Latin America afloat. The
first that comes to mind is Cuba, which Venezuela very generously provided with oil, but it is not only them. Nicaragua and Bolivia have also received aid through similar programs. These already poor countries could see their economies take a nosedive; this would result in government coffers drying up quickly and could cause these countries to become hotbeds of civil unrest. Hugo Chvez

effectively built a narco-democracy during his reign over Venezuela and he handpicked his successor, but the election of his handpicked successor, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro, is far from certain. Now

that Chvez and his charisma have been lost, some of the rats will abandon the ship. There will also be many power struggles within the state oil company, the military, and among other former Chvez allies. The upcoming election will tell us much about the future

of Venezuela, but there is no longer anyone powerful enough to handle all of the special relationships that Chvez once managed and I find that very worrisome.

A Venezuelan narco-state risks civil war Toro, 12 Venezuelan journalist and political scientist, BA from Reed College, MSc from the London School of Economics,

current a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of Maastricht in The Netherlands (Francisco, Venezuela's narcostate, Foreign Policy, 10 May 2012, http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/05/10/venezuela_s_growing_drug_problem)//BI Another day, another deeply damaging whistle-blowing by a former Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal

magistrate. Soon after Magistrate Eladio Aponte fled the country last month and aired a terrifying amount of dirty chavista laundry on TV, his one-time colleague Luis Velsquez Alvaray (above) did him one better, releasing detailed evidence about a court system that looks more and more like a criminal conspiracy. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde:

To lose one Supreme Tribunal magistrate may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. Together, the backto-back interviews (broadcast by the Miami-based, Venezuelan-exile owned TV channel SOiTV) paint a picture of a

criminal justice system deep in bed with the Colombian Rebel Armed Forces (FARC) guerrillas, where political interference, crooked rulings, collusion with drug traffickers, and occasional contract killings, are entirely routine. The cocaine route out of Colombia, through Venezuela, and on to the U.S. and Western Europe is simply too profitable -- and the tentacles of the trade's millions have seeped into every corner of the system. Coming from one-time trusted Chvez confidants in a position to know, these

interviews strip away whatever veneer of legitimacy the chavista justice system might have enjoyed. But while Aponte's allegations were impressionistic though largely unsupported by documents, Velsquez Alvaray has had plenty of time to organize the evidence to back his allegations: He has been in exile since 2006, having fled the country after being tipped off about a plot to murder him. Two years after his defection, his top clerk at the Supreme Tribunal was found dead under strange circumstances. The mounting

revelations paint Venezuela as a budding narcostate -- a country where big-time drug trafficking money has not just bought this and that judge, or this and that prosecutor, but has taken control of the state as a whole. Large-scale drug trafficking is a business that invariably leaves a trail of blood on its wake,

and a spate of recent contract killings of army officers alleged to be deep in the business raises the possibility of a Mexican-style drug war to come. Alas, the analogy isn't really accurate. In Mexico, the drug war pits the armed forces against the

drug cartels. In Venezuela, if the former magistrates are to be believed, the drug cartels operate from within the Armed Forces. And what do you call it when one part of a country's armed forces goes to war against another? That's right: a civil war .

Ven Terrorism
Trafficking in Venezuela is linked to Middle East terrorist organizations
Grassley, 12 Iowa senator (Chuck, Drug Trafficking in West Africa Fuels Instability, Congressional Documents and Publications, 16 May 2012, ProQuest)//BI Another area of concern that links West Africa to our past work is the involvement of Venezuela. We have previously heard

at hearings and briefings about the use of Venezuela as a transshipment point for cocaine destined for Central America and the Caribbean. There are even allegations that the current defense

minister of Venezuela is involved in drug trafficking. So, I'm interested in the links between Venezuela and West Africa as it seems to be a repeat offender in fueling the drug trade. In fact, Venezuela is becoming such a repeat offender at all our hearings we ought to hold a hearing on Venezuela's role in facilitating global drug trafficking. If we look for common links between different regions, we'll keep coming up with Venezuela. So, we should hold a hearing specific to the problem posed by Venezuela. More importantly, we can't ignore the growing links between Hezbollah, Iran, and Venezuela. For example, following his 2010 arrest in Colombia, Venezuelan drug

kingpin Walid Makled was asked if Hezbollah is operating in Venezuela. He replied, "...they [Hezbollah] work in Venezuela...and all of that money they send to the Middle East."

*Drug Trade Good*

Mexico crackdown -> cuba violence Dominacan Today, 12 (citing Senator Dianne Feinstein, Cuba could become a hub for illegal drugs entering US, 2/11/2012, http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/world/2012/2/11/42634/Cuba-could-become-a-hub-forillegal-drugs-entering-US0, JKahn) Los Angeles. Cuba could become a significant hub for illegal drugs entering the United States in the near future, warned a California senator who chairs a congressional caucus on international drug trafficking. According to hispanicbusiness.com, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., made the remarks while leading a hearing on what several observers consider the growing possibility that the Caribbean could become an even larger transit zone for illegal drugs. If the trend happens or is happening, it is likely because of increased pressure international law enforcement is placing on violent drug cartels in Mexico and elsewhere in Central
America, these observers say. While mentioning the growing drug violence throughout the Caribbean during opening statements of the Feb. 1 hearing of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, Feinstein said Cuba should not be considered immune from the problem. "I would be remiss not to mention Cuba. Just 90 miles from Florida, Cuba has the potential to be a major transshipment point for illicit drugs," she said.

Cuban Violence

Mex - Economy
Loss of drug trafficking revenue collapses Mexican economy and government Daily Telegraph 97 Lord of the Skies, stuff.mit.edu/people/aaelenes/sinaloa/narco/amado/amado12.html
precisely that reason, most people in Jugrez just don't believe it. There is one certainty among all this conjecture. So Eavesdropping on a cocaine cowboy in an Italian restaurant, I hear, 'Ten killings in a week is nothing! This is El Seor settling accounts as usual, for the load that got seized last week.' According to the DEA, the killings are evidence of a battle for succession within the Jugrez cartel - or, possibly, the breakup of the Federation. This is a much more obvious explanation - and, for

long as the great white nostril to the north keeps on sucking, the drugs will continue to flow. 'It's just like when Henry Ford died,' says the former head of DEA intelligence, Phil Jordan. 'The cars keep rolling out of the factory.' Narcotics trafficking is a $ 30 billion-a-year industry in Mexico, equivalent to the rest of the nation's GNP put together. Oil, the second biggest industry, earns $ 10 billion a year, the annual income of Amado Carrillo Fuentes. The government can't afford to stamp out drug trafficking, even if it could. Without narco-dollars, the Mexican economy would likely collapse and the government along with it . Which explains why
the United States, for all its drug war rhetoric, tolerated Carrillo for so long. Which explains a letter Carrillo wrote to the Mexican President, Ernesto Zedillo, on January 14 this year, subsequently leaked to the press: 'Leave me alone to run my business. Otherwise I'll withdraw its benefits from the nation.' Note the slightly impatient tone: Look Ernesto, just don't you forget who's paying the bills around here.

Drug cartels are key to the Mexican economy generates valuable liquidity in the banking system

Lange, 10 Washington Correspondent for Reuters, citing US officials in Mexico; additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Tijuana (Jason, From spas to banks, Mexico economy rides on drugs, Reuters, 22 January 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/01/22/us-drugs-mexico-economy-idUSTRE60L0X120100122)//BI Mexican cartels, which control most of the cocaine and methamphetamine smuggled into the United States, bring an

estimated $25 billion to $40 billion into Mexico from their global operations every year. To put that in perspective: Mexico probably made more money in 2009 moving drugs than it did exporting oil, its single biggest legitimate foreign currency earner. From the white Caribbean beaches of Cancun to violent towns on the U.S. border and the beauty parlors of Mexico City's wealthy suburbs, drug cash is everywhere in Mexico. It has even propped up the country's banking system, helping it ride out the financial crisis and aiding the country's economy. Smuggled into Mexico mostly from the United States in $100 bills, narco money finds its way onto the books of restaurants, construction firms and bars as drug lords try to legitimize their cash and prevent police from tracing it. "Mexico is saturated with this money," said George

Friedman, who heads geopolitical analysis firm Stratfor. In western Mexico, drug money started pouring into Zapopan and nearby Guadalajara in the 1980s as the Sinaloa cartel bought hospitals and real estate, said Martin Barron, a researcher at the institute that trains Mexico's organized crime prosecutors. Now residents in the region known in Mexico for its piety say drug smugglers barely make an effort to disguise themselves. A strip of fancy boutiques in Zapopan was financed with drug money, says Jaime Ramirez, a local newspaper columnist who has been reporting on the drug world for two decades. As well as the Grupo Collins factory in Zapopan, a nearby car wash is also on the U.S. Treasury's black list. A local cemetery draws relatives of traffickers who were among the 17,000 people killed in the drug war in Mexico since 2006. "A lot of narcos are buried there. You should see it on Fathers' Day," Ramirez said, as a black pick-up truck with tinted windows pulled in. Zapopan residents just shrug their shoulders when a wealthy neighbor displays traits seen as typical of a drug trafficker -- wearing cowboy gear, playing loud "norteno" music from the country's north or holding lavish parties attended by guests who arrive in pick-up trucks or SUVs. "Living alongside them is normal," Ramirez said. "Everybody knows when a neighbor is on the shady side." One of those neighbors was Sandra Avila, a glamorous trafficker known as the "Queen of the Pacific," who lived in Zapopan before being arrested in Mexico City in 2007. On a typical day in Zapopan recently, men unloaded boxes from vans in the Grupo Collins compound, near the company's private chapel and soccer field. From behind the factory's high walls, there was little to suggest it could have ties to a cartel. "It has always been really calm," said Genaro Rangel, who sells tacos every morning to factory workers from a stall across the street. The plant was advertising a job opening on the company web site for a machine room technician. Washington's accusation, filed under a U.S. sanctions program, makes it illegal for Americans to do business with Grupo Collins and freezes any assets it might have in U.S. accounts. In a 2006 report, Mexican authorities named Grupo Collins' owner Telesforo Tirado as an operator of the Colima cartel. The U.S. Treasury and Mexico's Attorney General's office both declined to provide further details on the case and Grupo Collins executives also refused to comment. But Tirado has previously denied the charges in the Mexican media. CASHING IN ON THE DRUG TRADE What's going on in Zapopan is happening all over Mexico. A well-known Mexico City restaurant specializing in the spicy cuisine of the Yucatan

peninsula was added to the U.S. list of front companies in December. Months earlier, one of Mexico's top food critics had recommended it. Drug money has also fueled part of a real estate boom around tourist resorts such as Cancun, said a senior U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico City. "We've had cases where traffickers

tracts of land in areas where any investor would buy," he said, asking not to be named because of concerns about
his safety. An architect in the city of Tijuana did well out of designing buildings that cartels would build and rent out to legitimate local businesses. "The pay was enough for me to build a house for myself, as well as to buy a lot a tools," he said. He was once hired to design a tunnel that led to the street from a secret door in a drug gang member's closet. Craving acceptance, the drug gangs

purchased large

even throw their money at acquaintances to get them on the social scene. A drug trafficker pays his friend
Roberto, who declined to give his last name, to keep him connected in Tijuana and introduce him to women. "I take him to parties," Roberto said. In the wealthy shopping areas of Interlomas, near Mexico City, the Perfect Silhouette spa offers breast implants. Staffed by young women in loose-fitting white suits, the spa also sells weight-loss creams and offers massages. The U.S. Treasury recently said it was part of the financial network of the Beltran Leyva cartel, whose leader was gunned down by elite Mexican marines in December. The salon's manager, Teresa Delgado, appeared baffled by the U.S. accusations. "We haven't seen anything strange here," she said. A woman Delgado identified as the owner did not return a phone call requesting an interview.

Businesses enlisted to launder drug money typically get a cut worth 3 percent to 8 percent of the funds passing through their books, the U.S. law enforcement official said. "SMURFING" AROUND THE LAWS Much of the cartels' profits eventually ends up in Mexico's banking system, the U.S. official said. During the global financial crisis last year, those assets provided valuable liquidity, says economist Guillermo Ibarra of the

Autonomous University of Sinaloa. "They had a cushion from drug trafficking money that to a certain extent helped the banks," Ibarra said. Indeed, drug money in banks is a global phenomenon, not just in Mexico. A United Nations report on the global drug trade in 2009 said that "at a time of major bank failures, money doesn't smell, bankers seem to believe." Drug gangs in Mexico have their associates make thousands of tiny deposits in their bank accounts to avoid raising suspicion from banking authorities, a practice known as "smurfing," said the U.S. official. Mexico's banking association and the finance ministry's anti-money laundering unit declined to comment for this story. While Mexico is confiscating more drugs and assets than ever under President Felipe Calderon, forfeitures of money are still minuscule compared to even low-ball estimates of the amount of drug money that flows into Mexico. Under Calderon, authorities have confiscated about $400 million, almost none of which was seized from banks, said Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office. Mexican bank secrecy laws make it particularly difficult to go after drug money in financial institutions, Najera said. "We can't just go in there and say 'OK, let's have a look,'" he said. "We have to trace the illicit origin of that money before we can get at those bank accounts." The U.S. Treasury has blocked only about $16 million in suspected Mexican drug assets since June 2000, a Treasury official in Washington said. The official, who asked not to be named, said the sanctions program aims to hit drug lords by breaking "their commercial and financial backbones." But freezing assets is not "the principal objective nor the key measure of success." MAFIA CAPITALISM Data on Mexican banking provides a

novel way for calculating the size of the drug economy. Ibarra crunched numbers on monetary aggregates across different Mexican states and concluded that more money sits in Sinaloan banks than its legitimate economy should be generating. "It's as if two people had the same job and the same level of seniority, but one of them has twice as much savings," he said, talking about comparisons between Sinaloa and other states. Ibarra estimates cartels have laundered more than $680 million in the banks of Sinaloa -- which is a financial services backwater -- and that drug money is driving nearly 20 percent of the state's economy. Edgardo Buscaglia, an academic at Columbia
University, recently scoured judicial case files and financial intelligence reports, some of which were provided by Mexican authorities. His research found organized crime's involvement in Mexican businesses had expanded

sharply in the five years through 2008, with gangs now involved in most sectors of the economy.

Drug trafficking is key to Mexicos economy Morris, 12 (Stephen D. Morris is professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at Middle Tennessee State

University. He is the author of Corruption and Politics in Contemporary Mexico (1991), Political Reformism in Mexico (1995), Gringolandia: Mexican Identity and Perceptions of the United States(2005), and Political Corruption in Mexico: The Impact of Democratization (2009); and coeditor of Corruption and Democracy in Latin America (2009) andCorruption and Politics in Latin America: National and Regional Dynamics (2010). His articles have appeared in Bulletin of Latin American Research, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Latin American Studies, and Third World Quarterly, among other journals; 2012; http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/latin_american_research_review/v047/47.2.morris.html) KD The linkages attending drug trafficking are many; their impacts hauntingly far reaching. The illicit trade in

drugs has become an integral part of Mexicos economy. Operating through vast networks of street and prison gangs, police, customs officials, front companies, banks, and many others, Mexican cartels employ an estimated 450,000 people; have operations throughout the United States and in parts of Central and South America, as well as Europe; and take in between $25 billion and $30 billion a year. Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan estimate that the livelihood of some 3.2 million people in Mexico depends on the illicit trade in narcotics, a figure that does not include the thousands of people and billions of dollars involved in combating it (Bunker, 41). Indeed, DTOs provide financial opportunities where few others exist and pump needed funds into local economies. Drug traffickers pay for schools and hospitals, pour[ing] money

into churches and homes (Beith, 87). They provide gifts to children, assist victims of natural disasters, [and] generate

employment in poor areas (Grayson, 122). Overall, Charles Bowden estimates that between 30 percent and 60 percent of the Jurez economy runs on laundered drug money (45).

The drug trade is key to the Mexican economy

Gray, 10 Economic Analyst at U.S. Government Accountability Office, Research Assistant at National Bureau of Economic Research (Colin, The Hidden Cost of the War on Drugs, Stanford Progressive, May 2010, http://www.stanford.edu/group/progressive/cgi-bin/?p=521)//BI While violence is escalating and some are calling Mexico a failed state, the Mexican effort has certainly disrupted the

drug trade. Officials point to evidence of criminal organizations diversifying as drug revenues begin to dry up and to the rising price of cocaine. As early as the second quarter of 2007, the White House reported cocaine shortages in 37 U.S. cities and a 24% increase in the drugs retail price. Yet, such disruption of the trade has revealed a new issue: the dependence on the drug trade by many parts of the Mexican economy. In

considering how to fight illicit drugs in Mexico, it is crucial to consider how a blow to drugs may damage other sectors and industries. As a net effect, most experts would agree that the illicit drug trade adversely affects the Mexican economy. Cartels undermine the rule of law. Instability alienates current investors and deters potential investors or business-owners. Government revenues fall, as taxable commodities are replaced in the economy by illegal goods that are not taxed by the government. Tourism, one of Mexicos most important exports, suffers: the U.S. military has officially discouraged travelers from vacationing in many parts of Mexico. Drug cartels often intervene in economies directly, further discouraging investment. According to the L.A. Times, the Zetas (the military arm of the Gulf Cartel) have proved to be ruthless overlords. They have kidnapped businessmen, demanded protection money from merchants, taken over sales of pirated CDs and DVDs and muscled into the liquor trade by forcing restaurant and bar owners to buy from them. Viridiana Rios of the Harvard Department of Government estimates that the cost of violence is equivalent to 1.07 billion dollars, investment losses accounts for other 1.3 billion, drug abuse generates a loss of 0.68 billion dollars, and other costs may have an impact as high as 1.5 billion dollars. Despite the net damage that such cartels create in the Mexican economy, the

issue is not as homogenous as it initially appears. In fact, the Mexican economy is, in many ways, dependent on this industry. Economists estimate that the industry brings in between U$25 billion and U$50 billion every year. In 2009, Mexico probably made more money in the drug trade than it did in its single largest export industry: oil. One study, noted by Global Envision, reported that the loss of the drug business would shrink Mexicos economy by 63 percent. Others attribute as much as 20% of Mexicos GDP to this industry. Mexican journalist Carlos Loret de Mola claims that cartels make three times as many profits as Mexicos 500 largest companies combined. Furthermore, the effects of a blow to drugs would not be uniformly felt in Mexico. Certain legal industries would be hit harder. Luxury goods, for example, have thrived in Mexico due to the lavish tastes of drug dealers, smugglers, and organizers. These include cars, flight schools, yachts, and the like. While drug lords do not single-handedly keep such industries afloat, they do provide significant business. Some argue that banks are inadvertently dependent on drug money, and may have stayed afloat during the crisis partly due to this money. While deposits are usually made into thousands of different
accounts, the money flowing through the banking system provided valuable liquidity during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. By far, the people most hurt by a blow to the drug cartels would be the rural poor in certain areas of Mexico. According to Ms. Rios: drug

traffic cash flows are in fact helping some Mexican communities to somehow alleviate a grinding stage of poverty and underdevelopment. In fact, for almost all drug-producing
communities, the drug traffic industry seems to be the only source of income. This is partly due to the nature of drug cultivation, which, in many ways, is similar to farming. As of the late 1990s, roughly 300,000 peasants were employed in drug production. The National Farm Workers Union (UNTA) estimates a number around 600,000. The importance of drugs in the area is nothing new. The earliest documented poppy production in the state of Sinaloa, called the heart of Mexican drug country by Newsweek, was in 1886. The extent of this dependence was illustrated in 1976, when a joint operation by the U.S. Drug

Enforcement Agency and the Mexican government was organized. Called Operacion Condor, it involved helicopters that would spray (and ruin) poppy and marijuana fields. The operation caused such immediate economic destabilization in the region that the Mexican government indefinitely halted the project. This
dependence on drug cultivation, especially on the labor-intensive process of processing poppy gum, still exists today.

Drug trafficking props up the Mexican economy without it, it will collapse Lange, 10 writer at Reuters (Jason, From spas to banks, Mexico economy rides on drugs Jan 22, 2010

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/01/22/us-drugs-mexico-economy-idUSTRE60L0X120100122) // czhang (Reuters) - At a modern factory in a city whose main claim to fame is an image of the Virgin Mary revered for granting miracles, Mexican pharmaceuticals firm Grupo Collins churns out antibiotics and other medicines. But the United States contends that the company in Zapopan is not what it seems. The U.S. Treasury put Grupo Collins on a black list in 2008, saying the firm supplies a small drug cartel in western Mexico with chemicals needed to make methamphetamines. Grupo Collins, which has denied any connection to organized crime, is one of dozens under suspicion of laundering money for the nation's booming drug business, whose growing economic impact now pervades just about every level of Mexican life. Mexican cartels, which control most of the

cocaine and methamphetamine smuggled into the United States, bring

an estimated $25 billion to $40 billion into Mexico from their global operations every year. To put that in perspective: Mexico probably made more money in 2009 moving drugs than it did exporting oil, its single biggest legitimate foreign currency earner. From the white Caribbean beaches of Cancun to violent towns on the U.S. border and the beauty parlors of Mexico City's wealthy suburbs, drug cash is everywhere in Mexico. It has even propped up the country's banking system, helping it ride out the financial crisis and aiding the country's economy. Smuggled
into Mexico mostly from the United States in $100 bills, narco money finds its way onto the books of restaurants, construction firms and bars as drug lords try to legitimize their cash and prevent police from tracing it. "Mexico is saturated with this money," said George Friedman, who heads geopolitical analysis firm Stratfor. In western Mexico, drug money started pouring into Zapopan and nearby Guadalajara in the 1980s as the Sinaloa cartel bought hospitals and real estate, said Martin Barron, a researcher at the institute that trains Mexico's organized crime prosecutors. Now residents in the region known in Mexico for its piety say drug smugglers barely make an effort to disguise themselves. A strip of fancy boutiques in Zapopan was financed with drug money, says Jaime Ramirez, a local newspaper columnist who has been reporting on the drug world for two decades. As well as the Grupo Collins factory in Zapopan, a nearby car wash is also on the U.S. Treasury's black list. A local cemetery draws relatives of traffickers who were among the 17,000 people killed in the drug war in Mexico since 2006. "A lot of narcos are buried there. You should see it on Fathers' Day," Ramirez said, as a black pick-up truck with tinted windows pulled in. Zapopan residents just shrug their shoulders when a wealthy neighbor displays traits seen as typical of a drug trafficker -- wearing cowboy gear, playing loud "norteno" music from the country's north or holding lavish parties attended by guests who arrive in pick-up trucks or SUVs. "Living alongside them is normal," Ramirez said. "Everybody knows when a neighbor is on the shady side." One of those neighbors was Sandra Avila, a glamorous trafficker known as the "Queen of the Pacific," who lived in Zapopan before being arrested in Mexico City in 2007. On a typical day in Zapopan recently, men unloaded boxes from vans in the Grupo Collins compound, near the company's private chapel and soccer field. From behind the factory's high walls, there was little to suggest it could have ties to a cartel. "It has always been really calm," said Genaro Rangel, who sells tacos every morning to factory workers from a stall across the street. The plant was advertising a job opening on the company web site for a machine room technician. Washington's accusation, filed under a U.S. sanctions program, makes it illegal for Americans to do business with Grupo Collins and freezes any assets it might have in U.S. accounts. In a 2006 report, Mexican authorities named Grupo Collins' owner Telesforo Tirado as an operator of the Colima cartel. The U.S. Treasury and Mexico's Attorney General's office both declined to provide further details on the case and Grupo Collins executives also refused to comment. But Tirado has previously denied the charges in the Mexican media. CASHING IN ON THE DRUG TRADE What's going on in Zapopan is happening all over Mexico. A well-known Mexico City restaurant specializing in the spicy cuisine of the Yucatan peninsula was added to the U.S. list of front companies in December. Months earlier, one of Mexico's top food critics had recommended it. Drug money has also fueled part of a real estate boom around tourist resorts such as Cancun, said a senior U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico City. "We've had cases where traffickers purchased large tracts of land in areas where any investor would buy," he said, asking not to be named because of concerns about his safety. An architect in the city of Tijuana did well out of designing buildings that cartels would build and rent out to legitimate local businesses. "The pay was enough for me to build a house for myself, as well as to buy a lot a tools," he said. He was once hired to design a tunnel that led to the street from a secret door in a drug gang member's closet. Craving acceptance, the drug gangs even throw their money at acquaintances to get them on the social scene. A drug trafficker pays his friend Roberto, who declined to give his last name, to keep him connected in Tijuana and introduce him to women. "I take him to parties," Roberto said. In the wealthy shopping areas of Interlomas, near Mexico City, the Perfect Silhouette spa offers breast implants. Staffed by young women in loose-fitting white suits, the spa also sells weight-loss creams and offers massages. The U.S. Treasury recently said it was part of the financial network of the Beltran Leyva cartel, whose leader was gunned down by elite Mexican marines in December. The salon's manager, Teresa Delgado, appeared baffled by the U.S. accusations. "We haven't seen anything strange here," she said. A woman Delgado identified as the owner did not return a phone call requesting an interview. Businesses enlisted to launder drug money typically get a cut worth 3 percent to 8 percent of the funds passing through their books, the U.S. law enforcement official said. "SMURFING" AROUND THE LAWS Much of the cartels' profits eventually ends up in Mexico's banking system, the U.S. official said.

During the global financial crisis last year, those assets provided valuable liquidity, says economist Guillermo Ibarra of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. "They had a cushion from drug trafficking money that to a certain extent helped the banks," Ibarra said. Indeed, drug money in banks is a global phenomenon, not just in Mexico. A United Nations report on the global drug trade in 2009 said that "at a time of major bank failures, money doesn't smell, bankers seem to believe." Drug gangs in
Mexico have their associates make thousands of tiny deposits in their bank accounts to avoid raising suspicion from banking authorities, a practice known as "smurfing," said the U.S. official. Mexico's banking association and the finance ministry's antimoney laundering unit declined to comment for this story. While Mexico is confiscating more drugs and assets

than ever under President Felipe Calderon, forfeitures of money are still minuscule compared to even low-ball estimates of the amount of drug money that flows into Mexico. Under Calderon,

authorities have confiscated about $400 million, almost none of which was seized from banks, said Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office. Mexican bank secrecy laws make it particularly difficult to go after drug money in financial institutions, Najera said. "We can't just go in there and say 'OK, let's have a look,'" he said. "We have to trace the illicit origin of that money before we can get at those bank accounts." The U.S. Treasury has blocked only about $16 million in suspected Mexican drug assets since June 2000, a Treasury official in Washington said. The official, who asked not to be named, said the sanctions program aims to hit drug lords by breaking "their commercial and financial backbones." But freezing assets is not "the principal objective nor the key measure of success." MAFIA CAPITALISM Data on Mexican banking provides a novel way for

calculating the size of the drug economy. Ibarra crunched numbers on monetary aggregates across different Mexican states and concluded that more money sits in Sinaloan banks than its

legitimate economy should be generating. "It's as if two people had the same job and the same level of seniority, but
one of them has twice as much savings," he said, talking about comparisons between Sinaloa and other states. Ibarra estimates cartels have laundered more than $680 million in the banks of Sinaloa -- which is a financial services backwater -- and that drug money is driving nearly 20 percent of the state's economy. Edgardo Buscaglia, an academic at Columbia University, recently scoured judicial case files and financial intelligence reports, some of which were provided by Mexican authorities. His research found organized crime's involvement in Mexican businesses had expanded sharply in the five years through 2008, with gangs now involved in most sectors of the economy. Buscaglia thinks Mexico's lackluster

effort to confiscate dirty money is allowing drug gangs and other mafias to flourish.

Drug trade has a net positive effect on the Mexican economy --- key to a bunch of sectors Gray, 10 (Colin, The Hidden Cost of the War on Drugs, Stanford Progressive, May 2010,
http://www.stanford.edu/group/progressive/cgi-bin/?p=521, Tashma) Despite the net damage that such cartels create in the Mexican economy, the

issue is not as homogenous as it initially appears. In fact, the Mexican economy is, in many ways, dependent on this industry. Economists estimate that the industry brings in between U$25 billion and U $50 billion every year. In 2009, Mexico probably made more money in the drug trade than it did in its single largest export industry: oil. One study, noted by Global Envision, reported that the loss of the drug business would shrink Mexicos economy by 63 percent . Others attribute as much as 20% of Mexicos GDP to this industry. Mexican journalist Carlos Loret de Mola claims that cartels make three times as many profits as Mexicos 500 largest companies combined. Furthermore, the effects of a blow to drugs would not be uniformly felt in Mexico. Certain legal industries would be hit harder. Luxury goods, for example, have thrived in Mexico due to the lavish tastes of drug dealers, smugglers, and organizers. These include cars, flight schools, yachts, and the like. While drug lords do not single-handedly keep such industries afloat, they do provide significant business. Some argue that banks are inadvertently dependent on drug money, and may have stayed afloat during the crisis partly due to this money. While deposits are usually made into thousands of different accounts, the money flowing through the banking system provided valuable liquidity during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. By far, the people most hurt by a blow to the drug cartels would be the rural poor in certain areas of Mexico. According to Ms. Rios: drug traffic cash flows are in fact helping some Mexican communities to somehow alleviate a grinding stage of poverty and underdevelopment. In fact, for almost all drug-producing communities, the drug traffic industry seems to be the only source of income. This is partly due to the nature of drug
cultivation, which, in many ways, is similar to farming. As of the late 1990s, roughly 300,000 peasants were employed in drug production. The National Farm Workers Union (UNTA) estimates a number around 600,000. The importance of drugs in the area is nothing new. The earliest documented poppy production in the state of Sinaloa, called the heart of Mexican drug country by Newsweek, was in 1886. The extent of this dependence was illustrated in 1976, when a joint operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Mexican government was organized. Called Operacion Condor, it involved helicopters that would spray (and ruin) poppy and marijuana fields. The operation caused such immediate economic destabilization in the region that the Mexican government indefinitely halted the project. This dependence on drug cultivation, especially on the labor-intensive process of processing poppy gum, still exists today.

The drug trade generates a large flow of money into the Mexican economy

Friedman, 10 Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University, founder of Stratfor, geopolitical intelligence firm that provides strategic analysis and forecasting to individuals and organizations around the world (George, Mexico and the Failed State Revisited, Stratfor Global Intelligence, 6 April 2010, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100405_mexico_and_failed_state_revisited)//BI

Indeed, what the wars are being fought over in some ways benefits Mexico. The amount of money pouring into Mexico annually is stunning. It is estimated to be about $35 billion to $40 billion each year. The massive profit margins involved make these sums even more significant. Assume that the manufacturing sector produces revenues of $40 billion a year through exports. Assuming a generous 10 percent profit margin, actual profits would be $4 billion a year. In the case of narcotics, however, profit margins are conservatively estimated to stand at around 80 percent. The net from $40 billion would be $32 billion; to produce equivalent income in manufacturing, exports would have to total $320 billion. In estimating the impact of drug money on Mexico, it must therefore be borne in mind that drugs cannot be compared to any

conventional export. The drug trade's tremendously high profit margins mean its total impact on Mexico vastly outstrips even the estimated total sales, even if the margins shifted substantially. On the whole, Mexico is a tremendous beneficiary of the drug trade. Even if some of the profits are invested overseas, the pool of remaining money flowing into Mexico creates tremendous liquidity in the Mexican economy at a time of global recession. It is difficult to trace where the drug money is going, which follows from its illegality. Certainly, drug dealers would want their money in a jurisdiction where it could not be easily seized even if tracked. U.S. asset seizure laws for drug trafficking make the United States an unlikely haven. Though money clearly flows out of Mexico, the ability of the smugglers to influence the behavior of the Mexican government by investing some of it makes Mexico a likely destination for a substantial portion of such funds. The money does not, however, flow back into the hands of the gunmen shooting it out on the border; even their bosses couldn't manage funds of that magnitude. And while money can be -- and often is -- baled up and hidden, the value of money is in its use. As with illegal money everywhere, the goal is to wash it and invest it in legitimate enterprises where it can produce more money. That means it has to enter the economy through legitimate institutions -banks and other financial entities -- and then be redeployed into the economy. This is no different from the American Mafia's practice during and after Prohibition. The Drug War and Mexican National Interests From Mexico's point of view, interrupting the flow of drugs to the United States is not clearly in the national interest or in that of the economic elite. Observers often dwell on the warfare between smuggling organizations in the northern borderland but rarely on the flow of American money into Mexico. Certainly, that money could corrupt the Mexican state, but it also behaves as money does. It is accumulated and invested, where it generates wealth and jobs. For the Mexican government to become willing to shut off this flow of money, the violence would have to become far more geographically widespread. And given the difficulty of ending the traffic anyway -- and that many in the state security and military apparatus benefit from it -- an obvious conclusion can be drawn: Namely, it is difficult to foresee scenarios in which the Mexican government could or would stop the drug trade. Instead, Mexico will accept both the pain and the benefits of the drug trade.

Money Laundering
Drug producers rely on money laundering --- the War on Drugs would reverse this Arnold, 5 (Guy, specialist in north-south relations who writes mainly in the areas of African history and politics, and
international affairs, former Director of the Africa Bureau, The International Drugs Trade, pg. 209, Routledge, Tashma)

Profits from drug trafficking can only be usefully employed by the criminal underworld when the money has been legitimized. Drug traffickers must convert their illicit gains into acceptable, respectable money before it can be used and before they can branch out into legitimate occupations that allow them to enjoy their wealth without fear of investigation. The major end process in drug trafficking, therefore, is money laundering. Consequently, one of the principal tasks of the UNDCP is to tackle this
problem. Thus, to deprive drug traffickers of their illicit power and influence, UNDCP assists governments in efforts to counter money laundering and confiscate assets gained from drug trafficking. It is supporting a $4.3 million global program to improve the capacity of legal and law enforcement systems, which in- cludes the creation of financial intelligence units to reduce the vulnerability of financial systems} The

end objective of all drug trafficking is to make money; and the way to curtail successful drug trafficking, therefore, is to make the legitimization of drug-trafficking profits increasingly difficult, if not impossible. The task is a daunting one since there are always crooked bankers and businessmen who will turn a blind eye to the source of finances that come their way provided they themselves are able to make a profit out of handling such money. That destroys big banks --- they rely on money laundering for profits Arnold, 5 (Guy, specialist in north-south relations who writes mainly in the areas of African history and politics, and

international affairs, former Director of the Africa Bureau, The International Drugs Trade, pg. 217, Routledge, Tashma) However, attitudes to problems, once established, remain in place for a long time before any significant change takes place. For example, following the assassination of the Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan Sarmiento in 1989, his brother Alberto commented on the approach to the drugs war by the new Bush administration (George H. W. Bush had been President Reagans drugs czar") and pointed out that Washingtons

strategy avoided "the core of the problem""the economic ties between the legal and illegal worlds," the "large financial corporations" that handle the drug money. According to Noam Chomsky, George Bush had been instrumental in terminating the main thrust
of the real "war on drugs." Thus, officials in the enforcement section of the Treasury Department monitored the sharp in- crease in cash inflow to Florida (later Los Angeles) banks as the cocaine trade boomed in the 1970s, and connected it to the large-scale laundering of drug receipts." They brought detailed information about these matters to the DEA and the Justice Department. After some public exposs, the govern- ment launched Operation Greenback in 1979 to prosecute money laundercrs. It soon foundered;

the banking industry is not a proper target for the drug war. The Reagan administration reduced the limited
monitoring, and Bush "wasnt really too interested in financial prosecution," the chief prosecutor in Operation Greenback recalls.

In other words, then as later, money laundering through U.S., British, or other European banks is too valuable a business to be curtailed; and the fact that these countries have not seen fit to tackle this problem properly makes nonsense of the rest of the war on drugs.
That destroys clean tech leadership Cogan, 8 (Doug, leader of RiskMetrics Climate Change Research Team and expert in investment responses to climate change, Corporate Governance and Climate Change: The Banking Sector, Ceres, January 2008, http://www.ceres.org/resources/reports/corporate-governance-banking-sector)
Banks are the backbone of the global economy, providing capital for innovation, infrastructure, job creation and overall prosperity. Banks also

play an integral role in society, affecting not only spending by individual consumers, but also the growth of entire industries. As the impacts of global warming from the heat-trapping gases released by power plants, vehicles and other sources take root in everyday life, banks have never been more important to chart the future. The companies that banks decide to finance will be a linchpin in slowing Earths warming and moving the world economy away from fossil fuels and into clean er tech nologies. There is now overwhelming scientific evidence that worldwide temperatures are rising, glaciers are
melting, and drought and wildfires are becoming more severe. Scientists believe most of the warming in the last 50 years is humaninduced. This confluence of evidence has galvanized public attention and governments worldwide to take action to avert a possible climate catastrophe. With nearly $6 trillion in market capitalization, the global financial

sector will play a vital role

in supporting timely, cost-effective solutions to reduce U.S. and global greenhouse gas emissions. As risk management
experts, it is essential that banks begin now to consider the financial risk implications of continued investment in carbon-intensive energy technologies.

Extinction Klarevas, 9 professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (Louis, Securing American Primacy While
Tackling Climate Change: Toward a National Strategy of Greengemony, 12/15/2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/louis klarevas/securing-american-primacy_b_393223.html)

***gendered language modified

As national leaders from around the world are gathering in Copenhagen, Denmark, to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the time is ripe to re-assess America's current energy policies - but within the larger framework of how a new

approach on the environment will stave off global warming and shore up American primacy. By not addressing climate change more aggressively and creatively, the United States is squandering an opportunity to secure its global primacy for the next few generations to come. To do this, though, the U.S. must rely on innovation to help the world escape the coming environmental meltdown. Developing the key technologies that will save the planet from global warming will allow the U.S. to outmaneuver potential great power rivals seeking to replace it as the international system's hegemon. But the greening of American strategy must occur soon. The U.S., however, seems to be stuck in time, unable to move beyond oil-centric geo-politics in any meaningful way. Often, the gridlock is portrayed as a partisan difference, with
Republicans resisting action and Democrats pleading for action. This, though, is an unfair characterization as there are numerous proactive Republicans and quite a few reticent Democrats. The real divide is instead one between realists and liberals. Students of realpolitik, which still heavily guides American foreign policy, largely discount environmental issues as they are not seen as advancing national interests in a way that generates relative power advantages vis--vis the other major powers in the system: Russia, China, Japan, India, and the European Union. Liberals, on the other hand, have recognized that global warming might

very well become the greatest challenge ever faced by (hu)mankind. As such, their thinking often eschews narrowly defined national interests for the greater global good. This, though, ruffles elected officials whose sworn obligation is, above all, to protect and promote American national interests. What both sides need to understand is that by becoming a lean, mean, green fighting machine, the U.S. can actually bring together liberals and realists to advance a collective interest which benefits every nation, while at the same time, securing America's global primacy well into the future. To do so, the U.S. must re-invent itself as not just your traditional hegemon, but as history's first ever green hegemon. Hegemons are countries that dominate the international system - bailing out other countries in times of global crisis, establishing and maintaining the most important international institutions, and covering the costs that result from free-riding and cheating global obligations. Since 1945, that role has been the purview of the United States. Immediately after World War II, Europe and Asia laid in ruin, the global economy required resuscitation, the countries of the free world needed security guarantees, and the entire system longed for a multilateral forum where global concerns could be addressed. The U.S., emerging the least scathed by the systemic crisis of fascism's rise, stepped up to the challenge and established the postwar (and current) liberal order. But don't let the world "liberal" fool you. While many nations benefited from America's new-found hegemony, the U.S. was driven largely by "realist" selfish national interests. The liberal order first and foremost benefited the U.S. With the U.S. becoming bogged down in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, running a record national debt, and failing to shore up the dollar, the future of American hegemony now seems to be facing a serious contest: potential rivals - acting like sharks smelling blood in the water - wish to challenge the U.S. on a variety of fronts. This has led numerous commentators to forecast the U.S.'s imminent fall from grace. Not all hope is lost however. With the impending systemic crisis of global warming on the horizon, the U.S. again finds itself in a position to address a transnational problem in a way that will benefit both the international community collectively and the U.S. selfishly. The current problem is two-fold. First, the competition for oil is fueling animosities between the major powers. The geopolitics of oil has already emboldened

Russia in its 'near abroad' and China in far-off places like Africa and Latin America. As oil is a limited natural resource, a nasty zero-sum contest could be looming on the horizon for the U.S. and its major power rivals - a contest which threatens American primacy and global stability. Second, converting fossil fuels like oil to run national economies is producing
irreversible harm in the form of carbon dioxide emissions. So long as the global economy remains oil-dependent, greenhouse gases will continue to rise. Experts are predicting as much as a 60% increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the next twenty-five years. That likely means more devastating water

shortages, droughts, forest fires, floods, and storms. In other words, if global competition for access to energy resources does not undermine international security, global warming will. And in either case, oil will be a culprit for the instability. Oil arguably has

been the most precious energy resource of the last half-century. But "black gold" is so 20th century. The key resource for this century will be green gold - clean, environmentally-friendly energy like wind, solar, and hydrogen power. Climate change leaves no alternative. And the sooner we realize this, the better off we will be. What Washington must do in order to avoid the traps of petropolitics is to convert the U.S. into the world's first-ever green hegemon. For starters, the federal government must

drastically increase investment in energy and environmental research and development (E&E

R&D). This will require a serious sacrifice, committing upwards of $40 billion annually to E&E R&D - a far cry from the few billion dollars currently being spent. By promoting a new national project, the U.S. could develop new technologies that will assure it does not drown in a pool of oil. Some solutions are already well known, such as raising fuel standards for automobiles; improving public transportation networks; and expanding nuclear and wind power sources. Others, however, have not progressed much beyond the

drawing board: batteries that can store massive amounts of solar (and possibly even wind) power; efficient and cost-effective photovoltaic cells, crop-fuels, and hydrogen-based fuels; and even fusion. Such innovations will not only provide alternatives to oil, they will also give the U.S. an edge in the global competition for hegemony. If the U.S. is able to produce technologies that allow modern, globalized societies to escape the oil trap, those nations will eventually have

no choice but to adopt such technologies. And this will give the U.S. a tremendous economic boom, while simultaneously providing it with means of leverage that can be employed to keep potential foes in check. The bottomline is that the U.S. needs to become green energy dominant as opposed to black energy independent - and the best approach for achieving this is to promote a national strategy of greengemony. Banks are quintessential to money laundering --- they secretly partner up with drug producers Arnold, 5 (Guy, specialist in north-south relations who writes mainly in the areas of African history and politics, and
international affairs, former Director of the Africa Bureau, The International Drugs Trade, pg. 210-211, Routledge, Tashma)

People who commit crimes need to disguise the origin of their criminal money so that they can use it more easily. This fact is the basis for all money laundering, whether that of the drug trafficker, organized
criminal, terrorist, arms trafticker, blackmailer, or credit card swindler. Money laun- dering generally involves a series of multiple transactions used to disguise the source of financial assets so that those assets may be used without com- promising the criminals who are seeking to use the funds. Through money laundering, t.he criminal tries to transform the monetary proceeds derived from illicit activities into funds with an apparently legal source} Huge profits from drug trafficking remain largely

worthless unless these can be moved into legitimate financial and commercial activities. This is not easy to do and, at the very least, requires legitimate organizations to cooperate in the process, passively by turning a blind eye to any questions about the source of such funds or, more actively, by becoming partners in the money laundering venture. Given the size of the funds seeking legitimate outlets, it is not surprising that major financial institutions, such as banks, as well as countries, have been prepared to accept large inputs of what they must have known to be the profits of crime without asking any questions. Money laundering is a growing part of the global "black economy " in which
more and more countries are involved. Financial speculations are an increasingly important aspect of shadow economies, and market deregula- tion has led to huge increases in Western speculative financial transactions; Of the trillions of dollars that daily flow around the global marketplace, less than 10 percent are connected with the real economy. The remainder are largely concerned with gambling on the future performance of stocks and markets. While its magnitude is unloiown, it has been argued that money laundering by criminal networks has become part of such huge speculative flows. Indeed, given its willingness to take risks, it has proba- bly amplihed the turbulence and volatility of such movements?

Narco-Terrorism
Narco terrorism is beneficial --- countries are more willing to cooperate on cracking down crime than terrorism --- allowing terrorists and cartels to cooperate sparks global efforts to curtail terrorism and destroys the legitimacy of terrorist organizations Jacobson, 10 (Michael, senior fellow in the Stein Program at The Washington Institute, former Treasury Department official,
and Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute, former Treasury Department official, Tracking Narco-Terrorist Networks: The Money Trail, 34 Fletcher F. World Aff. 117, Winter 2010, lexis, Tashma) TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE GROWING CRIME-TERRORISM NEXUS All things considered, the growing nexus

between international terrorism and organized crime may actually be a positive development. For one, tracking terrorists for their illicit activities, rather than their terrorismbased endeavors, is less complicated. Also, while countries may adhere to dissimilar definitions of terrorism or hold divergent lists of designated terrorist organizations, there is more of a consensus on the need to fight crime. [*120] Some countries are more willing to coordinate with the United States on criminal law enforcement than on counterterrorism efforts, for a variety of reasons. Many countries do not want to acknowledge that they have a terrorist problem that they are not dealing with effectively. Others are reluctant to be seen cooperating with the U nited States in the unpopular "War on Terror." The governments in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, where Hizbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist organizations have had a long-standing presence, is a good example of the former. For instance, in December 2006, the U.S. Treasury
designated several prominent Lebanese expatriates in the TBA as terrorists because of their Hizbollah ties. In response, the Argentine, Paraguayan, and Brazilian governments issued a joint statement exonerating these individuals and rejecting American claims of terrorist activity in the TBA. However, the 2007 State Department annual report on terrorism reveals that these three governments take a markedly more aggressive approach to other criminal activities: "The governments of the TBA have long been concerned with arms and drugs smuggling, document fraud, money laundering, and the manufacture and movement of contraband goods through this region." 3 Thus, the United States would be wise to work with the TBA governments

through crime enforcement and drug-related channels rather than by ineffectively promoting collaboration on counterterrorism measures. This approach is appealing because it would require neither changes to domestic legal structures nor a reorganization of government bodies or legal, administrative, and regulatory authorities. Drug laws are comprehensive and ubiquitous; governments must simply enforce existing laws and hold terrorists accountable for their transgressions. Enforcing
domestic laws is not a political statement, but merely a function of law and order and of national sovereignty. Kenya vividly illustrates the potential of the law enforcement approach. Kenya lacks stringent counterterrorism laws, but could effectively combat terrorism by enforcing domestic criminal legislation. Although Kenyan authorities continue to battle Islamic terrorist networks along its unstable border regions, the perception of counterterrorism legislation as "anti-Muslim" has prevented the legislation's development. U.S. authorities [*121] commenting on terrorism in Kenya have drawn negative responses from Kenyan officials; the Kenyan government views such public statements as "unfriendly act[s] and threat[s] to the country's vital tourism industry." It is

also easier to prosecute terrorists for criminal activity than for crimes of terrorism. In terrorismrelated procedures, evidence often comes from intelligence sources, which can pose significant challenges in prosecuting a suspect. The evidence may be inadmissible, its use may compromise a valuable source or
method, or the evidence may have been supplied by a foreign government unwilling to publicly acknowledge its cooperation with the United States. Evidence in criminal prosecution is more fluidly utilized and has fewer gray areas. Zacarias Moussaoui's prosecution on terrorism-related grounds provides a paradigmatic example of the difficulties in trying suspected terrorists. Although the "20th hijacker" ultimately pleaded guilty, the trial persisted for more than three and a half years as a result of disputed intelligence. Beyond the legal benefits, disclosing terrorists' criminal activities conveys a

positive public relations externality. Redefining terrorists as criminals sullies the upright reputation they seek to portray among their followers, be it as "freedom fighters" or principled religious activists. Publicly pursuing terrorists through the criminal activity track taints the political, religious, or practical legitimacy so critical to building financial support and recruiting operatives for terrorism. The 2006 Federal Narco-Terrorism statute, which has been used in several cases already, is likely to play an

increasingly important role, not only in terms of enforcement, but in highlighting terrorist groups' hypocritical involvement in criminal activity.

Terrorism leads to great power warfare --- only scenario for escalation Ayson 10 (Robert, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies Victoria University of

Wellington, After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 33(7), July, InformaWorld) A terrorist nuclear attack, and even the use of nuclear weapons in response by the country attacked in the first place, would not necessarily represent the worst of the nuclear worlds imaginable. Indeed, there are reasons to wonder whether nuclear terrorism should ever be regarded as belonging in the category of truly existential threats. A contrast can be drawn here with the global catastrophe that would come from a massive nuclear exchange between two or more of the sovereign states that possess these weapons in significant numbers. Even the worst terrorism that the twenty-first century might bring would fade into insignificance alongside considerations of what a general nuclear war would have wrought in the Cold War period. And it must be admitted that as

long as the major nuclear weapons states have hundreds and even thousands of nuclear weapons at their disposal, there is always the possibility of a truly awful nuclear exchange taking place precipitated entirely by state possessors themselves. But these two nuclear worldsa non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear exchangeare not necessarily separable. It is just possible that some sort of terrorist attack, and especially an act of nuclear terrorism, could precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange of nuclear weapons between two or more of the states that possess them. In this context, todays and tomorrows terrorist groups might assume the place allotted during the early Cold War years to new state possessors of small nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising the risks of a catalytic nuclear war between the superpowers started by

third parties. These risks were considered in the late 1950s and early 1960s as concerns grew about nuclear proliferation, the socalled n+1 problem. It may require a considerable amount of imagination to depict an especially plausible situation where an act of nuclear terrorism could lead to such a massive inter-state nuclear war. For example, in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, it might well be wondered just how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be fingered as the most obvious state sponsors or encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far

too responsible to be involved in supporting that sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily

threaten them as well. Some possibilities, however remote, do suggest themselves. For example, how might the United States react if it was thought or discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear terrorism had come from Russian stocks,40 and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The correct attribution of that nuclear material to a particular country might not be a case of science fiction given the observation by Michael May et al. that while the debris resulting from a nuclear explosion would be spread over a wide area in tiny fragments, its radioactivity makes it detectable, iden tifiable and collectable, and a wealth of information can be obtained from its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion, the materials used and, most important some indication of where the nuclear material came from.41 Alternatively, if the act of nuclear terrorism

came as a complete surprise, and American officials refused to believe that a terrorist group was fully responsible (or responsible at all) suspicion would shift immediately to state possessors. Ruling out Western ally countries like the United Kingdom and France, and probably Israel and India as well, authorities in Washington would be left with a very short list consisting of North Korea, perhaps Iran if its program continues, and possibly Pakistan. But at what stage would Russia and China be definitely ruled out in this high stakes game of nuclear Cluedo? In particular, if the act of nuclear terrorism occurred against a backdrop of existing tension in Washingtons relations with Russia and/or China, and at a time when threats had already been traded between these major powers, would officials and political leaders not be tempted to assume the worst?

Of course, the chances of this occurring would only seem to increase if the United States was already involved in some sort of limited armed conflict with Russia and/or China, or if they were confronting each other from a distance in a proxy war, as unlikely as these developments may seem at the present time. The reverse might well apply too: should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in Russia or China during a period of heightened tension or even limited conflict with the United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures that might rise domestically to consider the United States as a possible perpetrator or encourager of the attack? Washingtons early response to a terrorist nuclear attack on its own soil might also raise the possibility of an unwanted (and nuclear aided) confrontation

with Russia and/or China. For example, in the noise and confusion during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S. president might be expected to place the countrys armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of alert. In such a tense environment, when careful planning runs up against the friction of reality, it is just possible that Moscow and/or China might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intentions to use force (and possibly nuclear force) against them. In that situation, the temptations to preempt such actions might grow, although it must be admitted that any preemption
would probably still meet with a devastating response. As part of its initial response to the act of nuclear terrorism (as discussed earlier) Washington might decide to order a significant conventional (or nuclear) retaliatory or disarming attack against the leadership of the terrorist group and/or states seen to support that group. Depending on the identity and especially the location of these targets, Russia and/or China might interpret such action as being far too close for their comfort, and potentially as an infringement on their spheres of influence and even on their sovereignty. One far-fetched but perhaps not impossible scenario

might stem from a judgment in Washington that some of the main aiders and abetters of the terrorist action resided somewhere such as Chechnya, perhaps in connection with what Allison claims is the Chechen insurgents long-standing interest in all things nuclear.42 American pressure on that part of the world would almost certainly raise alarms in Moscow that might require a degree of advanced consultation from Washington that the latter found itself unable or unwilling to provide. There is also the question of how other nuclear-armed states respond to the act of nuclear terrorism on another member of that special club. It could reasonably be expected that following a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States, both Russia and China would extend immediate sympathy and support to Washington and would work alongside the United States in the Security Council. But there is just a chance, albeit a slim one, where the support of Russia and/or China is less automatic in some cases than in others. For example, what would happen if

the United States wished to discuss its right to retaliate against groups based in their territory? If, for some found the responses of Russia and China deeply underwhelming, (neither for us or against us) might it also suspect that they secretly were in cahoots with the group, increasing (again perhaps ever so slightly) the chances of a major exchange. If the terrorist group had some connections to groups in
reason, Washington Russia and China, or existed in areas of the world over which Russia and China held sway, and if Washington felt that Moscow or Beijing were placing a curiously modest level of pressure on them, what conclusions might it then draw about their culpability? If

Washington decided to use, or decided to threaten the use of, nuclear weapons, the responses of Russia and China would be crucial to the chances of avoiding a more serious nuclear exchange. They might surmise, for example, that while the act of nuclear terrorism was especially heinous and

demanded a strong response, the response simply had to remain below the nuclear threshold. It would be one thing for a non-state actor to have broken the nuclear use taboo, but an entirely different thing for a state actor, and indeed the leading state in the international system, to do so. If Russia and China felt sufficiently strongly about that prospect, there is then the question of what options would lie open to them to dissuade the United States from such action: and as has been seen over the last several decades, the central dissuader of the use of nuclear weapons by states has been the threat of nuclear retaliation. If some readers find this simply too fanciful, and perhaps even offensive to contemplate, it may be informative to reverse the tables. Russia, which

possesses an arsenal of thousands of nuclear warheads and that has been one of the two most important

trustees of the non-use taboo, is subjected to an attack of nuclear terrorism. In response, Moscow places its nuclear forces very visibly on a higher state of alert and declares that it is considering the use of nuclear retaliation against the group and any of its state supporters. How would Washington view such a possibility? Would it really be keen to support Russias use of nuclear weap ons, including outside Russias traditional sphere of influence? And if not, which seems quite plausible, what options would Washi ngton have to communicate that displeasure? If China had been the victim of the nuclear terrorism and seemed likely to retaliate in kind, would the United States and Russia be happy to sit back and let this occur? In the charged atmosphere immediately after a nuclear terrorist attack, how would the attacked country respond to pressure from other major nuclear powers not to respond in kind? The phrase how dare they tell us what to do immediately springs to mind. Some might even go so far as to interpret this concern as a tacit form of sympathy or support for the terrorists. This might not help the chances of nuclear restraint.

