Lies of Prohibition: How the War on Drugs Was Invented and Sustained

By Raúl Lescano Méndez
Content made possible by Youth RISE and the Robert Carr Foundation
You can read the Spanish version here

«There is a very famous interview that journalist Dan Brown did with Ehrlichman, who was an advisor to Richard Nixon during his time in the White House. In 1994, he asks him about the war on drugs, about Nixon’s famous declaration in 1971 that drugs were public enemy number one, and that all society’s resources had to be invested in pursuing them. And he says, ‘Let me tell you what it was about. Nixon had two main political enemies: activists against the Vietnam War and activists for black civil rights. We couldn’t prohibit being against the war, and we couldn’t prohibit being black. So, we invented the war on drugs and put strong laws in place to pursue consumption, possession, and trafficking. We knew we were lying about drugs, of course we knew. That’s what he says,» recalls Jorge Javier Romero, the guest of the latest episode of the first season of our podcast Drugs as They Are.

After delving into different fields, we close this first block of interviews by talking about the history of drug prohibition and how it has consolidated a geopolitical dynamic globally. That’s why we invited Jorge Javier Romero, a Mexican political scientist, writer, and researcher, who has been part of the Department of Politics and Culture at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (Xochimilco Campus), the graduate division of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and the Drug Policy Program at CIDE Central Region. He is also the author of books and articles on the Mexican political system, the educational system, and drug policies. Additionally, he was the first teacher on what was the first study trip in the history of Project Soma, in 2020, in Mexico, with the course History of Drugs in Latin America: from the colonial era to the present.

This is a shortened reading version of what can be heard on our Spotify and YouTube channels.

Before delving into historical intricacies, we wanted to know a bit more about your interest in politics and history. How did you become interested in political science? And what complement, do you think, exists today between political science and history, particularly regarding the world of drugs?

Well, my interest in political science is very early. I knew I was going to study political science almost since I entered secondary school at the age of 11. I was always interested in the social world. I grew up in an extremely politicized family, with a grandfather who had been a politician and a father who was a historian and journalist. For me, interest in politics is lifelong, and I was interested in political science because I had a militant interest. I was involved in left-wing politics from a very young age. First in a left that had, at least declaratively, revolutionary ideas, but very soon I moved towards social democracy. My way of understanding political science has always been historical. One of my professors used to say that as a political scientist, I was a constrained historian. My doctoral thesis is an institutional history of the PRI regime. That is, what I analyze is Mexican institutions, the rules of the game that have persisted in Mexican politics inherited from the Viceroyalty. History and politics, for me, are closely linked.

And how does the world of drugs enter this equation?

Well, I started using cannabis since university, and it always seemed to me, from the moment I knew it, that there was a huge social prejudice against marijuana, a completely mistaken idea of what it meant. I saw it in the environment of university students, intellectuals. I saw how the social myths around marijuana were enormous because the harmful effects of the substance were much less than those of alcohol, which has always been present in our societies, a drug that is present in all areas of our society and undoubtedly causes many more negative social and personal effects than cannabis consumption. And since then, I began to question the reasons why marijuana had been prohibited. I always wanted to find out what was happening. And very soon, I became an anti-prohibition activist.

It seemed very important to me to approach the issue of drugs from a non-prohibitionist perspective because by then, it was clear to me that the prohibition policy had been much more harmful than any health problems caused by drugs. Prohibition causes many more deaths, many more violations of human rights, much more stigmatization, much more social harm than the substances that are prohibited. So, I started studying a different way to regulate drugs that would become public policy. But here’s an interesting thing: back in 2000, the topic was absolutely taboo. Speaking about a drug policy that was not based on prohibition was anathema 23 years ago.

At what point does the history of drugs become the history of drug prohibition? Some refer to it as a history of more than 50 years, others speak of more than 100 years. You have called it a «centenary absurdity.» There are different dates that can mark the beginning: the Shanghai International Opium Commission in 1909, the Hague Convention in 1912, the Geneva Opium Convention in 1925, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961, and perhaps the most contemporary image we have of the start of the War on Drugs, Nixon’s famous speech declaring drugs as public enemy number one in 1971. For you, when does the history of prohibition begin?

