THE 16TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PENAL
ABOLITION (ICOPA 16)
Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito, Ecuador, June
16-18, 2016
A major gift I have received at
every ICOPA in which I have participated[i]
is for local activists to present the rest of us with the primary problems of
violence and punishment generally and state violence and incarceration
particularly which they face, and seek to transform.
The most profound knowledge I
bring home to the US from ICOPA 16 comes from the testimony of mothers trapped
into serving as mules or couriers for drug cartels, alongside testimony from
their families, activists and human rights lawyers, as ultimate victims of warriors
trained, sponsored and corrupted by US wars on drugs. The mothers initially agree to carry a drug
shipment, most commonly to Europe, out of a desperate need to feed their
families. They represent an ethnic
rainbow of those who live in poverty, but are primarily indigenous. They are forced to continue serving as
couriers by cartels who threaten otherwise to kill their families. As in all wars, women and children are the
ultimate victims of drug wars—fought by police, (para-)military forces and judges
trained and funded by the School of the Americas and its successors in the US, often
in US-based privatized prisons, stirred on by US drug enforcement agents (with
some exceptions, as in Bolivia where President Evo Morales expelled them).
I came to ICOPA 16 well aware of the racist
depictions of Chinese and Latin American immigrants that led heroin, cocaine
and marijuana to become the basic targets of US drug enforcement. I had known in theory that underclass young
people of color pay by far the largest price for inherently counterproductive
drug wars. I owe it to the organizers of
ICOPA 16 to know for real and personally that once again, as in all
patriarchal, militarized worlds, it is the mothers who are enslaved into
trafficking and their children whom our US-sponsored drug warriors supply to
fill beds in US-built and operated prisons.
At one of the conference sessions
featuring the plight of mothers in prison, on “prison and drug use,” I asked
the panelists whether they shared a vision of legalizing heroin, cocaine, and
marijuana. I mentioned several examples:
heroin maintenance first introduced in Switzerland in 1994 after methadone
“treatment” had failed, cocaine use as when I chewed coca leaves in Bolivia to
climb hills without getting winded, or as extracted from the leaves (which are
sent to Coca Cola to be blended with caffeine, and still, extract of the kola nut
which has never been criminalized) for dental and medical use in the US, or
marijuana as now legalized in several US states. Ecuadoran human rights attorney Ernesto
Pazmiño responded that an effort was being made to legalize marijuana
possession and growth for personal use.
I had lunch with a family member and an activist from the region who
were quite interested in how various West European countries had decriminalized
and legalized drug use and possession.
Throughout the world, the
largest single contributor to incarceration is the detention of underclass
people of color for drug possession and trafficking. As drug wars have expanded, in the US as now
I see in Latin America, young mothers of color have become those whose
incarceration rate has climbed fastest, have become the leading bounty of our
drug wars. It is so obviously,
uncontrovertibly the leading product of all our drug wars as to legally
constitute the intended, primary product of our drug wars, to constitute the
war crime of racially, primarily, targeting innocent underclass children and
their de facto enslaved mothers, to fill prison beds in wars where failure to
control drugs justifies escalation. You
might well say that this is drug warriors’ primary accomplishment.
Because drug wars are the single
greatest contributor to incarceration, understanding the history of drug wars
and the effects of drug use have been a primary interest of mine since I
entered criminology. In our article on
“Controlling Drug Use” (Criminal Justice
Policy Review 13, no. 1, 21-31, March 2002; pdf available on request), I
join Kevin Whiteacre in taking a public health or “peacemaking” approach to drug
control, where drug users become one another’s primary source of information on
good and ill effects of ways drugs are used, alongside information
“authoritative sources” have to offer, where treatment for ill effects is
available—all in all, efforts at harm reduction instead of prohibition. Opiates including heroin, coca(ine) and
marijuana and its derivatives are not inherently good or bad. As with all
substances we eat, drink and inhale, it is the preparation, amount and
administration of these drugs that makes the difference. Unlike many pharmaceuticals and other things
we consume, heroin and marijuana are not even inherently toxic; it is only when
they are contaminated for illicit distribution that they may become
poisonous—another argument for legalization.
As a US citizen, a
criminologist, and an educator, I feel a special responsibility to offer Latin
Americans whatever testimony, consultation or assistance I might in drug cases,
in political discussions, and in educational settings, regarding the
neo-colonial history, politics and counterproductivity of drug prohibition, and
positive ways to prevent and treat adverse effects of drug use as public health
policy; just as I have long felt a special obligation to raise awareness in the
violence and human destruction of the drug wars we launch and sponsor, which
fall most heavily on economically desperate mothers and children of color
everywhere. I am especially grateful to
the organizers and Latin American participants at ICOPA 16 for featuring this
as the most egregious problem of “criminal justice” they face, for which we of
the US are primarily responsible. The
first political step to making peace with drug use is noticing and recognizing
the harm done by US-led wars on drugs; the challenge is to change course. Criminologists are fond of ranking the
seriousness of crime and violence. As
far as I’m concerned, the violence done to women in Latin America for drug
trafficking, and their children, is as serious as organized violence and crime
can get. Special thanks to ICOPA 16
organizers and participants for making this reality so plain and personal. Love and peace, hal
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