International cooperation on stopping narco terrorism is uniquely key to stop Hezbollah Jacobson, 10 (Michael, senior fellow in the Stein Program at The Washington Institute, former Treasury Department official,
and Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute, former Treasury Department official, Tracking Narco-Terrorist Networks: The Money Trail, 34 Fletcher F. World Aff. 117, Winter 2010, lexis, Tashma) THE CASE OF HIZBOLLAH This approach of targeting terrorist organizations for their criminal

activity could pay especially large dividends when it comes to Hizbollah. The United States and many of its allies, particularly the Europeans, disagree on whether or not Hizbollah is a terrorist organization. There is far more agreement, however, that Hizbollah's global criminal activities and infrastructure pose a serious problem and need to be addressed. To date, the European Union has not designated any part of Hizbollah as a terrorist organization, although the EU included Hizbollah members involved in specific acts
of terrorism, such as Imad Mughniyeh, on its terrorism list. Even the United States' closest ally, the United Kingdom, has been reluctant to treat Hizbollah as a terrorist group. In March 2009, the United Kingdom announced that it was reviving dialogue with the [*122] political wing of Hizbollah. Unlike the United States, which has blacklisted the entire Hizbollah organization, the United Kingdom has banned only Hizbollah's terrorist (External Security Organization) and military wings. The ban on the terrorist wing began in 2000, while the ban on the military wing followed Hizbollah's June 2008 decision to increase its support to Iraqi and Palestinian militants. The inherent challenge in developing an international consensus on the

definition of terrorism is highlighted by enduring debates at the United Nations, which tend to devolve into semantic arguments over the distinction between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter."
Even the United States and its European allies encounter disagreement. For example, Europe has yet to designate Hizbollah as a terrorist group because of the organization's activity in the Lebanese political arena. Many European officials argue that Hizbollah, which is a part of the Lebanese government, is now on the path to becoming a legitimate political party, and that the designation would backfire and reverse this progress. Despite the differences between U.S. and European perceptions of and policies toward Hizbollah, there

is one critical area where all parties' interests converge: law enforcement. The United States and its European counterparts have a particularly strong interest in combating

Hizbollah's burgeoning role in illicit drug trafficking. Regardless of divergent political considerations or varying definitions of terrorism, combating crime and enforcing sovereign laws are straight-forward issues. Of
all Islamic groups, Hizbollah has the longest record of engaging in criminal activity to support its activities. While Hizbollah is involved in a wide variety of criminal activities, its role in the production and trafficking of narcotics is

particularly salient. Hizbollah has capitalized on the vast Lebanese Shi'a expatriate population, mainly located in South America and Africa. With its strong presence in Africa, Hizbollah has been able to utilize the continent as a strategic location from which to raise and transfer funds and to engage in such criminal enterprises as diamond smuggling. In early 2009, Admiral James G. Stavridis, the supreme allied commander, Europe, testified before the House Armed Services Committee about the nexus of illicit drug trafficking. He testified that in August 2008, the U.S. Southern Command and the DEA coordinated with host nations [*123] to target a Hizbollah drug trafficking ring in the TBA of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. According to Michael Braun, the former assistant administrator and chief of operations at the DEA, "both Hamas and Hizbollah are active in this [Tri-Border] region, where it is possible to make a profit of 1 million dollars from the sale of fourteen or fifteen kilos of drugs, an amount that could be transported in a single suitcase." 4 As discussed above, in late 2008, U.S. and Colombian investigators identified and dismantled an international cocaine smuggling and money-laundering ring based in Colombia. This operation, which was composed of a Colombian drug cartel and Lebanese members of Hizbollah, used portions of its profits--allegedly hundreds of millions of dollars per year--to finance Hizbollah. Such revelations should not be surprising. In December 2006, the U.S. Treasury listed Hizbollah operative Sobhi Fayad as a Specially Designated Terrorist. Treasury officials stated that Fayad served as a liaison between the Iranian embassy and the Hizbollah community in the TBA and also traveled back to Lebanon and Iran to meet with senior Hizbollah officials. According to Treasury, Fayad was also involved in a variety of illicit activities including trafficking drugs and counterfeiting U.S. dollars. While the Europeans may not consider Hizbollah to be a terrorist group, Europeans unequivocally oppose efforts by Hizbollah to establish criminal enterprises within their borders.
For example, although there is no consensus between the United States and the United Kingdom on whether or how to engage Hizbollah, or even how to classify Hizbollah and its various component parts, the countries agree that drug trafficking

is illegal. The United Kingdom and other European nations are as eager as the United States to stop the flow of drugs into their countries and to prevent Hizbollah from operating criminal enterprises within their territories. Therefore, while officials may openly describe these actions as targeting criminals, not Hizbollah, the end result will be much the same.

Poverty
Drug trade solves widespread poverty --- small farmers cultivate drugs to stay afloat Keefer, 8 (Philip and Norman V. Loazya, The World Bank, Rodrigo R. Soares, University of Maryland and PUC-Rio, The
Development Impact of the Illegality of Drug Trade, The World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper, March 2008, WPS4543, Tashma) 4.1. The Distribution of Rents

Repression of the drug trade naturally reduces the wealth of agriculture workers in poor countries that grow poppy seeds (Afghanistan) and coca leaves (Bolivia, Colombia, Peru). Their welfare losses are usually considered insignificant relevant to evaluations of prohibition, precisely because their farming activity is either criminal in and of itself, or contributes to criminal activity in other countries.
There are four reasons to take these welfare losses more seriously. First, the cultivation of poppy seeds and coca has not been historically criminalized, nor is it everywhere criminalized; these farmers are therefore not criminals in the usual sense nor in their own perception. Second, they are poor and the welfare losses caused by economic setbacks are

proportionally greater. Third, the benefits of prohibition seem to be scant, such that even the lightly-weighted welfare losses that prohibition imposes on cultivators may be relatively large. The fourth reason is perhaps the most important: the losses that farmers incur may arise in part because criminalization leads to a transfer of rents from them to drug traffickers. Poverty makes violence inevitable --- outweighs nuclear war Gilligan 96 (James, Professor of Psychiatry Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for the Study of Violence,

Member Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence, Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes, pg. 191-196)

***We do not endorse the use of Holocaust rhetoric which this card has been edited to remove The deadliest form of violence is poverty. You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons

and mental hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcible and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterizes their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families and friends, you are forced to recognize the truth in Gandhis observation that the deadliest form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by without realizing that trying to understand them and their violent behavior in purely individual terms is impossible and wrong-headed. Any theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of men in maximum security prisons and hospitals for the criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are not where the major violence in our society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are far from being the main causes of most violent deaths. Any approach to a theory of violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence in this country. Focusing merely on those relatively few men who commit what we define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those structural causes of violent death that are far more significant from a numerical or public health, or human, standpoint. By structural violence I mean the increased rates of death, and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as co ntrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of class structure; and that structure is itself a product of societys collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting structural with behavioral violence, by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural violence differs from behavioral violence in at least three major respects. *The lethal effects

of structural violence operate continuously, rather than sporadically, whereas murders, suicides, executions, wars, and other forms of behavioral violence occur one at a time. *Structural violence operates more or less

independently of individual acts; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties, voters) whose decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for others. *Structural violence is normally invisible, because it may

appear to have had other (natural or violent) causes. The finding that structural violence causes far more deaths than behavioral violence does is not limited to this country. Kohler and Alcock attempted to arrive at the

number of excess deaths caused by socioeconomic inequities on a worldwide basis. Sweden was their model of the nation that had come closes to eliminating structural violence. It had the least inequity in income and living standards, and the lowest discrepancies in death rates and life expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy in the world. When they compared the life expectancies of those living in the other socioeconomic systems against Sweden, they found that 18 million deaths a year could be

attributed to the structural violence to which the citizens of all the other nations were being subjected. During the past

decade, the discrepancies between the rich and poor nations have increased dramatically and alarmingly. The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict.

Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those by genocideor about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000) deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it was clear that even war

cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other words,

every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating,

thermonuclear [war], or genocide, perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. Structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide to war and genocide). The question as to which of the two forms of violence structural or behavioralis more important, dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each other, as cause to effect.

*War on Drugs Fails*

General
US can never solve drug trafficking in Central America in a bind Carpenter, 12 (Ted Galen Carpenter is senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Dr.
Carpenter served as Catos director of foreign policy studies from 1986 to 1995 and as vice president for defense and foreign policy studies from 1995 to 2011. He is the author of nine and the editor of 10 books on international affairs; 1/4/12; Drug Mayhem Moves South; http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/drug-mayhem-moves-south) KD The U.S. government is caught in a bind. Clearly, Washington does not want to see Central

America become a region of narco-states in which the drug cartels are the political powers that really matter. And Central American leaders have a point when they argue that their countries are at risk largely because of their geographic location along the route between drug-source countries and the insatiable U.S. drug market. According to the 2011 United Nations World Drug Report, the U.S. market accounts for approximately 36 percent of world consumption of cocaine, and the figures for other drugs are similar. At the same time, U.S. leaders need to guard against letting excessive guilt make them receptive to what amounts to a financial shakedown from Central American regimes. Murder rates in those countries were already among the highest in the world before the Mexican cartels moved in. The drug gangs have certainly exacerbated security problems in Central America, but they did not create them.

The War on Drugs is a massive waste of money --- hasnt curtailed illegal drug trade Boesler, 12 (Matthew, reporter for Business Insider's markets desk, and Ashley Lutz, writer for Business Insider's retail section, 32 Reasons Why We Need To End The War On Drugs, Business Insider, 7/12/12, http://www.businessinsider.com/32-reasons-why-we-need-to-endthe-war-on-drugs-2012-7?op=1, Tashma) The 'war on drugs' is insanely expensive In the past 40 years, The US has spent more than $1 trillion enforcing drug laws. Annually, the US spends at least $15 billion a year on drug law enforcement. Globally, over $100 billion is spent fighting the war on drugs every single year. All that money is in practice a complete and total waste United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Since the global war on drugs began, drug use has expanded steadily, the exact opposite outcome the war is meant to effect. There have been nearly no official cost benefit analyses of the war on drugs, leaving the door wide open for all kinds of unexpected harm caused and little accountability. Ending illegal drug activity is impossible --- the necessary resources dont exist Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 67-68, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) For example, there are not enough resources that could be dedicated to capture and hold an entire area where drugs are grown or manufactured and where violent groups operate. Identifying where drug crops are grown is daunting enough. Attacking portions of a drug network infrastructure, including processing labs, transportation nodes, or inter- chcting shipments, has had minimal impact as a counternarcotics strategy and, therefore, has not been a useful part of any potent coercive military operations. At the wholesale and retail level of distribution, police agencies are overwhelmed by the drug activities and crimes carried out by individuals and groups. Drugs have low obstructability. They can only be blocked with many soldiers and heavy equipment .... Resources that have a lower value-to-weight ratio that must be transported by truck or
trainlil<e minerals and timberare moderately obstructable if they must cross long distances. Resources that are transported in liquid form and travel long distances through aboveground pipelines (i.e., oil and natural gas) are highly obstructable.5

Impossible to stop drug organizations --- their motives are unknown

Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 69, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) Far from cohesive political movements, many groups are now more akin to armed business ventures. They are now known as much for their activities, such as kidnapping, extortion, assassinations and drug running, as for the political causes espoused by their founders. The FARC, for example, is now often referred to as the "third cartel, after Cali and Medellin. Similar groups, including the IMU, SL, the Taliban, and the United Wa State Army (UWSA), no longer appear to be ideologically inspired, yet they do not state that their goals are to turn their respective countries into full-blown "narco-states" or possess an autonomous region for the sole purpose of producing drugs. This ambiguity over the central direction or goal of their violence makes these groups difficult to defeat in combat or to be persuaded into good faith negotiations." State-based policies to combat drugs structurally fail Freeman and Luis Sierra, 05 (*Laurie, Director for Yemen at the National Security Council, former State

Department Official, fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, writer for the Washington Post Mexico Bureau, M.A. in International Politics from Princeton University, degree from Duke in Latin American Studies, **Jorge, Knight International Journalism Fellow, degree in International Journalism from the University of Southern California, defense policy and economics fellow at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University, Mexico: The Militarization Traip, 2005, part of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The impact of U.S. Policy, Rienner, Google Books, JKahn)

U.S. drug control policy toward the Caribbean has failed to achieve even minimal objectives. Not only is the drug trade as deepy rooted as ever in the area; related violence and illicit drug consumption are on the rise . Changing U.S. priorities could, however, provide an opportunity for new policy approaches across the region. As the United States turns its attention elsewhere, the Caribbean and other countries may be given the flexibility they need to develop integrated alternative policies that take into account the complex
socioeconomic challenges they face. It is vital that the spectrum of public debate be broadened, that is, democratized. been the practice of the U.S. drug control bureaucracy.

Government resources should not be used to delegitimize alternative to critical positions, as has

Balloon Effect
The balloon effect precludes stopping trafficking drug trade will just be displaced elsewhere Globe and Mail, 12 (The drug war spreads instability; Narco-trade corridors undermine governance, the Globe and Mail, 4/26/2012, Lexis, JKahn) The war on drugs doesn't just cause human misery. It contributes to the political instability of many parts of the world, including Mexico, Central America and now West Africa. The transnational criminal groups in control of the drug trade have successfully destabilized transit countries that stand between production and the market in Europe and North America. This underscores the unintended consequences of prohibition: the growth of a huge criminal black market financed by the profits of supplying demand for illegal drugs, and the "balloon" effect , whereby drug production and transit corridors shift location to avoid law enforcement. The war on drugs is inherently unwinnable , as the recent report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy concludes. Central America has emerged as the new epicentre in the illicit trade, as Mexican cartels are increasingly squeezed by President Felipe Calderon's military initiative against them. There has been an extraordinary surge in crime in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, including kidnapping, drug trafficking and
migrant smuggling. The drug economy in Guatemala is equal to twice the country's officially recognized GDP. No wonder Central American leaders are demanding reforms to global drug policy. Drug money is also perverting weak economies in West Africa, which has become a major transit repackaging hub for South American cocaine destined for Europe. There are fears it could next become a transit zone for cannabis.

Crackdowns will only cause ballooning displacement Youngers and Rosin, 05 (*Coletta, Senior Fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, consultant with the International Drug Policy Consortium, B.A. from the University of the South in Political Science, M.A. from Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, researcher at Oxford University, **Eileen, researcher at WOLA, The U.S. War on Drugs: Its Impact in Latin America and the Caribbean, Drugs and Democracy in Latin America, Rienner, 2005, Google Books, JKahn) A significant gap exists in U.S. drug control programs between expansive goals and limited achievements. U.S. officials routinely assert that international counterdrug programs are successful. Short-term tactical successes are indeed evident coca crops are eradicated, traffickers are arrested, and shipments are intercepted. Nonetheless, total coca production has remained remarkably steady (Figure 1.2). There is no evidence demonstrating a significant reduction in the supply of illicit drugs on U.S. city streets. To the contrary, the stability of price and purity levels of drugs points to their continued accessibility. Winning the drug war is as elusive today as it was when the effort was first launched. The drug trade, it seems, is more like a balloon than a battlefield. When one part of a balloon is squeezed, its contents are displaced to another. Similarly, when coca production is suppressed in one area, it quickly pops up somewhere else , disregarding national borders. Arrested drug lords are quickly replaced by others who move up the ranks; dismantled cartels are replaced by smaller, leaner operations that are harder to detect and deter. When drug-trafficking routes are disrupted by intensive interdiction campaigns, they are simply shifted elsewhere 5.

Bribes
And they cant win offense --- even if large-scale cartels are caught, theyll bribe or murder their way out of trouble Becker, 13 (Gary S., professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, Nobel laureate, and Kevin M. Murphy, professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Have We Lost the War on Drugs?, Wall Street Journal, 1/4/13, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324374004578217682305605070.html, Tashma) The large profits for drug dealers who avoid being caught and punished encourage them to try to bribe and intimidate police, politicians, the military and anyone else involved in the war against drugs. If police and officials resist bribes and try to enforce antidrug laws, they are threatened with violence and often begin to fear for their lives and those of their families. Mexico offers a well-documented example of some of the costs involved in drug wars. Probably more than 50,000 people have died since Mexico's antidrug campaign started in 2006. For perspective, about 150,000 deaths would those killed were innocent civilians and the army personnel, police officers and local government officials involved in the antidrug effort.

result if the same fraction of Americans were killed. This number of deaths is many magnitudes greater than American losses in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, and is about three times the number of American deaths in the Vietnam War. Many of

Designer Drugs Alt Cause

War on drugs is futile designer drugs is a huge alt cause Bell, 6/15/13 writer at the Guardian (Vaughan Why the war on drugs has been made redundant The Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jun/16/designer-drugs-legal-highs) // czhang The term "designer drug" became popular with the acid house and ecstasy boom in the 1990s, but it was never really accurate. The main ingredient in ecstasy pills MDMA was first synthesised in 1912 and began its life as a recreational drug in 70s California, years before it became notorious on the rave scene. The drug was never created for the party crowd, but the " designer

drug" label stuck as the perfect phrase both to glamorise and demonise the fashionable new high. There have been some genuine attempts at designer drugs through the years where people have attempted to create new recreational substances to evade drug laws but most have been abject failures. In the most notorious example, chemistry
student Barry Kidston tried to create a synthetic heroin-like high in 1976 and ended up creating MPTP, a substance so neurotoxic that it gave him Parkinson's disease days after he injected it. As a grim consolation, Kidston's only legacy was to create a drug that is still used today in lab experiments to try and understand this debilitating neurological disorder. But something has

changed on the street drug scene in recent years. For the first time, we can use the term "designer drug" with confidence because we are in the midst of an unnerving scientific revolution in the use and supply of mind-altering substances. These drugs have hit the headlines under names such as Spice, K2, mephedrone and MCat, but there are hundreds more. They are sold euphemistically as "bath salts", "incense" or "research chemicals", and don't get regulated, at least not at first, because they are labelled as "not for human consumption". Unlike previous generations of legal highs that were about as recreational as a slap in the face, they actually work. They get you high. The two most popular types are synthetic, cannabis-like drugs, sold as smokable plant material, and stimulants, similar to ecstasy and amphetamines. But

what makes this a revolution, rather than simply a market innovation, is the scale and speed of drug development. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addiction reported 73 new substances last year, meaning new highs were hitting the market at a rate of more than one a week. This wave of new drugs only began five years ago and since then more than 200 previously unknown substances have been found in circulation. This upsurge in new highs has some serious science behind it. It is worth

noting that most traditional drugs of abuse speed, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and so on can be synthesised fairly easily. You need someone with a bit of knowledge and the right ingredients, not always easy to find, but you can complete the process in a back room, basement or jungle. Not so with the new generation of synthetic highs. While most university chemists would sneer at the suggestion that the synthesis was difficult, it still

needs a professional laboratory, more so for the constant production of new substances. It is this constant innovation that is driving the market and making it possible to evade the law. Take the synthetic cannabis drugs, for example. All include variations of the

tetrahydrocannabinol or THC molecule, the main active ingredient in cannabis. Hundreds of these variations were created for research purposes and described, often only once or twice, in the pages of obscure scientific journals. They were mostly created in the lab as an exercise in exploring the limits of the cannabinoid molecules but were never used commercially and never tested on humans. When the legal highs market exploded in 2008, drug researchers started to analyse what was being sold. They found inert plant material, sprayed with obscure substances that were barely known outside the small world of cannabis neurochemistry. It was like finding the new iPhone worked on antimatter. When Germany identified the substances and banned

them in early 2009, new cannabinoids, again never before seen outside the lab, had replaced them within weeks and this is what has been happening ever since. One gets banned and another novel substance takes its place almost immediately. Professional but clandestine labs are rifling the

scientific literature for new psychoactive drugs and synthesising them as fast as the law changes. In one of the most interesting developments, a cannabinoid detected in 2012, named XLR-11, was not only new to the drug market but completely new to science. Several previously unknown substances have turned up since. The grey market labs are not only pushing new

substances on to the drug market, they are actually innovating drug design. The human testers select

themselves of course, unaware of what they're taking, sometimes leading to disastrous results. Information about the dangers of new substances is usually nonexistent. The whole process has also been an unwitting experiment in drug

policy. Despite the free availability of substances as pleasurable as already banned drugs, we have not seen a massive increase in problem users and drug mortality rates have been falling. Furthermore, even with the newly introduced "instant bans", drug laws are simply not able to keep up. Currently, it is barely possible to detect new drugs at the rate they appear. It has long been clear that the drug war approach of criminalising possession rather than treating problem drug-users has been futile. The revolution in the recreational drug market is a stark reminder of this reality. The war on drugs has not been lost, it has been made obsolete.

Fill In
The aff fails to resolve drug trade groups will just consolidate networks Youngers and Rosin, 05 (*Coletta, Senior Fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, consultant with the
International Drug Policy Consortium, B.A. from the University of the South in Political Science, M.A. from Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, researcher at Oxford University, **Eileen, researcher at WOLA, The U.S. War on Drugs: Its Impact in Latin America and the Caribbean, Drugs and Democracy in Latin America, Rienner, 2005, Google Books, JKahn) A similar phenomenon happens with arrests of traffickers. Removing one set of international drug

dealers has often simply cleared the way for rivals and new entrants to the drug trade, rather than reducing the size of the drug market. Smashing the large Mexican and Columbian cartels led to the formation of groups that are smaller and harder to detect. Larger and more frequent drug seizures, often
offered as evidence of policy success are in fact inherently ambiguous indicators. They may instead reflect increased drug production and trafficking, as traffickers seed to compensate for their anticipated losses.

FAA Spec.
The strict nature of the War on Drugs backfires double bind: EITHER countries comply and are forced to grow unprofitable crops OR countries dont comply and face economic decline --- both scenarios result in more drug trade Swanson, 6 (Joe, J.D., The George Washington University Law School, DRUG TRAFFICKING IN THE AMERICAS: REFORMING UNITED STATES TRADE POLICY, 38 Geo. Wash. Int'l L. Rev. 779, lexis, Tashma)
2. Non-Trade Based Mechanisms The FAA has received numerous criticisms. Under

the FAA system of "aid leveraging," the United States grants or withholds assistance depending on a country's compliance with U.S. conditions. 122 While providing for a system of rewards, "aid leveraging" [*794] also provides for punishment; withholding of U.S. assistance can further depress the economies of already struggling countries, which in turn may force individuals into the drug trade. 123 Even the system of rewards can produce negative results ; for example, providing crop substitution assistance only for those crops that would not compete with U.S. commodities on the open market may in fact lead to an increase in drug cultivation by discouraging the cultivation of alternative, profitable crops. 124 Additionally,
crop eradication efforts work to the detriment of poorer farming families rather than those responsible for pushing drugs into the international "pipeline"; in the case of coca, crop eradication eliminates an otherwise legal and culturally important plant. 125 Finally, some commentators note that provision of United States aid may not always be motivated entirely by concerns about narcotics production. 126

Increases Profits
The War on Drugs backfires --- it increases cartel profits because they can justify jacking up prices to compensate for risk of punishment Becker, 13 (Gary S., professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, Nobel laureate, and Kevin M. Murphy, professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Have We Lost the War on Drugs?, Wall Street Journal, 1/4/13, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324374004578217682305605070.html, Tashma) Prices of illegal drugs are pushed up whenever many drug traffickers are caught and punished harshly. The higher prices they get for drugs help compensate traffickers for the risks of being apprehended. Higher prices can discourage the demand for drugs, but they also enable some traffickers to make a lot of money if they avoid being caught, if they operate on a large enough scale, and if they can reduce competition from other traffickers. This explains why large-scale drug gangs and cartels are so profitable in the U.S., Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and other countries. Boosting drug prices just increases black market profits --- no serious reduction in demand Williams, 11 (Ray B., Why The War on Drugs Has Failed, Psychology Today, 6/6/11, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201106/why-the-war-drugs-has-failed, Tashma) At least 500 economists, including Nobel prize winners Milton Friedman, George Akerlof and Vernon Smith have concluded that reducing the supply of marijuana though interdiction without reducing the public demand, causes the price and therefore the profits of drug cartels to rise. Despite over $7 billion spent annually
towards arresting and prosecuting nearly 800,000 people for marijuana offenses in the U.S. in 2005, according to the FBI, the federally-funded Monitoring the Future Study reported that 85% of high school seniors found marijuana "easy to obtain."

Numerous experts have criticized The War on Drugs as the wrong approach to deal with the problem. They argue that by favoring domestic law endorsement in instead of treatment, the government has focused on enforcement instead of dealing with treatment as a social problem. In addition, by making drugs illegal rather than regulating them, The War on Drugs creates a highly profitable black market , and increasing levels of violent crime. Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply have not worked. Violence and the organized crime associated with the drug trade are getting worse, not better,
despite the current policies. The alarming power of the drug cartels leads to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime. And the corruption of the judicial and political system is undermining the foundations of democracy in several Latin American countries.

And higher prices reinforces the same crime that they seek to prevent Boesler, 12 (Matthew, reporter for Business Insider's markets desk, and Ashley Lutz, writer for Business Insider's retail section, 32 Reasons Why We Need To End The War On Drugs, Business Insider, 7/12/12, http://www.businessinsider.com/32-reasons-why-we-need-to-endthe-war-on-drugs-2012-7?op=1, Tashma) Expensive drugs cause more people to commit crimes in order to fund their habits. For example, cigarette smokers typically don't have to commit felonies just to fund their lifestyles. However, due to insane mark-ups of unsafe, unregulated, and therefore highly addicting products, many users of illegal drugs often do. A comparison of illegal drug users with medicinal users of the same
drugs shows dramatic decreases in the level of crime being committed to fund drug addictions.

Increasing prices causes an eruption of black markets within the U.S.

Swanson, 6 (Joe, J.D., The George Washington University Law School, DRUG TRAFFICKING IN THE AMERICAS: REFORMING UNITED STATES TRADE POLICY, 38 Geo. Wash. Int'l L. Rev. 779, lexis, Tashma)
A. Failures of the Present Regime of International Drug Control 1. Criticisms of America's "Supply-Side" and "Prohibitionist" Regimes Critics of the United States' supply-side narcotics control

efforts argue that due to the profitability of drug production, the United States' policies of crop eradication and substitution merely displace drug producers to other countries. 113 Moreover, critics claim that heavy U.S. involvement in drugproducing regions exerts upward pressure on drug prices, making drug production even more economically attractive. 114 Some fear that effective control of illegal drug supplies, which inevitably increases drug prices, will create black markets in the United States and increase crime rates. 115 Finally, many urge that the United States' focus should be on its [*793] own drug demand problem rather than the
supply created by that demand. 116 Other commentators argue that the

United States' prohibitionist attitude, under which resources are allocated to preventing the production and importation of illegal drugs, has contributed to the failure of its drug control efforts in the Western hemisphere. 117 Instead of taking an "all or nothing" approach to drug
production in other countries, these commentators argue that U.S. policy should allow its neighbors leeway to ease internal restrictions on drug production and use, 118 reasoning that a legitimate and regulated drug production industry would provide employment opportunities. 119 Moreover, careful and deliberate legalization would reduce or eliminate many of the social and political effects of black market drug operations, such as corruption of public officials, violence, organized crime, and international arms trafficking. 120 Finally, legalization would allow countries to more easily track drugs as they moved from legitimate markets to illicit ones; these countries could then share this information with the United States and assist substantially in interdiction and seizure efforts. 121

Small Scale Focus

The War on Drugs targets small-scale cartels --- allows for large-scale cartels to remain invisible and reap enormous profits Becker, 13 (Gary S., professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, Nobel laureate, and Kevin M. Murphy, professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Have We Lost the War on Drugs?, Wall Street Journal, 1/4/13, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324374004578217682305605070.html, Tashma) The paradox of the war on drugs is that the harder governments push the fight, the higher drug prices become to compensate for the greater risks. That leads to larger profits for traffickers who avoid being punished. This is why larger drug gangs often benefit from a tougher war on drugs, especially if the war mainly targets small-fry dealers and not the major drug gangs. Moreover, to the
extent that a more aggressive war on drugs leads dealers to respond with higher levels of violence and corruption, an increase in enforcement can exacerbate the costs imposed on society.

Current US strategy is inefficient Bagley, 13 (Bruce Bagley, holds a PhD. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research
interests are in U.S.-Latin American relations, with an emphasis on drug trafficking and security issues, 2013, http://www.scielo.gpeari.mctes.pt/pdf/spp/n71/n71a06.pdf) KD While the United States has managed to stabilize or even reduce demand for most illicit drugs at home, it

US Strategy

most certainly has not eliminated American demand for illicit drugs or the profits associated with supplying the huge US market. Demand control has routinely been underfunded by Washington while primary
emphasis has almost automatically been accorded to expensive, but ultimately ineffective, supply-side control strategies. There have been some efforts since 2009 undertaken by the Obama administration, and his Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, to redress this longstanding imbalance in US drug policy, although prevention and treatment remain woefully underfunded. Analysis of the reasons behind the US insistence on supply over demand control strategies lies beyond the scope of this essay. The consequences of Washingtons strategic choices are, however, obvious. Washington has demanded that the

countries of the region follow its lead in the war on drugs and, as in previous years, upheld a formal certification process that often sanctioned those nations that did not fully cooperate.US insistence on such a policy approach has not only led to overall failure in the war on drugs over the last twenty five years plus, it has been counterproductive for both US and individual Latin American country interests. The price that Colombia has paid for its role in the war on drugs has
been high in both blood and treasure. The price that Mexico is being asked to pay today is as high or higher. The high costs associated with failure have generated a reaction to the US strategy both at home and abroad and produced a new debate over alternatives to American prohibitionist approaches such as harm reduction, decriminalization, and legalization (Bagley and Tokatlian, 2007; Bagley, 2009b; 1988).

AT: Borders
Border enforcement will ultimately fail smugglers were utilize the Carribean Freeman and Luis Sierra, 05 (*Laurie, Director for Yemen at the National Security Council, former State Department Official, fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, writer for the Washington Post Mexico Bureau, M.A. in International Politics from Princeton University, degree from Duke in Latin American Studies, **Jorge, Knight International Journalism Fellow, degree in International Journalism from the University of Southern California, defense policy and economics fellow at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University, Mexico: The Militarization Traip, 2005, part of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The impact of U.S. Policy, Rienner, Google Books, JKahn) The U.S. governments antidrug strategy defines the Caribbean region as a transit zone , an extensive and problematic border that must be controlled to keep drugs away from U.S. shores. The notion of a transit zone implies that dugs pass directly through the region from the production zone to the consumption zone and that the flow of drugs could be stopped by turning the border into a kind of shield . At its most extreme, this would involve the impossible task of building a Caribbean barrier against illicit dugs, using police and military controls.

AT: Economic Sanctions

Economic sanctions fail Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 68, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) Economic sanctions against a country to curtail the drug trades influence on a conflict are counterproductive . If sanctions are not targeted, social and economic conditions may deteriorate within a country forcing more people into the drug trade or into participating in the ongoing violence. The imposition of trade restrictions on an illegal commodity is also unfeasible, for drugs do not have to face tariffs. Moreover; targeting sanctions against irregular groups is exceptionally difficult. Efforts at "naming and shaming" groups by exposing leaders connections to the illicit economy in hopes of eroding their support among their followers, are rarely effective. Many followers either already
know about the connections (and even benefit from them) or do not care since the means are secondary to the objective.

AT: Empirics
The War on Drugs has evolved --- past successes are no longer possible Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 67, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) Today, the twin phenomena of drug-financed violence and drugged combatants pose special challenges for opponents of the drug trade who seek conflict resolution. Drug-financed combatant groups and drugged combatants increase the difficulty of promoting sustainable peace in war-torn societies by reducing many of the familiar dampening forces that have been present in other conflicts while diminishing the effectiveness of measures aimed to reduce ongoing violence. As a result, the face of war is becoming less familiar in many contexts,

affecting traditional approaches to conflict resolution. Although agreements have been reached to limit or end several violent conflicts, the drug trade has limited the power of many commitments made by the warring parties. Combatant access to legal commodities in other resource-driven conflicts, such as oil, timber, diamonds, and gas, can

be more easily curtailed through traditional military, diplomatic, and economic actions designed to bring pressure on the parties involved} The three prevailing approaches that have been used in other

resource-driven conflicts are to capture resource areas from belligerents, broker an agreement to share revenues between parties, and impose economic sanctions? The diffuse and complex nature of the drug trade, however, makes many

contemporary conflicts uniquely resistant to these time-honored conflict resolution measures. They are largely infeasible given the illicit status of narcotics, the ways that drug crops are grown and amphetaminetype stimulants (ATS) are manufactured, the multifaceted manner in which they are transported to market, and the vastness of the international trafficking network that now exists. Empirics are irrelevant --- the nature of drug producers has changed Kan, 9 (Paul R., Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US Army War College, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare, pg. 71, Potomac Books Inc., Tashma) In many of todays conflicts, traditional attempts to manufacture political solutions to end the violence are tenuous or completely untenable from the beginning. Drug-financed warring groups combined with drug-fueled violence lessen the ability of policymakers and military leaders to control the magnitude and duration of war. In previous eras, empires or commercial surrogates almost exclusively controlled the drug trade, which meant drat governments could more easily manipulate the role of drugs in warfare; their role was more tightly controlled and more closely tied to clear political objectives for war: While the

Opium Wars may stand out as a contrary example, they were nonetheless wars whose underpin- nings were the commercial interests of the states involved.Although Britain wanted China to open its market, China did not want to cede any sovereignty to European powers. Contrary to many of todays wars, the Opium Wars were not protracted, unrestrained,

fought by irregulars, or involved shifting strategic objectives owing to the presence of drugs. In fact, despite the central issue of dispute being the trade of a narcotic, the British and Chinese governments were able to manage the levels of violence in hopes of bringing about their respective political objectives, a quality that many current warring groups do not share."

AT: Firearm Laws

Tightening fire arm laws fails theres no correlation in the evidence Carpenter, 9 vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books, including Bad Neighbor Policy: Washingtons Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (Ted Galen, Troubled Neighbor: Mexicos Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States February 2, 2009
Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/troubled-neighbor-mexicos-drug-violence-poses-threat-unitedstates) // czhang

The Mexican government has responded to Washingtons complaints about the surging violence by blaming supposedly lax U.S. gun laws. Mexicos attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, typified that view,

saying: I think American [gun] laws are absurd because they make it very easy for citizens to acquire guns. 37 Gun control advocates in the United States have taken up the same theme. A New York Times editorial encapsulated the logic of strengthening the restrictions on firearms as a way to more effectively wage the war on drugs south of the border. Mexico has no hope of defeating the traffickers unless this country is also willing to do more to fight the drug war at homestarting with a clear commitment to stop the weapons smugglers. 38 University of Southern California scholar Pamela Starr goes even further, arguing that U.S. leaders should focus on the southward flow of arms and ammunition that is fueling an explosion of drugrelated violence in Mexico. She stresses that anestimated97percentofthe arms used by the Mexican cartelsincluding military grade grenade launchers and assault weapons are purchased at sporting goods stores and gun shows on the U.S. side of the border and then smuggled south,accordingtotheMexicangovernment.HerproposedsolutionisaCabinetlevelinitiativetoattacktheillicitguntrade.The departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State, Defense, and Treasury all need to be involved. Echoing the arguments of Mexican political leaders, Starr asserts: The United States is enabling the bloodshed in Mexico. We have a moral responsibility to stop arming the murderers and kidnappersour national security demands it. 39 Even some U.S. political leaders have accepted the Mexican governments explanation for the surging violence. In June 2008,the Bush and Caldern administrations announced a new program, the Armas Cruzadas (Crossed Arms),to stem the flow of guns from the United States to Mexico. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) defended the initiative, saying: As drugs come into our country, money and illegal firearms go out. We owe it to our neighbors to help cut down on outbound smuggling. 40 The notion that the violence in Mexico would

subside if the United States had more restrictive laws on firearms is devoid of logic and evidence. Mexican drug gangs would have little trouble obtaining all the guns they desire from black market sources in Mexico and elsewhere. After all, the traffickers make their fortunes operating in a black market involving another product, and they have vast financial resources to purchase whatever they need to conduct their business. Even assuming that the Mexican governments estimate that 97 percent of the weapons used by
the cartels come from stores and gun shows in the United Statesand Mexican officials are not exactly objective sources for such statisticsthe traffickers rely on those outlets simply because they are easier and more convenient, not because there are no other options. One could close every sporting goods store in the southwestern states, and the measure would not disarm the drug gangs. If Washington and the various state governments adopted the fire- arms reforms that Mexico City is demanding, the principal result would be to inconvenience law-abiding American gun owners and merchants. Moreover, the research on restrictive

gun laws in both U.S. and foreign jurisdictions shows no correlation between tough laws and a decline in homicides and other crimes. 41 Attempts to lay the blame for Mexicos chaos at the door of U.S. gun laws are either naive or a cynical effort to find a scapegoat. Tightening fire arms laws in the United States (even if that were politically feasible) is not a solution to the violence in Mexico.

AT: Prohibition
Prohibition enforcement fails reducing demand is key Globe and Mail, 12 (The drug war spreads instability; Narco-trade corridors undermine governance, the Globe and Mail, 4/26/2012, Lexis, JKahn) Decriminalizing marijuana would substantially reduce the drug cartels' power and wealth; cannabis accounts for 25 per cent to 40 per cent of cartels' revenues. The resources of law enforcement should be reserved to battle the organized criminals who control the trade, and not wasted on individual drug users who cause harm only to themselves. Countries such as Mali, Guinea Bissau and Liberia are ill-

equipped to confront drug traffickers, and the judiciary and police are vulnerable to corruption. Cocaine seizures are worth more than some countries' entire security budgets. "Narco-traffic threatens to metastasize into broader policy and

security challenges," notes the commission's report. Why should fragile states continue to bear the brunt of a futile antinarcotics crusade? Instead, the world should strengthen the defences of states under attack, and help them build alternatives to the drug trade. Consumer countries should focus on reducing demand. Prohibition is far from being an adequate answer.

AT: Reduces Usage

High prices dont deter illegal drug usage --- their evidence overlooks several factors Becker, 13 (Gary S., professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, Nobel laureate, and Kevin M. Murphy, professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Have We Lost the War on Drugs?, Wall Street Journal, 1/4/13, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324374004578217682305605070.html, Tashma) The main gain from the war on drugs claimed by advocates of continuing the war is a lower incidence of drug use and drug addiction. Basic economics does imply that, under given conditions, higher prices for a good leads to reduced demand for that good. The magnitude of the response depends on
the availability of substitutes for the higher priced good. For example, many drug users might find alcohol a good substitute for drugs as drugs become more expensive. The conclusion that higher prices reduce demand only "under given conditions" is especially important in considering the effects of higher drug prices due to the war on drugs. Making the selling and consumption of drugs illegal not only

raises drug prices but also has other important effects. For example, while some consumers are reluctant to buy illegal goods, drugs may be an exception because drug use usually starts while people are teenagers or young adults. A rebellious streak may lead them to use and sell drugs precisely because those activities are illegal. More important, some drugs, such as crack or heroin, are highly addictive. Many people addicted to
smoking and to drinking alcohol manage to break their addictions when they get married or find good jobs, or as a result of other life-cycle events. They also often get help from groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, or by using patches and "fake" cigarettes that gradually wean them from their addiction to nicotine.

It is generally harder to break an addiction to illegal goods, like drugs. Drug addicts may be leery of going to clinics or to nonprofit "drugs anonymous" groups for help. They fear they will be reported for consuming illegal substances. Since the consumption of illegal drugs must be hidden to avoid arrest and conviction, many drug consumers must alter their lives in order to avoid detection.
Usually overlooked in discussions of the effects of the war on drugs is that the illegality of drugs stunts the development of ways to help drug addicts, such as the drug equivalent of nicotine patches. Thus, though the war on drugs may well have induced lower drug use through higher prices, it has likely also increased the rate of addiction. The addicts to

illegality of drugs makes it harder for get help in breaking their addictions. It leads them to associate more with other addicts and less with people who might help them quit.

AT: Solves Cultivation

Any successes translate to larger failures --- the shift in cocaine cultivation from Peru and Bolivia to Columbia proves Lee, 2 (Rensselaer W., contract researcher for the Congressional Research Service and a senior fellow at FPRI, Perverse Effects of Andean Counternarcotics Policy, Orbis, Volume 46, Issue 3, Summer 2012, pg. 537-554, sciencedirect, Tashma) Unfortunately, the story does not end here. In international drug control, small enforcement successes often mask larger policy failures. The supposed achievements of the Andean drug war, in fact, have spawned an array of unanticipated problems for the United States, Colombia, and other countries in this hemisphere. Recent statistics show, for example, that cultivation of coca has ballooned in Colombia, largely negating the eradication achievements elsewhere in the Andes. Colombian syndicates have reportedly also succeeded in compensating for lost Peruvian and Bolivian supplies by improving leaf yields and alkaloid content. The consequences to Colombias internal stability have been terrible: the

increased concentration of upstream coca production has vastly increased the resources available to antistate groups, fueling the countrys ongoing civil conflict. The disintegration of the cartel structure has had a similar result, if for different reasons. The cartels provided a degree of order and control in the industry, but their demise has emboldened Colombias various guerrilla organiza tions to enter the business of refining, trading, and exporting drugs.5 Since these groups seem to contemplate the violent overthrow of the government or (minimally) a permanent partition of the country, they may represent a greater threat to Colombias survival than did the classic criminal coalitions of the 1980s and 1990s.

More evidence --- statistics and government estimates Lee, 2 (Rensselaer W., contract researcher for the Congressional Research Service and a senior fellow at FPRI, Perverse Effects of Andean Counternarcotics Policy, Orbis, Volume 46, Issue 3, Summer 2012, pg. 537-554, sciencedirect, Tashma) The Crop Reduction Debacle U.S. cocaine control efforts in source countries in the 1990s effectively redrew the map of coca cultivation in the Andes. Bolivia and Peru accounted for more than three-quarters of the extensions of coca in the region in 1995 and Colombia for less than a fourth. By 2001 those proportions had been reversed and the total cultivated area devoted to coca had increased somewhat. Similarly, the U.S. government estimate of potential production of cocaine from Colombian leaf was only 10 percent of combined Andean production in 1995, but was more than 75 percent in 2001. Total potential
Andean production of cocaine reached a record high of 930 tons in 2001.8

AT: Spraying
Spraying strategy fails --- forces drug producers to relocate --- destroys rural populations and poses a biological threat Lee, 2 (Rensselaer W., contract researcher for the Congressional Research Service and a senior fellow at FPRI, Perverse Effects of Andean Counternarcotics Policy, Orbis, Volume 46, Issue 3, Summer 2012, pg. 537-554, sciencedirect, Tashma)

Americas international drug problems have produced a difficult legacy. More than a quarter-century of struggle against the Andean cocaine industry has done almost nothing to reduce the availability of cocaine in U.S. markets, while at the same time feeding the insurgency in Colombia (which threatens to metastasize to neighboring countries), stimulating the South American heroin industry, and accelerating the Colombianization of criminal and political structures in drug transit states.40 Such adverse consequences raise the obvious question of whether the benefits of international drug control are commensurate with the costs. Certainly the goal of supply-reduction has been elusive. As we have seen, eradication of drug crops merely shifts the locus of upstream production from region to region and country to country. Another unanticipated consequence has been unwanted crop diversification the expanded cultivation of opium poppy in Colombia and (according to recent reports) in Peru, as well.41 Even the intensified aerial

spraying envisaged under Plan Colombia is unlikely to succeed, since farmers will probably push the coca frontier (and the attendant polluting effects of the cocaine industry) further into the Amazonian jungle with little or no decrease in net cultivation. Indeed, recent reports from Colombia suggest that this is already happening. More importantly, the spraying campaign exacerbates the governments problems of political control in coca-growing areas, alienating large rural populations who stand to lose their main source of income. In the southern department of Putumayo, according to a recent RAND Corporation study, 135,000 of the departments 314,000 inhabitants depend directly on coca growing for a livelihood.42 Since the FARC poses as an advocate for growers, spraying widens its base of support , contradicting the objectives of the governments counterinsurgency efforts in Putumayo and other affected zones. In addition, allegations abound that the spray mixture used causes extensive harm to humans, other crops, and livestock.43 The United States
and Colombia clearly need to rethink the logic of the spraying program. Perhaps they could learn from the example of Peru, which suspended eradication of coca altogether at the end of the 1980s to counteract the influence of the revolutionary Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) movement and to improve the image of the Peruvian government locally. Possibly Colombias enforcement prioriti es should shift to targeting critical nodes in transportation and refining and (to the extent possible) sealing off traffic routes to and from the main coca-producing zones. Interdiction can disrupt internal markets for coca derivatives, and compared to eradication it imposes fewer direct costs on peasant producers and generates less political unrest.

Mex - Corruption
Mexico cant combat drug trafficking alone corruption and inability Morris, 12 (Stephen D. Morris is professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at Middle Tennessee State
University. He is the author of Corruption and Politics in Contemporary Mexico (1991), Political Reformism in Mexico (1995), Gringolandia: Mexican Identity and Perceptions of the United States(2005), and Political Corruption in Mexico: The Impact of Democratization (2009); and coeditor of Corruption and Democracy in Latin America (2009) andCorruption and Politics in Latin America: National and Regional Dynamics (2010). His articles have appeared in Bulletin of Latin American Research, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Latin American Studies, and Third World Quarterly, among other journals; 2012; http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/latin_american_research_review/v047/47.2.morris.html) KD The contrasting forces of corruption and coercion in turn link the drug trade to the state . Considered the sine qua non of the drug trade, corruption is a major focus of all the works under review. They all address how governors,

mayors, high-ranking officials in federal law enforcement, and military officers provide DTOs with access to the transportation routes needed to move their merchandise; how cartels buy the loyalty and protection of district commanders of the federal police and military; how police at all levels of government affiliated with drug cartels intimidate, kidnap, and murder their opponents, provide inside information to cartel leaders, and warn them via pitazos (tips) of antidrug operations; how seized drugs often seem to disappear; how bribes to customs officials at airports facilitate the transportation of merchandise; and how bribes to
prison officials allow capos either to continue to run their operations from behind bars or to escape, as in the case of El Chapo Guzmn. The degree of integration of drug traffickers and state officials is extensive institutionally

and geographically, as well as long-standing. Bowden notes: In over a half century of fighting drugs, Mexico has never created a police unit that did not join the traffickers. Or die (109). Bunker and Sullivan estimate that 1,500 cities have been infiltrated by cartels (Bunker, 41). Malcolm Beith summarizes the situation quite simply: Anyone could be bought (68). Some see infiltration to extend beyond merely buying protection to actually challenging the state itself. According to
the municipal president of Durango, from the Partido Accin Nacional (PAN), as summarized by George W. Grayson, DTOs have begun to erect a parallel state and to carry out traditional government functions such as collecting taxes (in the form of extortion) and providing security (in return for payments) (124). This political danger is perhaps the major concern behind the collection of essays edited by Bunker. Efforts to confront and defeat drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico are

severely handicapped not only by corruption but also by the states inability [End Page 217] to enforce the rule of law, by societys lack of trust in government and the law itself, and by the fear spread by high-profile violence and insecurity. Nevertheless, the state has unleashed a massive crackdown marked

by the militarization of vast portions of the country, daily raids, and a record number of arrests. This campaign has resulted in more than forty-five thousand violent deaths since 2006: police and military officers have killed those engaged in criminal activities; criminals (including corrupt police and military officers, and civilians disguised as them) have killed government officials and criminal rivals; and state officials and criminals alike have threatened, terrorized, and killed

journalists, political activists, and citizens. Contesting the governments claim that drug cartels are simply fighting

and killing one another, Bowden contends that the only certain thing is that various groupsgangs, the army, the city police, the state police, the federal policeare killing people in Jurez as a part of a war for drug profits (23). Indeed, it is whispered in the city that the army is doing the killing (114). This view is partially reinforced by reports by human rights organizations and citizen complaints.

Alt cause corruption is huge Carpenter, 9 vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books, including Bad Neighbor Policy: Washingtons Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (Ted Galen, Troubled Neighbor: Mexicos Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States February 2, 2009
Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/troubled-neighbor-mexicos-drug-violence-poses-threat-unitedstates) // czhang

The Problem of Corruption The corruption factor makes it especially unlikely that Caldern will make any more lasting progress than previous administrations against the drug trade. Several
major scandals have surfaced in just the past year. In April 2008, authorities arrested the police chief of Reynosa for allegedly protecting members of the Gulf cartel. 52 In October, prosecutors charged that employees of the federal Attorney Generals office were working for a subunit of the Sinaloa cartel.

Two top employees of the organized crime unit and at least three federal police agents assigned to it were allegedly passing information to the cartel regarding surveillance targets and potential raids. They supposedly received payments of between $150,000 and $450,000 per month
for their information. 53 Less than two weeks later, prosecutors announced that Rodolfo de la Guardia Garcia, the number two official in Mexicos Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2003 to 2005, had been placed under house arrest pending an investigation into allegations that he, too, had leaked information to the Sinaloa cartel. 54 The scandals continued in late November, when the government announced the arrest of No Ramrez, who, until July 2008, was the chief of the Special Organized Crime Investigation Division, for allegedly taking bribes from traffickers. 55 Ramrez had been President

Mexican law enforcement personnel are so susceptible to corruption by the cartels. By cooperating with the drug trafficking syndicates, those individuals can earn moreoften far morein a single month than they could ever hope to earn in their legal jobs in yearsand in some cases, more than they could earn in decades. 56 Such temptation is hard to resist. According to a former mid-level Tijuana policeman: There is barely a Mexican police officer along the U.S. border who isnt involved in the drug trade. Even if you try to resist,
Calderns highly regarded drug policy czar and the chief liaison with U.S. anti-drug officials. The size of the alleged payoffs underscores why your superiors pressure you into it or sideline you. 57 He had resigned from the force after personally witnessing his commander receive a $5,000 bribe to ignore drug smuggling in his sector. Not surprisingly, During the 1990s, the National Police Commander was caught with $2.4 million in the trunk of his car. Later he was convicted of giving more than $20 million to another government official to buy protection for one of Mexicos most notorious drug lords. 58 Perhaps the most embarrassing incident prior to the recent Ramrez arrest occurred in the mid-1990s when President Ernesto Zedillo appointed General Jos de Jess Gutirrez Rebollo to be Mexicos new drug czar. The general seemed to have excellent drug-fighting credentials, having personally led a much-publicized raid against the head ofthe Sinaloa cartel. U.S. officials greeted Gutirrez Rebollos appointment enthusiastically. U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey gushed: He has a reputation for impeccable integrity....Hes a deadly serious guy. 59 Three months later, the Mexican government announced that its new drug czar was in a maximum-security prison, charged with taking bribes and protecting the nations largest drug trafficker. The general had indeed been tough on drug traffickingtough, that is, on organizations that competed with his patrons cartel. The latest scandal in Mexicos Attorney Generals office, though, suggests that

drug-related corruption, ranging from low-echelon police officers to the highest-level officials, has had a long history in Mexico.

drug related corruption may not be confined to Mexican government agencies. One of the suspects in that episode has reportedly told investigators that he paid a spy in the U.S. embassy for information on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration operations in Mexico. 60 Mexican corruption precludes effective enforcement Kurtzman, 09 (Joel, Senior Fellow; Executive Director, Senior Fellows Program; Publisher, The Milken Institute Review,

business editor and columnist at The New York Times, member of the editorial board of Harvard Business School, AB at the University of California, Recipient of the Eisner Memorial Award, master's at the University of Houston, recipient of a Moody Foundation Fellowship, Mexico's Instability Is a Real Problem, the Wall Street Journal, 1/16/2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123206674721488169.html) The problem is that in Mexico's latest eruption of violence, it's difficult to tell the good guys from the

bad. Mexico's antidrug czar, Noe Ramirez Mandujano was recently charged with accepting $450,000 from drug lords he was supposed to be hunting down. This was the second time in recent years that one of Mexico's antidrug chiefs was arrested for taking possible payoffs from drug kingpins. Suspicions that police chiefs, mayors and members of the military are also on the take are rampant. In the past, the way Mexico dealt with corruption was with
eyes wide shut. Everyone knew a large number of government officials were taking bribes, but no one did anything about it. Transparency commissioners were set up, but given no teeth. And Mexico's drug traffickers used the lax law

enforcement their bribes bought them to grow into highly organized gangs. Once organized, they have been able to fill a

vacuum in underworld power created by Colombian President lvaro Uribe's successful crackdown on his country's drug cartels. The result is that drug traffickers are getting rich, while Mexico pays a heavy price in lost human lives and in economic activity that might otherwise bring a modicum of prosperity to the country. In 2008, Mexico ranked 31st out of 60 countries studied in the Milken Institute/Kurtzman Group Opacity Index. The cost to ordinary Mexicans from poorly functioning institutions has been huge.

U.S. policies promote Mexican corruption in drug enforcement Freeman and Luis Sierra, 05 (*Laurie, Director for Yemen at the National Security Council, former State

Department Official, fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, writer for the Washington Post Mexico Bureau, M.A. in International Politics from Princeton University, degree from Duke in Latin American Studies, **Jorge, Knight International Journalism Fellow, degree in International Journalism from the University of Southern California, defense policy and economics fellow at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University, Mexico: The Militarization Traip, 2005, part of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The impact of U.S. Policy, Rienner, Google Books, JKahn)

Mexicos growing importance in the drug trade triggered a number of U.S. policies toward Mexico intended to invigorate that countrys ability to disrupt and to dismantle drug-trafficking organizations. Although these policies have not had a discernible impact on the amount of drugs entering the United States via Mexico, they have become obstacles to consolidating democracy, protecting human rights, and establishing civilian oversight of the military in Mexico. The United States supported the creates of the elite and corruption-free antidrug units in Mexicos security forces, but so far the track record of these units suggests that they cannot be completely inoculate against corruption . Their creation has diverted effort and attention from more comprehensive reform.

Mex - Empirics
Investment and personnel cant solve empirics Astorga and Shirk, 10 (Luis Astorga is a researcher at the Institute of Social Research at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM). He is also coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Economic and Social Transformations Connected with the International Drug Problem; David A. Shirk, PhD, joined the University of San Diego in July 2003. Shirks teaching covers a wide range of subject areas, mainly concentrated in comparative politics, international political economy, Latin American studies, and U.S.-Latin American relations, with a concentration in Mexico and border politics. He conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, and law enforcement and security along the U.S.-Mexican border. Shirk also directs the Trans-Border Institute, which works to promote greater analysis and understanding of Mexico, U.S.-Mexico relations, and the U.S.-Mexico border region; 1/1/10; Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies in the U.S.-Mexican Context; http://usmex.ucsd.edu/assets/024/11632.pdf) KD For its part, the United States has sought to assist Mexico by channeling aid, in the form of training

and equipment, through the Mrida Initiative. The Mrida Initiative will provide Mexico with $1.4 billion in U.S. equipment, training and other assistance from 2008 through 2012, on top of the more than 4 billion that Mexico spends annually combating drug trafficking.4 In parallel, the United States has also deployed additional manpower and money to its southwest border in an attempt to stave off a possible cross-border overflow of violence from Mexican organizations. Thus far, the major successes of these efforts include a steady stream of arrests and extraditions targeting organized crime, as well as record seizures of drugs, guns, and cash. However, progress on the metrics that really matter reducing the availability, consumption, or psychotropic potency of drugs has remained illusive for both countries.5 Indeed, by some accounts, despite a nearly forty year effort to wage the war on drugs, drugs are more accessible, more widely utilized, and more potent than ever before.6

Winning the war on drugs is impossible empirical proof from the Caldern administration Carpenter, 9 vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books, including Bad Neighbor Policy: Washingtons Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (Ted Galen, Troubled Neighbor: Mexicos Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States February 2, 2009
Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/troubled-neighbor-mexicos-drug-violence-poses-threat-unitedstates) // czhang Since Caldern took office in 2006, the Mexican government has for the first time given the military a

lead role in combating the traffickers. Approximately 36,000 troops are now involved in that effort, in addition to several thousand federal police officers. The principal outcome of that strategy, however, has been an even greater level of violence, with military personnel increasingly becoming targets. The military also has now been exposed to the temptation of financial corruption that had previously compromised Mexicos local and federal police forces so thoroughly. Decapitation Strategies Dont Work The belief that neutralizing Mexican drug kingpins will achieve a lasting reduction in drug trafficking is the same assumption that U.S. officials made with respect to the crackdown on the Medelln and Cali cartels in Colombia during the 1990s. Subsequent developments have shown that assumption to be erroneous. Indeed, an October 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office found that while opium poppy cultivation and heroin production in Colombia had declined since the start of Plan Colombia, coca cultivation and cocaine production (the countrys principal drug export) had actually increased by 15 percent and 4
percent, respectively. 51 The elimination of the Medelln and Cali cartels merely decentralized the Colombian drug trade.