In reality, in different historical periods, in different cultures, there have been prohibitionist expressions. You just have to see how the Quran prohibits alcohol. Puritanism, since the 16th century, began to have very strong reservations about drunkenness. The Spanish Inquisition, in the Viceroyalty, in Mexico, also condemned the consumption of certain substances, especially those linked to the rituals of certain indigenous peoples, such as peyote among the desert peoples. There has always been a certain type of social restriction. However, specifically, the modern prohibition of drugs is something that begins to take shape in the mid-19th century in the United States, on the one hand, and in China, on the other. And it has social and historical reasons that are understandable and need to be looked at.

Specifically, China did experience a profound public health crisis caused by an opiate epidemic because smoked opium consumption caused an epidemic in China in the early 19th century. China’s reaction was the prohibition of opium. But first, Britain and then France reacted by waging war on China in the name of free trade because both Britain and France produced opium in India and Indochina to sell it to the Chinese and have a less deficit trade balance. And with that, they did cause an epidemic because opiates are a substance with epidemiological risks. We are seeing it today with the great epidemic that the United States is experiencing, and there have been different epidemic moments related to opium. But when morphine emerged, it began to be used as the great analgesic, especially for war wounded, from the Crimean War, but then it was used during the Civil War in the United States. People who were treated with morphine for amputations or serious wounds and who then no longer had access to morphine turned to clandestine opium that was arriving massively in the United States because the U.S., which had abolished slavery with the Civil War, was receiving Chinese slave labor for the construction of the railroad. And the Chinese, who arrived in very precarious conditions in the United States, were already accustomed to opium consumption, which was the only way to tolerate such a miserable life, and it began to generalize among people who no longer had access to legal morphine. As many of these Chinese workers began to be seen lying on the streets due to opium dependence, there was a moral indignation about this, a clear puritanical stamp. It is also the same time when puritanical campaigns against alcohol come along. Many of them were promoted, moreover, justly, by feminism, because they attributed much of the violence against women to alcohol, not without reason. The puritan movement against alcohol prohibition coincided with the puritan movement against opium prohibition, and the first wave of prohibitionist demands begins, which soon becomes profitable for politicians. Politicians begin to see that if they take up these causes, they will gain votes and begin to turn prohibition into a political cause. And local prohibitions of opium and alcohol in the United States emerge in the second half of the 19th century, but this process is mainly about customs and tax regulations. We are not yet facing criminal prohibition. And here is a legitimate concern, the fact that opiates are substances with a very high problematic use. Their management must be very well regulated and handled.

A understandable concern, you mention. But to what extent was it, for example, with marijuana, which, in a way, at some point, becomes the symbol of the enemy of prohibition?

