With the unfolding of capitalism to its ultimate consequences in its imperialist stage, this phase of globalization that is sinking the majority of the world’s population into misery, many peoples with an important agrarian economy opt for the cultivation of coca, opium poppies and marijuana as the only way to survive.
The profits realized by these peasants are minimal. Rather, those who really enrich themselves are the middlemen who turn these crops into mind altering substances and those who transport and commercialize them in the developed countries, especially the United States. The authorities designated to combat this process are easy prey for corruption, since their ethical principles succumb to any bribe larger than $50.
Governments, businessmen, athletes, artists, ranchers and big landlords, military officers, politicians of every variety and bankers suspend their morality to accept the huge sums of money this business generates by supplying the drug addicts of the developed countries.
Capitalism has sickened the morality of the world by causing the constant growth of demand for narcotics at the same time that the imperialist powers prohibit this commerce, given their inability to produce the raw material. The example of the mariJuana market in the US is clear evidence of this.
Since demand is so high in its own territory, and the quantity of dollars that leave its borders for this reason is so voluminous, they elevate the stage of primary production to the status of their strategic enemy and grave threat to national security. They forget their own free market principles that supply is a function of demand and discharge their arrogant rage against the peasants who work just to survive since neo-liberalism condemns them to the misery of underdevelopment.
The narcotics traffic is a phenomenon of globalized capitalism and of the yankees, in first place. It is not a problem caused by the FARC-EP. We reject the narcotics traffic. But, since the US government uses the existence of the narcotics traffic as the pretext for its criminal activity against the Colombian people, we call upon it to legalize the consumption of narcotics. In that way, the huge profits produced by the illegality of this business would be suppressed, consumption could be controlled and those with drug dependence could receive treatment and this cancer could be definitively eliminated.
In the meantime, they must provide sufficient funds for curing those made ill, for educational campaigns that seperate humanity from the consumption of these drugs and for the substitution of these crops by food production that would contribute to the healthy growth of the world’s youth and the improvement of its moral quality.
But they must not continue financing the war through policies like the PLAN COLOMBIA, a criminal strategy that pours more gasoline on our internal conflict. They must not continue experimenting with the lives of our compatriots, spreading worms that kill all the vegetation and often the people too. They must not continue spraying herbicides because they are killing the natural environment. They must not continue upsetting our precarious ecological equilibrium. They must not use Colombian peasants as cannon fodder for their dirty aims, because the yankees are accustomed to making war very far from their borders and for any pretext and doing criminal experiments with the inhabitants of our underdeveloped countries.
If they really want to eliminate the phenomenon of the narcotics traffic, they should be serious. They must not use the misfortune of our backwardness as an electoral tool in the struggle between Democrats and Republicans in the US and, least of all, as a shameless pretext to justify interventions in the internal affairs of our countries.
The rulers of the northern imperialist power should abandon their two faced morality, their hypocrisy and ambition and make a real contribution to humanity. They should not forget that the ancient Roman Empire perished because of its arrogance and immorality.