Instead of two large organizations controlling the trade, today some 300 smaller, loosely organized groups do so. More to the point, the arrests and killings of numerous top drug lords in both Colombia and Mexico over the years have not had a meaningful impact on the quantity of drugs entering the United States. Cutting off one head of the drug-smuggling Hydra merely results in more heads taking its place. Indeed, one might wonder how serious Mexicos anti-drug
campaign will be in the long run. U.S. leaders held out hopes that Calderns predecessor, Vicente Fox, would disrupt the trade. Similar hopes were invested in earlier Mexican administrations, but a noticeable pattern emerged in all of those cases. Early on,

new Mexican presidents typically went out of their way to impress on U.S. policymakers that

they were serious about cooperating with Washington and taking on the drug lords. Then, within a few years, the efforts dwindled into futility marked by official corruption.

Mex - Enforcement
Mexican law enforcement fails Astorga and Shirk, 10 (Luis Astorga is a researcher at the Institute of Social Research at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM). He is also coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Economic and Social Transformations Connected with the International Drug Problem; David A. Shirk, PhD, joined the University of San Diego in July 2003. Shirks teaching covers a wide range of subject areas, mainly concentrated in comparative politics, international political economy, Latin American studies, and U.S.-Latin American relations, with a concentration in Mexico and border politics. He conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, and law enforcement and security along the U.S.-Mexican border. Shirk also directs the Trans-Border Institute, which works to promote greater analysis and understanding of Mexico, U.S.-Mexico relations, and the U.S.-Mexico border region; 1/1/10; Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies in the U.S.-Mexican Context; http://usmex.ucsd.edu/assets/024/11632.pdf) KD In Mexico, law enforcement and judicial institutions suffer significant limitations in capacity and, in some cases, troubling dysfunctions that

reduce their effectiveness in combating even ordinary forms of crime, sophisticated transnational organized crime syndicates. Local and state law enforcement agencies, in particular, suffer a lack of institutional capacity and, in any event, most drug-related crimes pertain to
federal jurisdiction. Most Mexican police officers have had few opportunities for educational development, and lead lives that are terribly impoverished. Operationally, local law enforcement officers who represent the vast majority of Mexican police are

not authorized to receive crime reports from citizens, are not equipped to conduct criminal investigations, and are not properly prepared to preserve crime scenes and evidence. Even at the federal level there have been obstacles and troubling breaches of institutional integrity, including corruption at the highest levels. All of this impedes effective law enforcement, hinders international security cooperation, and results in low public confidence in the Mexican justice sector as a whole. The imperfections of Mexicos domestic police forces have paved the way for the militarization of public

security, as Mexican public officials have encouraged ever deeper military involvement in counter drug efforts and other aspects of public safety.59

Mexican military enforcement fails Astorga and Shirk, 10 (Luis Astorga is a researcher at the Institute of Social Research at the National Autonomous

University of Mexico (UNAM). He is also coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Economic and Social Transformations Connected with the International Drug Problem; David A. Shirk, PhD, joined the University of San Diego in July 2003. Shirks teaching covers a wide range of subject areas, mainly concentrated in comparative politics, international political economy, Latin American studies, and U.S.-Latin American relations, with a concentration in Mexico and border politics. He conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, and law enforcement and security along the U.S.-Mexican border. Shirk also directs the Trans-Border Institute, which works to promote greater analysis and understanding of Mexico, U.S.-Mexico relations, and the U.S.-Mexico border region; 1/1/10; Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies in the U.S.-Mexican Context; http://usmex.ucsd.edu/assets/024/11632.pdf) KD Meanwhile, there are several hazards to military participation in domestic public security since it

lacks the proper mandate and training for law enforcement and criminal investigations, and its involvement has been accompanied by significant allegations of human rights abuses.62 Moreover, there are major questions about whether the military is truly immune from the kind of corruption found in Mexican police agencies, and whether its integrity can be sustained over an extended period. Indeed, there have been important examples of military corruption, as noted above. Also, as Moloeznik points out, there have been disturbingly high levels of defection by Mexican military personnel, with at least some developing ties to organized crime (Moloeznik 2009). Indeed, organized crime groups have brazenly recruited military personnel to join their ranks, with promises of higher pay, better food, and a more glamorous lifestyle. In some cases the defection of military forces such as the Zetas to work with DTOs has led to more extreme use of violence; indeed, in addition to the Zetas, the Sinaloa DTO developed its own elite enforcer groups (Los

Negros, Los Pelones, and La Gente Nueva), as has the Carrillo Fuentes organization (La Linea and Los Aztecas). Also concerning is that, while its overall popularity remains high, the military has become a target of popular protest. In February 2009, protestors demonstrated in Monterrey, Ciudad Jurez, Nuevo Laredo, and Reynosa, criticizing the militarys involvement and blocking roadways and ports of entry. The fact that these protests were likely instigated by drug traffickers offers

little comfort, since it suggests

a troubling capacity for such groups to manipulate certain sectors of society and public opinion at large (Emmott 2009; Gutirez 2009; Lpez Velasco 2009; Reforma 2009; Tapa 2009).

Mex - Laundry List

Mexican war on drugs failing 5 reasons Chase, 12 (Colonel David Chase of the US Army, graduated from the Army War College, in charge of strategy research on the
Southern border; Military Police: Assisting in Securing the United States Southern Border; 12/3/12; http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA561048) KD These efforts by the Mexican government have met with some success especially with the targeting, capturing and killing of DTO leadership. However, there are fears that little real positive effect has been achieved and some belief that Mexicos war on drugs is proving to be futile altogether. Critics claim that any attempts at progress has been slowed and

hampered by several problems. First, the strong response from the Mexican government is one factor in the increased violence as DTOs fight back in response. Second, even as DTO leadership has been arrested or killed the organizations themselves have proven very resilient by becoming more adaptive, less vertical in organizational structure and by becoming multi-nodal. Other problems cited include the fact that the Police are generally viewed as corrupt, brutal and susceptible to bribes despite purges of senior police leadership and intensive retraining efforts. As recently as August 2010 a purge of the federal police force was conducted and resulted in more than 3,000 officers being fired for being corrupt. Even the Mexican military is facing problems. Ever since becoming involved in the crackdown on DTOs the Mexican Army has been continually charged with human rights violations to include rape, killings, disappearances and torture. As recently as 2010 there were over 1,200 human rights complaints against the Army.28 Another problem that the Army faces is a very high desertion rate, particularly among soldiers sent to fight the DTOs. 29 Exacerbating the problems with the security forces is the lack of effective rule of law highlighted by a judicial system that is ineffective and corrupt itself. A recent study has found that of all the numerous cases brought before Mexican courts the conviction rate is only around one percent with known criminals routinely being released.30

Mex - Sinaloa Cartel

Sinaloa is the largest drug cartel impossible to win because they are structurally engrained in society and have international influence Hootsen 13 writer for the Global Post (Jan-Albert 2/28/13 How the Sinaloa cartel won Mexicos drug war
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/mexico/130227/sinaloa-cartel-mexico-drug-war-US-globaleconomy-conflict-zones) // czhang For well over a century, local farmers have harvested marijuana and opium in the rugged mountains surrounding Badiraguato. Since the 1980s, the Sinaloa cartel has acted as their Wal-Mart, transporting the mind-bending cargo north with quasi-corporate efficiency, and distributing it to a narcotics-craving United States market. Ever since former President Felipe Calderon

deployed thousands of soldiers and federal police to combat organized crime in 2006, the country has been ravaged by violence. An estimated 70,000 people have been killed in often brutal territorial warfare.

Yes, there have been victories for the government: In March 2009 the attorney generals office published a most-wanted list of 37 high profile drug lords. As of February 2013, two-thirds of them are either dead or in custody. By now, the majority of the seven major drug trafficking cartels battling for dominance have been crippled. Most have partially or completely fractured into smaller groups. Even the infamous Los Zetas, whose leader Heriberto Lazcano was killed last fall, have recently suffered severe blows. Only the Sinaloa cartel seems to have survived the onslaught relatively intact. In fact, some critics of the

government even claim Sinaloa has won the drug war. El Chapo is still at large, after his spectacular escape
from prison in 2001.* In mid-February Guatemalan authorities investigated rumors that he had been gunned down, but the presidents spokesman later told GlobalPost they found no evidence of this. His inner circle cronies Juan Jose Esparragoza an d Ismael Zambada also still operate freely. And while they succesfully evade capture, the cartel has made substantial

territorial advances, and has amassed extravagant wealth. El Chapo is going to get stronger if he is not

arrested in the next year and a half, a senior official of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told Forbes in a June 2011 interview. Since then, the Sinaloa cartel ousted its rivals in the lucrative smuggling corridors of

Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. El Chapo himself is now the most wanted man on the globe, with US

authorities offering a $5 million reward for any information leading to his capture. In a business as opaque as the drug trade, its hard to get reliable figures on the size of a crime groups territory, the breadth of its wealth or the extent of its market share. Court

documents, arrests and drug seizures, however, paint a picture of the Sinaloa cartel as a multinational, highly flexible organization, quick to adapt to new circumstances and showing a resilience unlike any of its rivals. Compared to its humble beginnings in the 1980s, when it controlled only a single Pacific trafficking route into Arizona, the cartels territorial expansion has been staggering. Key areas it now controls include most of Mexicos Pacific coast states and parts of central Mexico. Even more impressive is its global reach. Sinaloa operatives have been arrested from Egypt to Argentina and from Europe to Malaysia. Properties attributed to El Chapo Guzman have been seized in Europe and South America. US law enforcement reports that the group is now present in all major American cities. Recent US court documents involving the case of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, Mayo Zambada's son, even suggest the Sinaloa cartel now controls the cocaine trade in Australia. Earlier this month, Chicago named El Chapo Guzman public enemy No. 1, the

first to receive that title since the citys legendary crime boss, Al Capone. Sinaloa's share in the drug market is titanic. Even by the most sober estimates, Mexican drug trafficking amounts to over $6 billion per year, with El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel controlling an estimated half of that market, raking in billions each year. No wonder Forbes has listed El Chapo Guzman on its annual list of billionaires since 2009. The Sinaloa cartel certainly has the upper hand now, says Javier Valdez, co-founder of Rio Doce, a Sinaloa-based weekly magazine covering the drug war. Its

the only cartel that has grown over the years, extending its reach into Europe, Africa and South America, while all others have lost.

Some have accused the Calderon administration of collusion with El Chapo, claiming the government struck a deal by taking out its rivals. And last October, leaked emails from security analysis firm STRATFOR suggested that even the US government facilitated them. Accusations of government collusion, however, are rejected by Malcolm Beith, a British-American journalist and author of "The Last Narco," a book about El Chapo Guzman. Since 2009, the Sinaloa cartel has been hit very hard too, completely obliterating those criticisms, he contends. Beith points out that Sinaloa's survival and recalcitrant power should instead

be attributed to the way it operates. There is a level-headedness about the leadership that the other groups lack, he
says. To the authorities, first priority always has to be quelling violence. When other groups throw grenades into a crowd of innocents or behead[s] people, it's obvious what needs to be done. Sinaloa has perpetrated its share of violence,

but by and large it did not cause disruption to the general well-being of the population." The Sinaloa cartels relatively low profile in terms of violence is partly due to its relatively long history its been around for 25 years. In Sinaloa itself the group is deeply rooted in society. Not only do its senior leaders hail from the region,

but the cartel reputedly funds hospitals and schools, thus winning support from locals who aid the "capos" in their never-ending struggle to escape arrest. El Chapo and his cronies have also perfected the strategy of bribe over bullet, preferring to corrupt

authorities rather than fighting them into submission. Government officials on all levels in Mexico have been accused of being on Sinaloas take, as have some of their US counterparts. El Chapo has an apparent ability to [allegedly] corrupt and infiltrate elements of law enforcement on both sides of the border and seemingly play the authorities' every move to his advantage, Beith says. When the Mexican army moved into
Juarez, so did El Chapo, seizing an opportunity. When the authorities took down the Arellano-Felix cartel, El Chapo was already poised to take Tijuana. All things considered, El Chapo Guzman and his Sinaloa cartel seem to have been

profiting rather than suffering from the drug war, Javier Valdez argues. The drug war has helped them stay on top. While they continue to keep the heat away from their home turf, their rivals have been weakened. The most recent National Drug Threat Assessment of the Justice Department (2011) suggests the same, by stating that overall drug availability in the US is increasing, as are production of marijuana, heroin and synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine. Those are all businesses in which El Chapo Guzman and his Sinaloa cartel have a large stake. The organization is particularly dominant because it is one of the few that can obtain multi-ton quantities of cocaine from South America, as well as produce large quantities of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine, the report claims. Felipe Calderen left office in December. His succesor Enrique Pea Nieto promises to cut the murder rate in half in the next six years, but most Mexicans doubt he is able to; during his first two months in office at least 1,500 people are estimated to have died in gangland violence. All the while El Chapo Guzman continues to make a mockery of the drug war with every day he remains at large. His Sinaloa cartel has been around longer than any other crime group in Mexico, and it may just outlast everybody else.

Cooperation fails deteriorating relations precludes effective drug cooperation Smith, 12 (Phillip, professor of Sociology at Yale, Bolivia and Venezuela Scoff at Obama's Drug War Criticism, Tell US to Look in the Mirror, Alternet, 9/19/2012, http://www.alternet.org/drugs/bolivia-and-venezuela-scoff-obamas-drug-war-criticism-tell-uslook-mirror?paging=off, JKahn Obama's singling out of Bolivia and Venezuela as countries that have failed to comply with US drug policy demands has sparked sharp reactions. Last Thursday, the White House released its annual determination of major drug trafficking or producing countries, singling out Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela as countries that have failed to comply with US drug policy demands. That has sparked

Venez Fails

sharp and pointed reactions from Bolivia and Venezuela. "I hereby designate Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela as countries that have failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to make substantial efforts to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements," President Obama said in the determination. That marks the fourth year in a row the US has singled out Bolivia and Venezuela, which are left-leaning regional allies highly critical of US influence in Latin America. But while the US has once again put the two countries on its drug policy black list, it is not blocking foreign assistance to them because "support for programs to aid Bolivia and Venezuela are vital to the national interests of the United States." Despite that caveat, Bolivia and Venezuela were having none of it. "Venezuela deplores the United States government's insistence on

undermining bilateral relations by publishing this kind of document, with no respect for the sovereignty

and dignity of the Venezuelan people," the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said in a communique Friday. Venezuela "rejects in the most decided manner the accusations of the government of the United States," the communique said, adding that the presidential determination is "plagued with false statements, political preconceptions and veiled threats," which only repeat its "permanent line of aggression against independent sovereign governments." Venezuela also counterpunched, accusing the US of

allowing "a fluid transit" of drugs across its borders" and "the laundering of capital from drug trafficking through
the financial system."

Anti-Americanism precludes cooperation efforts Smith, 12 (Phillip, professor of Sociology at Yale, Bolivia and Venezuela Scoff at Obama's Drug War Criticism, Tell US to Look in the Mirror, Alternet, 9/19/2012, http://www.alternet.org/drugs/bolivia-and-venezuela-scoff-obamas-drug-war-criticism-tell-uslook-mirror?paging=off, JKahn "The government of the United States has become principally responsible for this plague that is the
scourge of the entire world," it said. The foreign ministry added that Venezuela's anti-drug efforts improved after it kicked out the DEA in 2005, that it has been free of illegal drug crops since 2006, and that it has actively pursued leading drug traffickers, including 19 it had extradited to the US since 2006. Bolivian President Evo Morales, for his part, said the US, home of the world's largest drug consumer market, had

no grounds on which to criticize other countries about its war on drugs. "The United States has no morality, authority or ethics that would allow it to speak about the war on drugs. Do you know why? Because the biggest market for cocaine and other drugs is the United States ," Morales said in a Saturday speech. "They should tell us by what percentage they have reduced the internal (drug) market. The internal market keeps growing and in some states of the United States they're even legalizing the sale of cocaine under
medical control," the Bolivian president said. It's unclear what Morales was trying to say with that latter remark. Although as a Schedule II drug, cocaine can and occasionally is used medically in the United States, there are no current moves by any US state to take that further. Some 17 US states and the District of Columbia have, however, moved to legalize the sale of marijuana under medical control. "I'm convinced that the drug trade is no less than the United States' best business ," Morales added, noting that since the first international drug control treaties were signed in 1961, drug trafficking has blossomed, not declined. He said he has suggested to South American leaders that they form a commission to report on how well Washington is doing in its war on drugs. Morales also took the occasion to lambaste the US for opposing Bolivia's request before the United Nations to modify that 1961 treaty to acknowledge that chewing coca leaf is "an ancestral cultural practice" in the Andes. Like Venezuela, Bolivia protested that it, too, has been fighting drug trafficking. The Bolivian government said that it had seized 182 tons of cocaine since Morales took power in 2006, compared to only 49 tons confiscated in the previous five years. Bolivia has seized 31 tons of cocaine so far this year, most of it from Peru, the government said. The US presidential determination named the following countries as major illicit drug producing or trafficking countries: Afghanistan, the Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.

*War on Drugs Good*

The War on Drugs drives up drug prices --- transport and secrecy make illegal drugs ridiculously expensive --- giving up drives down drug prices and makes drugs affordable for everyone --- causes extreme drug usage Calukins, 12 (Jonathan P., Stever Professor of Operations Research at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and a consultant with RAND's Drug Policy Research Center, and Michael A. C. Lee, drug-policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, The Drug-Policy Roulette, National Affairs, Number 12, Summer 2012, http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-drug-policy-roulette, Tashma) To understand the consequences of legalization, it is essential to start with a crucial factor too often ignored: prohibition's effects on production costs. Today, illegal drugs are shockingly expensive. Even run-of-the-mill "commercial grade" marijuana sells for $100 per ounce. Cocaine and crack, heroin, and methamphetamine all sell for $100 or more per pure gram, making them more valuable than gold. (If cigarettes cost that much, a standard pack of 20 would carry a price tag of roughly $2,000.) There is no physical reason why drugs need to be so expensive: Drug "labs" are rudimentary affairs; with a few exceptions (such as lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD), they employ at most undergraduate-level chemistry. And the associated crops coca, cannabis, poppy are neither difficult to grow nor resource-intensive; they are in fact often produced in some of the least-developed nations of the
world.

Drug Use Deterrence

What makes illegal drugs so expensive is precisely the fact that their production is prohibited, and that this prohibition is often strictly enforced. One factor is what economists call "compensating wage differentials," or compensation for taking risks. Suppliers of illegal drugs court real dangers, including arrest, imprisonment, physical injury, even death. Thus, in addition to seeking wages that compensate for their time and allow for normal profits, people employed in drug distribution also seek compensation for assuming these risks much as coal miners and deep-sea divers typically earn higher wages than people performing similar jobs under
less hazardous circumstances. Another factor is the inefficiency that stems from having to operate covertly. The

precautions required to evade detection make the production of drugs very labor intensive. Grocery-store cashiers, for instance, are more
than 100 times as productive as retail drug sellers in terms of items sold per labor hour. Similarly, hired hands working for crack dealers can fill about 100 vials per hour, whereas even older-model sugar-packing machines can fill between 500 and 1,000 sugar packets per minute. This labor intensity of drug production, combined with the high wages demanded

for that labor, are what drive up the costs of drugs; by comparison, materials and supplies glassine bags, gram
balances, and even guns are relatively cheap. How would these dynamics and, with them, drug prices be altered if drugs were legalized? To begin, legalization

would cut production costs in source countries. Cultivators and preparers would no longer fear crop eradication; the need to employ only manual labor would disappear. Production could expand and mechanize, becoming more efficient and therefore less expensive. The real reductions, however, would come in the area of transport. To estimate transport costs most
conservatively, one would assume no decrease in in-country production costs, and instead use current illegal prices. In its 2010 World Drug Report, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime put the price of cocaine in Colombia at roughly $2,300 per kilogram and that of heroin in Afghanistan at roughly $2,400 per kilogram. Current wholesale prices in the United States, meanwhile, can range from $10,000 to $43,000 per kilogram for cocaine and from $40,000 to $100,000 per kilogram for heroin. Even at the low ends of these ranges, the markup that occurs between the site of production and the site of

wholesale in other words, the cost of international transport under the current prohibition regime is enormous. If

cocaine and heroin were legal, distributors would be able to ship them by any of the various means now used to transport other legal goods. FedEx, for instance, charges about $65 to send a one-kilogram package from Colombia to the U.S. and about $200 to send a one-kilogram package from Afghanistan. Those rates are less than 1% of the lowest figures for current transportation costs for cocaine and heroin.

As substantial as the price decline would be at wholesale, retail price declines would be even greater. To understand why, one must recall that the free-market retail price for a good equals the good's wholesale price plus a
markup to account for distribution and retail costs (including taxes). In the case of drugs, there is every reason to believe that this markup would be small.

Some have argued that if drugs were legal, the distribution markup would, as a percentage, parallel the markups for other legal agricultural goods. But distribution costs depend mainly on a good's weight and hence its value-to-weight ratio (how much the good is worth per unit of weight). No major legal agricultural product comes close to having a value-to-weight ratio of more than $2,000 per kilogram; cocaine and heroin, then, are not likely to have distribution markups comparable to those of legal agricultural products. Moreover, the large markups for legal crops emerge from processing: For instance, the wholesale cost of wheat accounts for a small proportion of the price of bread. But the prices quoted above for drugs in Colombia and Afghanistan are for finished products that are ready to be consumed without further processing. So the percentage markups for legal agricultural products are not appropriate parallels. To anticipate what might happen to retail prices of drugs following legalization, a more useful comparison would be with a product that has a similar value-to-weight ratio, and one that requires very little processing. Here, the best analogue may be silver, which has a value-to-weight ratio within a factor of two of those of wholesale cocaine and heroin. Typically, the difference between the commodity-exchange price for an ounce of silver and the retail price (for, say, a one-ounce silver round at a coin shop) is a few dollars. If one takes into account that wholesale-to-retail markup, makes adjustments for the fact that drugs (unlike silver) are diluted between the wholesale and retail purchase points, and considers the effects of sales taxes, one might expect free-market retail prices for cocaine and heroin (at current retail purities) of roughly $2.50 and $2.00 per gram, respectively. According to the U.N., illegal cocaine currently retails for between $10 and $350 per gram and heroin between $55 and $150 per gram; relative to the midpoints of those ranges, the price declines one might expect to see as a result of legalization are in the range of 95%. Calculations for methamphetamine are broadly similar. As for marijuana, the 2010 RAND Corporation study Altered State? which examined California's Proposition 19, an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use and cultivation included the authors' calculations of marijuana's likely legal price. Even with ongoing federal prohibition of outright farming, the study estimated that grow-house based production, distribution, and retailing that avoided federal law enforcement's traditional targeting levels could profitably produce at a price of $38 per ounce of sinsemilla (high-potency) marijuana a decline of more than 80% from today's prices, which range from $300 to $450 per ounce. Moreover, were nationwide legalization to allow for the large-scale farming (instead of mere gardening) of

marijuana, yields would be on the order of 500 to 2,000 pounds per acre, suggesting production costs ranging from a few dollars to a few tens of dollars per pound (not per ounce). And it would take fewer than 10,000 acres or 0.0025% of the 400 million acres of cropland in the United States to supply the entire current U.S. market for marijuana. It is difficult to imagine such mass cultivation exerting anything but dramatic downward pressure on marijuana prices. And it is impossible to imagine that such steep price declines for marijuana as well as for cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines would not significantly increase the rates of drug use.

The War on Drugs is net better for individual liberties --- the alternative is a drugfilled society that ensures higher taxes and stricter laws Hawkins, 7 (John, IN DEFENSE OF THE DRUG WAR, Human Events, 1/25/07, http://www.humanevents.com/2007/01/25/in-defense-of-the-drug-war/, Tashma) Libertarians often attack the war on drugs as a waste of tax dollars and an infringement on personal liberties. That is misguided thinking that comes from trying to apply unworkable theoretical concepts in the real world.
For example, you often hear advocates of drug legalization say that were never going to win the war on drugs and that it wou ld free up space in our prisons if we simply legalized drugs. While its true that we may not ever win the war against drugs i.e. never entirely eradicate the use of illegal drugs were

At: Liberty

not ever going to win the war against murder, robbery and rape either. But our moral code rejects each of them, so none including drugs can be legalized if we still adhere to that code.

If we legalized drugs, wed be able to tax them and bring in more revenue for the state. But, how is that working out with alcohol and cigarettes? In 2004 and 2005, 39% of all traffic-related deaths was related to alcohol consumption and 36% of convicted offenders had been drinking alcohol when they committed their conviction offense. When it comes to cigarettes, adult smokers die 14 years earlier than nonsmokers. But, will we ever get rid of tobacco or alcohol? No, both products are too societally accepted for that and perhaps more importantly, the government makes enormous amounts of revenue from their sale. Do we really want to be sitting around 10 or 15 years from now saying, Gee, wed like to get rid of heroin, but how could we replace the revenue we make from taxing it at an exorbitant rate? Of course, the number of people using what are currently illegal drugs would skyrocket if they were legalized, so wed see a new wave of drug-addled burglars if we legalized it. Now, maybe you think thats not the case. Some people certainly argue that if illicit drugs were legalized, their usage would drop. However, the fact that drugs are illegal is certainly holding down their usage. Just look at what happened during prohibition. Per Ann Coulter in her book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): Prohibition resulted in startling reductions in alcohol consumption (over 50 percent), cirrhosis of the liver (63 percent), admissions to mental health clinics for alcohol psychosis (60 percent), and arrests for drunk and disorderly conduct (50 percent). p.311 Thats what happened when alcohol was made illegal. However, on the other hand, if we make drugs legal, safer, easier

to obtain, more societally accepted, and some people say even cheaper as well, there would almost have to be an enormous spike in usage.

Certainly thats what happened in the Netherlands where consumption of marijuananearly tripled from 15 to 44% among 18 -20 year olds after the drug was legalized. But, some people may say, so what if drug usage does explode? Theyre not hurting anyone but themselves. That might be true in a purely capitalistic society, but in

the sort of welfare state that we have in this country, the rest of us would end up paying a significant share of the bills of people who dont hold jobs or end up strung out in the hospital without jobs and thats even if you forget about the thugs whod end up robbing our houses to get things to pawn to buy more drugs. Even setting that aside, we make laws that prevent people from harming themselves all the time in our society. In many states there are helmet laws, laws that
require us to wear seatbelts, laws against prostitution, and its even illegal to commit suicide. So banning harmful drugs is just par for the course.

Reformists movements destroy the Castro regime Lee, 09 (Renssaler, fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Testimony before the House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee of National Security and Foreign Affairs, Cuba, Drugs, and U.S.-Cuban Relations, 4/29/2009, https://www.fpri.org/docs/alt/testimony.20090429.lee_.cubadrugs.pdf, JKahn)
This policy shift was attributable to three main factors: 1. First, the corruption scandals of the late 1980s brought home to Cubas leaders the reality that in Cuba as elsewhere in Latin America the illegal drug trade could spawn

Cuba Government

independent centers of power, posing potential challenges to the existing political order . Generally
speaking, the Ochoa-de la Guardia conspirators tended to favor the liberalizing tendencies that at the time were occurring elsewhere in the Soviet bloc, and Castro must have wanted to prevent the emergence of a narco-funded reformist movement that

could weaken the totalitarian underpinnings of the Cuban system . 2. Second, the disintegration of the
Soviet Union and the socialist bloc eliminated the protective mantle of Soviet patronage that had sustained Cuba for years, and thus forced Cuba to reorient its entire foreign economic posture to seek vastly improved trade, investment, and tourism ties with the West. To do this, Cuba needed to burnish its international image and to project an aura of respectability. This meant taking visible domestic and foreign policy steps to try to erase the drug stigma acquired in earlier years. 3. The third factor was the emergence

in the 1990s of a domestic consumer market for cocaine, crack, and marijuana, which was propelled by the increasing inflow of dollars from the tourist economy and by remittances sent from Cuban
communities abroad to their relatives on the island. In what appeared to be a replay of the 1950s, drugs circulated freely in Havanas nightclubs, bordellos, streets, and hotels. The internal drug market was never large, at least in relation to what we see here in the United States, but it alarmed Cuban authorities because it pre-supposed the development of a sphere of criminality outside the regimes effective control. An interesting question is: Where did all of these drugs come from? The main source, at least according to Cuban official statistics, were so-called recalos, bulk packages of cocaine and marijuana that are dumped at sea, and then carried by wind and tides to Cubas shores the detritus of failed rendezvous between Colombian planes or Jamaican marijuana carriers and go-fast boats based in Florida. Drugs are also brought to the island by foreign tourists , usually for their own use, but sometimes with the intent of introducing them into the Cuban market. A third source is domestic marijuana cultivation, which yields a relatively low-quality leaf, mainly in Cubas eastern provinces (Granma, Santiago de Cuba ). Finally, there was cocaine that leaked into the domestic Cuban market from the trafficking pipeline that Interior Ministry officials set up through Cuba in the late 1980s. This pipeline, I suspect, carried a lot more than the six tons officially acknowledged by the Cuban regime.

Mex - Economy
Costs of the illegal drug industry to the Mexican economy outweigh the benefits the war on drugs should continue
Rios, 8 PhD candidate in Government and a doctoral fellow in Inequality and Criminal Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School, studying drug trafficking, violence and corruption in Mexico (Viridiana, Evaluating the economic impact of Mexicos drug trafficking industry, Graduate Students Political Economy Workshop, Institute for Quantitative Social S ciences, Harvard University, Spring 2008, http://www.gov.harvard.edu/files/Rios2008_MexicanDrugMarket.pdf)//BI Previously, I discussed the positive and negative economic effects of drug trafficking. In section II, I talked about the economic benefits of the drug industry. Drug trafficking is economically beneficial because it generates employment, consumption and investment. First, almost half a million people receive a monthly salary from the drug industry, and out of these, 300,000 are peasants who have few other feasible sources of income. Second, according to the latest estimates, drug traffic generates around 2.78 billion dollars that are distributed among the people involved in the industry (specially favoring drug cartel leaders). A share of this profit is reinvested into the Mexican legal economy, principally in housing and cattle. Although the exact amount of reinvestment cannot be calculated, I estimated that about 50% of all drug cartel leaders profits come back to the country. This accounts for a return rate of 90% and real cash flows of 2.5 billion dollars annually. In section III, I discussed the economic costs of drug industry. In general, drug traffic brings negative consequences to the economy because it increases violence,

corruption and local drug abuse. Drug violence has forced the migration of thousands of families and businesses out of drug traffic states, and has reduced the productivity and created psychological damage to those who have stayed. The most recent estimated cost of violence is 1.07 billion dollars annually. Additionally, corruption has generated an investment loss of about 1.3 billion dollars annually. Finally, drug abuse generates an annual loss of 680 million dollars due to losses of productivity and addiction treatment. Other negative consequences of drug traffic cannot be measured. Adding up, the costs of the drug industry exceed the benefits. As Figure 3 shows, in 2004 the costs of drug traffic were almost 2 billion dollars higher that the benefits. However, this has not always been the case. Before 1999, drug cash flows and investments
generated more benefits than the costs associated with this illegal industry. As stated in sections II and III, the growth of the costs and the reduction in the benefits can be satisfactorily explained. On one hand, the negative costs of drug traffic for

Mexico have increased over the years because the number of crimes related to drugs, and the number of Mexicans that consume illegal drugs have increased. On the other hand, the benefits of the illegal-drug industry have been decreasing due to a decrease in the price of drugs and a decrease in the share of the marijuana market that is dominated by Mexicans. (Figure 3 about here) This finding yields a very important practical conclusion: Mexicos war on drugs must continue because diminishing drug traffic will be economically beneficial for the country as a whole. By fighting drug traffic, the Mexican government is not only
fighting against illegality and corruption, but against a negative economic externality that is affecting all other markets.

*War on Drugs Bad*

Columbian Instability
The War on Drugs causes Columbian instability --- U.S. efforts backfire Arnold, 5 (Guy, specialist in north-south relations who writes mainly in the areas of African history and politics, and international affairs, former Director of the Africa Bureau, The International Drugs Trade, pg. 118-120, Routledge, Tashma)
The Role of the United States The U.S. role in Colombia has become the key to what develops over the next few years. The

injection of more than $1 billion of U.S. aid, mainly destined for the police or military, under President Clintons Plan Colombia at the beginning of the century added a new dimension to a level of ongoing violence that is the worst in the Americas and possibly the worst in the world. Colombia has now suffered a civil war for more than 30 years, and there is no resolution in sight. The principal groups involved in confrontation and lighting are the two insurgent
groupsthe ELN and FARC; the army and the police; the right-wing death squads, often working closely with the army; and the drug traffickers, There are other subsidiary groups involved in the violence as well. And as usual, as in any such violent situation, the majority of the countrys peasants keep their heads down and try to survive. They do so by growing the

coca leaf to sell to the drug cartels. The shopkeepers pay weekly protection money to the insurgents; and the insurgents

fund their campaigns with the proceeds of cocaine. In Barrancabermeja, 322 kilometers (200 miles) north of Bogota, which is in the center of a region where the rebels are fighting for control, there are on average three violent deaths a day. Many of the people are too frightened to do anything; they are afraid of being taken either for sympathizers with the rebels, in which case they are liable to be targets of the police, the army, or the death squads; or of being taken for informers, in which case they become targets for the rebels. Barrancabermeja lies on the edge of the area occupied by the ELN, which President Pastrana has promised to make a no-go zone. The refinery in Barrancabermeja produces 70 percent of the countrys petrol and though the claimed in 2000; "Any ideology is long lost. The revolution is dead, and it is all economics. It is about who controls the black market gasoline concession and all the cocaine. The United States, which in any case has been exerting increasing pressures on Colombia for two decades, decided at the

end of Clintons presidency to increase its involvement in Colombia. That decision, the launch of Plan
Colombia, may well come to be seen in retrospect as comparable to President Kennedys decision to increase the U.S. military presence in Vietnam in the form of military advisers. There is little doubt that Plan Colombia and the implication

of much greater U.S. involvement on the ground in the anti-drugs war have raised many doubts and fears about the ultimate impact on Colombia and its neighbors. Supporters of Plan Colombia argue that the
additional U.S. backing will enable President Pastrana to force through his peace proposals with the ELN and FARC, since the destruction of the coca fields will deprive the rebels of their principal source of income, which is derived from taxing the drug cultivators. This is an optimistic view and must be tempered by evidence from other jungle wars. Neither the drug barons nor the rebels are going to be defeated easily; they have existed in parallel harness the rebels to change the political system, the drug cartels to make fortunes for more than 30 years. Experience from Vietnam and, more recently, from disintegrating Yugoslavia would

suggest that the U.S. involvement will have to be much greater than that envisaged under Plan Colombia if success in the drugs war is to be achieved. Opponents of Plan

Colombia first attack the waiving of human rights conditions that the U,S. Congress initially attached to the plan for the Colombian security forces, whose record in this respect has been abysmal. More importantly, they believe that U.S. military advisers

will simply become mired in an unwinnable war, although their presence and the arms and other equipment that will come with them will no doubt escalate the violence and spread it across Colombia`s borders. Suggested
parallels with Vietnam have been discounted by U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger; he insisted (in August 2000) that the U.S, presence will be restricted to 500 soldiers and 300 contracted employees at any given time and that U.S. personnel must not become involved in combat. Furthermore, the destruction of coca and poppy crops and the seizure of cocaine or heroin will be left largelyto the Colombians. Colombias neighborsBrazil, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuelahave each expressed concern at the growing U.S. presence in Colombia and believe that it will simply force refugees and drug traffickers across the borders into their countries. Environmentalists fear that the defoliants being used to spray the coca crops will blight the rain forest and, despite Sandy Bergers denial of any comparison, many Plan Colombia: "The

U.S. legislators warn of another Vietnam. Alfonso Cano of PARC said of United States needs an excuse to continue to play the role of the worlds policeman and now that excuse is drug trafficking." He went on to deride the new U.S.-backed drug offensive, which he described
as a disguised counterinsurgency effort. When he visited Cartagena at the end of August 2000, President Clinton said, We wi ll not get involved in the internal conflict of Colombia, nor is this about Yankee imperialism," but his remarks did not convince his South American audience. At the Brazil summit, which was being held at that time and was attended by the presidents of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, and Chile, plans for a multinational military force that would intervene in the Colombian

conflict were rejected. Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lanipreia spokefor the region when he said: "Brazil will not participate in any such international force. Whats more, Brazil stands iirmly against the idea of any foreign military force in C0lombia." The message to the United States was clear enough. Its urgency was enhanced when Vladimjro Montesinos Torres, the right-hand aide of President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, revealed that the United States had drawn up plans for a "multilateral invasion force to help the struggle against subversion? The increased U.S. concern about Colombia appeared to date from a January 1998 article in the Washington Post, which quoted State Department officials who had suggested that the left-wing rebels could seize power in Colombia within five years. The multilateral force envisaged by the United States for intervention in Colombia was concerned with "subversion" rather than drugs.

Any examination of the events in Colombia during the 1990s suggests a country that is virtually uncontrollable and close to disintegration. Despite the fact that it is the worlds largest source of cocaine, drugs are
only a part of Colombias problem; the civil war had been continuing for more than a decade when the huge escalation in demand for drugs from the United States led to a rapid growth of cocaine production in the mid-1970s. A massively increased U.S. involvement in Colombia, whether to assist in fighting the drugs war or in reality to prevent left-wing insurgents taking control of the country, is less likely to resolve Colombias many problems than to exacerbate them. Indeed, the

war on drugs exacerbates the very instability that acts as the breeding ground for drug trafficking groups.

Destroys Latin American democracy Wilhelm, 2k (General Charles E., FDCH, US Marine Corp Commander in Chief, USSC before House Committee on Government Reform Subcommittee on Crim. Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, STRATEGY AND LONG RANGE PLAN TO ASSIST COLOMBIA WITH ITS CD EFFORTS, February 15, 2000) Personal Assessment As I stated earlier, as Colombia's problems spill over into neighboring countries, they threaten the regional stability that is essential to the growth and sustainment of strong democracies and free market economies throughout the region. Drug trafficking is a major contributing factor to Colombia's internal problems. Key to global democracy Hillman, 2 Ph.D., Professor and Director, Institute for the Study of Democracy and Human Rights, St. John Fisher College (Richard S., Democracy and Human Rights in Latin Americai, Preface, p. vii) //SP Latin American experiences, especially in the areas of democratization and human rights protection, are particularly relevant for developing countries that are attempting to build stable political and economic systems in order to provide a decent standard of living and incorporate previously excluded populations into the national mainstream. The past record, of course, is far from acceptable. The advent of the twenty-first century, however, appears to be a time of great potential progress for the institutionalization of democratic human rights regimes that would reduce human pain and suffering. The number of countries in Latin America and elsewhere that are experimenting with democracy has never been greater. Clearly, the path toward fulfilling the expectations raised by these experiments is
not an easy one; it is fraught with difficult obstacles deriving from the historical legacy as well as contemporary challenges. Nevertheless, democracy and human rights have definitively entered the political lexicon and discourse throughout the world.

Extinction Diamond 95 (Larry, Senior Fellow Hoover Institution, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, December, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)
On any list of the most important potential threats to world order and national security in the coming decade, these six should figure prominently: a hostile, expansionist Russia; a hostile, expansionist China; the spread of fundamentalist Islamic, anti-Western regimes; the spread of political terrorism from all sources; sharply increased immigration pressures; and ethnic conflict that escalates into large-scale violence, civil war, refugee flows, state collapse, and general anarchy. Some of these potential threats interact in significant ways with one another, but they all share a common underlying connection. In each instance, the development of democracy is an important prophylactic, and in some cases the only long- term protection, against disaster. A HOSTILE, EXPANSIONIST RUSSIA Chief among the threats to the security of Europe, the United States, and Japan would be the reversion of Russia--with its still very substantial nuclear, scientific, and military prowess--to a hostile posture toward the West. Today, the Russian state (insofar as it continues to exist) appears perched on the precipice of capture by

ultranationalist, anti-Semitic, neo-imperialist forces seeking a new era of pogroms, conquest, and "greatness." These forces

feed on the weakness of democratic institutions, the divisions among democratic forces, and the generally dismal economic and political state of the country under civilian, constitutional rule. Numerous observers speak of "Weimar Russia." As in Germany in the 1920s, the only alternative to a triumph of fascism (or some related "ism" deeply hostile to freedom and to the West) is the

development of an effective democratic order. Now, as then, this project must struggle against great historical and political odds, and it seems feasible only with international economic aid and support for democratic forces and institutions. A HOSTILE, EXPANSIONIST CHINA In China, the threat to the West emanates from success rather than failure and is less amenable to explicit international assistance and inducement. Still, a China moving toward democracy--gradually constructing a real constitutional order, with established ground rules for political competition and succession and civilian control over the military--seems a much better prospect to be a responsible player on the regional and international stage. Unfair trade practices, naval power projection, territorial expansion, subversion of neighboring regimes, and bullying of democratic forces in Hong Kong and Taiwan are all more likely the more China resists political liberalization. So is a political succession crisis that could disrupt incremental patterns of reform and induce competing power players to take risks internationally to advance their power positions at home. A China that is building an effective rule of law seems a much better prospect to respect international trading rules that mandate protection for intellectual property and forbid the use of prison labor. And on these matters of legal, electoral, and institutional development, international actors can help. THE SPREAD OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM Increasingly, Europeans and Americans worry about the threat from fundamentalist Islam. But fundamentalist movements do not mobilize righteous anger and absolute commitment in a vacuum. They feed on the utter failure of decadent political systems to meet the most elementary expectations for material progress and social justice. Some say the West must choose between corrupt, repressive regimes that are at least secular and pro-Western and Islamic fundamentalist regimes that will be no less repressive, but anti-Western. That is a false choice in Egypt today, as it was in Iran or Algeria--at least until their societies became so polarized as to virtually obliterate the liberal center. It is precisely the corruption, arrogance, oppression, and gross inefficacy of ruling regimes like the current one in Egypt that stimulate the Islamic fundamentalist alternative. Though force may be needed--and legitimate--to meet an armed challenge, history teaches that decadent regimes cannot hang on forever through force alone. In the long run, the only reliable bulwark against revolution or anarchy is good governance--and that requires far-reaching political reform. In Egypt and some other Arab countries, such reform would entail a gradual program of political liberalization that counters corruption, reduces state interference in the economy, responds to social needs, and gives space for moderate forces in civil society to build public support and understanding for further liberalizing reforms. In Pakistan and Turkey, it would mean making democracy work: stamping out corruption, reforming the economy, mobilizing state resources efficiently to address social needs, devolving power, guaranteeing the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and--not least-- reasserting civilian control over the military. In either case, the fundamentalist

challenge can be met only by moving (at varying speeds) toward, not away from, democracy. POLITICAL

TERRORISM Terrorism and immigration pressures also commonly have their origins in political exclusion, social injustice, and bad, abusive, or tyrannical governance. Overwhelmingly, the sponsors of international terrorism are among the world's most authoritarian regimes: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan. And locally within countries, the agents of terrorism tend to be either the fanatics of antidemocratic, ideological movements or aggrieved ethnic and regional minorities who have felt themselves socially marginalized and politically excluded and insecure: Sri Lanka's Tamils, Turkey's Kurds, India's Sikhs and Kashmiris. To be sure, democracies must vigorously mobilize their legitimate instruments of law enforcement to counter this growing threat to their security. But a more fundamental and enduring assault on international terrorism requires political change to bring down zealous, paranoiac dictatorships and to allow aggrieved groups in all countries to pursue their interests through open, peaceful, and constitutional means. As for immigration, it is true that people everywhere are drawn to prosperous, open, dynamic societies like those of the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. But the sources of large (and rapid) immigration flows to the West increasingly tend to be countries in the grip of civil war, political turmoil, economic disarray, and poor governance: Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Central America, Algeria. And in Mexico, authoritarianism, corruption, and social injustice have held back human development in ways that have spawned the largest sustained flow of immigrants to any Western country--a flow that threatens to become a floodtide if the Zedillo government cannot rebuild Mexico's economy and societal consensus around authentic democatic reform. In other cases--Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan--immigration to the West has been modest only because of the greater logistical and political difficulties. However, in impoverished areas of Africa and Asia more remote from the West, disarray is felt in the flows of refugees across borders, hardly a benign development for world order. Of course, population growth also heavily drives these pressures. But a common factor underlying all of these crisis-ridden emigration points is the absence of democracy. And, strikingly, populations grow faster in authoritarian than democratic regimes.4ETHNIC CONFLICT Apologists for authoritarian rule--as in Kenya and Indonesia--are wont to argue that multiparty electoral competition breeds ethnic rivalry and polarization, while strong central control keeps the lid on conflict. But when multiple ethnic and national identities are forcibly suppressed, the lid may violently pop when the regime falls apart. The fate of Yugoslavia, or of Rwanda, dramatically refutes the canard that authoritarian rule is a better means for containing ethnic conflict. Indeed, so does the recent experience of Kenya, where ethnic hatred, land grabs, and violence have been deliberately fostered by the regime of President Daniel arap Moi in a desperate bid to divide the people and thereby cling to power. Overwhelmingly, theory and evidence show that the path to peaceful management of ethnic pluralism lies not through suppressing ethnic identities and superimposing the hegemony of one group over others. Eventually, such a formula is bound to crumble or be challenged violently. Rather, sustained interethnic moderation

and peace follow from the frank recognition of plural identities, legal protection for group and individual rights, devolution of power to various localities and regions, and political institutions that encourage bargaining and accommodation at the center. Such institutional provisions and protections are not only significantly more likely under democracy, they are only possible with some considerable degree of democracy.5 OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts
the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of

life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic

fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the

glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass

destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation

on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

And no offense --- the War on Drugs just causes drug organizations to produce other illegal drugs a) Heroin Lee, 2 (Rensselaer W., contract researcher for the Congressional Research Service and a senior fellow at FPRI, Perverse Effects of Andean Counternarcotics Policy, Orbis, Volume 46, Issue 3, Summer 2012, pg. 537-554, sciencedirect, Tashma)
Still More Unintended Effects U.S. supply-reduction and counterorganization

policies in the Andes have thus transformed the Andean cocaine industry in ways that strengthen Colombias various insurgent groups and worsen the countrys internal crisis. But still other consequences of the assault on the cartels may be cited. One of these is the growing economic significance of the heroin industry in Colombia and the increased penetration of
Colombian heroin into the U.S. market. A second, reflecting the diminished strategic reach of successor organizations to the cartels, is the changing dynamic of drug smuggling in the Western hemisphere; this has meant a greater participation of trafficking groups in transit countries in the value-added from Colombian narcotics exports. Heroin is not a new industry in Colombia. Small-scale opium cultivation and heroin processing have been taking place in Colombia for upward of 30 years. However, marijuana and later cocaine (the dominant drug export) were the commercially significant narcotics products. By the early 1990s, though, Colombian traffickersespecially those associated with the Cali coalitionbegan

to view heroin as an alternative source of income to the established cocaine trade. One Cali factionthe Ivan Urdinola groupacquired a measure of control over cultivation and processing, and the
dominant RodriguezOrejuela organization within the cartel undertook to distribute heroin to the United States.29

Law enforcement pressure on the cartels seems to have increased traffickers propensity to diversify into heroin. It is not hard to see why; the per-gram price of the drug averaged almost ten times that for cocaine during the 1990s.30 For independent trafficking enterprisesthose that succeeded the cartelsthe drug offered exceptionally attractive commercial possibilities. Storage and handling of large quantities of heroin is not an issue
as it is with large cocaine loads. Transport by human couriers, or mules, the preferred pre-cartel mode of smuggling (at a time when cocaine prices were several times higher) again allowed the small operator to realize a substantial return.31 For these reasons, the heroin business took off in Colombia during the 1990s. Estimated repatriable heroin revenues increased from $45 million per year in 1991 to $323 million in 1998, according to a 2000 U.N.-sponsored study, making heroin Colombias second most important narcotics export.32 According to DEAs Heroin Signature Program, in 2001 approximately 59 percent of the heroin seized in the United States by federal authorities originated in Colombia, compared to none a decade earlier.33

b) Opium Lee, 2 (Rensselaer W., contract researcher for the Congressional Research Service and a senior fellow at FPRI, Perverse Effects of Andean Counternarcotics Policy, Orbis, Volume 46, Issue 3, Summer 2012, pg. 537-554, sciencedirect, Tashma)
Pros and Cons of Counternarcotics Strategies

Americas international drug problems have produced a difficult legacy. More than a quarter-century of
struggle against the Andean cocaine industry has done almost nothing to reduce the availability of cocaine in U.S. markets, while at the same time feeding the insurgency in Colombia (which threatens to metastasize to neighboring countries), stimulating the South American heroin industry, and accelerating the Colombianization of criminal and political structures in drug transit states.40 Such adverse consequences raise the obvious question of whether the benefits of international drug control are commensurate with the costs. Certainly the goal of supply-reduction has been elusive. As we have seen, eradication of drug crops merely

shifts the locus of upstream production from region to region and country to country. Another

unanticipated consequence has been unwanted crop diversificationthe expanded cultivation of opium poppy in Colombia and (according to recent reports) in Peru, as well.41 Even the intensified aerial spraying
envisaged under Plan Colombia is unlikely to succeed, since farmers will probably push the coca frontier (and the attendant polluting effects of the cocaine industry) further into the Amazonian jungle with little or no decrease in net cultivation. Indeed, recent reports from Colombia suggest that this is already happening.

War on drugs denies people their human right to health Rolles et al, 12 a writer for the Guardian, Martin is Head of Campaigns and Communications at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Danny Kushlick is a British political activist and founder of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. Jane Slater is Head of Operations and Fundraising at Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Steve, George Murkin, Martin Powell, Danny Kushlick, Jane Slater 26 June 2012
The Alternative World Drug Report: Counting the Costs of the War on Drugs http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/AWDR.pdf) // czhang The right to health The right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health

Human Rights Health

fundamental right first articulated in the 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organization, and included in many
subsequent international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The right to health includes access to health-related

is a

education and information; the right to be free from non- consensual medical treatment39; the right to prevention, treatment and control of diseases; access to essential medicines, including those controlled under drug control systems; and participation in health-related decision making at the national, community and individual levels. Good quality health provision should be available, accessible, and acceptable without discrimination
specifically including on the grounds of physical or mental disability, or health status.40 In country after country around the world, however, the right to health is denied to people who use illegal drugs. Punitive drug law enforcement often runs contrary to the right to health when dealing with drug using populations, most prominently by denying

access to treatment and harm reduction services, and creating practical and political obstacles to getting essential medicines. This creates serious health costs, particularly for vulnerable populations of problematic drug users, including people who inject drugs an estimated 15.9 million people41 in at least 158 countries and territories around the world. Injecting drug use causes one in ten new HIV infections globally, and up to 90% of infections in regions such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia.42 Despite this, in many of these areas, access to proven harm reduction measures including needle and syringe exchanges programmes (NSP) and opioid substitution therapy (OST) is extremely limited or entirely unavailable. Yet these interventions are recognised by UN human rights monitors as a requirement of the right to health for people who inject drugs,43 while methadone and buprenorphine for OST are on the World Health Organizations essential
medicines list. (For more detail/ discussion see Chapter 5, pp. 64-65.) Enforcement activities themselves can create direct health harms, for example through aerial drug crop fumigations (which can cause damage to eyes and skin, and lead to miscarriages44), as well as interfering with access to health services. Criminalisation of use, and the stigma and

discrimination that often accompany it, contribute to the reluctance of people who inject drugs to utilise treatment and harm reduction services (see Chapter 7, p. 89). This is especially the case when laws
against the carrying of injecting paraphernalia are in place (contrary to the UNs International Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights45), or when police have a high presence near service providers.46 Global drug control efforts aimed

at non-medical use of opiates have had a chilling effect on medical use for pain control and palliative care. Unduly restrictive regulations and policies, such as those limiting doses and prescribing, or banning

particular preparations, have been imposed in the name of controlling the illicit diversion of narcotic drugs.47 Instead, according to the World Health Organization, these measures simply result in 5.5 billion people including 5.5 million with terminal cancer having low to nonexistent access to opiate medicines.48 More powerful opiate preparations, such as morphine, are unattainable in over 150 countries in the world.