In the United States, no one consumed marijuana in the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century, there begins to be some marijuana consumption among certain social groups, such as jazz musicians in Louisiana, and it begins to be falsely associated with Mexicans. The idea starts spreading that Mexicans brought marijuana consumption to the United States and that it is a drug that drives people crazy. They begin to spread the idea that Mexicans have brought marijuana consumption to the United States and that it is a drug that drives people crazy. With a puff, people go mad, they say. And there are campaigns in newspapers, especially in William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers, talking about this demonic herb that Mexicans smoke, causing madness and making brown people rape white girls and become murderers. And the myth is invented that the word «assassin» comes from hashish. Here is a hidden agenda that is very important. Why does Hearst start this strong campaign against marijuana? Because Hearst invested in a new technology for the time, which was paper made from wood cellulose. Until then, the major source of cellulose for paper was hemp. Since he bought shares in wood cellulose paper companies to supply his newspapers, what he needed to do was eliminate competition from hemp. That’s why he begins the tough campaign to seek marijuana prohibition and thereby eliminate hemp paper production. Of course, again, there are politicians willing to buy that agenda in exchange for popularity, visibility, and votes. And this is the case of Harry Anslinger, who was a very skillful diplomat, famous for his good manners, and who buys into the anti-drug agenda as his political banner. He soon becomes, from the early 1930s, the first drug czar in the United States. He becomes the director of the agency that is the predecessor of the DEA, and Anslinger embarks on a crusade against drugs, again with a hidden agenda, which was a clearly racist agenda. On the one hand, he goes on to say things like smoking a joint makes brown people feel as good as white people, and on the other hand, he goes on to say things like there has been no drug in the history of humanity that has caused as many deaths as marijuana. He knew he was lying. He knew it. But not only that, he also begins to use the prohibition of opium and its derivatives, heroin and morphine, as a tool to pursue political opponents, especially if they are Afro-descendants or of Mexican origin. Thus, the United States becomes the main promoter of what is now the international drug control system. The rest of the world never followed the United States in insisting on banning alcohol, and alcohol prohibition in the United States fell as soon as Roosevelt took office in 1933 because it was already evident that alcohol prohibition had produced many more harms than benefits. But there was already a bureaucratic structure that had been created to sustain alcohol prohibition and had to be maintained. This is called path dependence, and then that structure focuses on other substances considered harmful, unhealthy, and a social threat.

The 1960s and 1970s in the United States are perhaps one of the most media-covered periods in modern history of drug use. Much has been said about the influence of this era on culture, art, innovation, etc. But how did this era mark the history of prohibition? In fact, it is in 1971 that Nixon gives the famous press conference declaring drugs as public enemy number one. If we go back and watch that video now, what period of prohibition history are we observing in light of history?

What happened in the ’60s? Well, in the ’60s, there was a great social uprising in the United States against the Vietnam War, on the one hand, but also a great social uprising against racial discrimination against Afro-descendant people. Political movements emerge that become genuine challenges to the American establishment. There is a very famous interview that journalist Dan Brown did with Ehrlichman, who was an advisor to Richard Nixon during his time in the White House. He asks him, in 1994, about the war on drugs, about Nixon’s famous declaration in 1971 that drugs were public enemy number one and that all society’s resources had to be invested in pursuing them. And he says, ‘Let me tell you what it was about. Nixon had two main political enemies: activists against the Vietnam War and activists for black civil rights. We couldn’t prohibit being against the war, and we couldn’t prohibit being black. So, we invented the war on drugs, associated activists against the Vietnam War with marijuana and LSD, and associated blacks with cocaine and heroin, and put strong laws in place to pursue consumption, possession, and trafficking. We knew we were lying about drugs, of course we knew. That’s what he says.

And that strategy with such internal objectives for the United States ultimately expanded internationally. What role did Latin America play in that context?

Now Henry Kissinger has just passed away at the age of 100. And Henry Kissinger was first Nixon’s national security advisor and later became Secretary of State, both for Nixon and his successor, Gerald Ford. During his presidency, Nixon followed Kissinger’s advice to address the insurrectional threat in Latin America. Kissinger played a prominent role in the coup against President Salvador Allende in Chile and favored military coups to forcefully suppress left-wing movements in Latin America. This repression targeted not only guerrilla insurgents but any manifestation of left-wing ideology that could pose a threat during the Cold War era against U.S. strategy. In most Latin American countries, Kissinger succeeded in promoting military governments through military coups where the military took power and eradicated left-wing organizations and leadership through disappearances, assassinations, and more. However, not all cases were the same. The case of Peru is different because, initially, there was a reformist military government, but later, another repressive military government took over, signifying a brutal regression. Yet, there were some countries where overthrowing civilian governments was not possible. Two noteworthy cases are Colombia and Mexico. There, the war on drugs used the pretext of urging the Mexican and Colombian governments to combat the production and trafficking of substances listed as the public enemy by the United States. U.S. pressure led to the militarization of the fight against drug production and trafficking, involving the armies in supposedly pursuing clandestine crops, but in reality, they were also targeting guerrilla groups.

