A Charles Sturt University (CSU) academic says the recent seizure of 240 kilograms of cocaine by the Australian Federal Police is a reminder that the drug trade is a truly global business, but he thinks it is an over-statement to describe it as an 'infiltration' into Australia. Rather, drug imports like this are a product of market forces.

 

Dr Oliver Villar, a lecturer in politics at the CSU School of Humanities and Social Sciences in Bathurst, says, “Like any other business, drug cartels target markets and weigh the risks, which is why the trade and consumption of hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines fluctuates from time to time. In a decade from now cocaine use in Australia will increase or stabilise depending on market forces.”

 

Dr Villar, who wrote his PhD on the political economy of Colombia in the context of the cocaine drug trade, says Mexican drug cartels have played an increasingly important role in the global cocaine trade.

 

“This is due to the fact that while Colombia remains the cocaine producing capital of the world, Mexicans have been dominating distribution networks since the late 1990s when they began working as ‘middlemen’ for Colombian drug lords. They are now much more independent in their side of the drug business.

 

“These developments should be disturbing to any Australian concerned with the worsening drug problem because Colombia, not Mexico, stands as the model for the US ‘War on Drugs and Terror’ in the Western Hemisphere. Colombia is also a world leader in human rights violations and refugee displacement due to the civil war in the country.”

 

Dr Villar argues that the US ‘War on Drugs’ is a failure because the enormous profits of the global drug trade makes it impossible to take any 'war on drugs' seriously because the drug trade is politically and economically driven, and resides in the global financial system where trillions of dollars are laundered each year by legitimate business practices and banking institutions.

 

“The prohibition of alcohol did not work in the days of gangster Al Capone, and prohibition of drugs will not work in the 21^st century,” he says.

 

“The recent drug wars in Mexico, between drug cartels themselves and against government forces, show that the Mexican government has struggled with rampant corruption and the enormous political power that cocaine wields in Latin America, particularly in the ‘Crystal Triangle’ countries of Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru. Only Bolivia has demonstrated political will to confront the drug problem by giving rights to poor indigenous cocaleros (farmers), thereby moving in the right direction to regulate drugs.

 

“In Mexico, it has reached a crisis point where President Felipe Calderon has had to acknowledge that perhaps legalising drugs may be the only viable option to fight drugs.

 

“However, this is something that the United States would never accept because of its four decade-old ‘War on Drugs’ initiated by President Nixon. The political implications for the United States would be devastating in places like Colombia and Afghanistan where the drug war is ideologically connected to the multi-billion dollar ‘War on Terror’ and the money is used to fight counterinsurgency wars, not drugs in very corrupt countries.”