Intervention
The drug war is used as a justification for intervention which fuels more conflict and causes more corruption Newstext, 12 (Newstex, citing President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, The US War on Communism, Drugs, and
Terrorism in Colombia, 10/31/2012, Newstex, Lexis, JKahn) The effect of the militarised strategy has been a marked increase in drug related violence wherever it is initiated and there is not a more clear-cut example of this than Mexico. Before Calderon militarised Mexico s drug war the violent crime rate was actually falling. Since this approach has been adopted, with avid U.S. support including the allocation of 1.4 billion dollars over a three year period (2008-2010) through the Mrida Initiative, the homicide rate has more than doubled, the violent crime rate has increased by more than 200% and the number of human rights abuses committed by the military in their attempts to reign in the drugs cartels have increased six-fold.11 In terms of preventing the flow of drugs into the U.S. the militarised approach has one simple economic paradox at its core: by disproportionally tackling production and distribution (the supply side of the equation) without equally tackling consumption (the demand side of the equation), the price of the product is increased thus providing a greater profit incentive for people to take the involved risks in trafficking and producing illicit drugs. War on Narcoguerrillas? As previously stated, Plan Colombia s original objective was the eradication of coca plantations by targeting left-wing narcoguerrillas (FARC) who, it was explicitly claimed, were directly involved in the drug trade. Evidence of a direct link between the FARC and the illicit drug trade, however, did not emerge until the early 2000 s after Plan Colombia had been instigated. In fact, into the late 1990s, there

was little evidence to suggest that the FARC s involvement in the production and distribution of drugs extended beyond the taxation of coca cultivation in the regions it controlled. In 1997 Donnie Marshall, Chief of Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration admitted this in a DEA congressional testimony stating that there is little to indicate the insurgent groups are trafficking in cocaine themselves, either by producing cocaine HCL and
selling it to Mexican syndicates, or by establishing their own distribution networks in the United States. 12 Plan Colombia, while stating the pursuit of left-wing narcoguerrillas as an objective, did not equally target right-wing Colombian paramilitaries. While a few high profile cases of paramilitaries being tried and convicted on drug trafficking charges have occurred, on the whole, the

focus remains principally on the FARC. This is despite the fact that at least as early as 1997 the DEA were aware of their

involvement in narcotics trafficking. In the same congressional testimony quoted above Marshal stated that the AUC (United SelfDefence Forces of Colombia), the largest Colombian right-wing paramilitary group, has been closely linked to the Henao Montoya organisation; the most powerful of the various independent trafficking groups that comprise the North Valle drug mafia and that the AUC s leader, Carlos Castano, is a major cocaine trafficker in his own right. Fumigation too has been concentrated

mainly in FARC strongholds in the South East despite the fact that right-wing paramilitaries are known to be involved in cocaine production and trafficking in the north of the country. Suspicions have thus emerged that the

real aim of the fumigation campaign is to remove one of the FARC s key revenue streams (the taxation of coca cultivation in areas they control) rather than coca cultivation in general. The disparity in treatment between right and left-wing groups has also led many critics to suggest that the U.S. tolerate and even support right-wing paramilitary activities due to their ideological alliance with U.S. economic interests in the country. In 2001 an investigation by Amnesty International led to a lawsuit to obtain CIA records of Los Pepes , a vigilante organisation set up by Carlos Castano. Its findings

revealed an extremely suspect relationship between the U.S. government and the Castano family at a time when the U.S. Government was

well aware of that family s involvement with paramilitary violence and narcotics trafficking. 13 War on Drugs/War on Terror Colombia was one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid and training throughout the Cold War. In the Cold War era

the communist threat was used to justify counterinsurgency operations against the FARC rebels whose communist/socialist roots posed a particular threat to U.S. economic interests due to Colombia s

extensive natural resources and strategic geographical location. Today, even if the idea of the FARC gaining control over the Colombian state has diminished in credibility, the rebels regularly attack U.S. interests including the infrastructure (railways, pipelines etc.) of U.S. energy and mining multinationals in Colombia. As Marc Grossman, former U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs put it; [Colombian insurgents] represent a danger to the $4.3 billion in direct U.S. investment in Colombia . Colombia supplied three per cent of U.S. oil imports in 2001, and possesses substantial potential oil and natural gas reserves. 14 After the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union the communist threat no longer justified U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Colombia or elsewhere in Latin America. The US Military s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) therefore welcomed

the drug war as a new justification for maintaining the same levels of military spending and counterinsurgency training of Latin American militaries and low intensity warfare strategies employed in
Central America were easily adopted to fight a war on drugs. 15 In Colombia, the FARC, previously labelled Communist became narcoguerrillas and, post-9/11, this morphed again into terrorists. President Bush utilised the war on terror to

redefine the Colombian conflict and continue counter-insurgency operations against the FARC. Again,

the target of this campaign remained the FARC despite the fact that the Colombian Army and closely linked armed right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for countless grave human rights abuses.16 The Historic Importance of Military Training to U.S. Foreign Policy Military training and the cultivation of allied militaries whose interests and ideologies would reflect those of

Washington has, historically, been one of the main methods of U.S. control in Latin America. Several Spanish language schools were established specifically for training Latin American officers including the notorious School of the Americas (SOA) which trained nearly every officer involved in the 1973 Chilean coup and where many members of the Colombian Army continue to train today. As well as training these officers in counter-insurgency, counter terrorism and unconventional warfare (among other forms of attack) the SOA intentionally cultivates a glorified image of privileged capitalist modernity and a strong belief in the right-wing capitalist model. 15 What resulted from such instruction in the past was the creation of highly politicised right-wing military entities which remained allied to the state only insofar as the government in power reflected a similar ideology. Throughout the 1970 s and 1980 s this resulted in military coups overthrowing left-wing governments throughout Latin American and the Caribbean. As Latin

American states transitioned to democracy the strength of these staunchly right-wing militaries (as well as well-

grounded fears of U.S. military intervention) led to the establishment of pacted democracies whereby elite and military support for the democratic transition was conditioned on the formation of certain economic parameters to be enshrined into the constitution. Despite the fact that many democratic movements mobilised on the basis of wealth redistribution these

pacts generally guaranteed the continued presence of foreign multinationals in the extractive industries as well
as ruling out the nationalisation of resources and the socialisation of land as policy options regardless of electoral outcomes.17 Where specific pacts did not exist left leaning elected governments remained very wary of their right-wing militaries when making policy decisions. In Chile, one of the more modern examples, even though the Concertacin (Chile s democratic movement) opposed neoliberalism, the intimidating power of the right-wing military caused them to accept a moderately reformed version of Pinochet s 1980 constitution which enshrined the neoliberal model as well as a number of authoritarian enclaves with a bias to the political right.18 This is also the reason why very few Latin American countries, with the notable exception of Argentina, have managed to hold military personal accountable for atrocities of the past. Indeed, in many places, army personal who took part in

grave atrocities continue to hold high ranking positions in the military. In Colombia this is particularly so and,
as military abuses continue to this day, a culture of impunity has been created which remains a hindering factor to any potential for peace and reconciliation.19 What s more, many high ranking members of the Colombian military trained in the U.S. as counterinsurgents during the Cold War and were then thought by their U.S. instructors to define a number activities normally associated with a healthy democracy as Insurgent Activity Indicators. Such indicators listed in Manuals used by U.S. trainers included; Characterization of the armed forces as the enemy of the people Increased unrest amongst labourers Increased number of articles or advertisements in newspapers criticizing the government. Strikes or work stoppages Increase of petitions demanding government redress of grievance and Initiation of letter-writing campaigns to newspapers and government officials deploring undesirable conditions and blaming individuals in power. 14 The more recent move to the left in Latin

America has been a success, in part, because the new generation of left wing leaders are acutely aware of the dangers the

military pose. In Bolivia one of Morales acts as President was to raise military wages and the recent police strikes (so severe some called them a police mutiny) were partly based on the fact that police wages were roughly half those received by similar ranking military officers. In Venezuela, Chavez holds tight to his military image and many critics have used this to claim he is merely another generalissimo. This criticism fails to realise, however, the great political importance in Chavez s realignment of the Venezuelan military with the democratically elected government of the state rather than outside forces and ideologies. His success in this endeavour was demonstrated when soldiers loyal to him reversed a military coup that displaced him briefly from power in 2002. Both Chavez and Morales, due to their opposition to drug war policies and the imperialist undertones they carry, have driven the DEA out of their respective countries. The stability of instability It is clear that the war on drugs and the subsequent

war on terror in Colombia have been used as fronts to justify the continued counterinsurgency

war against the FARC. Or, as Stan Goff a retired US Army Special Forces officer for counterinsurgency operations and former military advisor to Colombia put it: the war on drugs is simply a propaganda ploy We were briefed by the Public Affairs Officers that counter-narcotics was a cover story that our mission, in fact, was to further develop Colombians capacity for counterinsurgency operations. 20 U.S. and Colombian government anti-terror and anti-drug policy, however, has actually

swelled the ranks of the FARC. Peasant farmers who depend on coca for their livelihoods are forced to rely on the armed guerrillas to protect their crop from planes spraying chemicals. The displacement and terrorisation of people and
the destruction of subsistence crops in rural areas due to fumigation and military and paramilitary activity have created a large amount of unemployed, disenfranchised and angry young people who gravitate towards the guerrilla movement due to the impunity of the armed forces and the perceived inability of the Colombian justice and democratic political systems to hear their grievances or reflect their interests.

The War on Drugs is often framed as a quest to protect morality --- that is a ruse perpetuated by the government --- it sustains extreme losses of civil liberties Fukumi, 8 (Sayaka, PhD student in International Relations at the University of Nottingham, Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America, Ashgate Publishing Company, pg. 94-97, Tashma)
The Limitation of Civil Liberties The United States has a reputation

Liberty

for widely accepted civil liberties and protected civil rights. However, Americans have much less personal autonomy in comparison to during the period before the War on Drugs.118 The war on drugs is regarded as a means to protect American values and morals.119 This is because the cocaine situation in the late 1980s was regarded as an opportunity for institutionalising the

judgements and tactics through public support during the 1990s. The cocaine epidemic in the 1980s was driven by the fear of disruption to the American social structure by the mass fl ow and use of cocaine.120 Politicians kept appealing to citizens to preserve morals and values in American society, and made them believe that tolerance to cocaine, such as legalisation, is equal to the advocacy of international narco-terrorism.121 The government claimed to be committed to Americas moral regeneration.122

The willingness of the US to limit its own freedoms for the sake of drug control appeared to be a consequence of the claim by the government: [Americans] should be extremely reluctant to restrict [drug enforcement offi cers] within formal and arbitrary lines.123 At the height of the War on Drugs, Americans were willing to sacrifice their own civil liberties. Opinion polls revealed that they even approved of extreme measures , such as: giving up some freedoms (62%), using the military to control the domestic drug trade (82%), letting police
search homes of suspected drug dealers without a warrant (52%), and reporting drug users to the police (83%).124 Not only the public but also the Supreme Court is supportive of limiting civil rights in exchange for fighting the

war on drugs. The Supreme Court ruled that government agencies can evict tenants in public housing even when the resident is unaware that a visiting family member or relative is using drugs.125 Zimring and Hawkins claim that: Public support for extreme governmental responses to drugs is higher than for authoritarian countermeasures to any other social problem.126 It is considered that Americans
have opposed drug use and feared drug experiences because they seemed to threaten a generally accepted set of values and aspirations that dated from the beginnings of the national experience.127 The restrictions on freedom for the fight against drugs are understood: as drugs

forced the United States to strike a new balance between order and individual liberties.128 To some extent, the end has come to justify the means in

the War on Drugs. The beginning of Americas sacrifi ce of civil rights was marked by an executive order for urine-tests to be conducted on all civilian federal workers to ensure they were not drug users.129 Some private companies followed the government direction, and requested their employees take the test. Although the urine test was eventually withdrawn from the drug control policy, it seemed that there was little opposition to such a test among Americans. As a consequence, drug testing of students

has been operated consistently, and Supreme Court Justice A.M. Kennedy did not accept the challenge of a high school
student against urine testing in 2002.130

In respect to legislation, the punishments for cocaine and crack offences are decided by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and Omnibus Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988.131 These laws impose mandatory minimum imprisonment 132 on the offenders and prohibit parole.133 At trial, according to Sterling, the President of Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, it is unnecessary for the police, federal agents, and prosecutors to present hard evidence against a suspect for prosecution.134 The testimony of co-operating individuals, the snitch, against the

suspect will be enough to convict.135 The only way for drug offenders to receive a reduced sentence is to assist the government as an informant.136 Considering the desperation of the convict to minimise the sentence, the information provided to the government could be unreliable. Gray maintains that: [the] War on Drugs has made [the United States] and its institutions so desperate that our judgement and our reason have been seriously clouded.137 The war on drugs and the claim of moral regeneration brings the risk of tighter government control on individuals,

the loss of civil liberties, and injustice under the uniform mandatory minimum sentencing.
The information provided through such policies could lead to limited understanding of the cocaine trade and the nature of substances.

The War on Drugs causes massive violations of liberty --- you have a moral obligation to rebel against it Moran, 12 (Andrew, Op-Ed: In Defense of Liberty Ending the drug war to protect freedom, Digital Journal, 12/11/12, http://digitaljournal.com/article/338812, Tashma)

Since the egregious war on drugs was declared, there have been enormous economic, social, criminal and personal liberty derelictions. If there were a cost-benefit analysis of how much taxpayer dollars that federal, state (provincial) and local governments used, it would show that there has been very little success in this failed war. For some reason or another, the populace concluded that the government knows best and it can impose moral behavior on the people, even if there would be massive unintended consequences that would incite enhanced immorality. The case for drug laws is that if it were legal

then our society would become chaotic, everyone would start shooting up on heroine and the nation as we know it would crumble because drug users wouldnt contribute to society. Before I continue, I have a question: how many people reading this article who are not drug users would immediately sniff a line of cocaine, insert a needle into your arm for a shot of heroine and take ecstasy? It can be safe to say that not a whole lot of you would do it. As with any other government policy that has good

intentions the road to hell is paved with good intentions this one has unintended consequences. By prohibiting the use of drugs, it has created an underground economy where prices have soared, users have resorted to prostitution just to pay for it and taxpayers are forced to pay for law enforcement, whose time could be better spent chasing rapists and pedophiles, just to crack down on this shadow

economy. If drugs were legalized, the marketplace would immediately adapt, which would lead to the extinction of the drug cartels and the drug dealers would be out of business of course, once government bans something else there would already be criminal activity. Remember, the government creates criminals with victimless laws and crimes. If I want to

smoke marijuana or start using heroin, isnt that my choice? Whatever happened to personal responsibility? During a Fox News Republican primary debate, retiring Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul made an excellent point when he mocked the establishment thinking the American people yearn for the federal government to take care of them and tell them how to live. Whether its eating a dozen doughnuts in one sitting, living in atrophy or not wearing a helmet while riding a bicycle, humans have free will and free choice and must take responsibility for their actions, even if these decisions are reckless to their own lives. These reasons alone, and many others, identify that the war on drugs must be ceased either immediately or gradually and to permit the people to make their own choices in their lives as long as they dont coerce
others to adopt their lifestyle. Since drugs are deemed bad for you, why not resort to the failed policies of prohibition? Why dont we completely ban junk food, compel others to purchase a gym membership and forbid individuals from smoking cigarettes, cigars and pipes? Wait nevermind. Lets not give the government anymore failing ideas. If you adore liberty and abhor the state controlling every facet of your life, you would endorse the principles of drug legalization.

Decision rule reject every instance Petro 74 (Sylvester, Professor of Law at NYU, Toledo Law Review, Spring, p. 480, http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200304/0783.html)

However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway - "I believe in only one thing: liberty." And it is always well to bear in mind David Hume's observation: "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." Thus, it is unacceptable

to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no importance because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Dijas. In sum, if one believed in freedom as a supreme value and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit.

The War on Drugs backfires --- it destabilizes the target region and destroys democratic structures and ideals Fukumi, 8 (Sayaka, PhD student in International Relations at the University of Nottingham, Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America, Ashgate Publishing Company, pg. 173-174, Tashma)
Conclusion

LA Instability

Through the Andean Strategy, the United States has been tackling the cocaine trade from various angles, eradication of coca bushes, interdiction of cocaine loads, demolishing criminal groups and providing alternative crops and
social infrastructures. Law enforcement operations (interdiction and eradication) are also expected to function as a deterrent, causing coca growers to withdraw from coca cultivation, and an incentive to shift their production to alternative crops provided by the alternative development projects. The logic is that the United States three- prong strategy may have the

potential to reduce the Andean cocaine industry despite the fact that so far it has posed a danger of instability to the region. According to Beers, the three-prong strategy of the United States contributed
to a reduction in coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia dramatically.228 Success in eradicating coca in Bolivia and Peru was the result of the combined effects of alternative development, re-establishing government control over the region as well as forceful eradication efforts supported by the United States.

American policy, in rhetoric and in legislation, denied that drugs are a permanent problem that needs to be managed rather than eliminated. Such an approach to drugs has worsened the situation in various ways, and affects the community and the state.22 Bolivia, in particular, has destroyed 80% of illicit
coca with large economic sacrifices. The statistics of seizures and eradication do not indicate success because those eradicated fields tend to be replaced in remote areas and other states, such as Colombia. Consequently, total coca flow to the United States remains steady. The third element of the three-prong strategy, alternative development, used to be affected by the sanctions to the Andean countries, and did not fulfil its role as a safety net for farmers who eradicated coca from their fields. Therefore, the US approach could not gain popular support or credibility in the Andes. The Andean governments, however, supported the US policy for the sake of economic support attached to the drug control aid.

The militarisation of the drug war has undermined civilian control of the militaries in the Andes and spread human rights violations through torture, disappearance and extrajudicial executions.23 The military extended its authority to the private trial of those suspected of participation in the cocaine trade, and thereby some citizens were convicted without lawful trial in some states.23 Instead of supporting democracy and protecting human rights, the US aid to counter-narcotics operations increased human rights violations through aerial spraying, military involvement and undermining democratic political systems in the Andes.232 In this sense, US anti-drug operations may be more harmful to the Andean countries and their society than the
cocaine trade per se.233

Poisons People
Anti-narcotics efforts poison populations which only intensifies fighting Newstext, 12 (Newstex, citing President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, The US War on Communism, Drugs, and
Terrorism in Colombia, 10/31/2012, Newstex, Lexis, JKahn)

Biological warfare One major part of both Plan Colombia and the Merida initiative has been the destruction of coca fields by aerial chemical fumigation thus impacting the cocaine trade at it s source. Glyphosate, the chemical substance used to fumigate illicit crops and known by its brand name Roundup, was originally patented and produced by the most notorious of US agricultural corporations; Monsanto. Glyphosate is classified by Monsanto as a mild herbicide but by the World Health Organisation as extremely poisonous. 5 Roundup is sold over the counter in the US as a herbicide and there it carries these warnings: Roundup will kill almost any green plant that is actively growing. Roundup should not be applied to bodies of water such as ponds, lakes or streams . After an area has been sprayed with Roundup, people and pets (such as cats and dogs) should stay out of the area until it is thoroughly dry If Roundup is used to control undesirable plants around fruit or nut trees, or grapevines, allow twenty-one days before eating the fruits or nuts. 6 In Colombia however, two additives Cosmo-Flux 411 and Cosmo InD are added increasing the toxicity four-fold and producing what is known as Roundup Ultra, or as some call it; Colombias Agent Orange. 6,7 In addition, the concentrations in the mixtures prepared by the Colombian military (under the guidance of their US colleagues) are five times higher than is recognised as safe for aerial

application by the US Environmental Protection Agency.6 This product is regularly sprayed over inhabited areas, farmland, livestock and areas of invaluable biodiversity.8 The National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, a Federal Advisory Committee to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, issued a letter on July 19 2001 stating that; Aerial spraying of the herbicide has

caused eye, respiratory, skin and digestive ailments; destroyed subsistence crops; sickened domestic animals; and contaminated water supplies.8 Even anti-drug development projects, including ones funded by U.S. Aid, the UN,

the Colombian government and international NGOs, have been destroyed by fumigation. One of many examples is that of CORCUSA, an organic coffee cooperative founded to provide peasant farmers with an alternative to coca cultivation. CORCUSA was fumigated in 2005 and again in 2007 destroying the coffee crop and the project s organic certification for future crops.9 As well as the clear human health, food security and environmental risks involved in the fumigation campaign, it has also been a massive failure in achieving its stated goal; the eradication of the coca crop. Coca, unlike most other food crops, is actually quite resistant to aerial spraying of glyphosate. Many farmers who have their food crops destroyed are left with few options when coca is all that will grow on their land after the spraying of glyphosate so the result of the fumigation campaign has been a marked increase in coca cultivation.9 Militarisation of the War on Drugs The militaristic approach to fighting the drug war has

intensified the conflict in Colombia. The result has been mass displacement and disenfranchisement of people which, in turn, has pushed more people into some area of the drug trade. Whats more, numerous studies dating back to the 1980 s have mutually concluded that militarising the drug war would have little to no effect on the consumption of illicit drugs in the United States .10

Human Rights K

1NC
Not only are current counter-narcotics strategies ineffective but they lead to social instability and a crackdown on personal liberties Rao, 12 (Kumar, attorney at The Bronx Defenders in New York City and a fellow at the Center for American Progress Leadership
Institute in Washington, D.C., Kumar Rao: The War on Drugs: A Shake-down, Not a Fair Shake for the Middle Class, Newstex, 12/18/2012, Lexis, JKahn) In the wake of President Obama's re-election and the fervor around "fiscal cliff" negotiations, issues related to middle class empowerment and fairness are rightfully at the center of our national policy agenda[1]. Decisions related to tax burden allocations and spending priorities are being made that have the potential to affect the middle class for a generation. It

is a watershed moment for our nation to end policies that have unfairly kept people from entering or remaining in the middle class. The "war on drugs" is one such policy. It has become the longest standing war[2] in American history -- spanning half a century, while being waged mostly within our borders and against our own people. President Obama stated[3] that his re-election gave him a mandate "to help middle-class families and families that are
working hard to try and get into the middle class." The president spoke inspiringly throughout his campaign about the idea that everyone is entitled to a fair shake[4]. And he continues to speak specifically about economic policies to bring about this progress.

The war on drugs is an impediment to realizing that vision. Instead of giving people a fair shake, we are giving them a shake-down . In New York City, for example, marijuana possession remains the most
common arrest charge[5] within the criminal justice system. Indeed, the vast bulk of all charges pending in the system are drug related and a byproduct of the aggressive, almost hysterical policing of residents[6] (overwhelmingly of color) within our cities. Beyond the short-term humiliation that people must endure while being stopped and frisked[7], or booked and jailed, the longer term effects for both individuals and communities can be disastrous. A recent FBI report[8], for example, found that there were 1.5 million drug arrests across the country in 2011. Through punitive enforcement and ever expanding legal and social penalties, these arrests have

devastated individuals[9], families and whole communities in its wake -- all without actually addressing or rectifying the real damage drug addiction can actually have on people. And quite expectedly, they represent impassable roadblocks for families hoping to stay in the middle class or those with aspirations to join it. The war on drugs has prevented and continues to preclude mass groups of people from upward mobility -keeping them locked into legal limbo, economic stagnation and state-sponsored social instability . At The Bronx Defenders[10], we see firsthand and try to fight against the catastrophic fallout on families from the
endless prosecutions of non-violent drug-related offenses. For a primary breadwinner of a household such as a utility worker or building janitor, the mere fact of an arrest can mean the loss of a job. For a teen with aspirations of going onto college[11], marijuana possession conviction can bar financial aid for a year. For mothers and fathers, a drug arrest can mean the removal of

their children[12] from their homes and the placement of the kids with a foster family or in a group home. For those of limited

financial means, mandatory court fees and fines[13] related to minor arrests can snowball, damage credit scores and trigger collection agency actions. For a non-citizen lawful resident, simple marijuana possession convictions alone can result in deportation to a foreign country[14] that they know no one in and nothing about. For whole families, it can mean temporary or even permanent exile from public housing, or eviction from their private apartment. When multiplied by the thousands in a city like New York, and by millions across the nation, the

consequences become increasingly clear, and increasingly dire: a cycle of individual, family and community destabilization with permanent scarring for

everyone involved. But this is a solvable crisis and one ripe for our re-consideration at the national level. A GQ Article[15] from this past summer suggested that President Obama was considering focusing his attention to the war on drugs in a possible second term. Let's hope he does. Beyond the moral impetus of treating our fellow countrymen with dignity and equal justice, increasingly highprofile appeals[16] for significant reforms to the country's drug laws from a diverse pool of fiscal, libertarian, and macroeconomic perspectives are emerging. What many across the political spectrum[17] are finally realizing is that the war on drugs costs

too much, impinges on our personal liberties and unnecessarily prevents people from fully contributing to the economy. We can end draconian policing, move towards decriminalization of marijuana, treat

substance abuse as a public health problem and not a criminal one, and invest in our youth and adults by supporting, not targeting, our communities. We can spend our resources developing the middle class, not shrinking it. To do so, we must eliminate the crushing collateral consequences of our extreme and arcane drug policies. Federal, state and local policymakers all

have a responsibility and role to end this so-called war on drugs, and to allow our fellow residents to live in dignity and with equal opportunity for real middle class advancement. It's the
fair thing to do. It's the smart thing to do. And the timing, more than ever, is right.

Terrorists - Link
Tagging traffickers as terrorists is a justification for human rights abuses Isacson, 05 (Adam, Senior Associate for Regional Security Policy, the Washington Office on Latin America, M.A. from Yale

University in International Relations, B.A. Hampshire College, Social Science, The U.S. Military in the War on Drugs, Part of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America, Youngers and Rosin, 2005, Rienner, Google Books, JKahn) Human rights defenders in Latin America, echoing debates over the civil liberties impact of the USA Patriot Act in the United States, highlight the potential dangers in giving governments such enormous latitude to define who is a terrorist. This inherently vague

term , any rightly fear, may become a catch-all to describe any internal political opposition. The regional crusade against communists during the Cold War gives abundant precedent for concern. The war on terror layered over the war on drugs may similarly serve as a rationale for security forces to crack down on peaceful reformers and proponents of existing regimes. Labor and peasant leaders, human rights monitors, independent journalists, neighborhood activists, and members of opposition political parties may find themselves subject to surveillance, harassment , or worse from U.S.-funded, U.S.-trained security units. With disturbing frequency, regional leaders are already referring to their peaceful opponents Bolivian coca growers, Columbian human rights groups, Honduran environmental activists as terrorists or allies of terrorists. Drug traffickers and insurgents are fundamentally different confusion destroys policy effectiveness Gallahue, 12 (Patrick, contributor to the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, B.A. in East Asian Studies

from Long Island University, LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Narco-Terror: Conflating the Wars on Drugs and Terror, University of Essex, 2012, http://projects.essex.ac.uk/ehrr/V8N1/Gallahue.pdf, JKahn) It must have been a confusing experience for alleged drug trafficker and informer, Haji Juma Khan, to be taken into custody in 2008. For years, the illiterate kingpin2 had reportedly met with and provided intelligence to the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) about the Taliban and other traffickers.3 Though he is believed to have supplied money to the Taliban for protection,4 it has also been suggested that he worked with provincial council chief and Afghan President Hamid Karzais late half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai (an accusation Mr. Wali Karzai strongly denied).5 Yet in late 2008, Juma Khan was taken off the US payroll and into the custody of federal prosecutors.6 Instead of his customary shopping trips in Manhattan, Juma Khan was brought to jail to be charged under a 2006 narco-terrorism law, which the prior year had been included in an amendment to the Patriot Act.7 The law makes it possible to prosecute and impose escalated sanctions against international drug traffickers who support terrorism. The case illustrates the unpredictable role that drugs play vis--vis terrorists and other armed groups. Insurgencies frequently turn to drugs to fund operations8 and/or reap the political capital that may come with controlling local economies.9 This is very much the case with the Taliban now. However,

that does not mean that drug trafficking is synonymous with terrorism, nor are all drug-related crimes linked to insurgencies. Confusing them can lead to policies and proposals which are not only politically problematic ,10 but contravene international law . Since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (9/11), the US government has found itself in conflict with an enemy that heavily exploits the drug trade, yet drug traffickers and insurgents are hardly identical enemies with indistinguishable goals. The case of Juma Khan reflects the fluid role of drugs in a
conflict situation.

Mexico Link
The U.S. government has turned a blind eye towards egregious Mexican enforcement offenses Freeman and Luis Sierra, 05 (*Laurie, Director for Yemen at the National Security Council, former State

Department Official, fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, writer for the Washington Post Mexico Bureau, M.A. in International Politics from Princeton University, degree from Duke in Latin American Studies, **Jorge, Knight International Journalism Fellow, degree in International Journalism from the University of Southern California, defense policy and economics fellow at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University, Mexico: The Militarization Traip, 2005, part of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The impact of U.S. Policy, Rienner, Google Books, JKahn)

Mexican police and soldiers have committed grave human rights violations during dug control efforts, and few are ever prosecuted for these crimes. In some cases, abusive soldiers or police have been the beneficiaries of U.S. training or other assistance. In other cases, the U.S. government has turned a blind eye toward human rights violations in the interest of obtaining drug-related information.

US Policy Link
U.S. drug enforcement policy fuels Mexican militarism that causes atrocities and human rights violations Freeman and Luis Sierra, 05 (*Laurie, Director for Yemen at the National Security Council, former State

Department Official, fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, writer for the Washington Post Mexico Bureau, M.A. in International Politics from Princeton University, degree from Duke in Latin American Studies, **Jorge, Knight International Journalism Fellow, degree in International Journalism from the University of Southern California, defense policy and economics fellow at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University, Mexico: The Militarization Traip, 2005, part of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The impact of U.S. Policy, Rienner, Google Books, JKahn)

The links between U.S. counterdrug policy and Mexicos human rights problems and fragile democracy are difficult to disentangle . Mexico had a dismal human rights record long before U.S. drug control policy took hold, and Mexican presidents have frequently experimented with militarizing policy and law enforcement institutions, often in response to their own citizens clamor for a tough-on-crime approach. Yet by fueling the Mexican militarys intrusion into policy work, by supporting policy units and forces that are not transparent or accountable , and by applying a scorecard approach to drug control, U.S. drug control policies have adversely affected Mexicos human rights situation. The State Department itself has recognized that the police and military were accused of committing serious human rights violations as they carried out the Governments efforts to combat dug cartels.86

Impact - HR
Drug-war rhetoric and militarization violate human rights Gallahue, 12 (Patrick, contributor to the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, B.A. in East Asian Studies
from Long Island University, LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Narco-Terror: Conflating the Wars on Drugs and Terror, University of Essex, 2012, http://projects.essex.ac.uk/ehrr/V8N1/Gallahue.pdf, JKahn) This paper examines the conflation of the wars on drugs and terror, particularly since 9/11, and the risks

that merging wars12 pose to human rights . Section one presents the rhetoric that has emerged since 9/11 linking drugs and terror. States have since attempted to use the United Nations as a vessel for classifying drugs as a threat to international security, which raised alarms with some governments who expressed concern about further militarisation of drug policy . Nowhere is this form of militarisation more
evident than in actual armed conflict situations where the wars on terror and drugs are being waged. Section two focuses on Afghanistan, where the United States argued that drug traffickers with links to the Taliban were

legitimate targets. This paper contends that such a strategy violates international humanitarian law . As section three will demonstrate, even in peacetime situations, drugs have been dealt with as a security threat through the engagement of militaries or the use of emergency laws which have a disastrous impact on human rights . Such examples illustrate the human rights risks associated with conflating terrorism and drugs.

Impact Error Replication

Militarized approaches to drug policy lead to error replication that continuously destroys rights Gallahue, 12 (Patrick, contributor to the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, B.A. in East Asian Studies
from Long Island University, LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Narco-Terror: Conflating the Wars on Drugs and Terror, University of Essex, 2012, http://projects.essex.ac.uk/ehrr/V8N1/Gallahue.pdf, JKahn) The increasing link, in some cases, between drug trafficking and the financing of terrorism, is also a

source of growing concern.23 The classification of drugs as a threat to international security also raises concerns. The

Security Council is empowered under Chapter VII to maintain or restore international peace and security.24 Chapter VII actions can include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations and could give rise to 'demonstrations, blockade, and other operati ons by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations'.25 During the debate, the Venezuelan representative warned that [Drug

trafficking] should be dealt with under the General Assembly and other relevant organs of the United Nations. In particular, foreign military bases should not be part of the solution .26 Several months later,
Venezuela repeated a similar statement at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs.27 A Presidential Statement linking drugs and terror is still a long way from formally permitting armed action against States in the name of the war on drugs. However, post-

9/11 there have been persistent attempts 'to apply the existing laws of war to a global war on terrorism including rules governing the legitimate use of force.28 There is far more that can be said on this

subject,29 but it is clear that the war on terror tested many experts conceptions of armed conflict, including when force can be lawfully used. Thus if counter-narcotics objectives are subsumed under the need to suppress global

terrorism, there would seem to be a risk of extending the nebulous limits of the war on terror to something even more diffuse . Might some States argue that they have a right to carry out air strikes, aerial fumigation or
other counter-narcotics activities in the territory of another if they suspect profits (no matter how far removed from the target State) could be used to fund terrorist activities?30

AT: Perm
No Gallahue, 12 (Patrick, contributor to the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, B.A. in East Asian Studies
from Long Island University, LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Narco-Terror: Conflating the Wars on Drugs and Terror, University of Essex, 2012, http://projects.essex.ac.uk/ehrr/V8N1/Gallahue.pdf, JKahn)

The war on terror has been fraught with human rights concerns, such as challenges to fair trial norms, the right to liberty and security of person and the right to life. Even before 9/11, many governments had restricted the enjoyment of similar rights of drug offenders using emergency laws. Capital drug laws exist in many
States and drug suspects have been subject to unfair trials in specialised courts or detention without due process guarantees by numerous governments, despite the forceful criticism of human rights advocates. As the nexus between the rhetoric and tactics of the wars on drugs and terror narrows, a number of troubling proposals have emerged that are

incompatible with international human rights and humanitarian law. In conflict situations, drug offenderseven those that provide financial support to insurgenciesare not legitimate targets. Engaging military forces in law enforcement functions is not always appropriate94 and applying specialised systems of justice to
people accused of drug crimes is immensely problematic to due process norms and other international human rights obligations. Introducing the death penalty for drug traffickers, as has occurred in Iraq for instance, is at odds with

interpretations of the right to life by numerous human rights bodies, including the UN Human Rights Committee.95 It
seems fairly obvious that drugs and terror are distinct phenomena. Though the two may be linked, they should not be treated as identical. To do otherwise is to tread into dangerous territory for fair trial norms, the right to liberty and security of person and the right to life, among other human rights and humanitarian law protections.

Otherization K

1NC
Their approach to drug violence sustains the securitized inferno behind the War on Drugs --- frames the other as an enemy and enables widespread racism --causes the worst forms of human rights violations --- also turns the case: their approach destroys necessary cooperation and corruption dooms it to failure Fukumi, 8 (Sayaka, PhD student in International Relations at the University of Nottingham, Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America, Ashgate Publishing Company, pg. 106-108, Tashma) The United States considers cocaine trafficking as a national security threat. This is because it sees cocaine trafficking as a potential harm to the US national economy and moral values, as well as potential support to international terrorism and regional instability. In the United States, cocaine traffi cking is
experienced in a combination of direct and indirect harms. Although the supply and consumption of cocaine affect various aspects of national life, the impact of counter-narcotics measures cannot be disregarded. This is because the activities of criminal organisations and law enforcement agencies are, to some extent, inter-related, and the impact of these two different activities are part of the threat posed by cocaine traffi cking. The criminal activities and law enforcement operations, however, affect the

state in different ways. Tandy, the chief of the DEA, expresses the threat posed by cocaine traffi cking as: Drug traffi cking

organizations attack the soul and fabric of America in pursuit of money.189 On the other hand, Reinarman and Levine claim that US drug control policies have caused more damage through racism, poverty and misinformation.190 The impact of the cocaine trade in the United States is more closely linked to the

consequences of law enforcement than the nature of trafficking organisations. Although the US government justifi es the signifi cance of strict legislation against cocaine and crack,191 Brownstein maintains that the crack crisis and crack epidemic were inventions to justify the massive expansion of the criminal justice system and the loosening of restrictions on law enforcement that were central to the justice juggernaut.192 The US government regards cocaine as a foreign enemy to its economy and society due to its origin and the fact that those actively involved in the cocaine trade are likely to be Latin Americans and other ethnic minorities. The large sums of narco-dollars laundered into the US national economy
support ethnic minorities and illegal immigrants, allowing them to survive and enrich themselves in the United States. At the same time, the social and economic costs from the increasing number of cocaine addicts are expanding. In the cocaine trade, the United

States is losing both financial and human resources. In addition, there is a fear in the US government that narco-dollars can fuel regional instability in Latin America, particularly in Colombia. The terrorist
groups in Latin America might be able to expand their activities from the domestic to the international level supported by narcodollars. Such regional instability will cause damage to the United States both politically and economically.

Drug control in general, therefore, is regarded as a policy that alienates some minority groups. The image attached to each drug remains vivid to the Americans: it is believed to be a rampant substance in black and Hispanic communities although the majority of users are white. The cocaine
trade is dominated by Hispanic populations because most cocaine is produced in Latin America and distributed through immigrant communities in the United States. The law enforcers, therefore, target particular communities for cocaine

arrests, and in doing so, the disregard for human rights has created tension with local communities. As a result, some communities in inner cities are ruled by the cocaine traffickers the emergence of states within a state. Law enforcement targeting often depends on profiling such things as ethnicity and the assets of
suspects.

The law enforcement agencies can earn their operational funding from seizures of assets and arrests of cocaine traffickers. This system of providing seized assets as rewards to the law enforcement agencies spawned injustice and corruption among the agents. Law enforcement officers steal confiscated assets and make illegal arrests and house searches, as well as receiving cash from the traffickers. At the higher levels, investigations are neglected. These cases could be concealed from the public , but when they are exposed, it leads to distrust of the authorities. As a result of the War on Drugs, the entire criminal justice system has been losing credibility.193
Turning to the diplomatic impact, the United States fears regional instability fuelled by narco-dollars, as well as the massive fl ow of cocaine from Latin America. In order to reduce cocaine production, the United States is actively involved in extradition and bilateral efforts to control cocaine from source countries. The US approach to drug control, however, sometimes

disregards the sovereignty of other states and international law. Narcotics Certifi cation can develop negative responses from Latin American states because US foreign narcotics policies towards Latin America have been insensitive to

sovereignty issues. This can trigger discord, and make bilateral cooperation difficult , even though Latin American states heavily depend on the United States for economic support. Overall, cocaine traffi cking to the United State has been perceived as a threat, which directly and indirectly affected the economic and public order of its domain. The War on Drugs is supposed to protect America from danger, but ironically, it

creates more danger to the society and eventually to the state. Fierce law enforcement practices have brought more violence than the cocaine trade originally did, and restricted the liberty of citizens in the name of protection and justice. Furthermore, aggressive and coercive drug control policy towards Latin America has been making co-operation with other states more difficult. The alternative is to reject the affirmative in favor of a cooperative approach towards drug trafficking --- failure to engage with the other turns the case Fukumi, 8 (Sayaka, PhD student in International Relations at the University of Nottingham, Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America, Ashgate Publishing Company, pg. 225-226, Tashma)
A Possibility for Multinational Supply Reduction Project Drug control policies adopted by the EU and the United States have

not achieved their goal to reduce cocaine production in the Andes, although they are making some progress. The EUs alternative development

programmes have introduced legal crops to substitute coca cultivation, and strengthened local government. However, it is questionable whether coca growers give up cultivation when their incomes reach a certain level. Generating income from legal crops is more difhcult than obtaining an income from cocaine because of` the competition in the market. Therefore, a USAID official claims that the coca growers continue coca cultivation in order to spread risks. 'S In order to eliminate poverty by altemative crops, the Andean farmers need protected markets until they become competitive in the global economy. This, however, conflicts with the interests of EU domestic producers and those who have already been granted trade preference.' After contributing substantial sums to development projects, states may refuse further sacrifices for Andean states. The weakness of alternative development projects is the lack of an income guarantee, and the lack of power to impose legal crop cultivation. On the other hand, US law enforcement operations weaken cocaine trafhcking networks and encourage people to uphold law and order in the community. Law enforcement has two aims: one is to punish cocaine trafhckers and make seizures of cocaine, and the other is to deter people from entering the cocaine trade. However, in order to pursue punishment and deterrence, law enforcement agents and govemment authorities need to be prepared for the risks of`attacks from armed cocaine trafhckers. In addition, law enforcement operations can show the consequences of becoming involved in cocaine trafhcking to the community, but it does not provide any alternative way of living, unlike economic projects. Considering these facts, supply

reduction in the Andean states requires a large programme of wideranging projects that need to be followed in parallel. This is because of the very nature of the cocaine
problem in the Andes. Firstly, coca leaves (but not cocaine) are in the life ofindigenous people, and policies should be supported to turn the coca leaves into legal products, such as teas.'7 Secondly, the cocaine industry impacts deeply on the economic, political and social spheres, and has partly grown from the weakness of the govemment authorities. In order to weaken the cocaine industry, a drug control scheme should tackle two elements simultaneously: one is the cocaine trafficking network and the other is the strengthening of the govemment. This is the equivalent of balancing law enforcement operations and alternative development programmes. However, tackling

multiple problems related to cocaine trafficking in one project is impossible to achieve by bilateral co-operation due to the costs involved. In order to conduct such an operation, it is necessary to divide tasks among the capable members of the international community through multinational co-operation , as the Colombian govemment attempted in Plan Colombia. In this manner, each participant
of the project can pursue its prioritised policy with co-ordination and co-operation with other participants. For example, the EU conducts altemative development whilst the United States operates law enforcement.

This division of tasks is possible because of various perceptions of threats posed by cocaine trafficking. Cocaine trafhcking affects the weakest point of each state, and every state experiences the impact in various degrees.'8 Therefore, the elements each actor regards as threats and problems posed by cocaine trafficking are equally important to the control of the flow of cocaine. The analysis of EU and US drug control policy leads to the fact that these actors employ solutions that they can operate most comfortably. In other words, participants playing to their strengths in a co-ordinated manner can achieve a common goal to reduce cocaine production.
The difficulty in multinational co-operation against cocaine trafficking is that each participant has a different perception of the threat posed by cocaine trafficking. Therefore, they may not agree to co-operate with each other, as was the case with the EU and the United States in Plan Colombia. A drug control programme consisting of various components to cover several aspects ofthe problem may be possible because of the various ways actors securitise cocaine trafficking. But, such programmes are difficult to realise because ofthe differences in how the actors see the threat. The actors can refuse to co-operate because they do not share the other sides understanding of cocaine trafhcking. If the participants of a multinational drug control co-

operation could commit themselves to controlling drugs and accept working with those who have different points of view, a project like Plan Colombia might work.

Epistemology 2NC
Their epistemology is flawed --- the benefits of War on Drugs constitute a hyperbolic ruse perpetuated by the government --- drug trade is only violent because its a reaction to the War on Drugs and health effects have been overstated Fukumi, 8 (Sayaka, PhD student in International Relations at the University of Nottingham, Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America, Ashgate Publishing Company, pg. 90-94, Tashma)
Crime and Violence related to Cocaine The use of violence by traffickers and dealers is a common feature in the cocaine trade. However, some argue that violence

in cocaine trafficking is not as high as it is reported by the media. Brownstein maintains that cocainerelated violence is a social construction of politicians, policy-makers and law enforcers through the media in order to promote a drug scare and to encourage public support for the expansion of law enforcement and the contraction of civil liberties.87 Also, Zimring and Hawkins maintain that the cocaine
trade may play a substantial role in predatory crime in the United States, yet there is not enough evidence to prove causality.88 Violence seems to play a significant role in the cocaine trade, although some facts reported

by the government could have been exaggerated. MacCoun and Reuter identify the potential causes of violence
at drug scenes, particularly crack and cocaine, as: the youthfulness of participants; the value of the drugs themselves; the intensity of law enforcement; and the indirect consequence of drug use.89 For the dealers and traffi ckers, violence is a necessary means to protect their business because of its illegal nature.90 In respect to the use of violence in the cocaine trade, according to Goldstein et al, between 1984 and 1988 drug and alcohol-related homicides increased by 11%.91 Among the homicide cases, systemic homicides tripled in 1988 in comparison to 1984, and 88% were related to either cocaine or crack dealings.92 The increase of systemic homicides related to the cocaine trade could result from the expansion of the cocaine market as well as the Colombian distribution networks. At the higher levels of the cocaine distribution system, the cell managers of the Colombian cartels apply violence as punishment and as warnings. Fuentes believes that: A respected manager with the effective use of violence tends to have less betrayal by both customers and workers.93 For the cell managers, violence is a tool to keep order and enforce the rules to operate their transaction successfully. The individual dealers at the lower levels of the cocaine distribution system use violence in the same manner to ensure payment from customers and to protect their own turf. At the street level dealings of cocaine, dealers purchase the drug on either a cash or consignment basis through their own networks.94 Making deals in this manner often is a cause of violent disputes over the payment because the customers fail to return with the rest of the payment by the agreed date. This kind of operation through loose individual connections with weak hierarchical structures is known as the freelance model.95 Curtis and Wendel describe the characteristics of cocaine dealing in this manner as: Freelancing tends to be the most visible, disruptive, and violent form of market organization. Socially bonded organizations are based on social ties, such as kinship, ethnicity, and neighborhood. They are held together by personal relationships, are often discreet about their sales practices (for example, they tend not to advertise drugs openly in the street), and are often less violent and disruptive to their communities than are other types of drug-dealing organizations.96 The lack of ties between individual dealers and the community to which they belong made them indifferent to others, and apply violence frequently. Therefore, Goldstein concludes that homicides in the drug scene are more likely to be a result of illicit dru g market disputes rather than psychopharmacological effects of crack.97 Turning to the relationship between law enforcers and some local communities, there are conflicts

between them, particularly within inner-cities. This is because the local people have felt abused by the law enforcers. It relates to the anti-loitering laws that give the law enforcement agents the right to arrest suspected drugrelated offenders based solely on profiles. Impressions from the profi les can be largely infl uenced by personal beliefs and values. As Glasser and Siegel point out, this operation contains the danger of twisting the facts with prejudice residing in officials.98 It creates the risks of cocaine related arrests being the
result of prejudice in the law enforcement agents.99 For example, since there is a perception that

the cocaine trade is largely controlled by the Hispanic and black population, there is prejudice against these minority groups. The prejudice has shaped

particular trends that do not fi t the profi le of American cocaine use. The controversy in the trends is that the majority of cocaine users are white middle-class suburbanites and the majority of cocaine arrests are unemployed black males.100 Due to such prejudice in the law enforcers, in some inner cities, such as Baltimore, more than 50% of the black male population between the ages of 18 and 35 were imprisoned.101 Furthermore, in 1989, black and Hispanics constitute 92% of all those arrested as drug offenders, although government statistics show that blacks constitute only 1520% of US drug users.102

Arrest without warrant based on police suspicion of cocaine dealing may be effective to capture people, but at the same time, it can increase distrust of law enforcement enforcers. Such sentiment can increase hostility toward law enforcers. McCoun and Reuter argue that the dispute between the communities and law enforcers is evident because the ways in which some police officers treat cocaine offenders were so inhumane that conflict between inner-city citizens and the police emerged.103

It is likely that the cocaine scene is associated with violence by the traffi ckers to protect their deals, although the frequency and level of violence could vary. McKenan reports that hostility

and violence against the police is so fierce that no

police officers can enter some areas.104 Following the absence of offi cial law enforcement mechanisms, the areas tend to be ruled by the drug traffi ckers. Under such circumstances, there are possibilities that bystanders will be the victims of shootings between cocaine traffickers.105
Although there are cases of violence in some areas, it usually targets particular people, such as traitors to the traffi cking organisations, and politicians and law enforcers acting against traffi ckers interests. The possibility of cocaine users

getting involved in violent crime, such as homicide, is low , but usually they are more likely to be involved in property
crime and theft in order to obtain fi nancial resources to use drugs.106 The neighbourhood of the areas with large numbers of cocaine users suffer from higher rates of petty crime, such as burglary and theft. The police are reluctant to answer non-drug related cases when they are called. As a consequence, statistics released by the Los Angeles Times state that only about 47% of all slayings from 1990 and 1994 were even prosecuted in Los Angeles County, compared with about 80% in the late 1960s.107 This approach appears to be over emphasising the drug related cases and neglecting other criminal cases. In addition to the insecurity arising from the increase of violence associated with cocaine traffi cking, the government has been seriously concerned about the harm to health posed by the use of cocaine. The number of cocaine users peaked in the 1990s, and then started to decline.108 Following the trend of decline, according to reports from the DEA and ONDCP, the statistics indicate that cocaine users (including both heavy and casual) remain about 2.4% of the total population.109 The health problems related to the cocaine trade are more likely to be caused by the related activities of the cocaine addicts, such as prostitution. Therefore, the high HIV positive rates among US cocaine users have been regarded as a consequence of needle sharing since other developed countries in which the government offers harm reduction programmes110 register lower rates.111Some cocaine addicts tend to engage in prostitution to support their habit.112 Through these, the cocaine addicts may spread infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and other sexual diseases to the community. For example, Colorado Springs, which is known for high infection rates of HIV in the community, has a large number of prostitutes and injecting drug users.113 According to the research by Neaiguset al., the sample of injecting drug users contained 40% HIV seropositive, a disease that is transmitted by syringe sharing and sexual behaviours.114 These studies indicate that the existence of a large community (network) can trigger the rapid spread of HIV. There are also dangers to health associated with cocaine use. However, the harm of actual cocaine use (such as instant addiction and death), according to Baum, has been exaggerated by the government.115 There are certainly health problems caused by the frequent use of cocaine. Those consuming cocaine excessively over long periods of time may experience paranoia, hallucinations and physical damages, and also tend to become aggressive.116 Cocaine

is not a physically addictive substance like opium, and normally death is caused by an overdose. The media has sensationalised information related to cocaine and crack by showing crack babies being addicted to cocaine in their
mothers womb.117 In reality, the infl uence of cocaine on unborn babies has yet to be proved.

Uniqueness 2NC
We dont have to win the alternative or framework --- the War on Drugs is inherently unsustainable --- itll decline absent the plan Fukumi, 8 (Sayaka, PhD student in International Relations at the University of Nottingham, Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America, Ashgate Publishing Company, pg. 174-175, Tashma) Also, the US war on drugs increased the dependency of Andean states on the US with certification, threatening the continuation of US aid. As Gerber and Jensen maintain: Drug control policy is simply another area in which the United States tries to force other nations to adopt its ideology.23" Hostile reactions from some concerned states and the increased tension between the Latin American states and the United States stemmed from the coercive manner of the United States to pursue its interests.235
It is said that the United States has transferred the costs of war on drugs to the producer side foreseeing social disruption and political and economic pressures at home.236 The intention of the United States, however, is not as it appears

the rest of the world. The Americans believe they are pursuing their policy not only for their own interests, but also for others interests.2" The impression that the United States is coercive may come from the use of

to

certification and sanctions as well as the way in which the United States handles the execution of policies. According to Bagley, One of the most glaring deficiencies of the US strategy is the tendency toward nonconsultative,

unilateral decision-making in bilateral or multilateral affairsfm The United States aims at its policy without any concern or warning to the host governments, particularly during electoral campaigns or after dramatic incidents.239

Security Link 2NC

Their discourse is tainted with a flawed securitizing mindset --- they conceptualize drugs as a threat that must be eradicated Fukumi, 8 (Sayaka, PhD student in International Relations at the University of Nottingham, Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America, Ashgate Publishing Company, pg. 222-223, Tashma) The United States: A National Security Threat and Law Enforcement In the United States, cocaine trafficking is treated as a foreign threat that undermines the economy and the countrys moral values. From the US perspective, cocaine trafficking is a national security threat from Latin America that affects its values and identity. Cocaine is perceived as a foreign enemy invading the United States. In addition, the US distrusts the ability of Andean countries to control
drugs and this has partlyjustified its interventionist approach. For the United States, it could be said that cocaine trafficking is a hybrid of traditional and nontraditional security threats because cocaine trafficking affects both its identity and the quality of its functions as a state, but it is a harm caused by a foreign enemy. In this sense, supply reduction for the United States is of cocaine trafficking is that the US emphasises the foreign origin of cocaine whilst the EU emphasises domestic consumption of cocaine.

equal to waging a war against Latin American cocaine cartels. The difference between the EU and US perceptions The US regards cocaine as a social evil that harms the nation." Cocaine spreads sexual diseases, such as
HIV/AIDS, it costs the US economy an estimated $100 billion and affects the social fabric and Americas moral values. America ns have a zero-tolerance attitude to the harm cocaine causes in their community." Drug traffickers and addicts are referred to as enemies in the war on drugs, and need to be captured and punished. The war on drugs targets ethnic minorities, particularly black people who use crack and Hispanics who deal in crack cocaine. The US is concerned about traffickers bringing cocaine into its territory, as well as the instability of the Andean region caused by narco-dollars. The Andean region is regarded as particularly vulnerable to the spread of insurgency conflicts from one country to another. The US is concerned because of its proximity, dominance in the region, and close relationships with many Latin American states.2

In the war on drugs, the way the United States protects its homeland is to try to prevent the enemy entering its territory. This is the concept behind supply reduction by eradicating coca fields and the interdiction
of cocaine supply. The capitalist economy is based on the interactions of supply and demand. However, the United States has taken the view that if there were no supply there would be no demand. This reverses the idea of capitalism: which holds that where there is demand, supply will arise to meet it. Therefore, the US government has emphasized law enforcement operations and supply reduction in the source countries." Law enforcement operations are executed with expanded authority, and less attention than Europe pays to human rights. This is because human rights and sovereignty of Andean states are a secondary concem for the United States in a war situation. Coca bushes were eradicated in the Andean countries and cocaine was interdicted in the transit states, both measures were intended to reduce the cocaine reaching US territory.

K Stuff
The War on Drugs is often framed as a quest to protect morality --- that is a ruse perpetuated by the government --- it sustains extreme losses of civil liberties Fukumi, 8 (Sayaka, PhD student in International Relations at the University of Nottingham, Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America, Ashgate Publishing Company, pg. 94-97, Tashma)
The Limitation of Civil Liberties The United States has a reputation

for widely accepted civil liberties and protected civil rights. However, Americans have much less personal autonomy in comparison to during the period before the War on Drugs.118 The war on drugs is regarded as a means to protect American values and morals.119 This is because the cocaine situation in the late 1980s was regarded as an opportunity for institutionalising the

judgements and tactics through public support during the 1990s. The cocaine epidemic in the 1980s was driven by the fear of disruption to the American social structure by the mass fl ow and use of cocaine.120 Politicians kept appealing to citizens to preserve morals and values in American society, and made them believe that tolerance to cocaine, such as legalisation, is equal to the advocacy of international narco-terrorism.121 The government claimed to be committed to Americas moral regeneration.122

The willingness of the US to limit its own freedoms for the sake of drug control appeared to be a consequence of the claim by the government: [Americans] should be extremely reluctant to restrict [drug enforcement offi cers] within formal and arbitrary lines.123 At the height of the War on Drugs, Americans were willing to sacrifice their own civil liberties. Opinion polls revealed that they even approved of extreme measures , such as: giving up some freedoms (62%), using the military to control the domestic drug trade (82%), letting police
search homes of suspected drug dealers without a warrant (52%), and reporting drug users to the police (83%).124 Not only the public but also the Supreme Court is supportive of limiting civil rights in exchange for fighting the

war on drugs. The Supreme Court ruled that government agencies can evict tenants in public housing even when the resident is unaware that a visiting family member or relative is using drugs.125 Zimring and Hawkins claim that: Public support for extreme governmental responses to drugs is higher than for authoritarian countermeasures to any other social problem.126 It is considered that Americans
have opposed drug use and feared drug experiences because they seemed to threaten a generally accepted set of values and aspirations that dated from the beginnings of the national experience.127 The restrictions on freedom for the fight against drugs are understood: as drugs

forced the United States to strike a new balance between order and individual liberties.128 To some extent, the end has come to justify the means in

the War on Drugs. The beginning of Americas sacrifi ce of civil rights was marked by an executive order for urine-tests to be conducted on all civilian federal workers to ensure they were not drug users.129 Some private companies followed the government direction, and requested their employees take the test. Although the urine test was eventually withdrawn from the drug control policy, it seemed that there was little opposition to such a test among Americans. As a consequence, drug testing of students

has been operated consistently, and Supreme Court Justice A.M. Kennedy did not accept the challenge of a high school
student against urine testing in 2002.130

In respect to legislation, the punishments for cocaine and crack offences are decided by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and Omnibus Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988.131 These laws impose mandatory minimum imprisonment 132 on the offenders and prohibit parole.133 At trial, according to Sterling, the President of Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, it is unnecessary for the police, federal agents, and prosecutors to present hard evidence against a suspect for prosecution.134 The testimony of co-operating individuals, the snitch, against the

suspect will be enough to convict.135 The only way for drug offenders to receive a reduced sentence is to assist the government as an informant.136 Considering the desperation of the convict to minimise the sentence, the information provided to the government could be unreliable. Gray maintains that: [the] War on Drugs has made [the United States] and its institutions so desperate that our judgement and our reason have been seriously clouded.137 The war on drugs and the claim of moral regeneration brings the risk of tighter government control on individuals, the

loss of civil liberties, and injustice under the uniform mandatory minimum sentencing. The information provided through such policies could lead to limited understanding of the cocaine trade and the nature of substances. Decision rule reject every instance Petro 74 (Sylvester, Professor of Law at NYU, Toledo Law Review, Spring, p. 480, http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200304/0783.html)

However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway - "I believe in only one thing: liberty." And it is always well to bear in mind David Hume's observation: "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." Thus, it is unacceptable

to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no importance because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Dijas. In sum, if one believed in freedom as a supreme value and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit. The war on drugs is patriarchal, violent, essentialist, racist, capitalist, and biopolitical

Luff, 92 board member of Marylanders for Drug Policy Reform, has served as an ACLU panel attorney in challenging First Amendment violations in drug / alcohol treatment programs (Ellen, The Drug War and Patriarchy, Off Our Backs, Vol. 22 No. 6, June 1992 http://www.jstor.org/stable/20834097)//BI The War on Drugs bears all the hallmarks of the patriarchy: it relies primarily on force (arrest and incarceration) as a means of social control; it

promotes violence and death; it takes as complex social problem and scapegoats one group (drug users and sellers); it prefers fear to compassion; it is racist and classist in its application; it has the effect of promoting processed, manufactured products which are the result of a corporate industry (prescription tranquilizers, alcohol, cigarettes) over low tech natural products which could be the product of decentralized production (marijuana); and it is increasing the control and surveillance of the state over its citizens. By means of propaganda and force, the War on Drugs has reshaped peoples' perception of reality and diverted economic and psychic resources away from constructive solutions to social problems. And the War is proceeding and escalating virtually unchallenged in the political
arena. The Drug War has even enlisted the help of many well-meaning women who, sub scribing to the Drug War's premise that drug use is the principle cause of many of society's problems, genuinely believe that all drug use must be stamped out at all costs. After all: it is a war.