Maybe here we enter into this reality, imagination, and common sense about drugs with which several generations have grown up: a world where drugs are bad and drugs are persecuted. There is no reflection on that, perhaps also due to a very human tendency to believe that things, as they are today, have always been so. Our notion of history is increasingly narrow. How was the relationship of societies with drugs before the war on drugs?

That is a very important question because throughout human history, human civilization must have consumed substances. Substances are linked to the birth of gods and the human imagination that sapiens is sapiens. All societies, without exception, have had some form of psychoactive substance consumption. Of course, the most widespread is alcohol. But the use of cannabis was domesticated; it was the first plant domesticated for fiber. About five thousand years ago, there are already traces of cultivated cannabis. Evidently, it was not only cultivated for fiber, but its psychoactive effects were also known very early on. And, of course, opium, as an analgesic and psychoactive substance, has been known ancestrally and was part of the culture in different peoples of India. The case of coca leaves also has an ancestral use. Tobacco among the Caribbean peoples and the Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula and Central America. There is substance consumption in all societies. Except for religious prohibitions, they were seen as a health problem only from the opium epidemic in China in the 19th century.

How did alcohol escape this prohibition? The reference to the failure of alcohol prohibition in the United States is classic, and the disastrous consequences it had with the rise of criminal groups and adulterated alcohols are well-known. However, this has never been a reference for the failure of the war on drugs. But there was a change with the alcohol industry. What factors led alcohol to escape prohibition and be the psychoactive substance freely delivered to society?

The fundamental issue is that alcohol had a very widespread social consumption that could not be contained by prohibition. Ultimately, LSD in the 1960s was a completely unknown substance that had been tried by a handful of people. Marijuana was consumed by very few people, in very specific social groups. In the 1960s, its consumption became more widespread, and as consumption increased, so did the pressure to regulate it differently. But it was only in the 1960s that marijuana became relevant as a mass consumption substance in the United States. On the other hand, alcohol was a substance that everyone consumed, and social resistance to prohibition was total. No one stopped drinking because of prohibition. People began to drink with more risks. As you mentioned, adulterated alcohol, but not only that, the shift from drinking beer or wine to drinking distilled spirits also increased the health risks of alcohol because alcoholism increased dramatically. But the most important thing is that prohibition faced strong social resistance that made it fail, just like the prohibition of other drugs has failed. However, it failed dramatically because it was evident that no one was stopping drinking because of prohibition. The resistance to the prohibition of other drugs has been much less, and it has been much easier to stigmatize them and invent myths around them because they are less known.

Speaking of myths, one of the great myths that feeds into the discourse of prohibition and the war on drugs is that of addiction. Today, the concept of drug addiction is a clear example for many researchers of the transcendental role played by the health and mental health industries in the development and consolidation of prohibitionism. How was this discourse of addiction created and how has it evolved?

