Mr. Igwe

The sight of a Mexican family deeply grieving the murder of their 7 year old boy on BBC News this November, 2009 brought it home to this Antillean Evangelist. This was a portrait of utter sadness, hopelessness and desperation: the callous and cold blooded murder of an innocent; a child paying the ultimate price for the carelessness of a seemingly drug dealing parent and community.

And how many more thousands of these desperate scenes of cold blooded murder: these killings of innocent men, women, and children, caught in the drug ‘’crossfire,’’ have to take place before the world wakes up to the current insanity.  

The war against the drug dealer in the West has been lost. After decades of various attempts by Western Governments to combat drug dealing, the result is not merely stalemate, but a continuation, even increase of this deadly trade with the accompanying criminality, violence and death.  

At the pinnacle of the drug trade are cold, extremely ruthless, and ‘’powerful men:’’ the sophisticated drug baron worth billions of dollars in the Latin Americas; the ‘’new mafias’’ of North American cities made up of violent Mexican, Columbian, Puerto Rican and Jamaican gangs; the Old Mafia of Sicilian Italian origins; African war lords who use the proceeds from the trade in marijuana, opium and heroin to lubricate their power apparatus; terrorists in Somalia and Afghanistan; kingpins of the Russian underworld; and the ubiquitous wealthy businessman with powerful political connections and seemingly ‘’untouchable.’’     

In the developing world, the drug baron is frequently much more powerful than the local mayor or governor: or he may be in that selfsame office himself.  His billions determine that senior members of the judiciary, the police, and local political power apparatus are on his payroll. And it is the brave Head of State indeed who has the wherewithal to use the organs of state to pursue this ‘’deadly quarry.’’ Going after a Columbian drug baron means the national leader’s family must be protected by the state for life.  

The largest importer of illicit drugs: the United States is finding out just how intransigent the illegal drug problem is by what is happening on her border with Mexico.  Drug lords with private armies are waging a war against the Mexican State with thousands of lives lost yearly.  Parts of Mexico are in a state of anarchy with little the Government can do to tackle this illegal drugs oriented violence.  Mexico is experiencing a war as terrible as any regular civil war only this time fueled by the illegal drug trade.
 
Back home in these paradise Antilles, an Economist Intelligence report determined the following: ‘’ the main force driving the high rates of crime and violence in the Caribbean is the impact of the intra-regional drug trafficking.  The explosion of the international drug trade has institutionalized criminal behaviour, increased property-related crime by drug users and underpinned a steady increase in the availability of firearms.’’

Another observation: the drug trade is synonymous with monoculture. This illegal business ‘’sucks the oxygen’’ out of everything else. That is, it is so profitable that when it establishes itself in a community its tentacles spread and everything is affected. In poor communities, and this is what is taking place on many a Mexican street, it takes complete control of the environment.  Father, mother, children are pulled into its diabolical orbit with disastrous consequences as witnessed on the streets of Mexico.  Thank goodness the situation in that American nation has not been exported into these West Indian Antilles.  

Yes good folk, the war against drugs is far from being won. So what is the solution to this evil that has taken the lives of so many of our young men, even in these British Virgin Islands? 

One solution that has been widely suggested is the proposed solution of ‘’legalizing illicit drugs and their use.’’  This idea is due to observation of the success of this experiment in various Scandinavian countries such as Holland where legalization and or limiting usage to certain drug zones has seen a slash in violent criminal activity. It is unclear however whether this legitimization has caused an increase in illegal substance abuse and its associated evils. Amsterdam is considered the most liberal and lax of European capitals. 

It is worthy of note that during prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920s, criminal activity in circumventing the ban on alcohol saw the creation of a whole new criminal class and the institutionalization of organized crime in various US cities such as Las Vegas, Chicago and Miami. ‘’Al Capone’’ became the ‘’poster boy’’ of the prohibition era. When prohibition was lifted, the incentive for violence in the alcohol trade disappeared.  

Politically however, legalization, especially in the ‘’Christian’’ Western Hemisphere appears to be a non starter.  Any politician hoping for re-election in a democracy in these Americas will not touch the issue.  An avalanche of criticism from the church and associated organizations will quickly lead to a U turn on the subject.  A vast majority of voters in the Americas are clearly against legalization as most polls indicate.
 
Therefore, the only other route is the maintenance of the status quo; spending further billions of dollars in a losing battle:  a drug war in which the wealthy drug dealer is well equipped and better prepared to continue the fight against the police and armies of various nation states. And this with the aid of his buried and well laundered billions, powerboats, jets, helicopters, custom built submarines and private armies.   

The alternatives are legalization or ‘’all out war’’ and the former is simply unacceptable socially this 2009, while the latter is untenable considering governments and their resource limits.  If the United States is finding it extremely difficult to combat bands of terrorists in the deserts of the Mideast and mountains of Asia, this the most powerful military on earth, how ‘’on earth’’ will the global powers that be fight the billionaire drug barons entrenched in various places surrounded by billions of dollars of ‘’protection’’ and the requisite hardware.  

It therefore remains a cause of widespread concern that in the absence of any well thought out policy on fighting this modern day evil, there appear to be no good options. The status quo remains the only tenable option: a reactive as opposed to a proactive and well thought out approach. A wait and see and keep your fingers crossed paradigm. With the problem of illegal drugs and the consequent tragedies and evils it proffers, we are all ‘’ a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi’’ caught between a rock and a hard place. 
 
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the management and staff of BVI News Online and its parent company.

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