The war on drugs is part of the disaster capitalism complex whereby war becomes a business and those conducting it have a vested interest in its perpetuation

Schack, 11 Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism at Ithaca College, PhD in Media Studies from the University of Colorado (Todd, Twenty-first-century drug warriors: the press, privateers and the for-profit waging of the war on drugs, Media, War & Conflict, Vol. 4 No. 2, pg. 142-161, August 2011, Sage Journals)//BI The fact that there has been a radical, concerted effort to privatize various aspects of war-making is both widely reported and accepted, especially since the 2003 invasion of Iraq (Avant, 2007; Klein, 2007; Scahill, 2007b; Singer, 2003). The names of private military firms (PMFs) like Halliburton, KBR (Kellog, Brown and Root) and private

security contractors (PSCs) such as Blackwater (recently renamed Xe) and DynCorp, have entered common parlance, and the public has grown accustomed to hearing about fraudulent expenditures and graft, abuses of power, and even

violent criminal acts, such as the Nissour Square incident in which 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed by Blackwater security contractors. The cultural saturation of the concept of for-profit war-making is codified by the fact that it has been the subject of a major Hollywood movie, Joshua Seftels War, Inc. (2008). The political economy of this concept has best been outlined by Naomi Kleins The Shock Doctrine (2007), and I will be maintaining that the increased outsourcing of waging the drug war to PSCs represents military-industrial complex, yet with much further reaching tentacles, the

a clear case of what she has termed the disaster capitalism complex. Similar to Eisenhowers disaster capitalism complex is a global war fought on every level by private companies whose involvement is paid for with public money, with the unending mandate of protecting the United States homeland in perpetuity while eliminating all evil abroad (p. 14). The key notion as it relates to the war on drugs is the fact that the drug war provides just the sort of perpetual evil that fuels the complex. As such, it is an exciting area of opportunity or in business parlance, an emerging market for the PSC industry. Other such emerging markets include the homeland security industry, which includes interrogating prisoners, covert intelligence gathering, surveillance and data mining, and peace-keeping missions, not to mention the overall waging of the war on terror, which has become the best example to date of a nearly fully-privatized war as private contractors outnumber soldiers in
both Iraq and Afghanistan (Avant, 2007; Klein, 2007; Pelton, 2007; Scahill, 2007b; Singer, 2003). Further areas of opportunity are crisis and environmental disaster response, privatized prisons, fire and police departments. All this has grown to the extent that: Now wars and disaster responses are so fully privatized that they are themselves the new

market; there is no need to wait until after the war for the boom the medium is the message (Klein, 2007: 16). The issue at

stake here is not whether this is occurring that has long since been established, and one merely has to look into the enormous growth of PSCs as an industry over the last decade, as well as the rise in government contract expenditures, to understand the economic extent of the growth in this industry (Avant, 2007; Klein, 2007; Pelton, 2007; Singer, 2003; Wedel, 2009). Rather, with

regard to the war on drugs, at the very moment that the militarized response to the drug problem is being deemed a failure by both governmental and independent bodies worldwide (Government Accountability Office: GAO, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy),1 a new private industry is being contracted to continue that same militarized policy, an industry that is financially self-interested in perpetuating the problem rather than solving it, and further, one that operates with near total impunity and unaccountability. As such, the drug war has become a for-profit endeavor, something to invest in, to seek expansion of both markets and solutions, and to realize returns for shareholders on those investments. As for
the press, they have a role to play as well: drug wars have long proved profitable to both print and broadcast media, as scholars have shown for quite some time (Gitlin, 1989; Marez, 2004; Reeves and Campbell, 1994). The media also stand to gain from this new complex: The creeping expansion of the disaster capitalism complex into media may prove to be a

new kind of corporate synergy, one building on the vertical integration so popular in the nineties. It certainly makes sound business sense. The more panicked our societies become, convinced that there are terrorists lurking in every mosque, the higher the news ratings soar. (Klein, 2007: 541) In place of terrorists one can easily substitute drug cartels and the point is the same. In fact, this is invoking classic moral panic theory, which plays a critical

role in the medias framing of the issue, and is discussed in section IV. Overall, I am interested in investigating four main issues: the extent of drug war privatization; the structural limitations of media investigations into PSCs; the complicity of the press with drug war narratives; and finally the implications of re-conceptualizing the drug war as a for-profit endeavor.

The US uses the war on drugs as an excuse to expand military presence in Latin America to enforce unpopular neoliberal reforms

Mercille, 11 lecturer in the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy at Univeristy College Dublin, PhD from UCLA (Julien, Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economyof the war on drugs in Mexico, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 32 No. 9, 2011, pp 16371653, Taylor & Francis Online)//BI But Washington has for decades prioritised the expansion of its hegemony in Latin Americaa task

which has often involved military force to keep opposition groups under controlover fighting corruption or defending human rights. As a Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) report reviewing trends in

US military programmes with the continent concluded: Too often in Latin America, when armies have focused on an internal enemy, the definition of enemies has included political opponents of the regime in power, even those working within the political system such as activists, independent journalists, labor organizers, or opposition politicalparty leaders.28 The war on drugs just like the war on terrorhas

served as one pretext to deepen bilateral military relations with Latin American countries and has proved useful to contain popular opposition to neoliberal reforms.

The White Houses Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has stated that one success of the drugs war was that the US and Mexico went from a virtually non-existent military-to-military relationship to the formation of a bilateral military working group. And as two experienced analysts have noted, The US military took advantage of the counterdrug mission to promote closer relations with the Mexican military.29 As narco-corruption increased from the 1980s onwards, the Pentagon and the

CIA often looked the other way and solidified their links with the Mexican military, as in 1986, when President Reagan called for the militarisation of the drugs war in both Mexico and the US. Indeed, between 1981 and 1995, 1488 Mexicans went to US military academies, with over 2000 Grupos Aeromviles de Fuerzas Especiales (air-mobile special forces GAFEs) doing so in 199798. The GAFEs were supervised by the Pentagon to attack drug traffickers, but eventually some of their members joined the Zetas cartelan example of the negative unintended consequences of militarising the drug war. The US priority was to assert its hegemony over Mexico, which since the 1980s has meant implementing neoliberal reforms. As such, Phil Jordan, the head of
the DEAs Dallas office from 1984 to 1994, has said that the intelligence on corruption, especially by drug traffickers, has always been there [but] we were under instructions not to say anything negative about Mexico. It was a no-no since NAFTA was a hot political football.30 Over the past decade the USMexico military bilateral relationship has been

preserved and upgraded, first through the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) (discussed by officials from 2005 to 2009 but never formally implemented) and then through the Mrida Initiative, the programme

that has been in place since 2008 and has delivered $1.5 billion to Mexico. The bulk of it is dedicated to training and equipping military and police forces officially involved in counter-drug operations. In March 2010 the US State Department released a Beyond Mrida strategy, which essentially continues the Mrida Initiative. For example, 26 armoured vehicles were delivered to Mexico, seven Bell helicopters valued at $88 million have been provided to the Mexican Army and three UH-60 helicopters valued at $76.5 million have been delivered to the Federal Police. The fact that much equipment is bought from US weapons

makers keeps the militaryindustrial complex humming, and the Mrida Initiative can be rightly seen as a gift to the US arms industry.31 Although often justified as fight[ing] criminal organizations . . . disrupt[ing] drugtrafficking . . . weapons trafficking, illicit financial activities and currency smuggling, and human trafficking these claims do not stand up to scrutiny.32 As will be seen below, the Mexican military has a bleak human rights record, weapons trafficking and money laundering has never been regulated seriously by the US and drug trafficking has actually increased in Mexico over the past three decades, just like migratory flows across the border. Rather, following a historical pattern, Washington has built links with the Mexican military to protect its hegemonic projects, most recently NAFTA and neoliberal reforms. This was in fact candidly stated by Thomas Shannon, the US assistant
secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, in a 2008 speech explaining the importance of the Mrida Initiative. He said NAFTA needed to be implemented in a way that creates a space for economic reform to take root over this $15 trillion economy comprised of Mexico, the US and Canada, and he specified that the SPP, on which the Mrida Initiative builds, understands No rth America as a shared economic space and that as a shared economic space we need to protect it . . . To a certain extent, were armoring NAFTA.33 More recently, the New York Times reported that US intervention in Mexico is not letting up: American Predator and Global Hawk drones now fly deep over Mexico to capture video of drug production facilities and smuggling routes. Manned American aircraft fly over Mexican targets to eavesdrop on cellphone communications. And the DEA has set up an intelligence outpoststaffed by Central Intelligence Agency operatives and retired American military personnelon a Mexican military base.34 It is understandable that NAFTA and neoliberal reforms need to be protected by force if

necessary, because they have caused much popular resentment, being geared towards meeting elites interests. As Jorge Castaeda wrote in 1995, shortly before he was to become Mexicos foreign secretary under Vicente
Fox, NAFTA was an accord among magnates and potentates: an agreement for the rich and powerful in the United States, Mexico and Canada, an agreement effectively excluding ordinary people in all three societies.35

The drug war has historically been used to cover ulterior motives, justifying the repression of marginalized groups

Mercille, 11 lecturer in the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy at Univeristy College Dublin, PhD from UCLA (Julien, Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economyof the war on drugs in Mexico, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 32 No. 9, 2011, pp 16371653, Taylor & Francis Online)//BI As outlined early on by now declassified national security planning documents, US objectives in Latin America throughout the post-World War II period have

revolved around ensuring Adequate production in Latin America of, and access by the United States to, raw materials essential to US security, which in Mexicos case applies particularly to its vast oil reserves. Another goal is the standardization of Latin American military organization ,
training, doctrine and equipment along US lines, which has been accomplished through numerous training and security assistance programs with Mexico. Moreover, Latin American countries should be encouraged to base their

economies on a system of private enterprise and, as essential thereto, to create a political and economic climate

conducive to private investment, of both domestic and foreign capital, including . . . opportunity to earn and in the case of foreign capital to repatriate a reasonable return.15 It is argued that it is these objectives which have shaped US policy

towards Mexico, not a desire to address drug problems. Conversely, the drugs war has repeatedly been used as a pretext for intervention in support of these fundamental goals. Whereas mainstream analyses depict a Mexican state infiltrated by drug traffickers, in fact the Mexican state has historically set the rules of the game in drug trafficking, while receiving strong support from the US. During its seven decades in power the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), until it lost power to the Partido Acci n Nacional (PAN) in 2000, oversaw an informal system whereby every relevant actor, from the military, police, traffickers and local and national political officials, took a cut from drug trafficking.16 Narco-violence was kept to relatively low levels and every group had an incentive to conduct its business in a relatively predictable and stable manner. Mexicos Federal Security Directorate (DFS) was partially responsible for anti-drugs policy, but
it was itself involved in the narcotics trade, a fact well known to the US. But Washington closed its eyes on this and to repeated electoral fraud that kept the PRI in power because the Mexican government and DFS were anti-communist allies during the Cold War. Today, as will be seen below, the state does not preside over a smoothly regulated drugs trade

anymorehence the violencebut significant sectors of the Mexican government and security forces are still associated with it.17 When political groups could not be co-opted by the PRI, it sometimes resorted to violent repression, which it sometimes justified by a purported concern to fight drugsobviously a pretext since the
Mexican state itself was regulating the drugs traffic nationally. For example, from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the Mexican military, police and intelligence services backed by the USwaged a dirty war on dissidents and leftist guerrillas. The Mexican military was responsible for the majority of abuses committed during that time, including the torture and enforced disappea rance of hundreds of civilians.18 The 1970s saw increased rural and labour militancythere were at least 300 strikes in 1977as a result of deteriorating economic conditions and a budgetary programme of austerity. The agricultural sector was barely growing, pushing many desperate campesinos to seize haciendas, execute local caciques (strongmen), migrate to the cities or the US, or become drugs entrepreneurs. At the same time Mexico increased the intensity of its war on drugs in 1975, when it decided to

eradicate opium and marijuana fields with herbicides and to conduct anti-drugs military operations. Operation

Condor, the core of the campaign, sent 7000 soldiers, aided by 226 DEA advisers, to the northern states of Durango, Chihuahua and Sinaloaa region faced with poverty and which had been the scene of many militant peasant land occupations for two years.19 Officially operations targeted narcotics, but the fact that not a single big drug trafficker was arrested, while hundreds of peasants were arrested, tortured and jailed, led some contemporary analysts to conclude that Mexicos military and counternarcotics campaigns in the countryside should have been more accurately described as a war against peasants, marginalised groups and the (real or imagined) guerrillas of the sierras rather than against drug trafficking setting a precedent for the current situation.20

War on drugs releases chemicals that threaten biodiversity unique to Latin America, which are crucial to global balance Rolles et al, 12 a writer for the Guardian, Martin is Head of Campaigns and Communications at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Danny Kushlick is a British political activist and founder of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. Jane Slater is Head of Operations and Fundraising at Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Steve, George Murkin, Martin Powell, Danny Kushlick, Jane Slater 26 June 2012

Mex Biodiversity

The Alternative World Drug Report: Counting the Costs of the War on Drugs http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/AWDR.pdf) // czhang The environmental costs of the war on drugs 1. How chemical eradications threaten biodiversity Concerns over human and environmental health have led Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Thailand to all ban the use of chemical agents in eradication efforts. But despite these concerns, the worlds second most biodiverse country, Colombia, still permits aerial fumigations of drug crops using a chemical mixture primarily consisting of the herbicide glyphosate. RoundupTM: Colombias poison rain Roundup is a commercial glyphosate-based herbicide, and is the main component of the mixture used in Colombias US-funded fumigation programme. Glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, meaning any

plant exposed to a sufficient amount of the chemical will be killed. In the mixture sprayed in Colombia, the

toxicity of glyphosate is enhanced by the inclusion of a surfactant, an additive that enables it to penetrate further through leaves, increasing its lethality. The particular surfactant used in Colombia is not approved for use in the US and its ingredients are considered trade secrets,6 rendering

any independent evaluation of its effects all the more difficult to conduct. The destruction of plant life The spraying of a herbicide designed to kill flora indiscriminately, across millions of acres of land, is concerning no matter what country it takes place in. But in this case it is especially alarming, given Colombias approximately 55,000 species of plants, a third of which are unique to the country. The imprecise nature of aerial spraying maximises this threat to biodiversity, because rather than being applied directly, from close range (as instructions for the use of herbicides state), herbicides are sprayed from planes. This increases the likelihood of the wrong field being sprayed due to human error, and in windy conditions causes herbicide to be blown over non-target areas. Consequently, drug crop eradications often wipe out licit crops, forests and rare plants. In
addition to the short-term loss of vegetation they cause, aerial fumigations can have a more long-lasting impact on plant life.

The Amazon has a fragile soil ecosystem, and farmers report that areas which have been repeatedly fumigated are either less productive or yield crops that fail to mature fully.9 The

contamination of national parks The inadvertent environmental damage caused by chemical eradications is exacerbated by the proximity of a number of Colombias national parks to illicit coca plantations. In effect, this means that some of the areas

most frequently targeted by aerial fumigations are also among the countrys most biodiverse and ecologically irreplaceable.10 As more than 17 million people depend on the fresh water that flows from these protected areas,11 this undoubtedly represents a threat to human health. It also further threatens Colombias more than 200 endangered species of amphibians that live in these aquatic environments and are particularly sensitive to herbicides such as Roundup.12 The danger to animal
health While the US State Department denies the chemical agents used in Colombia have any severe effects on fauna, evidence suggests that animal health can be seriously impacted by their use. Cattle have lost hair after eating fumigated pastures, and chickens

and fish have been killed as a result of drinking water contaminated with the fumigation spray.13 More significantly, by eradicating large areas of vegetation, aerial fumigations destroy many animals habitats and deprive them of essential food sources. With numerous bird, animal and insect species unique to Colombia, this poses a real risk of triggering extinctions, particularly given the wider
pressure on natural habitats in the region.

Destroys Latin American ecosystems Rolles et al, 12 a writer for the Guardian, Martin is Head of Campaigns and Communications at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Danny Kushlick is a British political activist and founder of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. Jane Slater is Head of Operations and Fundraising at Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Steve, George Murkin, Martin Powell, Danny Kushlick, Jane Slater 26 June 2012
The Alternative World Drug Report: Counting the Costs of the War on Drugs http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/AWDR.pdf) // czhang

2. Deforestation While eradications conducted, they

necessarily cause localized deforestation in the areas in which they are also have a multiplier effect, because once an area has been chemically or manually eradicated, drug crop producers simply deforest new areas for cultivation. And in their search for new growing sites, producers move into increasingly remote or secluded locations as a means of evading eradication efforts. Exacerbating the environmental cost of this balloon effect, they therefore often target national parks or other protected, ecologically significant areas where fumigation is banned. Mexicos Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range, for instance, is one of the most ecologically diverse regions in North America, yet is also now one of the most prolific opium and cannabis producing regions in the world. The displacement of drug producers to this area has fuelled widespread deforestation,
jeopardising the 200 species of oak tree and the habitats of numerous rare bird species such as the thick-billed parrot found in the region. Such deforestation is not limited to the area cultivated for illicit crops. Rather, in addition to this land, drug

producers also clear forest for subsistence crops, cattle pastures, housing, transport routes and in some cases, for airstrips. As a result of this, several acres of forest are often clear-cut to produce just one acre of drug crop. In 2008 the UN reported that, for the fourth consecutive year, the Alto Huallaga region of Peru which is located in tropical and subtropical forests was the countrys largest coca cultivating area21 The growing of opium poppy in countries such as Thailand and Myanmar depletes thin forest soils and their nutrients so quickly that slash-and-burn growers, after harvesting as few as two or three crop cycles, clear new forest plots. The cumulative effect of this has compounded the environmental destruction taking place in the Golden Triangle region22 Significant areas of US national parks in California, Texas and Arkansas have been taken over by Mexican drug cartels growing cannabis23 3. Pollution from
unregulated, illicit drug production methods Responsibility for the production of potentially dangerous substances has defaulted to unscrupulous criminal profiteers. One of the many negative consequences of this is the creation of an unregulated

system of chemically processing drug crops (primarily coca and opium, into cocaine and heroin). To avoid unnecessary costs and contact with authorities, drug producers must dispose of waste chemicals secretively, which in many cases means pouring toxic waste into waterways or onto the ground. This leads to soil degradation, destruction of vegetation, contamination of water sources and loss of aquatic life. The production of the synthetic stimulant methamphetamine is also notorious for the environmental harm it causes, due to the large number of dangerous chemicals used in its manufacture,28 which include sulphuric acid, ether, toluene, anhydrous ammonia and acetone. As a result, the production of one kilo of methamphetamine can yield five or six kilos of toxic waste, which is sometimes dumped directly into water wells, contaminating domestic water and farm irrigation systems in the US.29 The environmental consequences of improper chemical disposal are arguably more pronounced in South American countries, where this waste is deposited in the jungles and forests used by drug producers to hide their operations from law enforcement and eradication attempts. In Colombia, cocaine producers discard more than 370,000 tons of chemicals into the environment every year30 Thousands of tons of chemical waste are dumped into the rivers located in the Peruvian Amazon region annually31

Mex - Economy
War on Drugs hurts Mexicos economy Chase, 12 (Colonel David Chase of the US Army, graduated from the Army War College, in charge of strategy research on the
Southern border; Military Police: Assisting in Securing the United States Southern Border; 12/3/12; http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA561048) KD The effects of the violence on Mexican society are widespread and serious. One of the more serious problems is the

negative effect on the Mexican economy. Violence along the border creates instability which has a direct economic impact to Mexico not only through the cost of trying to fight DTOs but also the loss of potential industry and jobs along the border and direct investment to grow industry. According to the investment firm Bulltick Capital Markets, between 2006 and 2011 the war against drugs has cost Mexico 120 billion dollars in security spending and lost investments.10 DTOs are also using violence against Mexican industry. As an example the state-owned petroleum company, Pemex has reportedly been a repeated target of kidnappings and
theft by DTOs.11 Despite these problems the Mexican economy actually grew by 5.1% in 2011 and there has not been a flood of companies fleeing Mexico for safety reasons. However, security is a significant concern. Most experts who are monitoring the Mexican economy are seeing no immediate signs that large companies are going to pull out of Mexico. However some

investments have been put on hold and prior to investing in Mexico many companies are looking harder and harder at their exposure to risk.12 War on drugs is disastrous for Mexican long term economic growth and trades off with international poverty and humanitarian aid Rolles et al, 12 a writer for the Guardian, Martin is Head of Campaigns and Communications at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Danny Kushlick is a British political activist and founder of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. Jane Slater is Head of Operations and Fundraising at Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Steve, George Murkin, Martin Powell, Danny Kushlick, Jane Slater 26 June 2012
The Alternative World Drug Report: Counting the Costs of the War on Drugs http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/AWDR.pdf) // czhang 3. Huge economic and opportunity costs The consequences

and vulnerablities of a country relying economically on the export of a single product are well understood for legitimate commodities like oil. Similar problems can arise from illicit exports as well, with the potential threats to development made worse by the lack of taxation and the isolation from legitimate economic and social activity of illicit drug production. The related problem, a shift of labour and capital to the unregulated criminal sector, may also undermine longterm development and economic growth. As the economy and institutions of a country become progressively more criminalised, other illegal businesses under the ownership or protection of criminal cartels can gain preferential treatment, making it more dificult for legal enterprises to compete, and forcing them to bear a greater burden of taxation and regulation. The more a region becomes destabilised, the more it: Deters inward investment by indigenous or external enforcement (reducing accountability and increasing the likelihood of human rights abuses) Globally, in excess of $100 billion a year is spent on fighting the war on drugs (see Chapter 1, p. 23) roughly the same as the total spent
by rich countries on overseas aid. The US, and other countries, have diverted development aid from where it would be most effective, blurring it into military spending for its allies in the war on drugs most significantly in Latin America and Afghanistan. While any approach to drugs requires funding, there is a substantial opportunity cost from this

businesses Restricts the activities of development groups and other bodies that would otherwise assist in economic and human development Diverts aid and other resources from development into police and military

scale of expenditure on a policy which is not even delivering its stated goals. As a result, many of the poorest areas of affected countries are being further impoverished through wasting money that could have been invested in everything from education to infrastructure.

War on drugs destroys the environment chemicals have a multiplier effect Rolles et al, 12 a writer for the Guardian, Martin is Head of Campaigns and Communications at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Danny Kushlick is a British political activist and founder of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. Jane Slater is Head of Operations and Fundraising at Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Steve, George Murkin, Martin Powell, Danny Kushlick, Jane Slater 26 June 2012
The Alternative World Drug Report: Counting the Costs of the War on Drugs http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/AWDR.pdf) // czhang 6. Increasing deforestation and pollution An often overlooked cost of

Mex Environment

the war on drugs is its negative impact on the environment mainly resulting from aerial spraying of drug crops in ecologically sensitive environments, such as the Andes and Amazon basin, combined with pollution from unregulated
chemical drug processing. These harms almost all accrue in the developing and marginal regions where drug crop production is concentrated. Chemical eradication not only causes localised deforestation, but has a devastating multiplier

effect because drug producers simply deforest new areas for cultivation the so-called balloon effect. This problem is made worse because protected areas in national parks where aerial spraying is banned are often targeted. (For more detail/ discussion on environmental costs, see Chapter 3, p. 43.)

War on drugs is the single largest contributer to the spread of HIV Rolles et al, 12 a writer for the Guardian, Martin is Head of Campaigns and Communications at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Danny Kushlick is a British political activist and founder of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. Jane Slater is Head of Operations and Fundraising at Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Steve, George Murkin, Martin Powell, Danny Kushlick, Jane Slater 26 June 2012
The Alternative World Drug Report: Counting the Costs of the War on Drugs http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/AWDR.pdf) // czhang 7. Fuelling HIV infection and other health impacts The war on drugs results

Mex HIV

in a number of health-related harms that impact on development. Firstly, levels of drug use and the associated direct health harms tend to rise in the vulnerable and marginalised countries and areas used for producing and transiting drugs, as availability rapidly increases, with employees sometimes even being paid in drugs. Secondly, criminalising users encourages risky behaviours, like sharing needles, and hinders measures to help those infected with bloodborne viruses via drug injecting. As a result, there are epidemics of HIV and hepatitis B and C among people who inject drugs in many developing countries. Roughly one tenth of new HIV infections result from needle sharing among people who use drugs, with this figure rising to just under a third outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, and approaching or exceeding a half in some regions, including many former Soviet republics. (For more detail/discussion on health costs, see Chapter 5, p. 61.)

War on drugs is a human rights violation in so many ways Rolles et al, 12 a writer for the Guardian, Martin is Head of Campaigns and Communications at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Danny Kushlick is a British political activist and founder of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. Jane Slater is Head of Operations and Fundraising at Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Steve, George Murkin, Martin Powell, Danny Kushlick, Jane Slater 26 June 2012
The Alternative World Drug Report: Counting the Costs of the War on Drugs http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/AWDR.pdf) // czhang 8. Undermining human rights, promoting discrimination The UN is tasked with both promoting human rights and overseeing the international drug control regime, yet in practice human rights abuses in the name of drug control are

Mex HRV

commonplace. The range of abuses includes denial of the right to a fair trial and due process standards; torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; the death penalty and extrajudicial killings; over-incarceration and arbitrary detention; denial of the right to health; denial of the right to social security and an adequate standard of living; denial of the rights of the child; and denial of cultural and indigenous rights. (For more detail/discussion on human rights costs,
see Chapter 6, p. 71.)

War on drugs fuels drug cartels and allows them to fund international terrorist organizations Rolles et al, 12 a writer for the Guardian, Martin is Head of Campaigns and Communications at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Danny Kushlick is a British political activist and founder of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. Jane Slater is Head of Operations and Fundraising at Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Steve, George Murkin, Martin Powell, Danny Kushlick, Jane Slater 26 June 2012
The Alternative World Drug Report: Counting the Costs of the War on Drugs http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/AWDR.pdf) // czhang 1. Fuelling conflict and violence There are a number of ways in which the war

Mex Instability

on drugs is undermining security and contributing to conflict and violence, mainly stemming from control of the lucrative illegal market defaulting

to adaptable and ruthless criminal entrepreneurs. In the absence of any formal market regulation, violence has become their key regulatory tool. To secure and expand their business, cartels can and do equip private armies and militias which are in many cases able to outgun state enforcement. Organised criminal networks can also finance or merge with

separatist and insurgent groups, and illicit drug profits have become a key source of funding for various domestic and international terror groups. Corruption, combined with intimidation and actual violence against politicians, police, judiciary, and armed forces then further undermines governance and promotes conflict. Police and military interventions can involve significant violence in themselves.
For example, there were 2,819 extrajudicial killings under the banner of the Thailand governments war on drugs crackdown in 2003.4 State interventions can also precipitate a spiral of violence in which the cartels both fight

back against government forces with ever increasing ferocity, and also fight each other for control of the

trade as state action disrupts established illicit market structures. This has been shown most clearly in Mexico in recent years. In the longer term, endemic violence can traumatise populations for generations, in particular fostering a deeper culture of violence among young people. (For more detail/discussion on conflict and violence see Chapter 4, p. 57.)

War on drugs causes mass poverty in Mexico Rolles et al, 12 a writer for the Guardian, Martin is Head of Campaigns and Communications at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Danny Kushlick is a British political activist and founder of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. Jane Slater is Head of Operations and Fundraising at Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Steve, George Murkin, Martin Powell, Danny Kushlick, Jane Slater 26 June 2012
The Alternative World Drug Report: Counting the Costs of the War on Drugs http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/AWDR.pdf) // czhang 2. Increasing corruption and undermining governance The war on drugs

Mex Poverty

and the huge criminal market it has created have led to the corruption of institutions and individuals at every level in affected countries. This is a result of the huge funds high-level players in the illicit trade have, their readiness to threaten violence to
force the unwilling to take bribes, and the poverty and weak governance of targeted regions. Corruption can have a dire impact on social and economic development. According to Transparency International: Corruption not only reduces the net

income of the poor but also wrecks programmes related to their basic needs, from sanitation to education to healthcare. It results in the misallocation of resources to the detriment of poverty reduction programmes The attainment of the Millennium Development Goals is put at risk unless corruption is
tackled5 As the UNODC has described it: The magnitude of funds under criminal control poses special threats to governments, particularly in developing countries, where the domestic security markets and capital markets are far too small to absorb such funds without quickly becoming dependent on them. It is difficult to have a functioning democratic

system when drug cartels have the means to buy protection, political support or votes at every level of government and society. In systems where a member of the legislature or judiciary, earning only a modest
income, can easily gain the equivalent of some months salary from a trafficker by making one favourable decision, the dangers of corruption are obvious.

*AT:___*

U.S. consumption drives the trade thats key to stop trafficking Sheldon, 12 (Seina, Research Associate for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Re: US SAYS BOLIVIA, MYANMAR, VENEZUELA STILL FAILING DRUG WAR, 10/2/2012, http://www.coha.org/19743/, JKahn)

AT: WOD Fails Generic

Your September 15 article, US says Bolivia, Myanmar, Venezuela still failing drug war, successfully addresses a U.S. report that bears a dubious measure denouncing Bolivia and Venezuelas inadequate steps in restricting the illicit drug

trade.[1] Despite this clear overview, the article fails to acknowledge the longstanding American practice of illegal narcotics consumption . Moreover, it also neglects the substantive improvements that the Andean nations have made in curtailing the illicit drug trade in recent years. According to the National Coca Monitoring Survey for Bolivia, compiled by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), coca cultivation in Bolivia has fallen 12 percent from 2010 to 2011.[2] Additionally, cocaine confiscation in Venezuela rose from 33 tons in 2009 to 39 tons in 2010.[3] These statistics illustrate that Bolivia and Venezuela have made a considerable effort in combating narco-trafficking, contrary to the U.S. report . Furthermore, it is unreasonable for American authorities to condemn other nations for their less than stellar efforts when illicit drug trade primarily stems from U.S. demand . The U.S. is the worlds largest market for drug consumption.
According to the World Drug Report compiled by UNODC, the United States reported 5.7 million cocaine users annually, making it the highest cocaine consumer in the world. Moreover, a third of the worlds cocaine users live within its borders.[4] Perhaps the

U.S. should focus on its own troubled area of domestic demand rather than pointing fingers at others as a
specious source of the problem.

AT: WOD Fails - Mexico

The war on drugs is winnable Mexico is achieving large successes, but continued cooperation with the US is key
Poir, 11 Mexican government's spokesman for security affairs at the time of writing this article, now serves as director general at the Center for Intelligence and National Security (Alejandro, Can Mexico win the war against drugs?, Americas Quarterly, Vol. 5 No. 4, Fall 2011, ProQuest)//BI

By working with Mexican civil society and reforming the police force, we are scoring major victories. Success in Mexico's fight against drugs can't be measured like a game of baseball, in which you simply add up the score at the end of nine innings. It's a war with many fronts, and it requires a much different perspective. Drug trafficking is only one element of the larger problem: the reach of organized crime into every facet of our national life and economy. Mexico has chalked up major victories- and will continue to do so, thanks to its multitrack approach that focuses not just on eliminating drug trafficking, but on building stronger law enforcement institutions and reinforcing our social fabric. That would not have been possible without the

engagement of both government and civil society. Thanks to the leadership of President Felipe Caldern and the work of groups such as Asociacin Alto al Secuestro, led by Isabel Miranda de Wallace, and Mxico SOS, headed by Alejandro Mart, we have come a long way. In recent decades, the drug traffickers' criminal business model has changed, and Mexico is bearing the brunt. Before, the primary goal of drug traffickers was securing an uninterrupted flow of drugs into the United States. But the sealing of cocaine trafficking routes through the Caribbean, the increased security on the U.S. border after 9/11, the mismanagement of Mexico's economy from the 1970s through the 1990s, and the lack of professionalization in municipal and state police departments- among other factors-have led drug traffickers to seek control of a large variety of unlawful activities as a means of enhancing their earnings and competitive position in the criminal market. The end of the Assault Weapons Ban in the U.S. in 2004 has made this change all the more threatening to Mexico's security. Addressing this escalation of crime and insecurity required not

only a plan for domestic action, but also recognition of the transnational dimension of the problem. That recognition has been the key to our comprehensive, multifaceted approach. The National Security Strategy, launched in 2006, rests on three main tenets: severely weakening criminal organizations; massively and effectively reconstructing law enforcement institutions and the legal system; and repairing the social fabric through, among other things, enhancing crime prevention policies. To date, there have been significant achievements. Our enhanced intelligence capabilities and close collaboration with U.S. agencies have allowed us to arrest or kill 21 of the 37 most-wanted leaders of major criminal organizations. Moreover, Mexican authorities have seized over 9,500 tons of drugs that will never reach U.S. or Mexican children, and captured more than 122,000 weapons since 2006-most of which were bought in the United States. At the same time, the professional caliber of Mexico's Federal Police force has improved significantly through strict recruitment, vetting and extensive training-even as the force has grown nearly sixfold to 35,000 federal policemen. But it is not just a question of numbers; police intelligence capabilities have been reinforced by the recruitment of an additional 7,000 federal law enforcement intelligence personnel from top-level universities. A new judicial framework is in place, thanks to the introduction of legal reforms designed to strengthen due process
guarantees, provide fuller protection to victims and increase the efficiency and transparency of trials. Much of this has been the result of the introduction of oral procedures in the federal court system, which is expected to be fully implemented in 2016. We

have also achieved significant success in dismantling criminal financial networks. Authorities have confiscated a record amount of cash from the drug cartels-although more can still be done-and special investigative units are spearheading a national effort to combat money laundering.

Currently, Congress is working on passing a bill aimed at increasing the capacity of the federal government to investigate and prosecute money launderers. To improve Mexico's social fabric, we have focused on the economic and social roots

of crime and addiction since Caldern took office. We consider drug addiction to be a public health problem. Accordingly, national legislation has decriminalized personal consumption of drugs, while directing drug users to proper medical help. Also, public spending devoted to addiction/prevention programs has more than doubled during the first five years of Caldern's administration. Mexico now boasts the largest network in Latin America of centers for prevention and early treatment of addiction, with more than
330 units distributed throughout the country providing counseling, medical treatment and referrals to over 2 million people every year. We have recovered thousands of public places-including parks, civic plazas and sports fields-through the

improvement of infrastructure, recreational activities, citizen participation, and more effective

security measures. This shared responsibility between federal and local authorities and community members provides people
with safe places to gather and forge stronger social ties. We have also implemented the Safe School Program, where over 35,000 elementary and middle schools provide some 9 million young kids with a violence-free and addiction-free environment. Mexico sits between the largest consumer of drugs to the north, and the largest producers of many of these drugs to the south. That gives us a special challenge. But all countries in the region need to coordinate their drug and crime interdiction

programs if we are ever going to break the power of transnational criminal networks. The spread of these networks threatens not just Mexico but all of us in the region. Final success in the war against drugs can only be achieved when we tackle together the conditions that allow these networks to operate with impunity. A shift in strategy towards punishment for violent crime can win the drug war
Rios, 13 fellow in inequality and criminal justice at Harvards Kennedy School of Government. From 2010 to 2012, she and Michele Coscia, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvards Center for International Development, studied how and where Mexican drug cartels operate (Viridiana, How to win the Mexican drug war, H uffington Post, 12 April 2013, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-12/opinions/38492205_1_cartels-drug-violence-trafficking)//BI The U.S. government has spent $1.6billion to help Mexico end a war between drug cartels that has killed 63,000 people south of our border in the past six years. Yet

many of our assumptions about this war are wrong. As part of a study tracking the behavior of Mexicos organized-crime groups, a colleague and I created an algorithm that

uses Google to explore blogs, newspapers and news-related Web content and extract detailed data about how Mexican drug cartels operate. Our tool reads everything published and indexed as part of Google News and collects all the information the Web contains about the activities of the cartels, including their routes of expansion, since the 1990s. Our discoveries shocked us and surprised the U.S. officials who reviewed our findings. The United States may be helping Mexico fight the wrong war because we do not know who the enemy is. At

the heart of the Mexican governments strategy, which the United States has supported, is the belief that Mexicos drug violence is the result of antagonistic trafficking organizations battling to monopolize a territory. Thus, the thinking goes, trafficking organizations must be eliminated. Yet it is not true that drug violence necessarily increases when more than one cartel operates in one area. In fact, in many areas, organized-crime groups share territory peacefully. Our data show that

multiple cartels operated simultaneously in at least 100 Mexican municipalities in 2010, yet those municipalities did not experience a single drug-related homicide. Of the 16,000 assassinationsin Mexicos drug war that year, 43 percent occurred in just eight cities. A single city, Juarez, accounted for 8 percent of the deaths. What we learned is simple and powerful: Traffickers pick their

wars. Battling is a strategic choice for cartels and they frequently choose peace. War is not the

unavoidable outcome of a profitable illegal industry. Violent criminal groups in Mexico are no different from other illegal groups that manage to operate with low levels of violence. Consider: Bolivia and Peru produce marijuana in larger quantities than do many Latin American countries and still have murder rates among the regions lowest. The Japanese mafia controls the most profitable market of methamphetamines in Asia without major episodes of violence. Endangered species are smuggled through Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia without significant confrontations with poachers. Bosnias sex trafficking industry has boomed with out a parallel upsurge in homicides. Because trafficking is a business and fighting is a business strategy, drug cartels choose to fight whenever war brings more benefits than costs. And the

cost that governments can more efficiently impose on a criminal entrepreneur is prison. Cartels have chosen to fight in certain areas of Mexico because it makes business sense. South of the U.S. border, only 6 percent of all homicides produce a trial and judgment. As such, killing trafficking enemies to take over their territory, and potentially increase illegal earnings, is profitable. In short, war pays in Mexico. So the right way to fight a drug war in Mexico is not to aim at eliminating criminal organizations, as many have assumed, but rather to create conditions in which war does not pay. This will not be achieved with the strategy Washington has embraced. Even if all criminal organizations

were eliminated, new ones would emerge as long as profits could be made from cocaine. A war against drug organizations is an endless war. Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto plans to hold a national forum Tuesday with academics, laypeople and others to discuss how the country can best achieve peace. Now is the time for Mexico to choose the right direction. Mexico must craft a

system of incentives, using arrests, sentencing and imprisonment, so that criminal organizations cannot find it profitable to kill. Rather than help Mexico fight an unwinnable war against criminal organizations, the United States must help its neighbor battle impunity. Ours must be a war to make sure those who kill face consequences; a war to improve Mexicos justice system, because only 31 percent of the population believes it

would be punished after committing a crime; a war against the sort of outbreaks where, in one day, more than 130 prisoners escape a jail near the Texas border. The goal must be to make violent crime a risky endeavor, rather than a discretionary choice made by criminal businessmen. A war against impunity can be won. A war against drugs cannot.

AT: Drugs K Mex Econ

Predictions of a Mexican economic apocalypse from limiting the drug trade are factually impossible
Corcoran, 12 researcher and writer for InSight Crime, graduate of the University of Tennessee and an MA candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, citing the RAND Corporation, Wilson Center, the US National Drug Intelligence center and other data/research institutions (Patrick, Oliver Stone Gets it Wrong on Mexico Drug War, InSight Crime, 11 July 2012, http://www.insightcrime.org/news -analysis/oliverstone-gets-it-wrong-on-mexico-drug-war)//BI On the publicity circuit to promote his new movie, director Oliver Stone has made a series of assertions about

Mexico and the war on drugs that are not only false, but promote a dangerously misleading view of the country's criminal groups. In a recent interview on "Piers Morgan Tonight," Stone used a series of unfounded statistical assertions to justify his opposition to the war on drugs , theme of his movie "Savages" which opened in the US earlier this month. Among his comments, as compiled by the Los Angeles Times: The Mexican economy would die without [drugs] because they need the money. It goes into their legitimate economy.
Its bigger than tourism. Its bigger than oil. Its bigger than remissions from their Mexican emigrants back to their country ... Fifty percent of our prison system is victimless crimes. People whove never hurt anybody, theyre in for marijuana and it has noth ing to do with punishment. Its a medical issue, and I think we have to move to decriminalization and legalization. Stone is right to point out that the mass incarceration of drug offenders is demonstrably inefficient and in many senses immoral, but his facts are

incorrect. Drug offenders do not constitute 50 percent of the US prison systems inmates, but just over 20 percent. There are

certainly more effective and humane ways to deal with the issue than tossing these people behind bars, but the opponents of the largely mindless approach to drug policy that has dominated in the last 40 years only hurt their case by casually tossing out falsehoods. The problem continues with Stone's statement that flows of drug money in Mexico are larger than those from tourism, oil, or remittances. Estimates for the value of the Mexican drug trade are all over the map, but the

most rigorous analyses have concluded that export revenue from the drug trade is far lower than Stone suggests. Alejandro Hope, for instance, places the figure somewhere between $4.7 to $8.1 billion, while the RAND Corporation estimates that Mexican traffickers earn roughly $6.6 billion per year from
sending drugs to the US. In contrast, remittances sent by Mexicans living abroad in 2011 amounted to $22.7 billion. Mexicos tourist trade, notwithstanding the nations unfortunate image in the international press, still managed to generate $11.9 billion in 2010. Stone's claim is even further from the mark with regard to oil: the revenues for Pemex, the national oil company, amounted to $125 billion in 2011. Consequently, Stones statement that the Mexican economy would die without drug

money drifts into the terrain of the indefensible. Unfortunately, Stone is not alone in this exaggerated view of drug moneys role in the Mexican economy. One story, put forward by authors like Richard Grant and Charles Bowden, holds that a 2001 study by CISEN, Mexicos intelligence agency, found that an end to the drug trade would result in a 63 percent contraction of the Mexican economy. The study is not public -- citing a story
from El Diario de Juarez, Bowden wrote that it was leaked to the media in 2001, though InSight Crime's online search for the original study turned up nothing. It is difficult to know, therefore, if its authors were perhaps making a more

nuanced point that was lost in subsequent references to it. However, the scenario posited by Grant and Bowden, and the implicit idea that the Mexican economy would die without drug money, is simply absurd. The most obvious flaw is the very idea that drug trafficking could disappear entirely. Though the size and composition of proceeds
from the illicit trade may vary, longstanding industries, especially those that feed upon deep-seated human desires, dont simply disappear from one year to the next. Moreover, as demonstrated above, the total revenue generated by the drug

trade is relatively small. Even using a methodologically suspect high-end estimate, such as the $39

billion cited by the US National Drug Intelligence Center for revenues of all Colombian and Mexican organizations, and for the sake of argument attributing all of the profits to the Mexican gangs, the figure still amounts to less than 4 percent of

total Mexican output. Using the more rigorous calculations of the industrys size, drug trafficking probably accounts for roughly 0.5 percent of the nations economy. Eliminating the proceeds
of drug smuggling would certainly have a significant impact on the GDP, but such an event, aside from being virtually impossible, would be nothing like the economic apocalypse posited by Stone.

AT: Afghan TradeOff

No tradeoff regional drug trade is insulated Kleiman, 4 (Mark, B.A. magna cum laude, Haverford College, M.P.P., Harvard Kennedy School, Ph.D., Harvard, Professor of
Public Policy in the UCLA School of Public Affairs, Illicit Drugs and the Terrorist Threat: Causal Links and Implications for Domestic Drug Control Policy, Congressional Research Service, 4/20/2004, http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32334.pdf, JKahn) Even the same drug

may have very different implications for terrorism in different circumstances: where it comes from, how it travels, and which organizations traffic in it all make a difference. The United States gets the bulk of its heroin from poppies grown in Colombia , a smaller amount from poppies grown in Southeast Asia, and relatively little from poppies grown in Southwest Asia, including Afghanistan. Most of the heroin produced from the Afghani poppy crop either stays in Asia or is trafficked into Europe. Thus in the period leading up to September 11, 2001, European heroin consumption potentially helped finance Al Qaeda activities, or helped support the Taliban regime which harbored Al Qaeda, but heroin consumption in the United States likely did not. U.S. heroin consumption may have contributed to the terrorist threat in Colombia, and perhaps in Mexico, but likely had very little impact on Afghanistan or its neighbors.28 (Unlike petroleum, for example, which is traded in
world markets, so that increased demand or decreased supply anywhere tends to raise prices everywhere, the illicit trade in heroin tends to be compartmentalized, so that prices for poppy can be high in Colombia but low in Afghanistan, or vice versa.) By contrast, anyone concerned with the terror problem in Colombia can afford to ignore Asian heroin consumption, because virtually no Colombian-source heroin makes its way to Asia.29

AT: Violence Deters Mex Investment

Violence doesnt deter investment --- corruption hampers the economy --- MNCs invest in Mexico because they are corrupt Caldwell, 12 (Deborah, senior editor for Enterprise, cites George Haley, director of the Center for International Industry
Competitiveness at the University of New Haven, Crime Explodes But an Economy Booms, CNBC, 9/18/12, http://www.cnbc.com/id/49037775, Tashma)

Mexicos violence, Selee argues, is manageable , despite appearances to the contrary. Even in the cities, the violence rarely touches most people in direct ways, Selee said. Its more indirect. Most people know of someone who was kidnapped, or they dont go out at night. Its like being in New York in
the late 1980s. High-level foreign executives protect themselves and their investments with security systems, Selee said just like in the United States. As a result, large multinationals havent experienced much of the violence which

is why those companies continue to invest in Mexico. Mexico received $4.37 billion in foreign direct
investment in the first quarter of 2012, down about 9 percent from the same period in 2011; the U.S. accounted for about 37 percent of the inflow, followed by Spain at about 29 percent, and Luxembourg at 9 percent. From an operations point of view, the drug

war has very little effect on foreign corporations' operations. Experts say this is because it is difficult for drug
cartels to force a large company headquartered outside Mexico to pay a protection fee." Extortion depends on the cartels' showing there would be negative consequences of not paying but the multinationals

can simply lean on the Mexican government and military to strike back at the cartels. In fact, George Haley, who directs the Center for International Industry Competitiveness at the University of New Haven, dismissed the violence problem, calling it overblown. (More:Is This the Right Time to Invest in Mexican Real Estate?) Corruption is the greater problem , he said. For instance, in the Wal-Mart case, what Wal-Mart's Mexican executives did would not generally even be considered corruption in Mexico. In April, Wal-Mart said it had discovered that its Mexican subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico, allegedly paid bribes to facilitate awarding store permits, and
then the company's corporate headquarters stifled an internal investigation into the allegations. Former Mexico foreign minister Jorge Castaneda said Wal-Mart de Mexicos actions may look like a bribe to Americans, but theyre standard wants to open a business, its difficult to get all the permits you want to get without paying off low-level officials," he told CNBC in April. "It's pretty hard to get anything done unless you spread money around.

operating procedure in Mexico. Although the national government has made strides, "at the municipal level, anyone who

AT: Border Security

Doesnt solve the impacts at all unrealistic Carpenter, 9 vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books, including Bad Neighbor Policy: Washingtons Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (Ted Galen, Troubled Neighbor: Mexicos Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States February 2, 2009
Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/troubled-neighbor-mexicos-drug-violence-poses-threat-unitedstates) // czhang

An increasingly popular measure among Americans to stem drug-related violence seeping into the United States from Mexico is to greatly increase border security. 42 Proponents tout the alleged effectiveness of measures the traffickers merely moved their preferred transit corridor a little farther to the east, crossing into California in a more remote desert region rather than through the more urbanized, visible, and guarded San Diego metropolitan area. There was no evidence that the fence and increased surveillance did anything more than cause them as light inconvenience. Although the principal reason for passage of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was anger over the flow of undocumented immigrants, concern about the drug trade and the violence accompanying it was also a factor.
conditions on both sides of the border started to improve. 43 What Hunter did not mention is that

taken to date, even as they press for stronger initiatives. Representative Hunter combines both themes: While we have made some progress in recent years toward creating a more enforceable border, we still have a lot of work left to do. Moving forward, we must continue strengthening security through manpower, technology and infrastructure, including the most reliable and effective enforcement tool so far: border security fencing. Much like many other areas of the border today, the land corridor that once existed between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, California, was for many years considered to be the most prolific and dangerous smuggling route in the nation. It was not until I wrote into law the construction of a double border fence that drug smugglers and armed gangs lost control of this corridor and

Representative Hunter was candid about that motive. Recurring confrontations with Mexican soldiers, much like the drug smugglers and illegal immigrants that attempt to cross into the U.S. through Mexico each day, further illustrate why fencing and other infrastructure remains so important to the security and enforcement of our border. 44 A major source of resistance to fully funding anti-drug measures in Mexico has come from members of Congress, including influential Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (RTX),who want more of the money directed to beefing up law enforcement on the U.S. side of the border. 45

Proposals to seal or secure the border with Mexico are unrealistic. The desire for more security along the border is understandable, and some additional steps may be useful, but the logistics of attempting to dramatically reduce incursions along the 1,952- mile land border with Mexico would be prohibitively difficult. Not only would that goal require building the North American equivalent of the Berlin Wall, it would entail stationing tens of thousands of trained law enforcement, and possibly military, personnel to guard it and prevent breaches. Clearly, the more limited measures, such as the existence of flimsy fences and periodic appearances by the U.S. Border Patrol, have not worked. Hundreds of thousands of unauthorized immigrants cross the border into remote sectors of the southwestern states each year. Professional drug traffickers are not going to be stymied by such systems when ordinary immigrants are not. Even if it were possible to seal the land border, the trafficking organizations have ingenious ways of coping. On numerous occasions, U.S. authorities have detected tunnels underneath the border. Some of those facilities are incredibly sophisticated, with electric lights, rail lines, and air conditioning. 46 Controlling the border above ground is no guarantee that it will be controlled below ground. Aside from the problem of dealing with leakage of drugs and violence through the land border, traffickers can bypass it entirely and enter the United States through the lengthy coastline in the Gulf of Mexico or along the California coast. In addition to using speedboats (the most common method), the Mexican cartels have begun to emulate their Colombian colleagues by utilizing submarines to bring their product to market. 47 And drug traffickers can circumvent fences and border checkpoints by evading radar and flying over the border in small planes. Indeed, the cartels seem to maintain a veritable fleet of such planes to bring shipments into the United States. 48 The immensity of the task means that schemes to seal the border are just as futile as the calls to stop the southward flow of guns as a solution to the problems of drug trafficking and drug-related violence. Policymakers
must look elsewhere for effective measures. Unfortunately, the most popular proposal is to redouble the effort to win the war on drugs yet another false panacea.

AT: Mexico Failed State

No risk of Mexico becoming a failed state anytime soon Broder, 9 senior editor for defense and foreign policy at Roll Call. Before joining Congressional Quarterly in 2002, he worked
as an editor at National Public Radio in Washington and as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, NBC News and the Chicago Tribune, based in Jerusalem, Beirut and Beijing. graduate of the University of Virginia and studied international relations at Harvard University. (Jonathan, Mexico's Drug War: Violence Too Close to Home 3/9/09 http://library.cqpress.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/cqweekly/weeklyreport111-000003069323.) // czhang Mexican officials bristle at the dire forecasts for their country. The suggestion that Mexico is remotely close to a

failed state or is heading in that direction is analytically flawed and therefore simply wrong, Arturo Sarukhan, Mexicos ambassador to the United States, said in a statement. Mexico is today a country with solid institutions, a consolidating and pluralistic democracy, a vibrant civil society, and, despite the global recession, strong economic fundamentals. In a separate interview, Sarukhan argued that the heavy toll from the armed confrontations in Mexico is, if anything, a sign of his governments strength and determination to confront the cartels, which, he adds, have grown increasingly desperate under the armys assault. The violence, Sarukhan said, is an indication that theyre feeling the pressure and against the ropes. Many U.S. experts on Mexico also reject what George W. Grayson, a Mexico scholar at the College of William & Mary, called the overstated tone of the recent warnings about Mexico. The army is still loyal to the regime, said Grayson. Most workers get up and go to their jobs every day, and the major production facilities around the country continue to turn out goods and services . Allyson Benton, a Mexico City-based analyst for the Eurasia Group, an international risk analysis firm, said flatly, Mexico is not a failed state and will not become one. Mexico will never become a failed state stable influences Carpenter, 12 (Ted Galen Carpenter is senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Dr.

Carpenter served as Catos director of foreign policy studies from 1986 to 1995 and as vice president for defense and foreign policy studies from 1995 to 2011. He is the author of nine and the editor of 10 books on international affairs; 1/4/12; Drug Mayhem Moves South; http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/drug-mayhem-moves-south) KD What is so worrisome about the mounting presence of the drug cartels in Central America is the vulnerability and overall weakness of the region. There has been speculation that the violence in Mexico could ultimately cause that

country to become a failed state. Such fears are understandable given the scope of the carnage, but they are excessive. For all of its problems, Mexico still maintains powerful institutions that serve to keep the country relatively stable. One is the Catholic Church, a prosperous, well-organized and pervasive factor in Mexico. Another is the influential business community, which has an enormous incentive to prevent the country from descending into chaos. There are three stable political parties that have the same incentive and impressive capabilities. Though Mexico faces a serious threat from the drug cartelsand there are a few areas of the country in which the governments writ has become precariously weakit is still a long way from becoming a failed state.

AT: Heroin Kills People

Heroin overdoses usually arent responsible for death --- several other factors make it inevitable a) Alcohol and depressant usage Darke, 1 (Shane, Matthew Warner-Smith, Shane Darke, Michael Lynskey, and Wayne Hall, all work at National Drug and
Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Heroin overdose: causes and consequences, Addiction, Volume 96, Issue 8, August 2001, pg. 1113-1125, wiley online library, Tashma) Drug interactions

Concomitant use of opioids with other CNS depressant drugs, particularly alcohol and the benzodiazepines, has been repeatedly shown to increase the risk of overdose (Table 1). Morphine is rarely the only drug detected at autopsy17,22,45,62 and blood morphine concentrations are negatively correlated with blood alcohol concentrations.63,64 The concurrent use of
alcohol and benzodiazepines is also a risk factor for non-fatal opioid overdose.12

Co-administration of other depressant drugs can substantially increase the likelihood of a fatal outcome following injection of heroin, due to the potentiation of the respiratory depressant effects of heroin. Thus, in the presence of other CNS depressant drugs a normal or usual dose of heroin may prove fatal. Alcohol appears to be especially implicated, with the frequency of alcohol consumption a significant risk factor for opioid overdose.12 b) Pulmonary diseases Darke, 1 (Shane, Matthew Warner-Smith, Shane Darke, Michael Lynskey, and Wayne Hall, all work at National Drug and
Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Heroin overdose: causes and consequences, Addiction, Volume 96, Issue 8, August 2001, pg. 1113-1125, wiley online library, Tashma) Pulmonary disease

A number of studies suggest that mortality from opioid overdose may be associated with pulmonary dysfunction. Since the mechanism of death in opioid overdose is respiratory arrest55 it is plausible that opioid users with reduced pulmonary function may be at greater risk of mortality from a given overdose event through their increased vulnerability to fatal respiratory depression. Very few epidemiological data on the levels of systemic morbidity in heroin users exist in the literature. While the prevalence of pulmonary dysfunction in the heroin-using population is largely unknown, there is some evidence to suggest that it may be common. Heroin users are likely to suffer from impaired pulmonary function as a result of smoking, predominantly tobacco but also heroin and other drugs; complications of overdose, and increased susceptibility to
infection. In one of the few studies investigating the prevalence and severity of lung dysfunction in heroin users Overland et al.76 reported that 42% of 512 intravenous heroin users had impaired respiratory function.

c) Smoking Darke, 1 (Shane, Matthew Warner-Smith, Shane Darke, Michael Lynskey, and Wayne Hall, all work at National Drug and
Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Heroin overdose: causes and consequences, Addiction, Volume 96, Issue 8, August 2001, pg. 1113-1125, wiley online library, Tashma) Smoking

Tobacco smoking is typically highly prevalent among heroin users. Burling & Ziff.77 for example, report a prevalence of smoking above 90% in participants of a drug dependence programme. Heroin users in their late 20s and early 30s, the highest-risk age group for overdose, are likely to have a history of daily tobacco use dating back 1015 years. There is an overwhelming body of evidence illustrating the doseresponse relationship between smoking and pulmonary disease and dysfunction.78 Smoking related respiratory conditions, such as bronchitis, are reported to be widespread among IDUs.73 It is therefore highly probable that there is a
significant degree of tobacco induced pulmonary disease among heroin users.