The discourse of addiction was mainly based on the serious risks of problematic opioid use and later also cocaine, which also has a high risk of problematic use. So, the idea spread that all illegal substances were such because they were addictive. Of course, this does not withstand a scientific analysis of the problematic use of different substances. There is a very famous chart developed by David Nutt decades ago about the relative danger of substances, which has been improved with other studies. In that 2007 study, David Nutt argued that if there is a substance that has serious problematic use, both socially and personally, it is alcohol, yet alcohol is socially tolerated. Down the list, opioids have a very serious problematic use, and European societies had experienced this because in the 1970s and 1980s, there were very strong heroin epidemics. However, since then, we had learned to manage problematic opioid use with harm reduction strategies. When I moved to Spain in the late ’80s, it was still the end of an epidemic that was devastating for Spanish youth, consuming heroin. And how did the Spanish public health manage it? With harm reduction, methadone programs, freely accessible syringes, breaking the stigma, preventive campaigns to take heroin out of the clandestine market and provide legal options for accessing opioids. It was very effective. But there was this stigma of addiction as something that destroys lives, and it was falsely extended to all substances without considering the relative danger of each. So, campaigns are ‘say no to drugs’ without understanding that drugs are very different substances with very different effects and dangers. If you ask anyone – maybe less so now – what is more dangerous, LSD or alcohol, invariably they will say LSD. However, in that table of the relative danger of substances, alcohol has a relative danger of 75 out of 100, while LSD has a relative danger of 6 out of 100. That is, LSD is practically harmless, and, of course, cannabis has a relative danger of 19 out of 100. Furthermore, there is the question of how many people who consume illegal drugs actually develop problematic use. When you see the figures, you realize the brutal disproportion that prohibition, criminal persecution, and the use of all state resources to imprison not only traffickers and producers but also consumers entail. Of all the people who use illegal substances in the world, only 13% develop problematic use. This needs to be differentiated according to the type of substance because the most consumed among illegal substances is marijuana, and marijuana has a relatively low problematic use: nine out of a hundred people who consume marijuana may develop some kind of problematic use. Ninety-one percent of people who consume marijuana do not develop any kind of problematic use, something that cannot be said of tobacco, something that cannot be said of alcohol. And when it comes to cocaine, it is spoken of as an absolute demonic, destructive drug, and when you analyze its problematic use, you will see that the relative danger of cocaine is exactly the same as the relative danger of tobacco. Tobacco is dangerous, but this doesn’t mean we should go out into the streets shooting tobacco sellers and persecuting and imprisoning tobacco consumers. Of course, campaigns are needed for responsible use to reduce problems related to tobacco consumption. The entire prohibition is not based on scientific knowledge or evidence; it is based on moral prejudices, falsehoods, and lies.

The entire history has been creating certain authorities and authoritative voices on these issues. One of the main ones is the United Nations Organization, the UN. How to describe the role of the United Nations in the history of drugs? Its role is very confusing, as it is one of the main supranational institutions defending human rights worldwide, but it is also a key player in prohibitionist policies that violate human rights, leading to criticism and disqualification. Yet, whenever it shows certain progressive gestures, it regains authority. How to understand the role played by an organization like the United Nations in this whole story?

It is essential to consider that most of the history of the United Nations’ role in drug policy and the international substance control system has been marked by the dominance of the United States. As you mentioned, there is indeed a contradiction between international treaties protecting human rights and those supporting the international drug control system. Why would one prevail over the other? This is something any country should question. However, it is crucial to note how there was a consensus that has now been eroding around this system. At least until 1998, the international consensus was very strong around the three conventions. The international drug control system, the INCB, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime were considered absolute authorities on the subject, and no country dissented from these agreements. What happened afterward? The consensus has weakened. First, Europe began developing harm reduction policies. I’ve referred to them as soft defection from the treaties. Spain and France started implementing harm reduction strategies, no longer pursuing users and focusing on health strategies, substitution treatments, and so on. Then there was the significant soft defection by the Netherlands. Since the 1970s, they defected from the treaties without breaking them. They substantially reduced the prosecution of offenses related to small-scale marijuana trafficking and established local police rules to manage other substance markets. I remember, about 15 years ago, the Rotterdam police invited me to see how they managed drug policy. They did nothing. When do they intervene? When there’s a case of overdose, adulterated doses, or violence. In other words, they substantially reduced prosecution, which lowered violence related to the substance market and reduced overdose problems. They also took me to places they couldn’t enter, managed by civil associations where there was syringe exchange, safe injection sites, etc., part of a harm reduction strategy initiated by civil society but supported by the Dutch state. So, this early soft defection began, followed by a much tougher defection, especially regarding cannabis. The consensus started to break down when California approved the first medical cannabis referendum. Everyone knew it was a subterfuge. You’d go to the doctor, say, ‘Doctor, I’m in pain.’ Are you a California resident? Yes, and so on; you’d get your prescription and buy marijuana to ease your emotional pain. This subterfuge began to break the international consensus on marijuana, which had a very significant moment when Uruguay became the first country to have comprehensive regulation, followed by Canada. We have seen different states in the United States advancing regulation. Of course, the reaction of countries like Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia, which have experienced the brutal consequences of waging the war on drugs within their territories, played a crucial role in the breakdown of the prohibitionist consensus. They asked the United Nations to conduct a new assessment of drug policy in the 2016 UNGASS (Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly). The UNGASS of 1998 had concluded with the slogan that a world without drugs could be achieved, and the fact is, nothing had been achieved. On the contrary, the problems associated with prohibition were increasing, and the health issues related to dangerous and problematic consumption couldn’t be addressed. Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico asked the UN to reassess drug policy, but then another important issue arises: there is also a part of the world strongly committed, for religious, political, moral reasons, to the absolute prohibition of substances. Muslim countries have brutally repressive policies regarding substance consumption, with some even imposing the death penalty for consumption, not just trafficking. In these countries, there is still a very strong consensus influencing the policies of the United Nations, hindering the small advances made in the international drug control system.

