Speaker explores how drug war impacts the environment November 9, 2010 - Diamondback Online
Sanho Tree, the director of the Institute for Policy Studies' Drug Policy Project, spoke to about 30 students last night about two topics that rarely intersect: drugs and the environment.
Students for Sensible Drug Policy hosted the lecture, "The Drug War and the Environment," which targeted U.S. counter-narcotics policies' social and environmental effects on drug-producing countries. Attendees, mostly SSDP members, said the focus on the environment was an interesting twist on the belabored topic, and they appreciated looking at it from a new angle.
Tree explained how this country's "war on drugs" is to blame for the violence, social unrest and environmental degradation in Mexico, Afghanistan and Colombia - the three countries he honed in on. He cited extreme poverty in producing countries, high demand at home and, due to laws prohibiting them, the artificial escalation of the value of drugs.
"The alchemists never found a way to transform things into gold," he said. "We've found a way to turn essentially worthless plants into gold. Any kind of solution must first address taking away the value from these substances."
Though the name of the event had some students expecting otherwise, Tree mainly discussed the adverse environmental effects in Colombia, while he focused on other problems in the other two countries.
So far, the U.S. government has spent $7 billion to destroy coca plants grown by Colombian peasant farmers in an effort to eradicate the cocaine industry, Tree said. Fumigation planes - which fly over croplands and spray the coca crops with chemicals - are the main method of destroying the crop, but they often have unintended victims.
Tree told the audience about one couple he met in Colombia in 2001 who obeyed the U.S. government and grew food instead, but still lost their harvest because the planes sprayed chemicals anyway - four times.
"People generally talk about the economic effects or the health effects of drugs, but the environment is often overlooked," said junior English and philosophy major Zach Brown, co-president of SSDP.
Tree discussed how in the 1990s, the opium market in Afghanistan was in full swing, but once the Taliban outlawed the drug, the trade became much riskier - but far more profitable. As the market became more dangerous and the U.S. increasingly intervened, prices continued to rise, along with producers' motivation to grow the drug. As a result, more and more people turned to the opium market as a profitable alternative to food crops.
"Forced eradication doesn't work," Tree said, a statement that summed up a main point of the lecture.
Tree's description of Mexico also focused mostly on the impact drug cartels have on public safety and the government's inability to control the streets. He said in that country, the social problems are more prominent than the environmental impact, and they actually escalate when police "throw more law enforcement at the problem." As police shut down open-air drug markets and arrest dealers, rival gangs fight to take over the newly unoccupied space, which results in extreme violence, he said.
"What's really being destroyed is the social fabric, the social contract, the idea that the state is there to provide safety for the people," he said.
Tree told the audience about traveling to Colombia, where he flew in the fumigation planes and gained first-hand knowledge.
"Tree has a unique perspective into how the war on drugs affects people all around the world, disproportionately affecting those who are poor and just trying to feed their families," said SSDP co-president Brandon Levey.
Students said they left the lecture feeling more informed about the complex issue and more inclined to spread awareness about an aspect of the problem that is often overlooked.
"To me, it's important because our drug policy is overarching - it affects other countries in extremely damaging ways," senior nutritional science major Nyssa Bryant said.
--------------------
"I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" - Thomas Jefferson Legalize Meth | Drug War Victims
|
"What's really being destroyed is the social fabric, the social contract, the idea that the state is there to provide safety for the people," he said."
I see this happening in Egypt now ,the major weapon of inlfuence they use is religion and morals as a way to convince of the EVIL of drugs , lol Wish there was something i could do , even the people who smoke hash traditionally over there think they are committing a crime against themselves
|