AT: Drugs -/> Terror

Drug trafficking and narcoterror are globally integrated Thomas, 10 (James, J.D. from Washington and Lee University Law School, Narco-Terrorism: Could the Legislative and
Prosecutorial Responses Threaten Our Civil Liberties?, Washington and Lee University Law School, 5/2010, http://law.wlu.edu/deptimages/Law%20Review/66-4ThomasNote.pdf, JKahn) The global War on Terror has changed.1 "State sponsorship of terrorism is declining . . . . Terrorist groups, therefore, increasingly need

new sources of funds, and the drug business fills this need perfectly."2 Drugs fuel terrorism and economically support the very organizations America has pledged to defeat.3 As a result, the confluence of the War on Terror with the War on Drugs has culminated in the War on Narco-Terror.4 In post-9/11 America, with mounting evidence that the Taliban is funded by drugs,5 the United States government increasingly focuses on committing resources to curb this dangerous practice.6 Narco-terrorism is the most dangerous national security threat immediately facing Congress ,7 and it is readily apparent that legislative and prosecutorial action against it should be swift and severe.8 Yet, some restraint remains necessary.

AT: Terrorists Wont Target US

Drug-revenue-based terrorists groups specifically target the U.S. Kleiman, 4 (Mark, B.A. magna cum laude, Haverford College, M.P.P., Harvard Kennedy School, Ph.D., Harvard, Professor of
Public Policy in the UCLA School of Public Affairs, Illicit Drugs and the Terrorist Threat: Causal Links and Implications fo r Domestic Drug Control Policy, Congressional Research Service, 4/20/2004, http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32334.pdf, JKahn) For example, the direct support the Taliban regime in Afghanistan received from drug trafficking (and indirect U.S. support for its counter-drug efforts) helped

keep it in power during the time its territory was being used by Al Qaeda as a base from which to plot hostilities against the United States . In that case, then, the drug money that may have (indirectly) supported terrorism became a direct threat to the United States . (It is less clear whether any of the assistance provided by the United States to replace the incomes of poppy
farmers put out of business by the Talibans prohibition on poppy production36 in practice helped keep the Taliban in power. The same applies to the other relief aid that flowed to Afghanistan in that period though not directly to the Taliban government from a variety of international sources, reportedly as a reward to the Taliban for the poppy ban.) On the other hand, drug trafficking also helped sustain some elements of the Northern Alliance that were allies of the United States in ousting the Taliban. Insofar as the goal is to protect the United States against terrorist acts, we

need not merely to cut down on the drugrelated contribution to terrorism generally, but to the drug-related contribution to terrorist groups that threaten us. Narcoterrorists will threaten the U.S. Thomas, 10 (James, J.D. from Washington and Lee University Law School, Narco-Terrorism: Could the Legislative and
Prosecutorial Responses Threaten Our Civil Liberties?, Washington and Lee University Law School, 5/2010, http://law.wlu.edu/deptimages/Law%20Review/66-4ThomasNote.pdf, JKahn) This is a global phenomenon, and it is becoming increasingly clear that narco-terrorism is a

major threat to the stability of Mexico, Peru, Pakistan, and other countries.22 This world-wide issue significantly threatens the United States .23 Consider the following: As [foreign terrorist organizations] become more heavily involved in the drug trade, hybrid organizations are emerging, foreign terrorist organizations that have morphed into one part terrorist organization, one part global drug cartel. The Taliban and FARCtwo perfect examples are, in essence, the face of twenty-first-century organized crime, a visage meaner and uglier than anything law enforcement or militaries have heretofore faced. These hybrids represent the most significant security challenge to governments worldwide.24 In response to these and other threats to America, Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act
in 2001 and reauthorized many of its sunsetting provisions in 2005.25 As part of the reauthorization, Congress introduced the narcoterrorism statute, which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2006.

AT: Drugs Kill People

Illegal drugs kill LESS people than prescription drugs do Mercola, 11 natural health expert with Mercola, a website that is a reliable source of health articles, optimal wellness products,
medical news, and free natural newsletter (Joseph, The New Epidemic Sweeping Across America (and it's Not a Disease) October 26, 2011 Death by medicine is a 21st-century epidemic, and America's "war on drugs" is clearly directed at the wrong

enemy! Prescription drugs are now killing far more people than illegal drugs, and while most major causes of preventable deaths are declining, those from prescription drug use are increasing, an analysis of recently
released data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by the Los Angeles Times revealed. The Times analysis of 2009 death statistics, the most recent available, showed: For the first time ever in the US, more people were

killed by drugs than motor vehicle accidents 37,485 people died from drugs, a rate fueled by overdoses on prescription pain and anxiety medications, versus 36,284 from traffic accidents Drug fatalities more than doubled among teens and young adults between 2000 and 2008, and more than tripled among people aged 50 to 69 Again, these drug-induced fatalities are not being driven by illegal street drugs; the analysis found that the most commonly abused prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and Soma now cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined. Prescription drugs kill more people than illegal drugs do widespread availabililty Renick, 11 writer from Bloomberg News (Oliver, Prescription Drugs Cause More Overdoses in U.S. Than Heroin and Cocaine
Jul 7, 2011 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-07/prescription-drugs-cause-more-overdoses-in-u-s-than-heroin-andcocaine.html) // czhang

Accidental drug overdoses from prescription pills have more than doubled in the past decade as deaths from illegal drugs decreased, a Florida study found. Prescription medications were implicated in 76 percent of all overdose deaths in Florida between 2003 and 2009, while illicit drugs like cocaine and heroin were present in 34 percent of deaths, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention in Atlanta. Ten percent of overdoses came from a mix of both illegal and prescription drugs. Unintentional poisoning is the second leading cause of injury death in the U.S. after automobile accidents, accounting for 29,846 deaths nationwide in 2007, the CDCs Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, said. In 2007, the U.S. government began the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, a $9 million program that provides state funding for recording and monitoring prescription drug use. By 2009, the

number of deaths involving prescription drugs was four times the number involving illicit drugs, the report said. These findings indicate the need to strengthen interventions aimed at reducing overdose deaths from prescription drugs. The number of annual deaths from lethal concentrations of prescription medicines increased 84 percent from 2003 to 2009, while deadly overdoses of illegal drugs fell 21 percent. Deaths from the narcotic painkiller oxycodone and anxiety medicine alprazolam, sold under the brand name Xanax, more than tripled. Availability The sense is that the widespread availability of prescription drugs is causing people to switch from illicit drugs like cocaine and heroin, Leonard Paulozzi, a medical

epidemiologist at CDCs Injury Center, said in a phone interview. Paulozzi said most prescription overdoses were in men between the ages of 45 and 54. Heroin death rates dropped 62 percent in the period. Cocaine overdoses increased until 2007, and declined in 2008 and 2009, researchers found. Methadone rates rose 79 percent, the study said. The federal government spent $15.1 billion on the so-called War on Drugs in 2010, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Efforts to combat illegal drug use included prevention, treatment, law enforcement and interdiction.

The impact to drugs is inevitable - immigration Jackson, 7/17 (David, USA TODAY Obama: No immigration bill before fall

AT: Impact Inevitable

http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/07/17/obama-immigration-hispanic-television-stations/2523827/ While President Obama once called for an immigration bill by August, he is now acknowledging

that nothing will happen until after summer. Obama told Telemundo's Denver affiliate that August "was originally my hope and my goal," but too many House Republicans are balking at the comprehensive bill the Senate passed. Said Obama: "The House Republicans I think still have to process this issue and discuss it further -- and hopefully, I think, still hear from constituents, from businesses to labor, to evangelical Christians who all are supporting immigration reform." Obama made similar comments in interviews with three other Spanish language television affiliates. Some Republicans in particular object to a planned pathway to citizenship for people who are already in the United States illegally -- but Obama indicated he would veto any immigration bill that did not include such a provision. "It does not make sense to me, if we're going to make this once-in-a-generation effort to finally fix this system, to leave the status of 11 million people or so unresolved," Obama told the Denver station.

Internal factors are key Thoumi, Manaut, Sain, and Jcome, 10 (*Francisco E., expert at the Wilson Center, Ph.D., professor of economics and the director of the Research and Minotiring Center on Drugs and Crime at Universidad el Rosario, former research coordinator at the United National Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, **Ral Benitez, public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Humanities, professor and researcher at the North America Rsearch Center of UNAM-Mexico, CNAS Senior Fellow, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, School of Public Affairs and Washington College of Law, Ph.D in Latin American Studies at UNAM, Master of International Affairs from the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economica, ***professor at the University of San Andrs, Ph.D., University of Salvador, political science, Francine, professor of anthropology at the Central University of Venezuela, political science degree, Friedrich, Ebert, and Stiftung Research, The impact of organized crime on Democratic Governance in Latin America, http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/07386.pdf, JKahn) The concentration of the coca-cocaine and opium- poppy-heroin industry in few countries can only be explained by internal factors . The point is quite simple: if the production and trafficking of a particular product that is easy to produce and can be produced in many countries is declared illegal globally concentrates in one or a few countries, it will do so where it is easier to do illegal things! As argued extensively (Thoumi, 2009), the competitive advantage of Colombia in the cocaine in- dustry is rooted in its illegality not in its profitability . Il- legal cocaine demand is a great incentive to produce co- caine in the world, but its production is concentrated in Colombia because it is illegal and Colombia has a com- petitive advantage in illegal activities.

AT: Reduce Consumption

AT: Columbian Instability

Their impact is overstated --- drug trade isnt responsible for Columbian instability Lee, 2 (Rensselaer W., contract researcher for the Congressional Research Service and a senior fellow at FPRI, Perverse Effects
of Andean Counternarcotics Policy, Orbis, Volume 46, Issue 3, Summer 2012, pg. 537-554, sciencedirect, Tashma)

To ascribe these trends entirely to the pathologies of international drug policy would be unfair. The United States did not invent Colombias modern-day guerrilla problem. Colombian diversification into heroin was partly a response to growing saturation of the U.S. cocaine market, a trend already apparent in the early 1990s. Criminals, rogues, and scoundrels in various guises have always flourished throughout the Caribbean basin. Nevertheless, the drug war has often solved
nothing from a supply-reduction standpoint, and in some instances has exacerbated these problems. The deteriorating political military situation in Colombia in particular poses a major threat to U.S. security interests. For these reasons, alternatives to the current failed supply-side approaches to fighting drugs must urgently be sought.

*Mexico*

US K to Mexico
US engagement with Mexico is key to defend against drug cartel instability Broder, 9 senior editor for defense and foreign policy at Roll Call. Before joining Congressional Quarterly in 2002, he worked
as an editor at National Public Radio in Washington and as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, NBC News and the Chicago Tribune, based in Jerusalem, Beirut and Beijing. graduate of the University of Virginia and studied international relations at Harvard University. (Jonathan, Mexico's Drug War: Violence Too Close to Home 3/9/09 http://library.cqpress.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/cqweekly/weeklyreport111-000003069323.) // czhang The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels, the report said. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will before he departed in January as director of the CIA, Michael V. Hayden

have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Just listed the threat the drug gangs pose to Mexicos stability as one of top challenges facing Obama. He urged the president to strengthen ties with Mexican intelligence to deal with the situation there. As bad as it is and it is bad, Hayden said, theres an opportunity here. Even Obamas director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, has chimed in, telling Congress last month that the Mexican government already has lost control over some parts of its country. The corruptive influence and increasing violence of Mexican drug cartels, Blair told the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on Feb. 12, impedes Mexico Citys ability to govern parts of its country. Mexico shares a border with the U.S. this magnifies the link Carpenter, 09 (Ted Galen, senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, contributing editor to the National Interest, editorial boards of Mediterranean Quarterly and the Journal of Strategic Studies, Ph.D. in U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Texas, "The International War on Drugs", CATO Handbook for Policymakers, CATO Institute, http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-handbookpolicymakers/2009/9/hb111-58.pdf, JKahn) Mexico is a major source of heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine for the U.S. market, as well as the principal transit and distribution point for cocaine coming in from South America. For years, people both inside and outside Mexico have worried that the country might descend into the maelstrom of corruption and violence that plagued the chief drug-source country in the Western Hemisphere, Colombia, from the early 1980s to the early years of this century. There are growing signs that the Colombi- anization of Mexico is now becoming a reality . That tragic prospect is a direct result of Washingtons policy of drug prohibition. The enormous potential
profit attracts the most violence-prone criminal elements. It is a truism that when drugs are outlawed, only outlaws will traffic in drugs. If Mexico goes down the same path that Colombia did, the consequences to the United States will be much more severe.

Colombia is relatively far away, but Mexico shares a border with the United States and is closely linked to this country economically through the North American Free Trade Agreement. Chaos in Mexico is already
spilling over the border and adversely affecting the United Statesespecially the southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The prominence of the drug trade in Mexico has mushroomed over the past 15 years. One consequence of the increased prominence of the Mexi- can cartels is a spike in violence. Even supposed victories

in the drug war prove to be mixed blessings at best. As Stratfor, a risk-assessment consult- ing organization, notes: Inter-cartel violence tends to swing upward

after U.S. or Mexican authorities manage to weaken or disrupt a given organization. At any point, if rival groups sense an organization might not be able to defend its turf, they will swoop in to battle not only the incumbent group, but also each other for control.

K World Trade
Mexican drug gangs are the center of world drug trade one of the biggest industries Luhnow, 9 writer for Wall Street Journal (David, Saving Mexico December 26, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704254604574614230731506644.html) // czhang Today, the world's most successful drug trafficking organizations are found in Colombian drug gangs in the 1980s, who relied almost entirely on cocaine, Mexican

Mexico. Unlike drug gangs are a one-stop shop for four big-time illicit drugs: marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines and heroin. Mexico is the world's second biggest producer of marijuana (the U.S. is No. 1), the major supplier of methamphetamines to the U.S., the key transit point for U.S.-bound cocaine from South America and the hemisphere's biggest producer of heroin. This diversification helps them absorb shocks from the business. Sales of cocaine in the U.S., for instance, slipped slightly from 2006 to 2008. But that decline was more than made up for by growing sales of methamphetamines. In many ways, illegal drugs are the most successful Mexican multinational enterprise, employing some 450,000 Mexicans and generating about $20 billion in sales, second only behind the country's oil industry and automotive industry exports. This year, Forbes magazine put Mexican drug lord Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman as No. 701 on
the world's list of billionaires.

K Cocaine Trade
Mexico is the center of cocaine trade they are vital to global drug trade Stewart 1/3/13 Vice President of Analysis at Security Weekly, writing for Stratfor (Scott, Mexico's
1990s, and as the

Cartels and the Economics of Cocaine Security Weekly, Stratfor http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/mexicos-cartels-and-economicscocaine) // czhang
As U.S. interdiction efforts, aided by improvements in aerial and maritime surveillance, curtailed much of the Caribbean cocaine flow in the 1980s and

Colombian and U.S. governments dismantled the Colombian cartels, the land routes through Central America and Mexico became more important to the flow of cocaine. It is far more difficult to spot and seize contraband moving across the busy U.S.-Mexico border than it is to spot contraband flowing across the Caribbean. This increase in the importance of Mexico allowed the Mexican cartels to gain leverage in negotiations with their Central American and Colombian partners and to secure a larger share of the profit. Indeed, by the mid-1990s the increasing importance of Mexican organizations to the flow of cocaine to the United States allowed the Mexican cartels to become the senior partners in the business relationship. In a quest for an even larger portion of the cocaine profit chain, the Mexican cartels have increased their activities in Central and South America over the last two decades. The Mexicans have cut out many of the middlemen in Central America who used to transport cocaine from South America to Mexico and sell it to the Mexican cartels. Their efforts to consolidate their control over Central American smuggling routes continue today. This move meant that the Mexican cartels assumed responsibility for the losses incurred by transporting cocaine from South America to Mexico, but it also permitted them to reap an increasing portion of the profit pool.
Instead of making a set profit of perhaps $1,000 or $1,500 per kilogram of cocaine smuggled into the United States, the Mexican cartels can now buy a kilogram of cocaine for $2,200 or less in South America and sell it for $24,000 or more to their partners in the United States. But the expansion of the Mexican cartels did not stop in Central America. According to South American authorities, the Mexican cartels are now becoming more involved in the processing of cocaine from coca leaf in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. There have also been reports of seizures of coca paste being smuggled to cocaine processing laboratories in Honduras and Guatemala. The use of these Central American processing laboratories, which are run by Mexican cartels, appears to be a reaction to the increased efforts of the Colombian National Police to crack down on cocaine laboratories and the availability of cocaine processing chemicals. U.S. counternarcotics officials report that today

the Mexican cartels are the largest players in the global cocaine trade and are steadily working to grab the portion of cocaine smuggling not yet under their control. But the efforts of the Mexican cartels to increase their share of the cocaine profit are not confined to the production side; they have also expanded their involvement in the smuggling of South American cocaine to Europe and Australia and have established a footprint in African, Asian and European countries. Furthermore, they have stepped up their activities in places like the Dominican Republic and Haiti in an attempt to increase their share of the cocaine being smuggled through the Caribbean to the U.S. market. As seen by recent operations launched by U.S. law enforcement, such as Operation Xcellerator, Operation Chokehold and Operation Imperial Emperor, the Mexican cartels have also been increasing their presence at distribution points inside the United States, such as Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas, in an effort to increase their share of the cocaine profit chain inside the United States. While marijuana sales have
always been an important financial source for the Mexican cartels, the large profits from the cocaine trade are what have permitted the cartels to become as powerful as they are today. The

billions of dollars of profit to be had from the cocaine trade have not only motivated much of the Mexican cartels' global expansion but have also financed it. Cocaine
profits allow the Mexican cartels to buy boats and planes, hire smugglers and assassins ("sicarios") and bribe government officials.

Econ High
Mexicos economy is booming despite drug violence
ONeil & Gwertzman, 12 *Douglas Dillon Fellow for Latin America Studies, Council on Foreign Relations AND **Consulting Editor, CFR.org (Shannon & Bernard, Mexico's Burgeoning Economy Amid Drug Violence, Council on Foreign Relations, 20 February 2012, http://www.cfr.org/mexico/mexicos-burgeoning-economy-amid-drugviolence/p27386)//BI Despite an escalation in drug violence and thousands of people killed in drug-related murders in Mexico in

recent years, Mexico's economy and the tourism industry are thriving, says CFR's Mexico expert, Shannon K. O'Neil. "Mexico was the hardest hit in Latin America" as a result of the global financial crisis, she says, "but it's recovered quite quickly, and in part it's been due to a huge boom in manufacturing
along the border tied to U.S. companies and to U.S. consumers." On the contentious issue of Mexican immigrants in the United States, she says fewer Mexicans are immigrating to the United States because of a burgeoning economy and a demographic shift. More broadly, one reason the two countries have failed to find a solution, she says, is because while Mexicans see immigration as a foreign policy issue, the United States continues to treat it as a domestic one. There have been reports about Mexico's thriving economy amid continuing drug violence. Does this sort of ambivalence truly exist in Mexico right now? It is true. Mexico is a

place that's seen a huge escalation in violence. Under President Felipe Calderon over the last five years, we've seen almost 50,000 people killed in drug-related murders. But at the same time, Mexico's economy has actually been doing quite well since the end of the global recession. Mexico was the hardest hit in Latin America but it's
recovered quite quickly, and in part it's been due to a huge boom in manufacturing along the border tied to U.S. companies and to U.S. consumers.

Econ Ev Indict
Their studies are flawed they dont take into account aggregate costs and benefits
Rios, 8 PhD candidate in Government and a doctoral fellow in Inequality and Criminal Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School, studying drug trafficking, violence and corruption in Mexico (Viridiana, Evaluating the economic impact of Mexicos drug trafficking industry, Graduate Students Political Economy Workshop, Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Harvard University, Spring 2008, http://www.gov.harvard.edu/files/Rios2008_MexicanDrugMarket.pdf)//BI

It is well known that the drug trade in Mexico represents one of the biggest industries in that country, accounting for as much as $991 million dollars per year. The 2006 drug seizure of over $206 million in cash, the fortune

of Zhenli Yen Gon, an ostentatious drug smuggler, was approximately equivalent to the whole budget of the Mexican General Attorney Office for three months (CDHCU 2006) and was the largest seizure of drug money anywhere in the world (Shenon 2007). That the drug trade generates so much revenue in Mexico raises a set of crucial questions about the

rationale and efficiency of that countrys efforts to eliminate the industry. If -as some have estimated (Chabat

as cited by nderson 2007)- drug trafficking is one of the ten most important industries of the country, a serious analysis should be undertaken before dismembering it. After all, drug dollars are also dollars and drugs also an industry, one that introduces large capital flows into the country, generating employment, fostering consumption and sprinkling resources to other legal industries [for example, the construction industry of many cities are boosted by the exotic housing preferences of drug smugglers (Lpez 2007)]. In other words, is Mexico winning or losing by having such a successful -but illegal- industry as part of

its economy? An analysis of the aggregate costs and benefits of Mexican drug traffic is absent in the literature. Questions that require analysis include: How many dollars flow into the Mexican economy and to what extent do these flows foster economic growth? Who are the winners of this industry? How do the poor and

isolated peasants fair? How are violence, corruption and drug abuse affecting the productivity of the Mexican economy? How much is the country losing by being perceived internationally as the home of world famous drug dealers and corrupted politicians? By analyzing and reviewing the literature about the consequences of drug trafficking in Mexico, this paper tackles the aforementioned questions,

contributing to the formal study of a field that has been relatively ignored. This work has two contributions. First, it evaluates the economic costs and benefits of the Mexican drug industry to determine whether or not it is rational to suppress it. While some studies

have evaluated the impacts of drug profits in agriculture (Resa Nestares 2001, Marn 2002), the costs of drug abuse (CIDAD 2004), the costs of violence and crime (Londoo and Guerrero 2000), the cost of corruption (WB 2004) and the estimated amount of general illegal-drug cash flows (Reuter 2001, Toro 1995, Loret de Mola 2001, Resa Nestares 2003), none have evaluated the aggregate economic impact of this industry. Second, the paper formally analyzes the Mexican drug industry, in

particular the profits and revenues generated through its productive chain. Similar analyses have been undertaken in Colombia (Thoumi 1995, Lee 1989, Sarmiento 1991), but not for Mexico. Given Mexicos

dominance in the drug industry, such an evaluation is necessary. [almost all the cocaine produced in Colombia enters the US with the help of Mexican cartels (UNODC 2007a), and Mexico produces more marijuana and poppy than Colombia (ONDCP 2003)].

This paper is the first attempt to understand the fight against drug trafficking in Mexico with a formal cost-benefit analysis. Contrary to the US, where anti-drug efforts have been rationally justified in terms of

productivity losses (ONDCP, 2000), addiction rates (ONDCP 2003), or the potential costs of alternative policies (e.g. MacCoun and Reuter, 2001; Sabet 2006), the Mexican government has failed to formally frame the reasons for fighting this extremely costly war, offering only vague references to violence and social fragmentation (e.g. Informe Presidencial 2006). The main hypothesis of this paper is that Mexicos efforts against the illegal drug trade are worth the costs because, even

accounting for all the economic benefits generated by drug traffic (employment, cash flows and investments), extensive negative externalities (corruption, violence, productivity losses, and increase demand) produced by drug industry generate an aggregate negative impact. The paper also claims that, although in

the aggregate drug traffic has had a negative economic impact, drug flows may be beneficial for local, less diversified economies such as Mexican rural communities dedicated to poppy and marijuana production. This is no surprise since drug smugglers represent a critical source of employment, income, and consumption.

US Econ IL
Mexican decline collapses the U.S. economy Sarukhan, 12 (Arturo, Ambassador of Mexico to the United States, Mexico Critically Important to US Economy, Wilson
Its an incredibly strong relationship, for starters, because a lot of people sometimes dont stop to think that we Center, 2/24/12, video testimony, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/mexico-%E2%80%98critically-important%E2%80%99-tous-economy, Tashma)

trade one

billion dollars a day of goods in both directions. Second, that Mexico is the United States depending on crate
loads that we are either third, or second largest trading partner with the United States. China and Mexico have been sort of in second or third, and we are the second largest buyer of U.S. exports on the face of the Earth. Depending what your area of geographic expertise or fondness is, if you think of Latin America, Mexico buys more U.S. exports than all of Latin America and the Caribbean combined. If youre focused on Europe, Mexico buys more U.S. exports than the combined purchase of the U.K., Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. If youre focused on the new, sexy Asia-Pacific, Mexico is buying more U.S. exports than Japan and China combined. We buy more exports than all

the four BRIC countries put together , so its a very compelling story. 26 states in America today have Mexico as their #1 or #2 export market, and there are ten million U.S. jobs directly related to trade with Mexico in those states. So, it is very vibrant, very important to weigh economic
relationship. Mexicos macroeconomic fundamentals, when the world is hurting still and still facing some of the challenges from the global recession, Mexico growth last year was five percent with 3.1 [percent] inflation and four percent unemployment. These are very compelling numbers. I think that the macroeconomic fundamentals of Mexico are sound, and this two-way successful relationship that we have developed is

critically important for the social well-being and the

prosperity of Americans.

Mexico diplomacy and cooperation are key corruption and ineffective forces mean U.S. action is key Castaeda, 10 (Jorge, Ph.D. in Economic History from the University of Paris, B.A. from Princeton University, professors at National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, New York University, and the University of Cambridge, Bernard Schwartz fellow at The New America Foundation, Mexicos Failed Drug War, CATO Institute, 5/6/2010, http://www.cato.org/publications/economic-developmentbulletin/mexicos-failed-drug-war, JKahn) What is going on with Mexicos drug war? Why are we in our current mess, and what are the possibilities of getting out of it in any reasonable time frame? We are in this mess today , as opposed to over the last 40 or 50 years, because when the current president, Felipe Caldern, took office over three years ago, he felt that he had no choice but to declare a full-fledged, no-holds-barred war on drugs. He declared this war after a three-month transition
period, which was very rocky because of the controversy surrounding the elections. And he declared this war because he had the impression that it was as if a patient had come to him and said, I have a stomachache. Thinking it was a problem of appendicitis, he opened the patient up and found that the entire abdominal cavity was invaded by cancer. He had no option other than to go in with everything he had to fix it. This was the country Caldern said he found. He had to declare a war on drugs because the drug cartels had reached a level of power, wealth, violence, and penetration of the state that made the situation untenable. Why the War on Drugs? Why did President Caldern declare the war on drugs? The first reason was violence.

Cooperation Key

In

the last year of President Vicente Foxs administration there had probably been more incidents of violence related to drugs in some states of Mexico than in previous years. This is a hard judgment to make because only in the last
15 years has Mexico been a country where there is a real congress, where there is a free press, and where there is some sort of accountability and transparency. We dont really know how many people were killed in drug wars in the 1970s and the 1980s because there was nobody to count them. We know how many were killed in 2003, 2004, 2007, or 2008, because we now have a free press, we have an opposition in congress, we have international monitors, we have Human Rights Watch, we have the Drug Enforcement Administration, and we have all sorts of people doing those jobs. Since we didnt have that in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, we really dont know if there is that much more violence now than there was then. However, President Caldern had

the impression that there was more violence when he assumed office and so he had to take on the drug cartels for that reason. The second reason is that Caldern also thought there was more corruption now or three years ago
than before. However, the notion that drug-related corruption is worse today than 30 or 40 years ago is not really that clear since, again, we do not know how much corruption there was before. Still, its probably true that there is less corruption stemming from drugs today because there is less corruption, in general, in Mexico today for many reasons, including politics, globalization, and NAFTA. Therefore, that reason was a difficult one to accept at face value. A third explanation given by the president was that the drug cartels had penetrated the political arena at the local, state, and federal levels to such an extent that Mexico was losing control of parts of its territory. Again, this is a tough call to make in a country where we have had that type of penetration for many years. Finally, President Caldern has argued that Mexico has ceased being simply a transit country and has become a country of drug consumption. That notion struck a chord in Mexican public opinion: We are not doing this for the Americans

anymore; we are doing it for ourselves because drugs are reaching our children. The problem with this argument is that the

government has not been able to come up with any statistics over the last three years to substantiate the claim. In fact, most of the figures the government does provide, like the number of users, occasional users, addicts, and so on, show that, at best, there has been a very small increase in the number of users, whether they are occasional users or addicts. One shortcoming of the numbers that the government generally uses is that they only quantify users, without breaking down the data between occasional, recreational, or addicted users. Users of drugs have gone up from 307,000 to 465,000 over the last seven years (20022008), which in a country of 110 million people, is not a huge drug problem. Mexico is, by and large, today a middle-class country, with approximately 60 percent of the country ranked as such. In a typical middle-class country you have much more than 0.4 percent of the population that has used drugs. Fighting the War Who is waging this war? This is a complicated question. We have an

army in Mexico, the purpose of which is not to be a fighting army, but to participate in rescue efforts when some natural disaster strikes the country. Mexicos political system has, since the 1920s, deliberately ensured that the army is useless . There is a tremendous consensus in the country on this matter. We want an army that is corrupt, poorly trained, poorly equipped, and totally useless. Why? Because those armies dont overthrow their governments. We

have not even had an attempted military coup in Mexico since 1938. An old, distinguished Mexican politician, Jess Reyes Heroles, who in the 1960s was head of Pemex, the stateowned oil company, once told me that one day there was a riot somewhere in the country, and the minister of defense came to him and said, I need more gas for my trucks. Mr. Reyes Heroles refused, so the minister of defense went to complain to the president about why he couldnt have any more gas for his trucks. The president then called the head of Pemex and asked him about the situation. Mr. Reyes Heroles said, Look, Mr. President, Ill do whatever you want, but standing orders here in Pemex are never to give the army more than two days of gasoline. If you want me to give them more, Ill

do it. But this is the way things operate. Its not as stupid as it sounds; it was actually very wise. The caveat is that you cant ask such an army to go to war because thats not its business. Therefore, you

have an army that is totally unprepared to

fight a war against drug cartels . The second question is who else could be fighting this war if we dont have an effective army? What about the police? The problem is that Mexico doesnt have a national police force like Chile or Colombia. We have county and state police. Each of the 2,500 counties and 32 states in Mexico has its own police force, and they are the ones fighting the war on drugs. The problem is that local policemen go through an identity crisis every day regarding who they work for. Do they work for the drug cartels or the citizens of the country? They work for the drug cartels and everybody in Mexico knows that. Clearly, you cant ask them to fight the drug cartels because they are part of the drug cartels. Therefore, Mexico has an army which is not ready to fight a war on drugs, and a police force that is not willing to do so . The remaining alternative is the United States, but that option is quite complicated. Historically, Mexico has always wanted U.S. support for law-enforcement efforts, and the United States has been willing to give us such support,

but we want it on our terms, not on U.S. terms. And, since approximately the end of the Vietnam War, the United States has placed a series of restrictions on military aid that involve human rights provisions, military supervision, and instruction, among others. That means that we cant get American aid on our terms, and thus it has been very limited. Who then is fighting the war on

drugs? We dont really know . Another problem the president and the government faced has to do with the Powell
Doctrine. During the Gulf War, General Colin Powell, then head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, outlined what came to be known as the Powell Doctrine for U.S. involvement in conflicts abroad, and it establishes several conditions: you need to have a definition of victory, you need to have overwhelming force, you need to have an exit strategy, and you need to have the support and understanding of the people. If you apply the Powell doctrine to Mexicos war on drugs, you will quickly notice that first, there is no overwhelming force as a matter of fact, there is no force. Second, there is no exit strategy, because there is no way to know whether you have won the war on drugs or not. Third, there is no foreseeable way out of this war. And fourth, you have public support for this endeavor only as long as you are not affecting the daily lives of the people, and even though the war on drugs continues to have the support of most Mexicans, that support is quickly fading locally. If you ask someone what he or she thinks about the army taking over Ciudad Jurez or Cancn, that person would probably say that it is a good idea. But if you ask the people of Ciudad Jurez or Cancn whether they liked the massacre last week in the penitentiary or whether they liked seeing the severed head of the newly appointed chief of security displayed by the side of the road three weeks ago, they will say they are not so happy about it. Unrealistic Expectations of U.S. Change Everyone in Mexico knows that we cant win this war. The government, acknowledging this, has begun to say that drug trafficking and violence cant be solved until the United

States does two things, knowing full well that those are impossible. One is reducing the demand for drugs . It is well known that U.S. demand for drugs over the past 40 years has remained pretty much stable, although

the types of drugs consumed have changed: marijuana was the drug of the 1960s and 1970s, cocaine and crack were the drugs of the 1990s, and methamphetamine is the drug of the first decade of the 21st century. However, the overall number of users has remained pretty much the same. If the United States hasnt been able to reduce drug consumption in 40 years,

its very unlikely that it will be able to do it now. The first Mexican president to realize this was Gustavo Daz Ordaz,

in 1969, when Richard Nixon told him Yes, youre right, absolutely, we have to do something on the demand side. Since then, every American president has recognized the need to do something about drug demand, but nothing has happened because its not feasible. The second request to the U.S. government is to stop the traffic of weapons from the United States to Mexico because the Mexican authorities claim all of the violence and all of the killing is done with American guns. In fact, we only know with certainty that about 18 percent of guns come from the United States, according to Mexican and U.S. sources.1 The rest is surely coming from Central America, countries of the former Soviet Union, and beyond. And as countries as diverse as Brazil, Paraguay, Somalia, and Sudan attest all countries with a higher arms per capita than Mexico you dont need a border with the United States to gain easy access to guns. Nevertheless, the possibilities of really limiting the sales of weapons in the United States is not imminent, to put it mildly. Moreover, asking the United States to stop arms trafficking from north to south is like asking Mexico to control its border from south to north, whether it is for drugs, people, or anything else. Its not going to happen. What Can Mexico Do? President Caldern, in response to a recent report by former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, and Csar Gaviria of Colombia calling for the decriminalization of marijuana, said that such a move would condemn entire generations of Mexicans to destitution and despair.2 It seems that he didnt understand that what these former presidents were calling for was decriminalization of drugs everywhere, not just in their own countries, but in particular, in large drug-consuming nations such as the United States. There is no possible way that Mexico could get away with unilaterally decriminalizing possession, commerce, and consumption of drugs in Mexico if the United States didnt do the same thing, and in that sense, president Caldern is right. Not only would Mexico become a meeting point for junkies from all over the world and particularly from the United States but the real issue would be the pressure from the U.S. government not to do that, which would be unbearable for Mexico. Does that mean that Mexico cannot do anything until the United States does something , and that, in the meantime, we have to continue with this fratricidal war on drugs? I dont think so. There are things Mexico can do, although they are controversial even in Mexico. First, we need to go back to the modus vivendi that the government, society, and the cartels had over the past 50 years. There was no explicit deal or negotiation, but there was an understanding, and those tacit rules were followed by all sides. They were not ideal rules, and every now and then there were screw-ups: we would have to hand somebody over to the United States as a scapegoat, or we would have a problem with the United States that we had to fix. This could be shocking to many who might wonder how a democratic government could reach an understanding with criminals. Well, Mexico would not be the first country in which this happened. We also have to push for drug decriminalization in Mexico and in the United States. Even though we cant do it unilaterally in Mexico, we cant be silent about it either. This is not just a U.S. decision, since it affects everybody especially Mexico and if there is one country in the world that feels the effects of what the United States does in any field or endeavor, it is Mexico. We need to move in those directions, even though they are controversial and complicated. Last year, some 7,600 people died in drug-related episodes in Mexico more than a thousand deaths more than in 2008. And the death rate in 2008 was, in turn, double that of the previous year. Mexico is paying an enormous price to fight a war which is going nowhere,

which we are not winning, which we cannot win, and which the United States does not want to fight in its own territory, but wants others to fight elsewhere. We should find other solutions with the United States, not against the United States.

*Venezuela*

Collapse of cooperation means the impact is inevitable Kraul, 09 (Chris, special correspondent the L.A. Times, U.S. condemns Venezuela's anti-drug efforts, L.A. Times, 7/21/2009, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jul/21/world/fg-venezdrugs21, JKahn) A breakdown in anti-drug cooperation between Venezuela and the United States has contributed to an alarming surge in cocaine trafficking from Venezuela, according to a report issued Monday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The volume of drugs passing through Venezuela more than quadrupled from 66 tons in 2004 to 287 tons in 2007, the GAO said. U.S.-Venezuelan counternarcotics cooperation ended in 2005, as friction intensified between the Bush administration and leftist President Hugo Chavez. Although Venezuela was already a major corridor for Colombian cocaine before Chavez
took office in 1999, the volume has increased to the point that in 2007, one-quarter of all Colombian cocaine produced passed through Venezuela, according to estimates. The GAO said trafficking has increased in part because of Chavez's alleged tolerance of Colombian rebels in Venezuelan territory and because of widespread corruption in his military and police ranks. "Venezuela is caught between the world's largest producer of cocaine, Colombia, and largest consumer, the United States," the report concludes. "Nevertheless, absent greater initiative by the Venezuelan government to resume counter-narcotics

Cooperation Key

cooperation with the United States, U.S. efforts to address the increasing flow of cocaine through Venezuela will continue to be problematic ." Venezuela denies it has failed to hold up its end of the drug
fight, saying that it only chooses to no longer work with the United States. In an interview Monday, Venezuela's ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, said the report is "poor analysis that relies on old news and slanted sources." "It's another reflection of a Cold War mentality against Venezuela. Colombia and the United States are exempted from blame. According to the report, it's all Venezuela's fault," Alvarez said. Venezuela seizes 28% of all drugs passing through, a higher rate than the United States, Alvarez said. Luis Fernandez, assistant director of Venezuela's anti-narcotics police, said the country has seized 25 drug-ferrying airplanes and 30 tons of cocaine this year, and has invested in a $250-million Chinese radar system to detect drug flights. "We reject this unilateral report from a country that pretends to be the judge of the world," Fernandez said. The report was commissioned in early 2008 by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee to look into allegations that Venezuela was becoming a cocaine trafficking hub. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said in an e-mailed statement that the report's details reflect "corruption in that country's government" and "require at a minimum a comprehensive review of U.S. policy towards Venezuela." In any case, the GAO report amounts to a harsh official condemnation of what the U.S. sees as Chavez's failure to stem the rising flow of drugs across Venezuela. American officials usually prefer to discuss the issue off the record for fear of exacerbating already troubled relations between the countries. After hitting a nadir last year, when each country expelled the other's ambassador, U.S.-Venezuelan relations have improved since President Obama took office, and full diplomatic relations were restored early this month. But the subject of narcotics is likely to remain a thorny one. In 2005, Chavez reassigned more than 30 agents who had received training in the U.S., forbidding joint undercover sting operations and recalling intelligence officers working in the United States. He has also winnowed the number of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents by not renewing their work visas, referring to the agents as spies. Former Venezuelan anti-drug czar Mildred Camero said Monday that once-excellent cooperation between the countries began to go downhill after the short-lived April 2002 coup against Chavez, in which the fiery president believes the United States had a hand. The GAO report accuses the Chavez government of throwing a "lifeline" to drug-trafficking Colombian rebel groups by affording them "significant support and safe haven" along the border. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is thought to control as much as 60% of Colombian cocaine production and trafficking, the report says. In condemning Chavez for supporting the rebel group, the report relies on the Colombian government's representations of e-mails recovered in the laptop of FARC commander Raul Reyes, who was killed by Colombian armed forces in a March 2008 raid into Ecuador. Although Interpol declared a selection of the e-mails as legitimate, Chavez denies giving the FARC refuge and claims the e-mails were part of an elaborate disinformation program to discredit him.

Oil prices not cooperation determine instability which is inevitable Nagel, 5/16/13, (Juan, author for Foreign Policy, Venezuela blogger for Transitions, Is Venezuela becoming a failed state?, 5/16/2013, Foreign Policy, http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/16/is_venezuela_becoming_a_failed_stat e, JKahn) Venezuela remains mired in a political and economic crisis that shows no signs of letting up . But while street protests, soaring inflation, scarcity, and skyrocketing crime are massive headaches , the government can count on still-high oil prices to soothe the pain a bit. The question that begs asking is: How will Venezuela maintain stability if oil prices drop ? A recent report by the International Energy Agency underscores the challenges the
country faces in the short term. The United States has made huge progress in oil extraction thanks to fracking technology. It is set to become the world's largest oil producer by the year 2020, and the global spread of fracking is bound to significantly increase international recoverable oil reserves in the near future. The agency crows that fracking is creating a "supply shock that is

At: Failed State Alt Cause

sending ripples around the world." This obviously matters to Venezuela, a country that exports large amounts of oil and little else. Venezuela is increasingly reliant on high oil prices to maintain some semblance of stability. A prolonged drop in oil prices will undoubtedly shake the foundations of the petro-state to

its core. Being an oil producer, Venezuela can earn money in two ways: by sustaining high prices, or by increasing production. (Obviously, if it can do both things, it has hit the jackpot). Fracking threatens the first, and the country has seriously failed on the latter. Venezuela produces less oil now than it did in 1999, the year Hugo Chvez first came to power. Worryingly, the IEA sees few prospects for increased production. For example, in spite ofincreasing investment to $22 billion last year, Venezuelan production barely budged. State oil giant PDVSA vows to increase production by 3 million barrels per day in the next six years, but the IEA believes that a combination of the company's inefficiency and its heavy debt burden means the increase will actually be a tenth of that amount. Two other developments conspire against the future viability of Venezuela's oil industry. The country is increasing sales of crude oil to China, as part of a geo-strategic move the Chvez administration embarked on many years ago. The problem is that the oil being shipped has already been paid for, and the government has also already spent the money. The other issue is Venezuela's creaking refining infrastructure. Last year, following several accidents at its refineries, Venezuela became a net importer of gasoline and other refined products. In the last part of the year alone, PDVSA bought refined products for $1.5 billion, only to turn around and give it away for practically nothing, thanks to the heavy subsidies that characterize its internal market. The consensus is that Venezuela needs high oil prices just to stay afloat. But if the fracking oil boom results in low oil prices, what does the future hold for the South American country? Sadly, Venezuelans have nothing else to fall back on. Its private industry is a shambles, and the country is even importing toilet paper. Years of populism have left the state crippled and heavily in debt. The public deficit reached a whopping 15 percent of GDP last year, even in the context of high oil prices. Most of the spending came in the form of entitlements and subsidies that will not be easily eliminated. Furthermore, the country's current power clique seems particularly inept in dealing with the complicated economic and political conditions it has inherited. Nicols Maduro's only claim to legitimacy is that Hugo Chvez chose him. Now he is left with the thankless task of dealing with the Chvez mess. He has surrounded himself with a Cabinet composed of many of the same old faces, and neither his policies nor his rhetoric suggest any shift toward the type of solutions that could steer Venezuela away from the precipice. The problem for Venezuelans is that there is no great reformer in the governing party. And while opposition leader Henrique Capriles would undoubtedly steer Venezuela toward greater economic freedoms, there is little he would be able to do if the price of oil were to tank. A long period of low oil prices spells doom for

Venezuela's political sustainability. Without high oil revenues, basic services would practically disappear, and the potential for instability would be enormous. Already the country is stuck in a state of undeclared in civil war, and there are claims that drug smuggling has permeated the higher echelons of the government . Venezuela has so far avoided the fate of its neighbor Colombia, a country still deep in a long civil war with Marxist guerrillas and drug cartels . This is largely due to the deep pockets oil has afforded the government, which allowed for state
presence even in the most remote corners of the country. It is hard to see how that presence could be maintained if oil rents were to dry up significantly, and for a prolonged period. This could lead to the type of problems that have bedeviled Colombia, or even poorer neighboring failed states such as Haiti. Even though its problems are of its own making, the thought of a large, failed state in the heart of the Western Hemisphere should trouble the continent's leaders.

*Cuba*

Cooperation S
Despite current barriers to relations, the US and Cuba could still cooperate on drug trafficking measures Lee, 9 senior fellow at FPRI (Foreign Policy Research Institute), an authority on international crime, narcotics, and nuclear

security issues. Stanford Ph.D., President of Global Advisory Services, a consulting firm (Rens, April 2009, Cuba, Drugs, and U.S.Cuban Relations https://www.fpri.org/articles/2009/04/cuba-drugs-and-us-cuban-relations) // czhang The United States and Cuba have a strong mutual interest in closing off trafficking routes in the western Caribbean and in preventing attempts by Mexican and South American cocaine mafias to set up shop in Cuba proper. Yet they have

not entered into a formal agreement to fight drugs even though Havana maintains such agreements with at least 32 other countries and what cooperation exists occurs episodically, on a case-by-case basis. Washington and Havana need to engage more fully on the issue, deploying intelligence and interdiction assets to disrupt smuggling networks through and around Cuba. Washington hitherto has shied away from a deeper relationship, fearing that it would lead to a political opening and confer a measure of legitimacy on the Castro regime. Yet current strategic realities in the region and Havana's own willingness to engage in such a relationship, as well as impending leadership changes in Cuba, argue for rethinking these concerns, even in the absence of formal diplomatic ties. Cooperation with Cuba solves drug trafficking

Lee, 9 authority on international crime and narcotics and nuclear security issues, PhD from Stanford, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, performed overseas contract assignments for the State Department, the Department of Energy, the World Bank, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and other agencies (Rensselaer, Cuba, Drugs, and U.S. -Cuban Relations, Testimony before the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, 29 April 2005, https://www.fpri.org/docs/alt/testimony.20090429.lee_.cubadrugs.pdf)//BI Now on the foreign policy front: looking back in time, narcotics-trafficking was a focal point of conflict in U.S.-

Cuban relations for most of the pre-1990 years, except for a brief period during the Carter administration. The focus gradually shifted to cooperation in the 1990s, as the Cuban leadership ostensibly severed connections to the international drug trade. Cooperation and information-sharing between the two countries have netted a few high profile seizures, arrests, and extraditions, but all of this has occurred rather episodically, without an umbrella agreement on counter-narcotics cooperation, (although Cuba has concluded such agreements with many other countries inside and outside the hemisphere). Such an agreed framework could set the stage for a more substantive level of engagement on drugs. For example, we could train and equip Cuban Border Guards and Interior Ministry operatives, we could conduct joint naval patrols with Cuba in the western Caribbean, we could coordinate investigation of regional trafficking networks and suspicious financial transactions through Cuban banks and commercial entities, and we could station DEA and FBI contingents in the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. We could also negotiate a shiprider agreement with the Cuban authorities, and possibly even the right to pursue drug-laden vessels and aircraft seeking safe haven in Cuban territory. How far Havana and Washington would be willing to proceed in these directions is unclear, since the political barriers on both sides are formidable. Yet the prospects for more productive collaboration against the

hemispheric drug threat seem a lot more promising today than in the past. In any event, failure to exploit Cuba's law enforcement and intelligence assets to good advantage leaves a major gap in U.S. defenses against drug trafficking through the Caribbean. Interdiction successes in Mexico seem likely to augment this flow down the road, a further reason to closely monitor trafficking trends in a Caribbean country only 90 miles from U.S. shores. The drug threat from Cuba seems destined to increase as the Castro regime's revolutionary order loses its hold and appeal, as the island's economic ties with the outside world continue to expand, and as
criminally-inclined Cuban nationals seek alliances with South American and Mexican drug kingpins. Such an outcome is hardly in the best interests of the United States and other countries in the hemisphere.

Combatting drug trafficking is one area of US-Cuban cooperation positively affects relations

Ramsey, 12 researcher at Open Society Institute, writing regular analyses of political current events in Latin America, former researcher and writer for InSight Crime, MA in Latin American Studies from the School of International Service at American University (Geoffrey, Drug Fight Builds US-Cuba Bridges, InSight Crime, 2 February 2012, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/drug-fight-builds-us-cuba-bridges)//BI Fighting drug trafficking is one of the few issues where the US and Cuba actually collaborate, albeit on a small scale, though the true extent of drug smuggling on the island remains shrouded in mystery. At a Senate hearing on international drug trafficking this week, lawmakers voiced concerns about the potential for Cuba to become

a major transit point for drugs into the US. While discussing a surge in drug smuggling through the Caribbean, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) warned that the island could turn into an important distribution platform for traffickers. Since the 1959 revolution, Cuba has presented itself as taking a tough stance on organized crime, in part in

response to the fact that, under the Batista regime, the country was known as a haven for mob activity. During the latest meeting of the Communist Party Congress, President Raul Castro issued a sharp critique of corruption on the island, calling it "one of the main enemies of the revolution." It is likely that the kind of corruption Castro was referring to relates to bribery and embezzlement rather than collusion with drug traffickers. The most recent high profile corruption case in the country, for instance, involved a former minister who was convicted of accepting bribes from a Chilean businessman. But the country has

not been immune from the international drug trade. In 1989, General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, who fought intercepted a 7.2 ton shipment of cocaine bound for Cuba. According to anonymous Colombian law

alongside Fidel Castro during the revolution, was executed along with three other military officers for their roles in a multi-million dollar cocaine smuggling ring linked to Pablo Escobars Medellin Cartel. Nine years later, in 1998, Colombian officials enforcement authority cited by the Miami Herald at the time, the large size of the shipment suggested that the route had been used before. "No one dares to send seven tons at one blow unless they've tested the route,'' said the official. Since these incidents, there has been evidence to suggest that drug trafficking is on the rise on the island, fueled by a small but growing domestic market. Cuba first acknowledged the existence of this consumption in January 2003, and promised that there would be no impunity for anyone caught trafficking illicit substances. Even with the resulting crackdown, the flow of drugs into the country appears to be increasing. The government recently announced that they had seized nine tons of drugs in 2011, three times more than in 2010. The majority of this was reportedly marijuana, with only a small percentage of cocaine and hashish. The site of much of this drug traffic is the rural southeast province of Holguin. In 2005, the head of Cubas border security ministry told foreign press that Holguin is the region of Cuba most affected by drug trafficking. Since then the area has become more popular with foreign tourists, providing both an increased market for drugs and a ready supply of potential smugglers. Ultimately, it should be noted that the amount of

drugs that pass through Cuba on their way to the United States pales in comparison to the countrys Caribbean neighbors, such as Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. For one thing, the 50-year-old embargo makes it very difficult for drug smugglers to bring their product into the US. Additionally, drug trafficking is one of the rare issues in which Cuban and American officials cooperate. As InSight Crime has reported, the US Interests Section in Havana has a Coast Guard representative in Havana, and leaked diplomatic cables reveal a level of engagement between the official and his counterparts in the Cuban Ministry of Interior (MININT) on the issue of drug flights from Jamaica. This cooperation seems to be having an effect on US-Cuba relations, at least as they relate to crime. While State Department officials under President Ronald Reagan publicly accused Fidel Castro of attempting to traffic drugs in order to boost the Cuban economy, the State Departments 2011 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) acknowledges that the Cuban authorities have made major inroads against the drug trade. In a rare note of praise for the Castro government, it notes that Cubas counternarcotics efforts have prevented illegal narcotics trafficking from having a significant impact on the island. The war on drugs is a rare area of cooperation between the US and Cuba
Rainsford, 12 BBC Havana correspondent (Sarah, Cuba and US find common ground in war on drugs, BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19528416)//BI The golden beaches of Cayo Cruz lie at the end of a long path through a nature reserve. It is an idyllic stretch of Cuba's

northern coast but this is key territory in the fight against international drug-tafficking. Cuba sits right between the world's major narcotics producers in South America and the biggest market for those drugs, the United States. The island has served as a bridge for traffickers in the past but in recent years it has been a barrier to the illegal trade. "We used to see a lot of suspicious boats here," Ardoldo Cisneros Pena recalls of the 1990s. He Today, the scene is tranquil. A young border guard scans the horizon from a mint-green watchtower. A stone slab below reads "They shall not pass!" and "Viva Fidel!". 'Mortal venom' It was Fidel Castro, then president, who acknowledged a

is chief border guard in Cayo Cruz, where we were recently given rare access. "There were almost daily drops into the sea," he says. Small planes would bombard Cuban waters with packets of drugs, for speedboats to whisk to the US.

surge in the use of Cuban waters by drug-traffickers in 1999. There was a nascent narcotics market too, as smugglers' packages began washing up on the coast. The government was compelled to act against what Mr Castro calls a "mortal venom". "We have more resources now, there is a helicopter for the border guards and more commitment from the interior ministry, the military and the Cuban people too," Lt-Col Cisneros explains. Operation Ache, as the crackdown was known, also installed a new radar and recruited hundreds of unpaid "collaborators", trained to keep their eyes peeled for suspicious parcels along the shore. The drugs planes have now gone and the main threat today is from speed-boat smugglers attempting to traffic marijuana north. "They try to escape us but if they can't, they try to dump the drugs because they know this activity is very heavily penalised
here," explains Lt-Col Mago Llanez Fernandez, who heads the team responsible for intercepting the smugglers at sea. He admits that up to 60% get away. Securing any abandoned narcotics is the priority here. But as the boats flee,

Cuba now passes real-time data to the US coastguard so they can pick up the pursuit. It is rare teamwork for two old, ideological enemies. "I think this is important for Cuba, because we're preventing the drugs reaching here, but it's also very important for the US and other countries in the area ," Lt-Col

Llanez points out. With its very heavily policed society, it is no surprise Communist Cuba is not a big drugs market itself. Scarce supply means even a joint of marijuana can cost up to a week's wage ($5) for a state worker. But some smugglers have begun to see potential here. "We've seen a rise in attempts by Cuban Americans to bring drugs in, especially marijuana, because the prices are high here," says police investigator Yoandrys Gonzalez Garcia. "It's not a huge amount but it concerns us and we're increasing our efforts to fight this." 'Effective' Between January and June this year, 24 attempts to traffic narcotics through the island's airports were foiled, and these figures put Cuba on course to double the interdiction rates of 2010 and 2011. The drugs were mostly destined for sale in Cuba. Police point to a surge in air traffic with the US since President Barack Obama removed travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans. Lifting limits on remittances has also given some Cubans on the island greater spending power. But the US is not the only smuggling source. Boris Adolfo Busto was arrested at Havana airport for drug-trafficking. His group was bringing in drug "mules" from Ecuador, with up to a kilo of cocaine in their stomachs. "There was a Cuban guy involved and he said he could sell everything here, he said it'd be easy," Busto recalls when we meet at Havana's Condesa prison. He is serving a 23-year sentence. "I think the authorities are very efficient," he says forlornly, adding that "dozens and dozens" of other smugglers have since joined him behind bars. Cuba has called for a formal co-operation agreement with the US to help stamp out

smuggling in both directions. It already shares intelligence with European governments, and receives funding and

training. "Our communication at sea gets good results but sadly we can't say the same about air traffic," Mr Gonzalez police investigator complains of the Americans. The US and Cuba severed diplomatic ties more than five decades ago. But officials on the ground acknowledge Cuba's contribution to the common war on drugs . "[Without] a strong counterdrug stance, Cuba would be a prime area for drug smugglers, but its efforts are very effective," says Louis Orsini of the US coastguard, adding that the US would find it "really challenging" if Cuba became a direct conduit for

illicit narcotics. Today, though, the policy is zero tolerance and the interior ministry says nine tonnes of drugs were seized
from traffickers last year and incinerated. Most were destined for the US market and beyond.