In that sense, what has been, is, and should be the role of Latin America in this major debate? As you pointed out, Latin America has been one of the main regions in the world that has borne the costs of the war on drugs. Primarily considered a producer region for a long time, it has created significant international narratives, such as the Mexicanization or Colombianization of the drug problem. How useful do you consider these commonplaces when discussing the drug phenomenon, and what role do you think the Latin American region should currently play in these debates?

The idea that the culture of countries like Colombia, producing cocaine, or Mexico, producing methamphetamines and fentanyl, with organizations dedicated to export and armed forces generating violence, is flawed. It’s wrong because these organizations wouldn’t exist without prohibition, and they wouldn’t exist without an illegal demand for substances. If we had well-managed regulated markets, some substances might not even be on the market, such as fentanyl or crack. We need to understand how smoked cocaine developed as a byproduct of the prohibition of cocaine, which is much more dangerous than inhalation. Methamphetamines themselves are a byproduct of the prohibition of cocaine. So, addressing the problem from the supply side is incorrect because the central issue lies in how demand is managed. Managing demand will not happen by prohibiting or trying to abolish it. What we need is to regulate demand, guide it, channel it toward safer consumption, and reduce opportunities for specialists in clandestine markets. Conversely, if you have a whole police-military-judicial structure focused on pursuing these organizations without eliminating clandestine demand— I’m not saying eliminating drug demand but ending clandestine demand— and you have the entire judicial, police, and military system tasked with pursuing these organizations, they will continue to have resources to buy weapons and recruit armies. Why? Because that is the best way to ensure their business; they need to confront state forces, so the incentives for violence will be there. This is extremely weakening Latin American states. The state has lost territorial control as the clandestine market is strong enough to support organizations with weaponry and armies sometimes more powerful than state forces. Colombia experienced this since the 1980s, and what is happening is that Central American states are undergoing processes of decay linked to the increased strength of organizations specializing in clandestine markets. What should be the role of Latin America? I think there was a moment of reason at the beginning of the last decade when both the governments of Guatemala and Mexico—despite being the government that unleashed the war on drugs—and Colombia agreed to tell the UN that this issue needed to be discussed differently. However, the prohibitionist view still prevails, and there is a part of society that continues to defend prohibition from a moral perspective rather than a scientific and health perspective, which remains strong. The challenge in Latin America is facing political groups that, instead of taking responsibility for evidence-based public policies, continue to gain electoral advantage from the moral outcry against drugs. Unfortunately, this is causing a severe weakening and deterioration of Latin American states.

There is a narrative against drugs that has overshadowed the narrative on corruption in general. If there are mafias, it is believed that they are related to drug trafficking, when there is much evidence that drug trafficking is just one part of organized crime. It seems that the generalization we make about drug trafficking is useful for other mafias to hide: the mafia involved in illegal logging in the Amazon, the trafficking of natural species, etc. What do we mean when we talk about drug trafficking and organized crime today?