Cuba will say yes theyve already proposed cooperation

State Department, 10 (Cuba, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, U.S. Department of State, 2010, Academic OneFile)//BI IV. U.S. Policy Initiatives and Programs Bilateral Cooperation. The U.S. has no counternarcotics agreements with

Cuba and does not fund any GOC counternarcotics law enforcement initiatives. In July 2009, the GOC stated it would present the U.S. with a proposed counternarcotics agreement, but as of

December, that proposal had not been presented to the U.S. Government. In the absence of normal bilateral relations, the USCG DIS assigned at USINT Havana acts as the main conduit of counternarcotics cooperation with the host country on a case-by-case basis. Cuban authorities have provided DIS continued access to Cuban counternarcotics efforts, including providing investigative criminal information, such as the names of suspects and vessels; debriefings on drug trafficking cases; visits to the Cuban national canine training center and antidoping laboratory in Havana; tours of CBG facilities; container x-ray equipment at the Port of Havana, and access to meet with the Chiefs of Havana's INTERPOL and Customs offices. When scenarios dictate the need for first-hand visits to wash-up or interdiction sites, Cuban authorities have readily involved the DIS in post-incident assessments and site visits, routinely providing post-incident briefings and access to boats and aircraft involved in said cases. The Road Ahead. Cuba's Drug Czar Miguel Guilarte raised the idea of greater counternarcotics cooperation with the USG, and Commander-in-Chief Raul Castro

publicly called for a bilateral agreement on narcotics, migration, and terrorism. However, these calls have not been accompanied by actionable proposals on which to base future Cuban cooperation. Both nations may gain by pressing forward with expanded cooperation, especially considering Cuba's location in the Caribbean, and the potential for the island and its territorial seas to be utilized for drug transshipments to the United States.

K Stuff

U.S. consumption is the root cause of drug problems Xinhua News, 12 (Cuba, drug trafficking dominate summit of Americas, Xinhua News, 5/14/2012, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-04/15/c_131528055.htm, JKahn) CARTAGENA, Colombia, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Cuba and drug trafficking, the two irritants in U.S.-Latin American relations, dominated the first day of the sixth Summit of the Americas on Saturday. "AN ANACHRONISM" Addressing the opening session of the two-day summit, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos called for efforts to overcome the differences over Cuba, as the issue has long roiled U.S. relations with

Root Cause US

Latin American countries. He criticized the policy of "isolation" and "embargo" against Cuba, calling it "an anachronism that keeps us anchored to an outdated Cold War era." "We cannot be indifferent to the process of change that is going on in Cuba. It is time to overcome our differences so that this process can receive support," he told a gathering of 31 hemispheric leaders. He expressed the hope that Cuba would be present at the next summit, saying its absence then would be "unthinkable." At the opening session, Juan Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of the American States (OAS), also made a veiled appeal to the leaders. "Presidents (of the region) are faced with a dilemma," he said. "On the one hand, OAS principles call for the presence of all nations, but the democratic charter demands full observance of civil rights." "The best way to strengthen this organization is via dialogue and tolerance," he stressed. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, a bloc of eight Latin American and Caribbean nations, said on Saturday that it will boycott any future Americas summit unless Cuba is granted unconditional admission to the hemispheric gathering. "Our brother republic Cuba, as a part of our Americas, has the unconditional and unquestionable right to be present and participate in this forum," the group said in a statement, declaring: "We will not participate in Cuba's absence." Launched in 2004, the bloc now groups Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as well as Venezuela. The bloc had threatened to boycott the Cartagena summit in case of Cuba's absence early this year, but only Ecuador's President Rafael Correa delivered the threat. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is battling cancer and has called the summit meaningless as it is shunning fundamental issues like Argentina's claim of sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands (known as the Falkland Islands for the British) and Cuba's exclusion from the hemispheric event, is absent from the gathering as well. Cuba, which was suspended from the OAS in 1962 at the height of the Cold War, has been unable to participate in all the past summits since 1994. The suspension was officially lifted in 2009, but the Caribbean island nation has chosen not to return to the pan-American bloc. Upon his arrival in Cartagena on Friday, Bolivian President Evo Morales demanded Cuba's presence at future hemispheric summits, saying: "We are convinced this will be the last summit without Cuba." On Saturday, he joined the chorus again, arguing: "How can we talk about integration if we exclude Cuba?" Addressing the opening session of the summit, Alicia Barcena, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, also called for all the 35 countries of the Western Hemisphere to be included in future summits so as to enhance and consolidate the inter-Amercan dialogue. But in his remarks, U.S. President Barack Obama made no mention of Cuba. "I PROMISE" Surveys show that the general

public in Latin America see crime, violence and insecurity as the region's top problems, and there is a growing consensus that the root cause is the massive use of narcotics in the United States, and an unending flow of money and weapons southward to drug cartels. Upon taking office in December 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a war on drug cartels in his country by mobilizing the army and federal police, which has resulted in some 50,000 deaths to date. In his remarks, President Santos urged his peers to stop stalling and re-examine the approaches to the fight against drug trafficking "without dogma, without prejudice," by looking at "different scenarios and possible alternatives." "This summit is not

going to resolve this issue, but it can be a starting point to begin a discussion that we have been postponing for far too long," the president said. For his part, President Obama, while acknowledging that his country shared responsibility, said "no" to the idea of legalizing and decriminalizing drugs as proposed by some Central American leaders. "Here in Cartagena, I hope we can focus on our mutual responsibilities," Obama said. "As I've said many times, the United States accepts our share of responsibility for drug violence." "That's why we've dedicated major resources to reducing the southbound flow of money and guns to the region. It's why we've devoted tens of billions of dollars in the United States to reduce the demand for drugs," he remarked. "And I promise you today -- we're not going to relent in our efforts," he said. Addressing a CEO summit of the Americas earlier Saturday, Obama said "no" to the idea of decriminalizing drugs, declaring: "I personally, and my administration's position, is that legalization is not the answer." "If you think about how it would end up operating, that the capacity of a large-scale drug trade to dominate certain countries if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint could be just as corrupting if not more corrupting than the status quo," he explained. Washington launched the 1.6 billion-U.S.-dollar Merida Initiative in 2008 to help fund anti-drug operations in both Mexico and Central America, the two areas hit hardest by the scourge of organized crime. "Today, I can announce that the United States will increase our commitment to more than 130 million dollars this year to support the regional security strategy led by our Central American friends," Obama told the summit.

Drug Neolib Link

The war on drugs is a justification for neoliberal intervention which just increases drug cultivation Newstext, 12 (Newstex, citing President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, The US War on Communism, Drugs, and
Terrorism in Colombia, 10/31/2012, Newstex, Lexis, JKahn) On Thursday 6th September the President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos

rejected a proposed bilateral ceasefire by FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels aimed at bringing an end to Colombias armed conflict. He declared that he had asked operations to be intensified and stated that there will be no ceasefire of any kind. 1 These

comments bear reflection upon Colombia s half century dirty war, the actors involved and the motives behind U.S. policies that have merely served to worsen the conflict. Today Colombia is one of the largest recipients of U.S. military training and aid in the world. Although the U.S was involved in counterinsurgency operations in Colombia during the Cold War the continued flow of military funding and training occurred as a result of Bill Clinton s Plan Colombia (2000-2006) and George W Bush s Andean Regional Initiative (2008-2010) both of which were aimed at the forced eradication of coca and fighting Colombia s left-wing guerrillas due to their involvement in terrorism and the international drugs trade. Through these initiatives billions of dollars have been spent fighting a war on drugs followed by a war on terror. Coca production in Colombia, however, has increased as has the

intensity of the internal armed conflict with both FARC and right-wing paramilitary groups growing in size and
strength. Despite numerous studies concluding that the cheapest and most effective way to deal with the drug situation is to redirect

the U.S. government has maintained its militaristic approach to the so called war on drugs both at home and abroad. Given the resounding failure to achieve the stated objectives of these initiatives one must ask; is there an alternative objective, one that the current strategy achieves sufficiently? The Neo-Liberal Effect The U.S. has long held a policy of pushing neoliberal economic polices in Latin America. This has been achieved through NGO activity, strategically allocated aid, coercive interventions, conditions attached to IMF and World Bank loans and bilateral and multi-lateral free trade agreements. There is a substantial literature exposing the resultant social stratification these policies have caused in Latin America,3 but there is one particular effect of neoliberalism that has directly resulted in increased cultivation of coca for export. The neoliberal model aims to re-orientate agricultural production to the export market. While neoliberal policies remove protective tariff barriers
funds from law enforcement and forced eradication into treatment and prevention,2

on agricultural goods, subsidised U.S. agricultural imports undermine the price received for locally produced crops. Larger farms and ranches with sufficient resources can move into growing export crops such as coffee but these crops are more labour intensive, require more land and cost more to transport. Many small farmers and peasants therefore find that the only area in which they can maintain a competitive advantage is in the cultivation of coca. This was evident in Mexico after the signing of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). U.S. subsidised corn imports destroyed Mexicos domestic production and those who could not afford to invest in the production of other export crops either switched to cultivating illicit drugs or left their land for the city where a lack of employment opportunities pushed many rural immigrants into other elements of the drug trade. It is clear that if the U.S. wished to reduce the cultivation of coca in Colombia the most effective policy would be to redirect military aid into funding government subsidisation of legal crops. Yet the US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement actually prohibits such action. Under the agreement, that was signed in 2006 and came into affect in May of this year, Colombia is obliged to dismantle all of her domestic protections while the U.S. is permitted to maintain her own agricultural subsidies and thus an unfair advantage in the trade of agricultural produce. In 2010 Oxfam International commissioned a study which revealed the unequal terms of this trade agreement. It demonstrated that the agreement would lower the prices local farmers would receive for major crops such as corn and beans which, in turn, would reduce domestic cultivation of these crops and substantially impact the income and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Colombia s peasant farmers.4

U.S. anti-drug practices promote militarization and neoliberalism Newstext, 12 (Newstex, citing President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, The US War on Communism, Drugs, and Terrorism in Colombia, 10/31/2012, Newstex, Lexis, JKahn) The fact that the Colombian army and paramilitary groups continue to see coca growing peasants as guerrilla collaborators and therefore legitimate military targets (due to the taxes they are forced to pay the FARC on their coca crops) merely exacerbates the divide between the military and the peasantry. Some have been led to

argue that the real aim in Colombia is, in fact, to maintain a state of constant conflict. One in which there is sufficient order to protect investments and transport links but, also, sufficient disorder and terror so as to maintain a subservient and flexible workforce and an economic system which allows only a small local elite and foreign multinationals to benefit from the country s resources.21 The official military protect investments and transport links important to the extractive industries while paramilitaries closely linked to the official army, and revealed to be linked to the U.S. government, sufficiently intimidate any

move towards reform of the system. This is achieved through a policy of assassination, suppression and terrorisation of the political left, human rights activists, trade unionists and peasant and indigenous movements. Economic Imperialism In 1996 four years before Plan Colombia was passed by Congress, the U.S.-Colombia Business Partnership, representing U.S.

companies with interests in Colombia, was founded. This organisation launched a well financed lobbying effort for

U.S. intervention in the resource rich Andean state. Among the companies represented in this Business Partnership were Occidental Petroleum, Enron, Texaco, and BP.22 A survey released just months prior to the passage of Plan Colombia in the U.S. congress

indicated that there were a large number of commercially viable and unexploited oil fields in the

Putumayo region of Colombia,22 incidentally, the same area that experiences the highest intensity of paramilitary activity and aerial fumigation. This correlation has aroused suspicion that these policies are actually aimed at displacing local people from their land in order to open it up to speculation by foreign multinationals23 while simultaneously clearing the dense rainforest that makes identifying and pinpointing the location of oilfields difficult.22 This seems to be a recurrent theme in local impressions of the U.S. war on drugs in a number of different countries. In Guatemala, for example, locals have criticised militarisation of the resource-rich north eastern province of Petn. While it is known that this area is used to transport drugs to Mexico locals suspect the heavy military presence is more to do with oil interests in the region.24 Similar complaints have emerged from the Moskitia region of eastern Honduras which has experienced increased militarisation in recent years, particularly so since the 2009 coup. According to Norvin Goff Salinas, president of an indigenous Miskitu federation; More than anything else, they re militarizing because of the natural resources that are in the Moskitia, especially the strategic spots where there is oil. 25 Foreign direct Investment (FDI) flows into Colombia rose from $2.4 billion at the outset of Plan Colombia to $14.4 billion by 2011. In the mid 90s oil and gas constituted only 10% of all FDI in Colombia but by 2010 this had increased to almost one third.24 Colombia,

however, remains the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist and one of the most unequal
countries in the world with the top 10% of the population controlling nearly half of the country s wealth.26 Conclusions It is evident that in the stated objective of eradicating coca cultivation and narcotrafficking in Colombia the U.S.

anti-drug strategy has been a resounding failure. From the perspective of the U.S. State Department, however, Plan Colombia was not a failure at all but instead allowed for the creation of an effective new model for U.S. intervention. 24 As the U.S. Government Accountability Office s director of international affairs and trade put it; international programs face significant challenges reducing the supply of illegal drugs but support broad US foreign policy objectives. 27 These objectives, throughout the period of U.S. hegemony, have remained the same. U.S. imperialism is not based on territorial control but on economic control. The adoption of the neoliberal capitalist model across Latin America greatly benefited U.S. companies by making resource
extraction cheaper (due to reduced corporate tax), labour cheaper (due to labour flexiblisation practices) and domestic markets easier to dominate (due to the removal of all state subsidies and the breakup of state owned companies). The last point holds a particular level of hypocrisy because, while other countries must abandon all state subsidies, the U.S.

maintains high levels of protectionism in the one area that developing countries would hold a competitive advantage

in a free market system; agriculture. The difficulty lies in maintaining a system in which the main beneficiaries of economic production in a country are a tiny local elite and foreign multinationals. This, historically, has been achieved through substantial repression. Throughout the Cold War such repression was justified by labelling as communist any movement or political party whose views fell outside of radical right-wing capitalism. One crucial method of ensuring the maintenance of this economic model in Latin America has always been the cultivation of allied militaries whose ideological beliefs fall exactly in line with those of Washington. The end of the Cold war necessitated a new justification for the continuation of this practice and thus, the war on drugs was born. After the 9/11 attacks this evolved into a war on terrorism.

Terrorism Neolib Link

The drug war alienates populations and labels drug lords terrorists to justify imperialism Newstext, 12 (Newstex, citing President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, The US War on Communism, Drugs, and
Terrorism in Colombia, 10/31/2012, Newstex, Lexis, JKahn)

It is established that U.S. war on terrorism policies in Colombia and beyond further alienate the populations of countries where they are implemented and swell the ranks of the militarised terrorist forces the U.S. claims to be fighting. The purpose of this war however, like the war on drugs and the war on communism before it, is the creation of a faade that justifies U.S. economic imperialism. The terrorists therefore, like the narcoguerrillas , play a crucial role in maintaining this faade. While the U.S. Colombia policy is certainly aimed at making sure the FARC never gain the strength or political unity necessary to overthrow the state, the FARC are also a necessary enemy, just as the continuation of the internal conflict is necessary, to justify continued U.S. military training , aid and intrusion in the affairs of the strategically located, oil and resource rich Andean state. Reuters, Colombia s Santos Rejects FARC call for

Ceasefire, 7th September 2012.See for example, C. Peter Rydell (1994), Controlling Cocaine: Supply Versus Demand Programs, Rand Drug Policy Research Center.See for example: Stokes, Susan C. (2001), Mandates and Democracy: Neoliberalism by Surprise in Latin America, Cambridge University Press; Weyland, Kurt (2004), Neoliberalism and Democracy in Latin America: A Mixed Record, Latin America politics and Society. 46(1): p. 135-157; Gwynne, Robert N. and Cristbal Kay (2000), Views from the Periphery: Futures of Neoliberalism in Latin America, Third World Quarterly. 21(1): p. 141-156.Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2010), Will the U.S. Colombia Free Trade Agreement Help Colombia s Small Farmers? March 10.Bigwood, Jeremy (2001), Toxic Drift: Monsanto and the Drug War in Colombia.Robin, Marie-Monique (2010), The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption and the Control of our Food Supply, p 138.This nickname no doubt originates from the fact that Monsanto produced the chemical Agent Orange which was used for aerial fumigation during the Vietnam War resulting in birth defects, poisoning of land and outbreaks of cancer. After the war it emerged that Monsanto had known of Agent Orange s toxicity years before but had tried to cover it up. Due to the side affects seen in Colombians living in areas that have been sprayed with Roundup Ultra, and Monstanto s less than savoury record, many fear that, like Agent Orange, Roundup Ultra will hold future health implications yet unknown.Chemical War: Herbicides, drug crops and collateral damage in Colombia. After the Fact (a publication of the Institute for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies), Winter 2001.U.S. based NGO Witness for Peace.See for example: RAND Corporation, Sealing the Borders; The Effects of Increased Military Participation in Drug Interdiction. The study also noted that seven prior studies on the same topic over the preceding nine years had resulted in similar conclusions, including one done by the Center for Naval Research and the Office of Technology Assessment. Upside Down World, Interview with Peter Watt. The drug war in Mexico; politics, violence and neo-liberalism in the new narco-economy .DEA Congressional testimony July 9, 1997. Statement by Donnie Marshall, Chief of Operations of the Drug Enforcement Administration, before the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice.Villar, Olivar (2011), Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia, p. 79. Stokes, Doug (2005), America s Other War: Terrorising Colombia, Canadian Dimension Vol. 39, No. 4; p. 26.Gill, Lesley (2004), The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas. p. 10.Human Rights Watch, (2011), World Report 2012.Karl, Terry L. (1987), Petroleum and Political Pacts: The Transition to Democracy in Venezuela, Latin American Research Review. pg82.These enclaves include an electoral law that results in overrepresentation of rightwing parties, nonelected senators and institutions with veto power over the legislator. Olavarra, Margot (2003). Protected Neoliberalism: Perverse Institutionalization and the Crisis of Representation in Postdictatorship Chile . Chile since 1990: The Contradictions of Neoliberal Democratization, Part 2. Latin American Perspectives. 30 (6): p. 10-38.European Commission, Colombia Country Strategy Paper 2007-2013.Feinberg, Leslie (2003), War in Colombia: Made in the U.S.A, International Action Center p. 81.Klein, Naomi (2007), The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.Gorman, Peter (2003), Plan Colombia: The Pentagon s Shell Game, From the WildernessCraig-Best, Liam and Shingler, Rowan, Cultivation of Illicit Crops, Spectrozine.Paley, Dawn (2012), Guatemala: The Spoils of Undeclared War. Upside Down World. Cuffe, Sandra and Spring, Karen (2012) Botched DEA Raid in Honduras Exposes How Militarization Terrorizes Communities Around the World, AlterNet.World Bank Ford, Jess T. (2012), Drug Control: International programs face significant challenges reducing the supply of illegal drugs but support broad US foreign policy objectives, Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Enemy Security Link

The focus on the constructed internal enemy destroys human rights and ensures subornation Isacson, 05 (Adam, Senior Associate for Regional Security Policy, the Washington Office on Latin America, M.A. from Yale
University in International Relations, B.A. Hampshire College, Social Science, The U.S. Military in the War on Drugs, Part of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America, Youngers and Rosin, 2005, Rienner, Google Books, JKahn) Human Rights Abuses and Civil-Military Relations The risks of counterdrug and counterterror military aid

go beyond mission creep, however, as human rights advocates are quick to point out. Either mission requires historically repressive armed forces whose training is oriented toward overwhelmingly defeating an enemy to increase their internal role and their interaction with civilian populations. Worse, decades of counterdrug aid have continued the Cold War focus on an internal enemy, distracting governments from the tasks of reforming human rights practices and ensuring subordination to
civilian justice systems.

WOD Error Replication

The aff causes error replication reproduces another cold war Isacson, 05 (Adam, Senior Associate for Regional Security Policy, the Washington Office on Latin America, M.A. from Yale
University in International Relations, B.A. Hampshire College, Social Science, The U.S. Military in the War on Drugs, Part of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America, Youngers and Rosin, 2005, Rienner, Google Books, JKahn)

Overemphasizing the drug wars military dimension has caused the United States to repeat another Cold War error. U.S. policy is once again neglecting the historical and structural factors poverty and inequality, corruption and impunity , the lack of basic citizen security guarantees that foster perceived threats to U.S. interests. This all-stick-and-no-carrot approach has too often blinded U.S. policymakers to the political realities their allies face. A notable example was the George W. Bush administrations failure to
respond to Bolivian president Gonzalo Snchez de Lozadas pleas in 2003 for economic support in the face of growing opposition fueled by that countrys continuing economic crisis. This approach has also had the unintended consequences of building a po wer base for populist leaders and movements that have made opposition to U.S. policy a key focus of their rallying cries as did the movement that overturned President Snchez.

No Root Cause Drug Violence

Theres no root cause to drug violence complex social and economic causes underlie the drug trade Isacson, 05 (Adam, Senior Associate for Regional Security Policy, the Washington Office on Latin America, M.A. from Yale
University in International Relations, B.A. Hampshire College, Social Science, The U.S. Military in the War on Drugs, Part of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America, Youngers and Rosin, 2005, Rienner, Google Books, JKahn) While the most dramatic of these examples took place during the Cold Wars darkest days, some of the same patterns in

U.S.-Latin American military relations continue today. U.S. policymakers continue to see the region more as a source of potential threats than as a zone with potential for greater cooperation, sustain democratization, and shared prosperity. The search for threats leads Washington to turn to the regions militaries to solve problems such as violence, insecurity, drug trafficking, and other criminality, even though these problems have complex social and economic causes . U.S. aid and doctrine then encourage militaries to increase their internal roles, with negative consequences for human rights and political space, civil-military relations, democracy, and regional security

Counternarcotic operations in Mexico disproportionately target marginalized groups the vulnerable are raped and tortured in the name of security Mercille, 11 lecturer in the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy at Univeristy College Dublin, PhD from
UCLA (Julien, Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economyof the war on drugs in Mexico, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 32 No. 9, 2011, pp 16371653, Taylor & Francis Online)//BI The militarisation of internal repression has been accentuated in recent years . Caldern has sent 40 000 soldiers and police throughout the country, which have sometimes used the pretext of anti-drug operations to arrest and harass groups and individuals who oppose government policies. A recent Human Rights Watch report documents some

Mex - Security Link

of the many abuses by the military during counternarcotics, counterinsurgency and public security operations and shows that those targeted are often members of vulnerable or dissident groups calling for a more democratic polity, but are not involved in drugs or terrorism. It states: The abuses detailed in this report include an enforced disappearance, the rape of indigenous women during counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations in Southern Mexico, the torture and arbitrary detention of environmental activists during counternarcotics operations . . . Many victims of the abuses documented in this report had no connection to the drug trade or insurgencies.43 In fact, a 2000 document from the Mexican Defense Ministry confirmed that it is explicit policy to use drugs war operations to suppress dissent. The document outlined a

plan to establish counter-drug working groups that: . . . will adopt the measures necessary to obtain information on the existence of armed groups, subversive activities, unjustifiable presence of foreigners, organizations, proselytizing by priests or leaders of religious sects, ecological groups, political propaganda, [and] the presence and activities of bands or gangs of criminals.44 The International Civil Commission on Human Rights has likewise reported in 2008 that there have been widespread arbitrary arrests of members of social movements . . . To justify the arrests false evidence is used . . . even false accusations of possession of drugs or of arms . . . The logic behind all of this is to criminalise the members of social movements.45 For example, environmental activists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera conducted a campaign against logging and deforestation by multinational corporations in Guerrero, which angered local caciques, who told regional military commanders that the two activists were drug traffickers. The military then arrested and tortured them until they confessed that they had been caught in possession of drugs and guns, even though it was later found that the evidence had been planted by the soldiers. They were both convicted by the Mexican government and imprisoned. President Fox later released them but did not drop the charges against them, let alone punish those guilty.46 Finally, the drugs

war is also used as a means of social control of marginalised groups by arresting and incarcerating them disproportionately. Since 1995 there have been about 10,000 drug-related arrests per year in Mexico, and those who end up in jail tend to come from the poorest strata of society. In 2001, 20,000
people were convicted on federal charges (including over 9000 on drug-related charges). Fifteen thousand had less than a high school education, and more than 10 000 were day labourers or farmers, along with a substantial number of indigenous people incarcerated on drug charges, the majority of whom are used by drug traffickers to act as low-level drug transporters.47

Mex - Neolib Link

The war on drugs serves as a pretext for US hegemony over Mexico and expansion of neoliberal policies Mercille, 11 lecturer in the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy at Univeristy College Dublin, PhD
from UCLA (Julien, Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economyof the war on drugs in Mexico, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 32 No. 9, 2011, pp 16371653, Taylor & Francis Online)//BI What are the causes of Mexicos drug trafficking and violence? What is the meaning and purpose of the war on drugs in Mexico? The conventional

answers to such questions have been presented by a number of government officials, journalists and scholars.4 While there exist a variety of theoretical, methodological and empirical emphases, such approaches have all neglected the central role of political economy in their analyses. For example, some have provided ethnographic accounts of USMexico drug trafficking,5 others have interpreted the drugs war at the border as fulfilling a symbolic political function allowing US government leaders to show resolve to voters and Congress,6 or have studied the role of the drugs war in militarising the US Mexico border,7 and have compared and contrasted the war on narcotics with the war on immigration and homeland security waged by the US government.8 Despite these differences, the mainstream interpretation shares the following components: . Overwhelming attention is directed to the drug cartels, seen as the main or even onlysource of the problem of drug trafficking and violence. . The US, concerned with drug use and violence, collaborates with the Mexican authorities to reduce the cartels power by waging a war on drugs in Mexico. If lawlessness prevails, the cartels could take over parts of the state and refugees could flood the US. . A key obstacle to US plans is corruption among Mexican officials, fuelled by the cartels, which makes it difficult to win the drugs war. . Thus, solutions include cleaning Mexican institutions of corruption, interdiction and arrests of drug kingpins, increasing military aid, and promoting NAFTA-type free trade agreements to achieve economic development. .
Some researchers recognise that US drug consumption and firearms smuggling to Mexico are part of the problem and call for reducing US demand for drugs and regulating gun sales and trafficking. The conventional view thus focuses on the

drug cartels role in causing mayhem in Mexico and corrupting its governmental institutions. In

the words of General (ret) Barry McCaffrey, US drug czar under Bill Clinton, Mexico is fighting for survival against narco -terrorism and we need to support the courageous Mexican leadership of the Caldern Administration because the violent, warring collection of criminal drug cartels could overwhelm the institutions of the state and we could be faced with a surge of millions of re fugees crossing the US border to escape the domestic misery of violence.9 Robert Bonner, former director of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and chief of US Customs and Border Protection, comments approvingly on Calderns militarised drug war because he thinks the Mexican military is one of the countrys few reliable institutions. True, it has led to 40,000 deaths since 2006, but the increase in the number of drug-related homicides, although unfortunate, is a sign of progress, because it shows the government is finally destabilising the cartels. The US is depicted as a well intentioned leader fighting the

scourge of drugs and corruption for which the cartels are responsible. For example, Richard Haass, the
Mexico must also be

president of the Council on Foreign Relations, comments that American efforts to . . . shore up the [Mexican] justice system have been substantial.10 Some analysts add that the large US consumption of drugs and smuggling of firearms into

taken into account and rightly call for a reduction in demand in the US and better regulation of the flow of guns southward. However, they remain blind to, and even support, US hegemony over Mexico (political, economic and military). For example, David Shirk, in a Council on Foreign Relations report, asserts that US
authorities should make greater efforts to encourage NAFTA trade by facilitating legitimate cross-border flows to develop the Mexican economy.11 There is also a right-wing libertarian view that opposes drug prohibition and

Washingtons war on drugs in Mexico and elsewhere while calling for the legalisation of drugs as a solution. In some respects this position goes against the mainstream interpretation, but it still focuses on corruption and narcocartels, and neglects the crucial political economic dimension. For example, it fails to consider the detrimental impact of neoliberal free trade agreements on drug problems. On the

contrary, it advocates more economic deregulation: Latin American governments should move more aggressively to deregulate their economies and spur economic growth, thereby creating new opportunities for those people who are now involved in the lower echelons of the drug trade . . . The adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement provided important new economic opportunities for Mexico.12 This article presents an alternative interpretation that focuses on US hegemony over Mexico and in particular the neoliberal reforms like NAFTA that it has promoted since the early 1980s. Although the articles emphasis is on drug issues, it is framed within a critical political economic analysis of US foreign policy and neoliberalism. In outline, and as will be illustrated throughout, it is maintained that post-World War II US foreign policy has been shaped by the

following key

factors. First and foremost is the corporate sectors need to maintain a favourable investment climate and markets in Latin America and elsewhere. Second is geopolitics and military strategy, which in Latin America has meant trying to keep the region as a US backyard free of European, and later Chinese, influences, in addition to supporting allied military and militaristic regimes in power to prevent internal opposition from steering the region on a path independent of US hegemony. Ideology also plays a role in co-opting and making acceptable US policies to elites and segments of the population in Latin America.13 The article first shows that neoliberal policies have increased the size of the drugs industry, for example by forcing millions of peasants into the drugs trade in search of work. Second, it demonstrates how US hegemonic projects like NAFTA have been protected and policed partly under the pretext of the war on drugs, which is used discursively to promote closer bilateral relations between the US and Mexican militaries. This allows the latter to contain popular opposition to neoliberal policies in general, but also to use drugs control directly as a pretext to arrest individuals and groups who resist such projects. Washingtons support for institutions and officials corrupted by the Mexican narcotics industry and associated
with human rights abusesthe Mexican government, military and security forces, and perhaps even some cartel leaderswill be highlighted. Third, drugs money laundering by US banks will be discussed with reference to Mexican cases to show that the

financial sectors involvement in narcotics has never been tightly regulated because it provides significant liquidity to a powerful segment of US society. The article concludes by pointing to the large US drug consumption that fuels trafficking and to Washingtons failure to invest more in treatment of addicts and prevention, the two solutions proven by research to be the most effective in reducing
consumption, as opposed to the relatively ineffective arrests of drug kingpins and seizures of narcotics shipments.14 The US failure to stop the smuggling of firearms south of the border will also be briefly discussed. Overall, and contrary to the mainstream interpretation, the article emphasises the significant responsibility of the US in Mexicos drug traffic

and its discursive manipulation of the war on drugs, none of which, however, negates the responsibility of

Mexican drug cartels as generators of violence. The next section provides historical background showing the continuities between the past and more recent situation.

Mex - Turns Case (For Neolib K)

Turns the case neoliberal reforms in Mexico have empirically increased the size of the drug industry Mercille, 11 lecturer in the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy at Univeristy College Dublin, PhD from
UCLA (Julien, Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economyof the war on drugs in Mexico, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 32 No. 9, 2011, pp 16371653, Taylor & Francis Online)//BI From the 1980s onwards four developments converged to increase dramatically the size of the drugs

industry in Mexico. Not all were related to neoliberal reforms, but the latter nevertheless made a key contribution. First,

South American cocaine had until then been smuggled into the US via the Caribbean and Florida, but interdiction efforts in these areas diverted the traffic through Mexico, whose significance as transit country rose drastically. Essentially the Colombian narcotraffickers cut a deal with the Mexican cartels to ensure that their drugs would reach the US through Mexico rather than through the Caribbean and Florida. Second, the flow of narcotics was further magnified by the neoliberal reforms that

increased commerce across the USMexico border and facilitated the smuggling of large quantities of drugs. The cartels started putting shipments of heroin, crystal meth, cannabis and cocaine on the many trucks crossing the border.21 Third, NAFTA and neoliberal reforms have increased the size of the drugs industry by involving more Mexicans in it for two reasons: in order to find work and out of desperation. The consequences of neoliberalisation for the majority of Mexicos population have largely been negative. The economy grew at an annual per capita rate of 3.5 per cent between 1960 and 1979, before neoliberalisation, but only by 0.1 per cent in the 1980s and by 1.6 per cent between 1992 and 2007. NAFTA has failed to generate job growth and increase wagesthe average wage in Jurez, for example, dropped from $4.50 a day to $3.70. True, the manufacturing sector has added some 500 000 to 600 000 net jobs since NAFTA went into effect, but this has been offset by a loss of about 2.3 million jobs in the agricultural sector caused by cheaper imports of corn from subsidised US agrobusinesses. Farmers were forced to abandon their land and migrate to the

US or move to the cities in Mexico along the US border, where they became cheap labour for US manufacturing businesses (maquiladoras). Because maquiladoras mostly assemble imported components and immediately re-export finished products, few linkages have been generated with the Mexican domestic economy, creating few employment opportunities. A related negative effect has been the rise of the informal economy, which offers worse conditions to workers; it formed 57 per cent of the workforce in 2004, up from 53 per cent in 1992.22 As a result, many in Mexico had little choice other than to resort to participation

in drug trafficking to supplement their income, usually acting as low-level dealers. This mass of unemployed or underemployed in Mexicos northern regions constituted a perfect supply of desperate labour for the cartels .

The supply increased even more around 2000, when the maquiladora industry faced competition from China and India, which could provide lower-cost labour to make the same goods. Some companies established in Mexico moved their production to Asia, causing further layoffs. Finally, by causing significant social dislocation and lack of employment opportunities, neoliberal reforms

increased peoples recourse to drugs to alleviate their suffering, enlarging the market within Mexico itself and contributing to the growth of the narcotics industry. Charles Bowden, a veteran analyst

of the Mexican drugs trade, observes of Jurez, one of the most affected cities: Who in their right mind would turn down a chance to consume drugs in a city of poverty, filth, violence, and despair?23

Mex - K of Failed State Impact

Claims of a Mexican failed state are false and consistent with moral panic theory Schack, 11 Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism at Ithaca College, PhD in Media Studies from the University of
Colorado (Todd, Twenty-first-century drug warriors: the press, privateers and the for-profit waging of the war on drugs, Media, War & Conflict, Vol. 4 No. 2, pg. 142-161, August 2011, Sage Journals)//BI When it comes to reporting on the Mrida Initiative, and the use of private contractors both within Mexico and domestically in the US, we

find a similar pattern of convergence and amplification, one that is especially dominated by at least two media memes: first, that Mexico is at best a narco-state, and at worst is on the verge of being a failed-state; and second, that the drug-related violence that has arisen in Mexico in recent years is threatening to spill-over into the US. That is, the threat of drugs converges with the threat of (1) Latin American drug lords running an entire country, and (2) violence that is somehow other than that which already exists in the US.3 A recent San Francisco Chronicle article provides a
clear example of the failed-state meme: The U.S. Joint Forces Command called Mexico and Pakistan the worlds two most critical states in danger of failing. While cautioning that Mexico has not reached Pakistans level of instability, it reported that Mexicos government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressu re by criminal gangs and drug cartels. (Lochhead, 2009) It is a quantifiable fact that there has been a rise in drug-related violence

in Mexico since the Calderon government took power, and this point should not be dismissed. Lest this argument be

misinterpreted as callous, permit me to make absolutely clear that I am not dismissing what is a seriously high number of deaths. While the exact number of drug-related deaths is difficult to figure precisely and who is counted as a drug-related death even further complicates the matter it can be concluded that the violence is pervasive on the Mexican side of the border, especially in Tijuana and Ciudad-Juarez. I am not disputing this here, nor do I wish to underestimate the seriousness of the

situation in Mexico. As stated, exact numbers are difficult to quantify, but what is not in dispute is that, since Calderon took

office in 2006, each year has seen a rise in drug-related violence: according to a Council on Foreign Relations report, in 2007, there were more than 2500 deaths; in 2008, more than 4000 (Hansen, 2008). The Mexican paper El Universal places the 2008 figure at 5612 (Bricker, 2008). More recently, according to an internal Mexican Government report that was leaked to the press, in 2009 it is estimated that there were 9635 deaths, and in the early months of 2010 it is claimed that at least 3365 deaths have occurred (Ellingwood, 2010). However, some investigation into these reports is warranted, especially since they

are being used to justify the militarization of the border, which includes the use of private contractors. Journalist Shamus Cooke (2009) writes that: Interestingly, Mexico has lately been compared to Pakistan as a country on the verge of becoming a failed state, with the Mexican drug cartels accused of playing the same destabilizing role as the Taliban/terrorists in Pakistan. Calling such a comparison a stretch would be a gross understatement, of course. Why exactly is this more than a stretch to compare Mexico with Pakistan? First, drug cartels are not motivated by political aims, as are the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Second, these reports completely ignore the people in Mexico themselves, both private citizens and public government officials. Do they consider their country to be in danger of becoming a failed state and, if not, why are their voices not being heard? This process of only allowing certain voices to be heard is consistent with moral panic theory the voice of the folk devil (Cohen, 2002[1972]) is never allowed to speak for itself. While it is not reported in most media, those in Mexico are objecting to such a classification, and President Calderon himself

dismissed outright the US Joint Forces Command report that linked Mexico and Pakistan: To say that Mexico is a failed state is absolutely false, and added the nearly heretical accusation that the genesis of the problems is, in fact, in the U.S.: Im fighting corruption among Mexican authorities and risking everything to clean house, but I think a good cleaning is in order on the other side of the border. (Carl, 2009) Echoing this sentiment, and directly contradicting the Joint Forces Command report that caution ed that Mexico was in danger of becoming a failed state is Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who told Fox News: I think that the chances of the Mexican government losing control of some part of their country or becoming a failed state are very low (Agence France Presse, 2009). Another interesting opinion written on the subject by the well-known conservative website Human Events stated: It may be a knee-jerk conservative response to dub Mexico failed But Mexico is not a failed state Failed describes a state that has lost its ability to exercise the powers of a sovereignty calling it a failed state is, so far, a stretch. It would be the equivalent of saying that the U.S. was a failed state during Prohibition, when gangs organized a lucrative and illegal alcohol trade. (Molin, 2009) Even

when some articles do make an effort to quote native counter-claims that Mexico is not in danger of failing, those claims are quickly followed by outsider observations that even if it is not completely failing, at least it has become a narco-state. This was evident in the San Francisco Chronicle article, where Lochhead (2009)

first quoted Professor George Grayson at Mexicos College of William and Mary, saying: Im in the heart of Mexico City as we speak, and the buses are full of people, the metros are running, the shops are open and people are walking freely I dont see anything that looks like a failed state. Then, in the next paragraph she writes: Others contend that Mexico is in danger of becoming a narco state

where drug cartels control large parts of the country and the government cannot perform its most important task, ensuring the safety of its citizens. Further, some articles cite un-sourced claims, such as the one picked up in numerous papers in the US, that 70% of Mexicans are afraid to go outside for fear of crime, to which Laura Carlsen (2009: 2), who lives in Mexico City writes: This statistic has been cited without a source. Its ridiculous. In a recent poll Mexicans nationwide named the economic situation over crime as the biggest problem in the country by a margin of two to one. In a classic case of amplification, the (US)

media breathlessly report on the narco- or failed-state meme and fail to report the fact that both citizens and government alike in Mexico are bristling at these characterizations. Moral panic creates a convergence between the perceived threat and a racialized or class-based Other Schack, 11 Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism at Ithaca College, PhD in Media Studies from the University of

Colorado (Todd, Twenty-first-century drug warriors: the press, privateers and the for-profit waging of the war on drugs, Media, War & Conflict, Vol. 4 No. 2, pg. 142-161, August 2011, Sage Journals)//BI As such, drug scares have played this role far before the prototypical decade of drug panic (the 1960s), and the efficacy of these

moral panics has long been used for both financial gain by the media industries and political gain by politicians using the tough on crime campaign platform. Perhaps the best academic investigation of a media-fomented, drug-related moral panic in the US is Reeves and Campbells Cracked Coverage (1994), which details the epidemic in crack cocaine use during the 1980s. Typical of this type of moral panic, and to borrow from Stuart Hall, is the notion of convergence, where the perceived threat (crack cocaine) is coupled with a racialized or class-based Other (black urban males), and once this
link is established in the media, the moral panic gains momentum until demands are made to bring an end to this threat typically with a militarized or penal solution. Hall (Hall et al., 1978: 223) writes about an earlier moral panic (student hooliganism) and explains that: Convergence occurs when two or more activities are linked in the process of

signification as to implicitly or explicitly draw parallels between them. Thus the image of student hooliganism

links student protest to the separate problem of hooliganism whose stereotypical characteristics are already part of socially available knowledge In both cases, the net effect is amplification, not in the real events being described

but in their threat potential for society. It is in creating this amplification, or as Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994: 36)

have termed it, the disproportionality of the perceived threat, where the media play a significant role, as we shall see with regard to the drug war in Mexico. In this way, drug panics have been linked to racialized Others, dating as far back

as opium smoking and the Chinese (1880s), marijuana and Mexicans (19201940s), heroin and black jazz culture (19301950s). In more modern times, drug scares have followed similar patterns, with either race or class-based convergences: crack cocaine and black urban society in the US; heroin and (especially)

Scottish urban society in the UK during the 1980s; Ecstasy (which was a decidedly white, middle-class panic) in both the US and UK in the 1990s; Methamphetamine (typically a white, lower-class panic) in both societies since 2000.

Mex - K of Spillover Violence Impact

Scenarios for violent spillover of drug violence into the US are unfounded products of disaster capitalism violence in border states is decreasing Schack, 11 Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism at Ithaca College, PhD in Media Studies from the University of
Colorado (Todd, Twenty-first-century drug warriors: the press, privateers and the for-profit waging of the war on drugs, Media, War & Conflict, Vol. 4 No. 2, pg. 142-161, August 2011, Sage Journals)//BI The same sorts of hype, spurious claims and statistics are being used in the spill-over meme. This myth, however, carries even more political utility for PSCs as it can and has been used to fast-track legislation allowing private companies to profit from what is characterized as a crisis. This is entirely consistent with Kleins concept of disaster

capitalism, as well as moral panic theory. Summarizing most mainstream media coverage, Gabriel Arana (2009) writes that:

Television segments narrated like war documentaries broadcast dramatic footage of Border Patrol Humvees kicking up dust in the Southwest, Minutemen with binoculars overlooking the border and piles of confiscated drugs. In the national media, its

become a foregone conclusion that Mexican drug violence has penetrated the United States . In one
crystallizing media moment, CNNs Anderson Cooper went to El Paso, and, dressed in military fatigues, reported on the spill-over of violence, as guest Fred Burton, a security expert claimed on air that: Its just a matter of time before it really spills over into the United States unless we shore up the border as best we can (Del Bosque, 2009). Taking issue with the sensational reporting on these related media memes, Del Bosque writes that: All too often the nightly news portrays Juarez and El Paso as

one and the same, with the U.S. city symbolizing the perils of that new buzzword: spillover. Night after night, TV spin-meisters, retired generals, terror analysts and politicians rage on about spillover violence. They call Mexico a failed state and argue for militarizing the border. No wonder Americans are scared. In a rare reflexive moment, one journalist (Negran, 2009) who had had enough of the media hype wrote An Open Letter to the U.S. Media. In it, he managed to expose one of the principal aspects of a prototypical moral panic: the racialized Other who becomes the target of antipathy, obscuring the fact that the threat may have other, less acknowledged, origins: Get this straight: The violence is not spilling over the border into the U.S. No, every time you say that, whether you mean to or not, youre conjuring up images of crazed Mexicans crossing the border and you have it backwards. It spilled over from the U.S. into Mexico and Latin

America long ago for the past 20 years, weve slowly been turning the border into a militarized zone, so lets not say there isnt violence associated with both sides of the drug trade and the Drug War. We could say that were now sharing the violence to a higher degree, an important distinction from the simple-minded terminology of spilling over. This meme reached fever pitch when several articles in The New York Times were published and re-reported in various news organizations, articles that relied: heavily on anecdotes, impressionistic quotes from police or politicians, and bare statistics presented without context (Arana, 2009). If one

does look at the publicly available statistics on violent crime in the area for a period ranging over the last several years, what is discovered is an actual decrease in such crime in the border-states.

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, the four states that border Mexico (Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas) have all seen a drop in violent crime since 2005. In fact, Arizonas violent crime rate (per 100,000 persons) dropped every year: 513.2 (2005), 501.4 (2006), 482.7 (2007), 447 .0 (2008) and 408.3 (2009). Texas saw a similar steady decline: 529.7 (2005), 516.3 (2006), 510.6 (2007), 507.9 (2008) and 490.9 (2009). California saw a spike in violent crime in 2006, and a decline since: 526.3 (2005), 532.5 (2006), 522.6 (2007), 503.8 (2008) and 472.0 (2009). New Mexicos violent crime rate rose in 2007, b ut has since leveled off: 702.2 (2005), 643.2 (2006), 664.2 (2007), 649.9 (2008) and 619.0 (2009) (FBI, 2009). In the cities most often cited by the media as threatened by the spill -over Tucson, Phoenix, and El Paso a similar trend emerges. The Tucson Police Department reports that violent crimes overall are down from a spike in 2005 of 942 violent crimes (per 100,000 persons), to 757 in 2008 (Tucson Police Department, 2009). The Phoenix Police Department reports a similar steady downturn in violent crime from a peak in 2006 of 710.8 (per 100,000 persons) to a 10-year low in 2009 of 519.8 (Phoenix Police Department, 2009). El Paso, which is at the center of the controversy since it lies directly on the border with the Mexican city of CiudadJuarez, site of some of the most violent cartel action in recent years, has indeed seen a recent rise in crime, but this must be put into historical context. While the rate of violent crime for 2008 did rise to 461.3 (per 100,000) from 2007 levels of 417.8, this is still far below a high of 597.2 in 2003, and 2009 has seen another drop in the crime rate to 440.4 (FBI, 2009). Interestingly enough, and rarely mentioned in the press, is that in an annual report that is based on these same FBI Uniform Crime Reports, El Paso was ranked as the second safest big city with a population of greater than 500,000, in the US in 2009 (OLeary -Morgan et al., 2009). In 2010, after preliminary data were released for the early months of the year, the Associated Press (AP: 2010) reports that: The top four big cities in America with the lowest rates of violent crime are all in border states: San Diego,

Border Patrol agents face far less danger than street cops in most U.S. cities. Further, Lloyd Easterling, spokesman for the US Customs and Border Protections, said that: The border is safer now than its ever been. Despite such findings, the disproportionality what Hall termed amplification of the spill-over meme has gained momentum. Arana (2009) writes that: If
Phoenix, El Paso and Austin. Similarly, a recent Customs and Border Protection study concluded:

media reports are to be believed, an Armageddon-like rash of drug-related violence has crossed from Mexico into the United States. Yet, investigating the crime data from the areas most at risk, he comes to the conclusion: the numbers tell a different story violent crimes, including robberies, have either decreased in the first part of 2009 or remained relatively stable. This is not to say that the increased violence in Mexico has had no impact in the United States or that no violence in the United States can be traced to the conflict in Mexico. Rather the drive not to get scooped by competitors has led media outlets to conclude prematurely based on hearsay and isolated incidents that a wave of drug-related violence is upon us. This motivating factor that the competitive

nature of the media, which leads in this case to a fear of missing out on the next war (especially if it
is right on the southern border), and which in turn leads to the type of herd journalism that both misreports a story and fails even

to check readily available statistics is

consistent with moral panic theory and what we know about drug scares of the past. The journalism being done is so prototypically hyperbolic and sensationalistic that even local police are frustrated at the gross misrepresentation of the situation. Quoted in Arana (2009), Sgt Mark

Robinson, of the Tucson Police Department, says: The statistics speak for themselves and they are not indicative of a spike in violent crime The violence is in Mexico [The reports] just cost us a bunch of trouble because of a misinterpretation of what somebody said. The economically interesting and politically useful aspect of all this hyperbole and media panic is that the difference

between reality and public perception is only widening, and entering into that gap are those with both a political agenda and an economic interest at stake. Del Bosque (2009) points out: Thats the reality these
days for El Pasoans. Or rather, its the twisted perception created by border-warrior politicians and national news media For El Pasoans and residents of nearby border towns, it might all be a mere oddity maybe even worth a chuckle if it didnt mean the construction of 18-foot border walls, blustery talk about National Guard troop surges, and new resources for the disastrous war on drugs. While troop surge, border wall, and drug war might sound irresistibly sexy to politicians and pundits, its border residents who have to live with the fences and tanks and consequences.

*Legalization*

Legislation S
Drug violence is inevitable absent legalization police and military training backfire Wakefeild, 13 deputy editor of The Spectator (Mary, Stop the drugs war, The Spectator, 12 January 2013,

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8813601/stop-the-drugs-war)//BI What about Calderon, the one before Pea Nieto, I asked Maria, who's seen ten presidents come and go. Wasn't he OK? At least he tried to fight the drug cartels. 'He's loco! Mad,' said Maria, with a dismissive shrug. 'His so-called drug war--pah! Do you know

how many have died in the drug war? They say 50,000 dead but it's more like 100,000. It is more than died in the Vietnam war. And these are not soldiers, they are young boys, babies, mothers, husbands. And for what?' There's the question: for what? Felipe Calderon was once convinced he had the answer: to crack down on the kingpins; restore moral order. But Calderon's war had a pretty clear outcome: the bad guys won. Capos were shot, but their cartels just split and proliferated: more gang warfare, more severed heads dumped on beaches; more corpses carved up and left on busy streets for kids to gawp at; extortion, kidnap, rape. It soon became clear even to Calderon that the 'war on drugs' was unwinnable, for the simple reason that the cause of the mayhem is not in Mexico, it's in the States. For as long as there are American junkies, Mexico will pay the blood price for their addiction. This has been the status quo for the past few decades, and as far as I could tell on my Mexican adventure last year, Maria was right: no one expected Pea Nieto to change much of anything. He belongs to
the PRI--the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for most of the past century, and its approach to the cartels has been a blind eye. But late last year, there was a new twist: America, having spent billions on Calderon's daft crusade, last month voted to legalise cannabis in some states (if the federal government gives them the OK). Colorado and Washington started it, California is keen to follow suit, and Oregon, Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont aren't far behind. It creates an irony that the Mexican president is puzzling over: some 40 per cent of the cartels' business is selling

cannabis across the border, so why should Mexico bust a gut keeping it from getting to America,

if it's legal there? This new legislation, said one of Pea Nieto's advisers cautiously, 'changes the rules of the game'. It does, and it also creates an opportunity, though one that Pea Nieto might not welcome. If the Mexican president is brave enough, he could not just follow the new rules, but perhaps change the game. He could follow the lead of President Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala, who has asked the question: if fighting doesn't work, why not legalise drugs instead? Molina is a former head of the intelligence services who has himself tried the iron-fist approach to gangs, but now he says the price paid in human lives is too high. 'It's time to end the myths, the taboos, and discuss legalisation.' Perhaps it sounds like a dramatic step. It's certainly one America would oppose with every star and stripe, because to legalise drugs in Mexico would be to push the fight alarmingly close to their border. But then, even as a tourist there, you can see Mexico requires a dramatic step. To say that the police aren't

effective is an almost comic understatement. It's not just that there are good cops and bad cops; it's that it's impossible to
tell the difference. Take this little tangle. Last year, in June, there was a shootout in the food court of Mexico City airport, Terminal 2. Three police officers who suspected another three of drug-smuggling went (they say) to make an arrest. The drug-running cops opened fire, killed the good cops, then skipped off scot-free, leaving clumps of traumatised Texan tourists shivering under canteen tables, vowing never to leave Dallas again. It later turned out that the runaway cops were in fact the good guys. They had been about to expose all the other cops as drug-smugglers, and had been shot at as a result. All 348 airport cops were later reshuffled to other states. If you think perhaps the answer to Mexico's troubles is a tougher army, then I'd like to

introduce you to Los Zetas. They are often also described as the paramilitary wing of the older Gulf Cartel, but that hasn't
just recently overtaking the famous Sinaloa cartel and dominating the country. How have they managed this? Because they

been true for a while. In 2010 they bit off the hand that fed them, formed their own gang, and began to show their rivals the true meaning of brutality. The Zetas specialise in the butchering of children. They have been phenomenally successful,

came from the army, from Mexico's equivalent of the SAS. They were trained by American and Israeli special forces in intimidation, ambushing and marksmanship, just to fight the drug gangs. Then they upped and formed one. The Zetas still recruit from Mexico's special forces and from the Guatemalan equivalent, the Kaibiles. The more cash America puts into training the Mexican army, the happier the Zetas are, purring over all the potential new recruits. So there aren't really many other alternatives. Why not legalise drugs? It wouldn't be giving up, it would be winning without fighting --the best, cleverest way. The cartels would be forced above ground; the big money would be in legitimate business. The psychos, like Rosario Reta (opposite), would no longer be required, and who knows, the police might once again become an effective force. After leaving Oaxaca, I headed for Veracruz state on the Mexican gulf and Maria waved us off with a warning: 'Be careful,

Los Zetas operate there!' The next night was an anxious one, high in the Sierra Norte mountains, Googling for signs of trouble. The whole police force had been sacked recently, it turned out, and the Zetas were waging a war against journalists, leaving their beaten bodies in the streets as a warning to others. That was enough for me. At the turn-off to Veracruz the following day, we turned tail and made for safer-sounding Villahermosa, though I'm quite sure the chances of us actually meeting a Zeta were very slim. And that's another tragedy for Mexico. It's a terrific place, but tourists are increasingly so paralysed with anxiety about

the cartels that they're reluctant to travel there. We ate alone one night in a three-storey restaurant in Mexico City on
the main square--the one the Lonely Planet said was usually chock-a-block. Waiters idled by the walls, waiting to go home. A hundred tables laid in high season, and only two customers all night. If tourism dries up, there'll be only one career

for a young man with an eye to making money: join a gang.

Legalization Good
Legalization good decreases demand for drugs Stonebraker 13 associate professor of economics at Winthrop University, former professor in the Department of Economics, Ph.D. degree in economics from Princeton University and a B.A. degree in economics from the University of Maryland (Robert J. Stonebraker Supply-Side Drug Policy: Will it
Ever Work? The Joy of Economics: Making Sense out of Life Section II-C: Crime 06/04/13 http://faculty.winthrop.edu/stonebrakerr/book/supplysidedrugs.htm) // czhang Legalization? A more radical approach is legalization. Although quite controversial, legalization

does offer potential gains. Much of the current drug-related crime occurs as rival suppliers battle for turf and market share both within the U.S. and along supply routes throughout Central and South America and Asia. In a legal market, suppliers are likely to enforce contracts by recourse to law rather than violence. Moreover, law enforcement officials, free from having to chase down drug offenders, could reallocate their time and efforts to reducing other types of criminal activity. Drug safety might also improve. Retail stores that offer
branded products meeting government-certified standards could replace back-alley vendors who offer drugs of unknown purity. Legalization also might create financial benefits. In addition to the potential tax revenues states might collect on the sale and use of controlled substances, billions

of dollars now being spent on drug enforcement and prisons could be saved. Legalization certainly would increase the supply of currently illegal substances and bring down prices. The interesting question is what might happen to demand.
Opponents are convinced that legalization would cause the demand for drugs to soar as hordes of new users "experiment." Since many of these might subsequently become addicted, the costs to society would quickly multiply. On the other hand, proponents contend that quantities consumed will not rise significantly. Stripped of their illicit cloak, drugs would be

less alluring to rebellious youth. If so, the demand for drugs might actually plummet. And, if we fear that lower prices will push usage up, governments can raise those prices by imposing appropriate taxes. Moreover, alcohol can be a substitute for products such as marijuana or cocaine. If so, an increase in drug usage might create a similar decrease in the consumption of alcohol and its related costs. Since 2001, Portugal has used a novel, but related, approach. While possession and use of drugs remains officially illegal, they have been "decriminalized". The police can stop anyone they find using illegal substances and confiscate the drugs but, instead of imposing criminal penalties, they send the users to "dissuasion commissions" that offer therapy. There are no fines and no prison sentences. The initial results have been encouraging. Usage rates for most substances seem to have
fallen or remained constant and, with the fear of prosecution removed, the numbers of users seeking treatment has risen significantly.9 Similarly, Uruguay has much lower rates of drug usage than the U.S. despite the

fact that possession of drugs for individual use in that country never has been illegal. several other Latin American countries now are considering similar policies.10 Although several U.S. states recently have
moved to decriminalize marijuana, at least for medical purposes, the approach remains controversial.

Total legalization key to solve the root cause of violence and drug crime otherwise corruption spreads to the US and causes instability solving in the US spills over Carpenter, 9 vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books, including

Bad Neighbor Policy: Washingtons Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (Ted Galen, Troubled Neighbor: Mexicos Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States February 2, 2009 Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/troubledneighbor-mexicos-drug-violence-poses-threat-united-states) // czhang The Only Real Solution The brutal reality is that prohibitionism simply drives commerce in a product underground, creating an enormous black-market potential profit that attracts violence-prone, criminal elements. Even the U.S. State Department has conceded that point, although it remains blindly committed to a prohibitionist strategy. Drug organizations possess and wield the ultimate instrument of corruption: money. The drug trade has access to almost unimaginable quantities of it. No commodity is so widely available, so cheap to produce, and as easily renewable as illegal drugs. They offer dazzling profit margins that allow criminals to generate illicit revenues on a scale without historical precedent. 67 Governments around the world seem to be awakening to the problems caused by a strict prohibitionist strategy. Such countries as the Netherlands and Portugal have adopted decriminalization measures (defacto or dejure) for possession and use of small quantities of drugs. 68 That view is taking hold in the Western Hemisphere as well. The president of Argentina has endorsed the

decriminalization of drug consumption, and the president of Honduras has gone even further,

embracing the legalization of drug use. 69 Indeed, that sentiment seems to be growing in Mexico itself. The PRD(Party of the Democratic Revolution), the countrys largest opposition party, has called for drug legalization, and even President Caldern has proposed decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of street drugs. 70 Those proposals are modest steps in the right direction, and they certainly are more sensible than Washingtons knee-jerk support for comprehensive prohibition. Legalizing, or even decriminalizing, drug possession has the beneficial effect of not stigmatizing (and sometimes ruining) the lives of users. And such reforms have the salutary effect of not filling prisons with nonviolent offenders. But even those desirable reforms do not get to the root cause of the violence that accompanies the drug trade. Unless the production and sale of drugs is also legalized, the black-market premium will still exist and law-abiding businesses will still stay away from the trade. In other words, drug commerce will remain in the hands of criminal elements that do not shrink from engaging in bribery, intimidation, and murder. Because of its proximity to the huge U.S. market, Mexico will continue to be a cockpit for that drug-related violence. By its domestic commitment to prohibition, the United States is creating the risk that the drug cartels may become powerful enough to destabilize its southern neighbor. Their impact on Mexicos government and society has already reached worrisome levels. Worst of all, the carnage associated with the black market trade in drugs does not respect national boundaries. The frightening violence now convulsing Mexico could become a routine feature of life in American communities, as the cartels begin to flex their muscles north of the border. When the United States and other countries ponder

whether to persist in a strategy of drug prohibition, they need to consider all of the potential societal costs, both domestically and internationally. 71 Drug abuse is certainly a major public health problem, and its societal costs are considerable. But banning the drug trade creates economic distortions and an opportunity for some of the most unsavory elements to gain dominant positions. Drug prohibition leads inevitably to an orgy of corruption and violence. Those are even worse societal costs, and that reality is now becoming all too evident in Mexico. The only feasible strategy to counter the mounting turmoil in Mexico is to drastically reduce the potential revenue flows to the trafficking organizations. In other words, the United States

needs to de-fund the cartels through the legalization of currently illegal drugs. If Washington abandoned the prohibition model, it is very likely that other countries in the international community would do the same. At that point, the profit margins for the drug trade would be similar to the margins for other legal

commodities, and legitimate business personnel would become the principal players. That is precisely what happened when the United States ended its quixotic crusade against alcohol in 1933. To help reverse the burgeoning tragedy of drug related violence in Mexico, Washington needs to adopt a similar course today.

Drug prohibition helps terrorists Carpenter, 05 (Ted Galen Carpenter, the Cato Institutes vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, is the author
of six books and editor of 10 books on international affairs; Drug Prohibition Is a Terrorists Best Friend; 1/4/05; http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/drug-prohibition-is-terrorists-best-friend?print) KD There is little doubt that terrorist groups around the world profit from the drug trade . What anti-drug crusaders refuse to acknowledge, however, is that the

connection between drug trafficking and terrorism is the direct result of making drugs illegal. The prohibitionist policy that the United States and other drugconsuming countries continue to pursue guarantees a huge black market premium for all illegal drugs. The retail value of drugs coming into the United States (to say nothing of Europe and other markets) is estimated at $50 billion to $100 billion a year. Fully 90 percent of that sum is attributable to the prohibition premium. Absent a world-wide prohibitionist policy, this fat profit margin would evaporate, and terrorist organizations would be forced to seek other sources of revenue. Drug prohibition is terrorisms best friend. That symbiotic relationship will continue until the United States and its allies
have the wisdom to dramatically change their drug policies.

Legalization Bad
Drug legalization would fail their evidence doesnt assume crime groups retaliation Felbab-Brown, 12 a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program
at Brookings and an expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, organized crime, urban violence, and illicit economies (Vanda, Organized Criminals Won't Fade Away August 2012 The World Today Magazine http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/08/drugs-crime-felbabbrown) // czhang

Although frequently portrayed as an effective solution to the problem of organized crime, mere legalization of illicit economies, particularly of drugs, is no panacea. Proponents of legalization as a mechanism to

reduce organized crime make at least two arguments: it will severely deprive organized crime groups of resources. It will also free law enforcement agencies to concentrate on other types of crime. A country may have good reasons to want to legalize the use and even production of some addictive substances and ride out the consequences of greater use. Such reasons could include providing better health care to users, reducing the number of users in prison, and perhaps even generating greater revenues and giving jobs to the poor. Yet without robust state presence and effective law enforcement, both often elusive in parts of the world such as Latin

America or Africa, there can be little assurance that organized crime groups would be excluded from the legal drug trade. In fact, they may have numerous advantages over legal companies and manage to hold on to the trade, perhaps even resorting to violence to do so. Nor does mere legalization mean that the state will suddenly become robust and effective. Persistent deficiencies in the state explain why there is so much illegal logging alongside legal logging, for example, or why smuggling in legal goods take place. Organized crime groups who stand to be displaced from the drug trade by legalization can hardly be expected to take the change lying down. Rather, they may intensify their violent power struggles over remaining illegal economies, such as the smuggling of other contraband or migrants, prostitution, extortion, and kidnapping. To mitigate their financial losses, they may also seek to take over the black economy, which operates outside the tax system. If they succeed in organizing street life in this informal sector, their political power over society will be greater than ever. Nor does legalization imply that police would be freed up to focus on other issues or become less corrupt: The state may have to devote more resources to regulating the legal economy. Additionally, a grey market in drugs would probably emerge. If drugs became legal, the state would want to tax them to generate revenues and to discourage greater use. The higher the tax, the greater the opportunity for organized crime to undercut the state by charging less. Organized crime groups could set up their own fields with smaller taxation, snatch the market and the profits,
and the state would be back to combating them and eradicating their fields. Such grey markets exist alongside a host of legal economies, from cigarettes to stolen cars.

Legalize MJ Good
Legalization of marijuana would destroy the foundation for Mexican drug cartel success Luhnow, 9 writer for Wall Street Journal (David, Saving Mexico December 26, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704254604574614230731506644.html) // czhang

Advocates for drug legalization say making marijuana legal would cut the economic clout of Mexican cartels by half. Marijuana accounts for anywhere between 50% to 65% of Mexican cartel revenues, say Mexican and U.S. officials. While cocaine has higher profit margins, marijuana is a steady source of income that allows cartels to meet payroll and fund other activities. Marijuana is also less risky to a drug gang's balance sheet. If a cocaine shipment is seized, the Mexican gang has to write off the
expected profits from the shipment and the cost of paying Colombian suppliers, meaning they lose twice. But because gangs here grow their own marijuana, it's easier to absorb the losses from a seizure. Cartels also own the land where the marijuana is grown, meaning they can

cheaply grow more supply rather than have to fork over more money to the Colombians for the next shipment of cocaine. Several U.S. states like California and Oregon have decriminalized marijuana, making possession of small quantities a misdemeanor, like a parking ticket. Decriminalization falls short of legalization because the sale and distribution remain a serious felony. One of the big reasons for the move is to reduce the problem of overcrowded and costly prisons. Legalization solves the violence that arises from narcoterrorism and drug trade Luhnow, 9 writer for Wall Street Journal (David, Saving Mexico December 26, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704254604574614230731506644.html) // czhang "Economically, there is no argument or solution other than legalization, at said the top Mexican official matter-of-factly. The official said such

least of marijuana," a move would likely shift marijuana production entirely to places like California, where the drug can be grown more efficiently and governments should seriously consider legalizing marijuana as an effective tool against murderous drug gangs.

closer to consumers. "Mexico's objective should be to make the U.S. self-sufficient in marijuana," he added with a grin. He is not alone in his views. Earlier this year, three former Latin American presidents known for their free-market and conservative credentialsErnesto Zedillo of Mexico, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazilsaid

Decriminalization and regulation of drugs solves best in the long term Rolles, 10 senior policy analyst at BMJ, an open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal (Stephen,
An alternative to the war on drugs 3 June 2010 http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c3360?ijkey=xIwckDCjknVi9wn&keytype=ref) // czhang Consensus is growing within the drugs field and beyond that the prohibition on production,

Decriminalization Good

supply, and use of certain drugs has not only failed to deliver its intended goals but has been counterproductive. Evidence is mounting that this policy has not only exacerbated many public health problems, such as adulterated drugs1 and the spread of HIV and hepatitis B and C infection among injecting drug users, but has created a much larger set of secondary harms associated with the criminal market. These now include vast networks of organised crime, endemic violence related to the drug market,2 corruption of law enforcement and governments, militarised crop eradication programmes (environmental damage, food insecurity, and human displacement), and funding for terrorism and insurgency.3 4 These conclusions have been

reached by a succession of committees and reports including, in the United Kingdom alone, the Police Foundation,5 the Home Affairs Select Committee,6 The prime ministers Strategy Unit,7 the Royal Society of Arts,8 and the UK Drug Policy Consortium.9 The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime has also acknowledged the many unintended negative consequences of drug enforcement,10 increasingly shifting its public rhetoric away from its former aspirational goals of a drug free world, towards containment of the problem at current levels. Problems of prohibition Despite this emerging consensus on the nature of the problem, the debate about how policy can evolve to respond to it remains driven more by populist politics and tabloid headlines than by rational analysis or public health principles. The criminalisation of drugs has, historically, been presented

as an emergency response to an imminent threat rather than an evidence based health or social policy intervention .11 Prohibitionist rhetoric frames drugs as menacing not just to health but also to our children, national security, and the moral fabric of society itself. The prohibition model is positioned as a response to such threats, and is often misappropriated into populist political narratives such as crackdowns on crime, immigration, and, more recently, the war on terror. This conceptualisation has resulted in the punitive enforcement of drug policy becoming largely immune from meaningful scrutiny.14 A curiously self-justifying logic now prevails in which the harms of prohibitionsuch as drug
related organised crime and deaths from contaminated heroinare

conflated with the harms of drug use. These policy related harms then bolster the apparent menace of drugs and justify the continuation, or intensification, of prohibition. This has helped create a high level policy environment that routinely ignores or actively suppresses critical scientific engagement and is uniquely divorced from most public health and social policy norms, such as evaluation of interventions using established indicators of health and wellbeing. Emerging change Despite this hostile ideological environment, two distinct policy trends have emerged in recent decades: harm reduction15 and decriminalisation of personal possession and use. Although both are nominally permitted within existing international legal frameworks, they pose serious practical and intellectual challenges to the overarching status quo. Both have been driven by pragmatic necessity: harm reduction emerging in the
mid-1980s in response to the epidemic of HIV among injecting drug users, and decriminalisation in response to resource pressures on overburdened criminal justice systems (and, to a lesser extent, concerns over the rights of users). Both policies have

proved their effectiveness. Harm reduction is now used in policy or practice in 93 countries,16 and several countries in

mainland Europe,17 18 and central and Latin America have decriminalised all drugs, with others, including states in Australia and the United States, decriminalising cannabis.19 Decriminalisation has shown that less punitive approaches do not

necessarily lead to increased use. In Portugal, for example, use among school age young people has fallen since all drugs
were decriminalised in 2001.20 More broadly, an extensive World Health Organization study concluded: Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones.21 Similarly US states that have decriminalised cannabis do

not have higher levels of use than those without. More importantly, the Netherlands, where cannabis is available
from licensed premises, does not have significantly different levels of use from its prohibitionist neighbours.19 New approach Although these emerging policy trends are important, they can be seen primarily as symptomatic

responses to mitigate the harms created by the prohibitionist policy environment. Neither directly
unregulated criminal profiteers or they can

tackles the public health or wider social harms created or exacerbated by the illegal production and supply of drugs. The logic of both, however, ultimately leads us to confront the inevitable choice: non-medical drug markets can remain in the hands of

be controlled and regulated by appropriate government authorities. There is no third option under which drugs do not exist. The choice needs to be based on an evaluation of which
option will deliver the best outcomes in terms of minimizing the harms, both domestic and international, associated with drug

production, supply, and use. This

does not preclude reducing demand as a legitimate long term policy goal, rather it accepts that policy must also deal with the reality of current high levels of demand. A historical stumbling block in this debate has been that the eloquent and detailed critiques of the drug war have not

been matched by a vision for its replacement. Unless a credible public health led model of drug market regulation is proposed, myths and misrepresentations will inevitably fill the void. So what would such a model look like? Transforms blueprint for regulation22 attempts to answer this question by offering different options for controls over products (dose, preparation, price, and packaging), vendors (licensing, vetting and training requirements, marketing and promotions), outlets (location, outlet density, appearance), who has access (age controls, licensed buyers, club membership schemes), and where and when drugs can be consumed. It then explores options for different drugs in different populations and suggests the regulatory models that may deliver the best outcomes (box). Lessons are drawn from successes and failings with alcohol and tobacco regulation in the UK and beyond, as well as controls over medicinal drugs and other risky products and activities that are regulated by government. Five basic models for regulating drug availability22 Medical prescription model or supervised venuesFor highest risk drugs (injected drugs including heroin and more potent stimulants such as methamphetamine) and problematic users Specialist

pharmacist retail modelcombined with named/licensed user access and rationing of volume of sales for moderate risk drugs such as amphetamine, powder cocaine, and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy) Licensed retailingincluding tiers of

regulation appropriate to product risk and local needs. Used for lower risk drugs and preparations such as lower strength stimulant based drinks Licensed premises for sale and consumptionsimilar to licensed alcohol venues and Dutch cannabis coffee shops, potentially also for smoking opium or poppy tea Unlicensed salesminimal regulation for the least risky products, such as caffeine drinks and coca tea. Such a risk guided regulatory approach is the norm for almost all other arenas of public policy, and in this respect it is prohibition, not regulation, that can be viewed as the anomalous and radical policy option. Moves towards legal regulation of drug markets depend on negotiating the substantial institutional and political obstacles presented by the international drug control system (the UN drug conventions). They would

also need to be phased in cautiously over several years, with close evaluation and monitoring of effects and any unintended negative consequences. Rather than a universal model, a flexible range of regulatory tools would be available with the more restrictive controls used for more risky products and less restrictive controls for lower risk products. Such differential application of regulatory controls could additionally help create a risk-availability gradient. This holds the potential to not only reduce harms associated with illicit supply and current patterns of consumption but, in the longer term, to progressively encourage use of safer products, behaviours, and environments. Understanding of such processes is emerging from route

transition interventions aimed at encouraging injecting users to move to lower risk non-injecting modes of administration by, for example, providing foil for smoking.23 This process is the opposite of what has happened under prohibition, where a profit driven dynamic has tended to tilt the market towards ever more potent (but profitable) drugs and drug preparations, as well as encouraging riskier behaviours in high risk environments.

*Popularity*

WOD Popular
Fighting drug trafficking has empirically unanimously popular Khatami, 12 wrier for CQ Weekly, which reports on the worlds most powerful legislative body completely and accurately every week. The CQ news teamby far the largest on Capitol Hill, with more than 100 reporters, editors, and researcherscovers virtually every act of Congress, deliveritng nonpartisan news and analysis unavailable anywhere else (Elham, May 21, 2012 CQ Weekly
House Takes Aim at Cross-Border Drug Smuggling http://library.cqpress.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/cqweekly/document.php?id=weeklyreport112000004090661&type=hitlist&num=16) // czhang

A House-passed bill would give more tools to federal law enforcement agencies to combat drug traffickers who use tunnels under the U.S.-Mexico border. The chamber on May 16 passed the measure (HR 4119) 416-4 under suspension of the rules, an expedited procedure requiring a two-thirds majority for passage. The Senate unanimously passed a nearly identical measure (S 1236) earlier this year. (House vote 256, p. 1056) The legislation would expand a 2006 law (PL 109-295) that criminalized the construction or financing of unauthorized cross-border tunnels used to smuggle drugs, weapons, illegal immigrants or terrorists. It would subject tunnel smugglers and financiers to the same penalties imposed on those who construct the tunnels. During floor debate May 15, sponsor Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said that while security along the United States southwest border has strengthened in recent years, it has literally pushed drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations underground as they try to smuggle illicit drugs and people and other types of contraband. These are sophisticated, wellengineered and well-financed projects, Reyes added. Thats why it is imperative that this legislation be passed . Lamar Smith, R-Texas, agreed, saying that reports of drug-smuggling tunnels have increased significantly in recent years. He called the tunnels an unfortu nate testament to the ingenuity of the Mexican drug cartels. The bill would provide for criminal forfeiture of property used in tunneling activities and civil asset forfeiture of merchandise brought into the United States through a tunnel. It also would subject border tunnel offenses to money-laundering statutes. The legislation would allow the Justice Department to seek a court order authorizing the use of surveillance to intercept wire, oral or electronic communications to aid in the investigation of tunnel-smuggling activities.

WOD Unpopular
Anti-trafficking efforts in Mexico cause fights Fast and Furious proves Durbin, 13 professor of the School of Graduate and Continuing Studies in Diplomacy at Norwich University (Kirk J. Durbin International Narco-Terrorism and Non-State Actors: The Drug Cartel Global Threat
Global Security Studies, Winter 2013, Volume 4, Issue 1 http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Durbin%20Narcotics.pdf) // czhang Weapons Sources It makes sense that the United States at the northern door of Mexico is the best place to

conduct business when it comes to small arms. Reports of estimates are as that thousands of firearms cross over the border into Mexico each day. Operations such as Wide Receiver, White Gun, and the latest, Fast and Furious, were planned operation led by the ATF (Alcohol, Tabacco, and Firearms) allowed suspected gun traffickers to buy guns here in the United States to be transported across the border into Mexico. According to Frieden (2012), United States lawmakers were extremely outraged of AFTs poor handling in tracking weapons once they went into Mexico. ATF agent, Larry Alt told CNN, it was "egregious" that agents were watching people transfer guns to people who were handing them over to the cartels, "and we were not taking an enforcement action" (Frieden, 2012, para. 7). Agencies like the ATF are charged with the responsibility to prevent weapons from leaving the country illegally. The
issue is made worse with a lack of transparency, obstruction of the truth, and claimed executive privilege. Questions will to continue to be asked about the weapons, who in authority knew, and when they knew about the operations. Political

infighting will continue on these botched operations for years to come. Rather than getting to the truth, Mexico will continue to blame the United States for its lax gun laws and the United States will blame Mexico for its lack of enforcement and government corruption.

Other

International agreements are key to Cuban enforcement Lee, 09 (Renssaler, fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Testimony before the House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee of National Security and Foreign Affairs, Cuba, Drugs, and U.S.-Cuban Relations, 4/29/2009, https://www.fpri.org/docs/alt/testimony.20090429.lee_.cubadrugs.pdf, JKahn) Cuba's relations with the international drug trade are historically complex and controversial and
deserve some mention here. The Castro regime, on its accession to power in 1959, largely wiped out what had been a flourishing domestic market for cocaine and marijuana that was closely associated with the mob-run Havana casinonightclub scene. Despite this achievement, opportunistic ties with foreign drugtrafficking organizations apparently persisted . Allegations of Cuban state complicity in the drug trade date to the early 1960s, although hard evidence of a Cuban drug connection did not surface until the 1980s. Such cozy relationships reached a height in the late 1980s, when a group of Cuban Ministry of Interior officials, led by MC department head Antonio de la Guardia, together with representatives of Colombias Medellin cartel coordinated some 15 successful smuggling operations through Cuba to the United States which according to Cuban officials moved a total of six tons of cocaine and earned the conspirators $3.4 million. Also complicit in these activities, though tangentially, was Division General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, a decorated hero of the Cuban revolution. An Ochoa emissary met with Medellin cartel chief Pablo Escobar in 1988 to discuss a cocaine-smuggling venture and also a proposal to set up a cocaine laboratory in Cuba. The discussions also touched on another topic and this is what Escobar really wanted most the transfer of some surface-to-air missiles to the cartel in Colombia. The trafficking schemes never materialized, but in early 1990 the Colombian National Police discovered an assortment of 10 ground-to-air and air-to-air missiles of French manufacture (apparently originating in Angola) in a Bogot residence belonging to an assassin employed by the Medellin cartel. The Ochoa-de la Guardia machinations and the subsequent trials, executions, and purges marked the beginning of a

Intl Key To Cuba

watershed in the Cuban governments policies toward illegal drugs. In subsequent years the regime made a visible and mostly successful effort to distance itself from the international drug trade, setting up new and elaborate drugfighting institutions, establishing narcotics cooperation agreements with
European and other Latin American states, and adopting an increasingly prohibitionist approach toward the sale and use of drugs inside Cuba. (This, incidentally, contrasts sharply with the harm-reduction approach being advocated by three former Latin American presidents.)

Trade and liberalization decrease the risk of drug trafficking Bartilow, 9 associate professor of Poli Sci at U of Kentucky and Kihong is a professor of comparative politics and quantitative methodology at Kyungpook National University and a vising scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute (Horace and Kihong Eom, Free Traders and Drug Smugglers:

Trade Solves Drugs

The Effects of Trade Openness on States' Ability to Combat Drug Trafficking Source: Latin American Politics and Society, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Summer, 2009), pp. 117-145 JSTOR) // czhang Important policy implications emerge from this analysis. Should drug-consuming countries in the Americas restrict trade in order to limit their exposure to drug trafficking? With the growing concern over trade related job losses and the

recent collapse of the financial sector in the United States and other OECD countries, U.S.

policymakers might be tempted to interpret this finding as additional evidence for placing restrictions on trade. In the post-9/11 security environment, this response may appear reasonable, especially considering that many ter rorist organizations are connected to the drug trade (Drug Enforcement Administration 2002). However, it would be a mistake to erect

barriers to trade, because revenues earned from trade enable states in drug- pro ducing countries in the Americas effectively to interdict drug trafficking at its very source and potentially to limit the flow of drugs into North America. Moreover, because the analysis shows that increasing levels of trade openness have a positive effect on the counternarcotics operations of states in drug-producing countries in the Western Hemisphere, poli cymakers throughout the region should consider extending the various trade and investment provisions of NAFTA to South America, especially to the Andean countries, where drug trafficking is a major concern.

Evidence Indict
Be skeptical of their evidence the media is one of the largest beneficiaries Schack, 11 Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism at Ithaca College, PhD in Media Studies from the University of
Colorado (Todd, Twenty-first-century drug warriors: the press, privateers and the for-profit waging of the war on drugs, Media, War & Conflict, Vol. 4 No. 2, pg. 142-161, August 2011, Sage Journals)//BI Academics have long established how the history of the medias reporting of the drug war since the 1970s has

been one of over-hyped, sensationalized coverage that falls into easily categorizable stereotypes and myths that fail to address the far more complicated issues beneath the drug problem such as poverty, social and political marginalization, and race (Gitlin, 1989; Marez, 2004; Reeves and Campbell,

1994; Reinarman and Levine, 1989; Viano, 2002). What scholars have repeatedly shown regarding this type of media involvement is that, for the media, sensationalism in the drug war translates into pure profit: War is, of course,

the health of the networks, and of their promotion departments. Scenes from the battlefront play especially well. The drug war provides the most vivid pictures (Gitlin, 1989: 17). Further, over-sensationalized battlefront coverage and a focus solely on issues of violence are very useful for the overall justification of the militarized response, in the very traditional manner of using fear to mobilize support for pre-determined policy. This is nothing new, as the sociological notion of moral panic theory has established
for quite some time (Becker, 1963; Cohen, 2002[1972]; Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994; Hall et al., 1978; Jenkins, 1992; Thompson, 1998). In his seminal work on the subject, Cohen (2002[1972]) defined moral panic as: A condition, episode, person or group of persons [that] emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to. (p. 1)

Militarism Now
Obama is transitioning to a militarized policy Freeman and Luis Sierra, 05 (*Laurie, Director for Yemen at the National Security Council, former State
Department Official, fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, writer for the Washington Post Mexico Bureau, M.A. in International Politics from Princeton University, degree from Duke in Latin American Studies, **Jorge, Knight International Journalism Fellow, degree in International Journalism from the University of Southern California, defense policy and economics fellow at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University, Mexico: The Militarization Traip, 2005, part of Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The impact of U.S. Policy, Rienner, Google Books, JKahn) Barack Obama came to office amid a growing global consensus on the failure of a century of costly war

on drugs policies. The new administration inherited a legacy of US leadership focused on increasingly militarized and politicized supply reduction efforts rather than evidence based and rights based drug policy. The George W. Bush administration, in particular, explicitly sought to undermine the credibility and

scientific evidence behind harm reduction approaches, especially needle exchange as an essential HIV prevention measure. Oba mas predecessors escalated measures such as aerial crop reduction in the Andes even in the face of overwhelming evidence of their ineffectiveness. This paper, written early in the Obama administration, describes the political and historical constraints inherited by the new government and also seeks to highlight the opportunities the Obama White House has for turning the page on the wasteful and abusive drug policies of the past. It suggests that the first actions of the new administration signal a different tone for drug policy and a shift toward respect for science as the basis for policy. It remains to be seen, however, whether courageous leadership from the Obama White House will result in real resource and programmatic change in the face of inevitable ideologically driven attacks. The stakes are high as US policy, for good or ill, shapes global drug policy decision making. Leadership on evidence based drug policy could be among the Obama administrations most important contributions to improved global health.

Cocaine LA Key
U.S. is dependent on Latin American cocaine Lee, 2 (Rensselaer W., contract researcher for the Congressional Research Service and a senior fellow at FPRI, Perverse Effects
of Andean Counternarcotics Policy, Orbis, Volume 46, Issue 3, Summer 2012, pg. 537-554, sciencedirect, Tashma) United States international drug fighting strategy as it has evolved in recent years comprises two related but distinct imperatives. The primary imperative is simply to limit the availability of illicit drugs in U.S. markets. Latin America has been the

venue for most source-control efforts especially the Andean countries, which supply 100 percent of the cocaine and (now) as much as 60 percent of the heroin consumed in U.S. markets.
Standard supply-reduction measures include eradicating coca and opium poppy fields (sometimes spraying these crops with chemical defoliants), destroying processing laboratories and seizing illegal drug shipments en route to the United States. For instance, much of the $1.3 billion U.S. package of assistance to Plan Colombia, authorized in 2000, was earmarked for supplyreduction purposes: mainly helicopters, planes, and training to support a massive coca-spraying effort in southern Colombia, as well as electronic surveillance technology to help detect the northward flow of drugs from coca-growing areas of that country.1

Target US
Drug traffickers target the US violence spills over Durbin, 13 professor of the School of Graduate and Continuing Studies in Diplomacy at Norwich University (Kirk J. Durbin International Narco-Terrorism and Non-State Actors: The Drug Cartel Global Threat
Global Security Studies, Winter 2013, Volume 4, Issue 1 http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Durbin%20Narcotics.pdf) // czhang

The war between the Mexican Cartels over the control of the movement and the routing of drugs amounts to keys points across Mexico and most important at the U.S./Mexico border. The narco-cartels use this term, plazas(geographical locations or points where drug contraband passes through before entering into the United States). Control of locations near the United States and Mexico control the movement of drugs, the transporters, and any resources that assist in conducting their business. The cartel that controls these key locations possesses the ability to obtain and control the funds, the ultimate symbol of power. Serrano (1997) quoted the Drug Policy Director Barry R. McCaffrey, "Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the Rocky Mountain heartland of America, are increasingly becoming populated with Mexican cartel trafficking organizations and violent gangs using this major transportation crossroads as a trans-shipment center" (para. 12). Articles and reports illustrate that the drug problem has saturated the United States had gone far beyond the major cities that serve as major distribution centers. Serrano
(1997) wrote the drug cartels have been concentrating on untapped areas of the Mid-west and the Rocky Mountains. States such as Wyoming, Utah, and Iowa have a large number of legal and illegal immigrants who have converged on these areas. Serrano reports that

Interstates 25, 70, and 80 serve as pipelines for the movement of drugs and money. He adds that federal drug enforcement officials note that out the interstate roadways are the major routes for drugs to move north and east, and money to move south and west (para. 12-14). Gun violence will continue to spill over the border into the United States as the rival cartels continue to fight over the key entry points (Plazas) into the United States.

Drugs LA Key
Latin America is the prime pathway for drug trafficking geographical advantages Durbin, 13 professor of the School of Graduate and Continuing Studies in Diplomacy at Norwich University (Kirk J. Durbin International Narco-Terrorism and Non-State Actors: The Drug Cartel Global Threat
Global Security Studies, Winter 2013, Volume 4, Issue 1 http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Durbin%20Narcotics.pdf) // czhang Introduction to Narco Terrorism in Central America Central Americas geography is a natural land bridge connecting North and South America and provides

movement of drug contraband from South America to the United States. Mexicos outline from the sky
resembles the familiar shape, that of a leg; parted by its various geographical regions and states. The lay of the land provides a stretch of coast line on the east and west with water on each side. The Gulf of Mexicos waters move along the

east coast, providing easy routes by watercraft or plane to the gulf areas of the United States. The
Pacific Ocean also provides a path of travel to this country with access to the west coast of Canada. These coastline areas and the interior roads that lead north to the United States border, provide convenient routes for narcotics activities. Some routes are at times geographically impassible by air or land but numerous trails are available to move drugs into this

country and move cash from the sale of those drugs back to the south. Todays war is against a mix of the favorite route narco-terrorists will use to import drugs into the United States. Central America is a key path for drug trade Scutti, 6/28/13 reporter at Medical Daily, breaking health news, scientific trends, and innovations (Susan, Drug Trafficking As Well As Drug Abuse Pose Health Threat To Many, UN Report States

terrorism, illicit drug trade, bribery of public and military officials, threats and coercion, weapons trafficking, human trafficking, assassinations and kidnappings. The land bridge between North and South America will continue to be

http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/16979/20130628/drug-trafficking-well-abuse-pose-health-threat.htm) // czhang

The region of Central America and the Caribbean continues to be used as a major transit area for South American cocaine heading to the North American market. The increasing power of drug gangs has helped to raise corruption and homicide rates in the region, especially in Belize, El Salvador,
Guatemala and Honduras, which are particularly affected by significant levels of drug-related violence. Areas exposed to intense drug trafficking in Central America show higher homicide rates. UNODC estimates that about 280 tons of South

American cocaine (purity-adjusted) are destined for North America. Much of it travels by way of Central America and the Caribbean, where cocaine use is also increasing. Recently, cocaine shipments destined for countries in Central America, with further deliveries for Mexico and the U.S. have increased. In 2011 and 2012, trafficking in precursor chemicals increased in countries in Central America, in

particular non-scheduled chemicals used in the illicit manufacture of methamphetamine. El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua reported incidents in 2011 and 2012 involving significant seizures of esters of phenylacetic acid and methylamine. Illicit laboratories have also been reported in the region. Seizures of chemical precursors, raw material (coca paste) and laboratories in Guatemala and Honduras indicate the likely existence of both cocaine- and heroin-refining facilities. Furthermore, the abuse of MDMA

('ecstasy'), generally imported from Europe, has been spreading in Central America and the Caribbean since the period 2010-2011.

The Caribbean is the center of drug trade key to other regions of the global US, Africa, Europe Brewer, 6/17/13 C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International Associates, a global threat mitigation firm headquartered in

northern Virginia (Jerry, The Dominican Republic and Drug Smuggling via the Caribbean http://www.mexidata.info/id3641.html) // czhang

To break the cycle of narcotics trafficking and the accompanying violence by organized criminals and gangs, as they increasingly (and once again) make end runs via the Caribbean Basin with drug routes to the U.S., Africa and Europe, affected nations must commit and task multilateral enforcement efforts. Yet we will hear arm
chair pundits once again call for drug legalization, as well as a primary focus of investing in education, prevention, and training that gives youth hope beyond crime, albeit an investment in youth is a necessary and viable course of action for the future. The exception is for those who have progressed beyond youth, with many now in positions to compete as some of the wealthiest personalities in the world. Ironically, they diabolically set the bar on how to rise and achieve massive wealth quickly, and eliminate all those in their way that work to prevent them from achieving their offensives of death and terror for profit. These moguls of evil transgression are entrenched in virtually every facet of crime that brings quick and easy wealth that is easily concealed through a

myriad of international rogue financial conduits, as well as some rogue government facilitation. Global criminal networks corrupt and launder illicit proceeds. Fortunes are easily invested into ostensibly legitimate companies and real estate projects. Many of the organized criminal and drug cartel principals that have been successfully interdicted, convicted, and sentenced to prison continue to benefit as family members and other front persons act to monitor, control, and enforce their agendas by proxy. The

Dominican Republic has been a frequent strategic conduit for drug trafficking that has impacted crime, violence and addiction in Puerto Rico and other neighboring nations of the Caribbean. Intense drug interdiction in those areas of the Caribbean cyclically, in the last couple of decades, forced South American drug trafficking to more direct routes to the U.S. via Central America. Intense focus there, in the last few years, bounces much of it back to the Caribbean in this vicious circle. Venezuela became a major transit country for cocaine shipments under the former Hugo Chavez dictatorial rule. Corrupt Venezuelan military and National Guard personnel have been reported to facilitate both the FARC and other Colombian drug trafficking organizations. In 2011, a report by Venezuelas antidrug office stated that there was a network of air routes between the Venezuelan border states of Apure and Zulia to destina tions like the Dominican Republic and Haiti. As well, a Colombian drug trafficking organization run by Daniel Barrera moved tons of cocaine from the Venezuelan Caribbean island of Margarita to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico in recent years. Authori ties confiscated US$2.7 million in drug money belonging to the organization in Puerto Rico in April 2010. With the Dominican

Republic serving as a major transshipment point for South American drugs, it has also become: a transshipment point for ecstasy from the Netherlands and Belgium destined for the U.S. and Canada. Substantial money laundering activities in the Dominican Republic have been reported, as well as significant
amphetamine consumption since 2008.

Spills Over ME
Mexican drug cartels spill over globally to instable regions the Middle East Ehrenfeld, 9 director of American Center for Democracy and author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed - and How to Stop It (Rachel, Defeating Narco-Terrorism 3/17/09
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rachel-ehrenfeld/defeating-narco-terrorism_b_175537.html) // czhang And the threat is not limited to Mexican drug cartels; many criminal and drug trafficking

organizations in the Western Hemisphere collaborate with Muslim terrorist groups like alQaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The Tri-Border Area (TBA -- Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay), for example, is a known center of their operations. These anti-American narco-terrorist groups found a good ally in Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who stopped cooperating with the U.S. drug eradication efforts in 2005. Chavez provides these groups with a safe haven from which to transfer money, arms and operatives to and from Syria, Southern Lebanon and Iran.

Police Force S
Revamped police force can help combat war on drugs Astorga and Shirk, 10 (Luis Astorga is a researcher at the Institute of Social Research at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM). He is also coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Economic and Social Transformations Connected with the International Drug Problem; David A. Shirk, PhD, joined the University of San Diego in July 2003. Shirks teaching covers a wide range of subject areas, mainly concentrated in comparative politics, international political economy, Latin American studies, and U.S.-Latin American relations, with a concentration in Mexico and border politics. He conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, and law enforcement and security along the U.S.-Mexican border. Shirk also directs the Trans-Border Institute, which works to promote greater analysis and understanding of Mexico, U.S.-Mexico relations, and the U.S.-Mexico border region; 1/1/10; Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies in the U.S.-Mexican Context; http://usmex.ucsd.edu/assets/024/11632.pdf) KD Meanwhile, Mexico has also introduced significant institutional changes, passing new legislation in 2009

giving more investigative powers to the Public Security Ministry (SSP), creating a new Federal Police force, and replacing the Attorney Generals Federal Agency of Investigations (AFI) with the new Federal Ministerial Police.63 Under these reforms, agents of the Attorney Generals new police force will have greater powers to investigate crimes but will also be subjected to more rigorous vetting. These reforms also effectively bestowed investigative powers upon what was previously the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), which carried out a strictly preventive function, and created the new Federal Police (PF) within SSP. Under the new law, Federal Police officers will be able to collaborate with the PGR on its investigations , operating under the supervision of the Attorney General. Of significant concern to advocates of civil liberties, the Federal Polices new investigative powers include the ability to seek judicial orders to monitor telephone, satellite, and internet communications in the investigations of organized crime activity. Other dedicated responsibilities of the Federal Police now include functions formerly performed by the AFI: securing crime scenes, carrying out arrest warrants, and processing evidence. Federal Police agents will also have
authorization to operate undercover to infiltrate criminal organizations.

Some K card?
Profiteers of the drug war are driven to continuously create enemies to maintain the industry Schack, 11 Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism at Ithaca College, PhD in Media Studies from the University of
Colorado (Todd, Twenty-first-century drug warriors: the press, privateers and the for-profit waging of the war on drugs, Media, War & Conflict, Vol. 4 No. 2, pg. 142-161, August 2011, Sage Journals)//BI Here we come to the heart of the matter: the media hype, hyperbole and moral panic have actual

consequences, and it is worthwhile asking the cui bono question: who, exactly, is benefitting, because there are

billions of dollars at stake, and the question of funding or not funding certain contracts explains more about whats really happening than all the sensational reports based on exaggeration, un-sourced claims, and lack of statistics. Crucial to understanding this question of funding is one final point: that politicians in favor of the militarized response to the drug war (which includes privatizing the effort) must hold at all times the simultaneously contradictory position that, while the problem is worse than ever, they are actually succeeding in their goals. Carlsen (2009: 1) points out that: Through late February and early March, a blitzkrieg of declarations from U.S. government and military officials and pundits hit the media, claiming that

Mexico was alternately at risk of being a Failed State, a Narco-state, on the verge of Civil War, and as posing a direct threat to US National Security through spill-over In the same breath, were told that President Calderon with the aid of the US Government is winning the war on drugs, significantly weakening organized crime, and restoring order and legality. None of these claims are true. In fact, this
rhetorical double-bind is not only stock-in-trade for the entire drug control establishment, and has been for years, but is familiar to a variety of what Howard S Becker (1963: 157) famously termed moral entrepreneurs: Enforcement organizations, particularly when they are seeking funds, typically oscillate between two kinds of claims. First, they say that by reason of their efforts the problem they deal with is approaching solution. But, in the same breath, they say the problem is perhaps worse than ever (though through no fault of their own) and requires renewed and increased effort to keep it under control. This rhetorical situation has defined the war on drugs since at least Nixon, and the enforcement organizations the drug control establishment have grown into what Reeves and Campbell (1994) call the narco-carceral complex which, with the rise of privatization, has become the for-profit industrialization of the drug war. In other words, there is nothing new regarding the rhetorical situation whereby this

industry justifies itself, only pages taken out of a well-worn playbook and applied to the newest chapter in the continuing saga that is the drug war. What is new, however, is the fact that the private security contractors stand to benefit most and that is precisely the point of this article: The motivations behind the recent hype vary. Alarmist cries of a Mexican collapse help clinch the passage of measures to further militarize the southern border and obtain juicy contracts for private defense and security firms. Local politicians are finding they can be a
cash cow for federal aid. (Carlsen, 2009: 2) So too are the five firms who won the $15 billion dollar Pentagon contract in 2007, and aiding the effort was every breathless, over-hyped report of Mexico as a failed state, or of spill-over violence, reports that are especially useful during yearly funding cycles, as happened in 2009: The formation of local, state and national budgets at the beginning of the year provides

an opportunity for politicians to exaggerate the threat posed by Mexican drug cartels and thereby receive more funding for local police forces Indeed, Texas Homeland Security

Director Steve McCraw stressed that the spillover had already occurred in asking state lawmakers to approve a $135 million increase in funding requested by Texas Governor Rick Perry. (Arana, 2009) Therefore this is not simply a matter of press hype and sensationalism if it were it would be a matter of cultural relevance perhaps, but not political and economic. Using Beckers term moral entrepreneurs, Reeves and Campbell (1994: 150) write that this synergy between the press and those who

profit from a crisis is a well-established tactic in war profiteering: In the political economy of drug control, journalism is a market force that often raises the stock of moral entrepreneurs who profit from escalations in the war on drugs Like the merchants of war devoted to perpetuating the power of the military-industrial complex, the moral entrepreneurs and their journalistic comrades are in the hysteria business. This is precisely where moral panic theory and the concept of disaster capitalism converge, in the advancing of the three aligning interests: the press, which is perpetuating and profiting from the notion that the situation is at crisis levels; the private security contracting industry, which is financially self-interested in perpetuating the crisis; and government, which is seeking methods of absolving itself from public accountability for carrying out unpopular policy, and plausible deniability for when things go wrong. What is crucial, and what moral panics have proved to be so proficient at doing, is the creation and maintenance of the notion of crisis, and the creation of an inextinguishable source of renewable enemies that justify the existence of these moral entrepreneurs-turnedindustrialists. Writing about the crack cocaine scare in the 1980s, but relevant here, Reeves and Campbell (1994: 20) conclude that: Consequently, with nothing to gain and everything to lose from declaring a victory in the war on

drugs, the drug control establishments networks of power, knowledge, and discipline have a vested interest in maintaining a perpetual sense of urgency, even a sense of hysteria, about cocaine pollution. It is in this
way that the increasing use of private contractors, and the re-conceptualization of the wars on terror and drugs as for-profit endeavors can be likened to an addiction: Our military outsourcing has become an addiction, and were headed straight for a crash (Singer, 2007). It is an addiction of policy that if recent history in Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Mexico are any guide will result in impunity, plausible deniability, will make the 21st-century drug warriors very wealthy, and will not in any measurable manner result in gains made against the global flow of drugs.

At: No Nukes
Yes the Taliban can project power in Pakistan Sellin, 09 (Lawrence, retired colonel with the U.S. Army Reserve, Ph.D., A nuclear-armed Taliban?, United Press International, 9/29/2009, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2009/09/29/Outside-View-A-nuclear-armedTaliban/UPI-25021254238824/, JKahn) WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- A nuclear-armed Taliban? It may not be as far-fetched as it might first appear. The Taliban already control or have a significant presence in northwest Pakistan along a critical stretch of the Afghan border. Taliban units operate with relative impunity in the region surrounding
Peshawar, Pakistan's major population, commercial and transportation center less than 100 miles from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Dominance of Taliban and al-Qaida forces in the pivotal northwest region of Pakistan provides not only a sanctuary and training centers for attacks on Afghanistan, but it has become a base of operations to weaken any pro-Western sentiments among the Pakistani people and the government in Islamabad. Not the least of which are the attacks the Taliban and al-Qaida have mounted against Pakistani nuclear sites in the neighboring province of Punjab. According to an article published in the Long War Journal by Bill Roggio, attacks on the Kamra and Sargodha air bases may have been designed to intimidate officers either on the fence or who do not support the Islamists and erode the military's capacity to defend nuclear installations. The Taliban's

control of northwest Pakistan and its strong presence, along with al-Qaida, in Quetta and Baluchistan province in general is a threat to the status quo in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. If unchecked, an unambiguous Taliban victory in Afghanistan will not only produce mass executions on a scale not seen since the killing fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia and a refugee crisis like Darfur, but it will produce massive political aftershocks and enormously strengthen the hand of radical elements throughout the region. We are only fooling ourselves if we believe that a Talibancontrolled Afghanistan will not become a center for the export of radical Islamic ideology and terrorism. According to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recent assessment: "Afghanistan's insurgency is clearly supported from Pakistan. Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with al-Qaida and other violent extremist groups and are reported aided by some elements of Pakistan's (intelligence service)." With a base of operations already existing in western Pakistan, a Taliban victory in Afghanistan will only increase the likelihood of radical elements challenging for control of the Pakistani government. If turmoil breaks out in Pakistan, the United States and its allies may be placed in the unenviable position of securing Pakistani nuclear sites -at least those of which we are aware. Even without a change in government, a more radical Pakistan may increase the

possibility of nuclear proliferation. Case in point is that of radical Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, who allegedly provided critical nuclear secrets to rogue states such as Iran and North Korea or, more ominously, to terrorist groups. The secondary and tertiary effects of a Taliban victory in Afghanistan should not be underestimated. Attacks

by the Taliban and other radical insurgent groups against Pakistan proper are increasing. According to the National Counterterrorism Center, terrorist operations in Pakistan more than doubled in 2008. Pakistan's present civil unrest and political turmoil is already of concern to India. Any increase of the influence of radical elements within Pakistan could greatly exacerbate tension between them, especially in the aftermath of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The stability of Pakistan is threatened more by the radical groups within its own territory than by India. Diplomatic steps need to be taken to focus more attention on internal threats than on those Pakistan believes to exist on its eastern border. Any perceived rout of Western forces and Taliban control of Afghanistan will enhance the position of radical factions in Iran and further demoralize the nascent Iranian democracy movement. It will strengthen Iran's position internationally and create a nuclear-armed belt of instability from India in the east to Iraq in the west. One wonders if the progress that has been made in Iraq could possibly be sustained in the face of defeat in Afghanistan and how it would affect the strategic choices for Israel, which seem increasingly narrow when facing a nuclear-armed Iran with a ballistic missile delivery capability. The entire region is a volatile mixture of ethnic, religious, tribal, nationalistic and historical grievances dating back 1,000 years. Fragmentation, prolonged conflict and devastating

consequences for the people of the region may be in their future, if the present negative trends toward instability across southwest Asia are not contained and those who support it are not confronted. The United States,

its allies and the global community can help, but it is primarily the responsibility of the citizens of that region to move their countries away from the brink. If not, then the so-called restored caliphate envisioned by Osama bin Laden and the

premise of his war on civilization may amount to nothing more than a caliphate of chaos, destruction and collapse .

at pomegranates, etc.
Wrong poppy cultivation is the countrys only viable economic activity Xinhua News, 12 (Abdul Haleem, Chen Xin, Unchecked poppy cultivation to increase Afghan instability, Xinhua News, 2/17/2012, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/201202/17/c_131417059.htm, JKahn) KABUL, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Likewise the endemic militancy, poppy cultivation and production of illicit drugs have been continuing over the past decade in the war-torn Afghanistan, triggering criticism at home and abroad. " Security will not return to the country unless and until those big fishes involved in producing and trafficking the illicit drugs are punished," a political observer and Editor-in-chief of the Daily
Mandegar Nazari Pariani told Xinhua. He made this comment in the wake of the concerns expressed by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday. The world body chief, according to media reports, in his address at the Third Ministerial Conference of the Paris pact held in Vienna on Thursday, expressed concern over increase of Afghan poppy production and urged the Afghan government to prioritize effort to eliminate the menace. "Drug trafficking and transnational organized Millennium Development Goals," the world body chief noted in his address, according to media reports. Based on Afghan Opium Survey 2011, released by United Nations Office on Drug and Crimes (UNODC), the world body chief told the delegates that poppy cultivation has increased by 7 percent and opium production has increased by 61 percent last year. "We cannot expect

crimes undermine the health of fragile states, weaken the rule of law and hinder our attempts to meet the

stability when 15 percent of Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product comes from the drugs trade. We cannot speak of sustainable development when opium production is the only viable economic activity in the country " Ban further said, according to media reports. The UN secretary general made these remarks while Afghan government
with the support of international community and the presence of some 130,000-srong NATO-led multinational force have been fighting Taliban-led insurgency to ensure durable stability in the war-torn country. The total area under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, according to UNODC, was estimated at 131,000 hectares in 2011, a 7 percent increase compared to 2010; opium production in 2011 was estimated at 5,800 tones, a 61 percent increase compared to 2010. Poppy cultivation in

Afghanistan has constantly increased over the past 10 years, in spite of international community's support in fighting

militancy and injecting billions of dollars to strengthen the capacity of Afghan administration. The production of opium poppy in Afghanistan has increased from 185 tons in 2001 to 5,800 tons in 2011. Even though 20 out of the country's 34 provinces have been announced poppy free, it is said that Afghanistan still supplies to the world 90 percent of the raw material used in manufacturing heroin. "In fact, constant increase in Afghan poppy product exposes the continued failure of government and its international backers in fulfilling their promises," Pariani opined. The analyst was of the view that producing and trafficking of drug is not the business of ordinary Afghans, saying there are big fishes and influential figures that encourage poppy cultivation and the smuggling of the product. "Ordinary person cannot take even a small pack of opium from a village to the city. These are the powerful circles and figures that traffic tones of opium and heroin from rural areas to safer places onward abroad," he maintained. Meantime, Afghan minister for Counter-Narcotics Zarar Ahmad Osmani, according to media reports, has said that fighting drugs is very complicated, and it requires a very comprehensive approach. According to the minister, 98 percent of Afghan opium is produced in areas where there is no security. Kandahar the birthplace of Taliban, the neighboring Helmand and Zabul provinces and some other parts of the country have been regarded as Taliban hotbed as militants are more active there than other areas in the country. "Afghan government will not overcome the war on drug unless it chalk out a comprehensive strategy and fight corruption tooth and nail; otherwise the menace of drug would haunt Afghans and the world for the years to come," another Afghan political analyst and former diplomat Ahmad Sayedi observed.

at counternarcotics good
Wrong counternarcotics efforts just increase instability Blanchard, 09 (Chris, analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs for the Congressional Research Service, Afghanistan: Narcotics and U.S. Policy, Congressional Research Service, 4/21/2009, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl32686.pdf, JKahn) Critics of existing counternarcotics efforts have argued that Afghan authorities and their international partners remain reluctant to directly confront prominent individuals and groups involved in the opium trade because of their fear that confrontation will lead to internal security disruptions or expand armed conflict to include drug-related groups. In the past, Afghan authorities have expressed their belief that the beneficiaries of the drugs trade will resist attempts to destroy it, and have argued that the political risk of internal instability caused by counternarcotics measures must be balanced with the requirement to project central authority nationally for counternarcotics purposes.10 To date, conflict and regional security disruptions have accompanied efforts to expand crop eradication programs and previous efforts to
implement central government counternarcotics policies.

Drug Violence Alt Cause

Mexico drug violence is caused by institutional transformation Astorga and Shirk, 10 (Luis Astorga is a researcher at the Institute of Social Research at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM). He is also coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Economic and Social Transformations Connected with the International Drug Problem; David A. Shirk, PhD, joined the University of San Diego in July 2003. Shirks teaching covers a wide range of subject areas, mainly concentrated in comparative politics, international political economy, Latin American studies, and U.S.-Latin American relations, with a concentration in Mexico and border politics. He conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, and law enforcement and security along the U.S.-Mexican border. Shirk also directs the Trans-Border Institute, which works to promote greater analysis and understanding of Mexico, U.S.-Mexico relations, and the U.S.-Mexico border region; 1/1/10; Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies in the U.S.-Mexican Context; http://usmex.ucsd.edu/assets/024/11632.pdf) KD On the other hand, many scholars have also pointed the importance of the structure and integrity of

state institutions as a factor that shapes the behavior of illicit organizations. As Campbell (2009) notes, states and illicit or illegal activities are not separate, distinct fields of social action, but are tightly intertwined in a dialectical relationship.11 As is well documented, for many decades Mexico had in place a highly centralized power structure that was not only permissive, but protective of organized criminal activities (Astorga Almanza 2007; Flores Prez 2009; Snyder and Duran-Martinez 2009). Thanks to these conditions, Mexican drug trafficking organizations went virtually unchallenged by the state, operated in relative harmony, and grew extremely powerful. 12Indeed, as we discuss in greater detail below, the state itself was highly complicit with illicit drug trafficking organizations. Today, the picture looks substantially different, in large

part because of Mexicos domestic political transformation over the last two decades. As Snyder and Duran-Martnez (2009) discuss, major institutional changes in the Mexican coercive apparatus in the late 1980s, the rise of democratic

pluralism, and the decentralization of power in the Mexican political system complicated the equation, and destabilized the equilibrium that had developed between state actors and organized crime. These shifts have produced a more complicated and inconsistent relationship between the Mexican state and the transnational organized criminal networks that once enjoyed carte blanche in Mexico. As a result, DTOs became embroiled in a fierce fight to protect their plazas, or zones of control, and sustain their access to the lucrative U.S. market, where cocaine prices dramatically exceed those found in Mexico. Alt cause to drug violence gun accessibility in the US Astorga and Shirk, 10 (Luis Astorga is a researcher at the Institute of Social Research at the National Autonomous

University of Mexico (UNAM). He is also coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Economic and Social Transformations Connected with the International Drug Problem; David A. Shirk, PhD, joined the University of San Diego in July 2003. Shirks teaching covers a wide range of subject areas, mainly concentrated in comparative politics, international political economy, Latin American studies, and U.S.-Latin American relations, with a concentration in Mexico and border politics. He conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, and law enforcement and security along the U.S.-Mexican border. Shirk also directs the Trans-Border Institute, which works to promote greater analysis and understanding of Mexico, U.S.-Mexico relations, and the U.S.-Mexico border region; 1/1/10; Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies in the U.S.-Mexican Context; http://usmex.ucsd.edu/assets/024/11632.pdf) KD

Under President Obama, the United States and Mexico have sought to disrupt the southbound smuggling of firearms and bulk cash. The widespread availability of firearms in the United States particularly high-powered weapons (including high-caliber pistols, semi-automatic assault weapons, and armor-piercing 50 caliber sniper rifles) creates a readily accessible market for illegal weapons trafficking into Mexico, where there are strict limitations on the possession of firearms. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), among weapons confiscated in Mexico and subsequently traced by U.S. authorities, more than 90 percent came from the United States.56 While there is some controversy about these estimates, a significant number of weapons clearly make their way from the United States into Mexico. About one in eight licensed gun dealers an estimated 6,700 out of some 54,000 nationwide are located along the U.S.-Mexico border, and U.S. gun shops are weakly regulated, with only 5 percent of the countrys gun dealers inspected annually.57 Meanwhile, there are significant barriers to cooperation, since Mexican law enforcement authorities do not

have direct access to the information utilized by ATF for gun traces. At the same time, both countries have looked to bulk cash smuggling as another area of possible collaboration. DTOs generally smuggle their bulk cash profits into Mexico, since U.S. law establishes strict reporting requirements for monetary instruments in the United States [ 31 U.S.C. 5316] and U.S. law enforcement targets money laundering operations more actively than in Mexico.58 Still, overall U.S. seizures of bulk cash capture a relatively small portion of the estimated $18 to 39 billion in annual revenues that various sources estimate as the total repatriated profits of Mexican drug trafficking organizations. Hence, there is room for greater cooperation in attacking DTOs financial operations, as well as other areas, such as satellite and communications surveillance.