What we are talking about is organizations specializing in clandestine markets that greatly benefited from the prohibition of drugs because it created a market with a large enough demand to provide resources for arming themselves and recruiting armies capable of challenging the state and controlling other markets. Of course, not all clandestine markets are violent. The market for bootlegged movies, for example, was not a violent market but was clandestine. Violent markets are those confronted by the state with violence, generating incentives for arming themselves. The drug market was paradigmatic in this sense. However, as you rightly point out, in the Mexican case, for example, today the drug market, although still essential, is only one of the clandestine markets controlled by organizations with the capacity to challenge the state’s monopoly on violence. There are many varieties when there is a business from which rents can be extracted, even if it is legal, such as the avocado market. If you have an organization that already has weapons and an army at its service, that market is likely to become the spoils of that organization. You mentioned many other clandestine markets, such as the trade in wild species, logging not only in the Amazon but also in Mexican jungles. But there is another market that is terribly heartbreaking: human trafficking. As long as you have immigration laws that allow or incentivize the existence of organizations specializing in human trafficking, you will have organizations investing resources in arming themselves and developing structures to traffic people. The problem lies in clandestine markets. It is about limiting the spaces that organizations specializing in clandestine markets have, with good regulations, and, of course, with good strategies for tracking money laundering, along with good strategies for developing community-linked police. That is, we need to end the prohibition of drugs and establish regulatory mechanisms that take away this business from criminals.

Everything we’ve discussed is also the history of power groups that have been created and taken advantage of. We are talking about major corporate, political, religious, economic, medical, military, and media interests. With the large anti-drug budgets, the extensive bureaucracies generated around prohibition, and the electoral and political gains resulting from the war on drugs, how can an effective alternative be proposed? Can the discourse of human rights really prevail over the discourse of particular interests, especially in these times where human rights seem to be losing more ground?

I share your pessimism. That is, I believe that the discourse of human rights is worn out and has not withstood the onslaught of punitivism, of the punitive populist trend with a heavy hand. For example, what is happening in El Salvador with Bukele is a clear example of the defeat of the human rights discourse. Bukele’s popularity, rising above all human rights, while allegedly reducing violence, is simply terrifying to me. We must continue to defend the discourse of human rights, continue to build around the discourse of human rights, but above all, we have to build a discourse based on harm reduction in the field of drug policy. What we need to tell society is that we need to reduce the harm caused by substances, and the worst way to do that is to maintain prohibition. We need sensible regulation to reduce harm because prohibition causes much more damage than the substances themselves. It is a task that is still uphill, has not yet permeated social consciousness, and, of course, there are all the other interests and bureaucratic inertia. I believe the greatest risk we are facing in Latin America today is that the prohibition of drugs and the fight against organized crime are leading us to a new remilitarization in our societies, to the rise of the armed forces that seemed defeated after the democratic transition processes of the 1980s. To me, it seems like one of the great setbacks we are experiencing in Latin America. This has been strengthened precisely by the discourse against organized crime and the loss of state control over the territory. The military, once again, present themselves as the saviors of the nation, but if we accept that militarization without resistance, our societies will pay a very high price.

To conclude, I would like to go back to the beginning. We talked about how the war on drugs, despite all the political and economic interests involved, ultimately has a moral root, a moral war promoted largely by puritanism, the idea of abstinence, restraint, etc. So, behind all that, the underlying struggle is for the concept of how human development should be understood. How do you think human development should be understood in a world that inevitably has drugs?

I believe that human development should be understood as a right to the free development of personality, and we must reclaim the right to pleasure, joy, which is something that puritanism detests. This is very concerning because what we are experiencing in our times is a new puritanical wave, mainly manifested in a rejection of sexuality taking root among new generations, but also a rejection of pleasure, enjoyment, and indulgence. Puritanical waves are particularly conducive to the development of prohibitionists, those who believe they know how to teach others to live. So, the fundamental claim we have to make is for the free development of personality as the basis for human development.

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This podcast is a production of Proyecto Soma and is made possible by the support of the international organization Youth Rise and the Robert Carr Fund.

The interview and general editing were conducted by Raúl Lescano. Francesca Brivio was in charge of coordination. Sound editing was done by Santiago Martinez Reid. The music is a composition by Dr.100.