A gift to the drug kingpins: and the need for a North American Drug Policy Agreement

This article first appeared as an op-ed in the National Post, April 21, 2014

We know the stories. Hockey bags that go south full of B.C. bud and return full of Latin American cocaine. Elaborate underground tunnels at both the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders. Canadian mobsters being gunned down in Mexican resort towns. Unlikely Mennonite drug mules crossing North America’s borders with illicit packages concealed in gas tanks and old farm equipment.

It’s easy to think it’s always been this way, but the reality is we can thank the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for much of this activity. So this year, while business leaders and politicians fete the 20th anniversary of NAFTA, drug runners and cartels will be doing the same.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Free traders wax poetically about the interconnected, globalized economy, and the whole point of NAFTA was to strengthen the economic integration of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico by reducing trade barriers.

How’s this for economic integration, then? Access to legal, regulated medical marijuana in Canada and the U.S. has reduced black market demand across the continent. This phenomenon will become more pronounced with the recent legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington, and more states to come. It’s worth noting too that concerns over drug gangs generally, but Canadian gangs in particular, were a key reason Washington voters supported legalization in that state. Regardless, marijuana farmers in Mexico have responded to decreased black market demand by shifting to poppy cultivation. This has resulted in a surge of cheap heroin availability at a time when heroin use is increasing in both the U.S. and Canada.

Yet despite the predictability of this kind of domino effect in a continental economy, then-U.S. president Bill Clinton forbade U.S. negotiators from discussing the illegal drug trade in NAFTA talks. Years later, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official Phil Jordan revealed: “We were prohibited from discussing the effects of NAFTA as it related to narcotics trafficking, yes.” As a result, “For the godfathers of the drug trade in Colombia and Mexico, this was a deal made in narco heaven.”

Indeed. NAFTA brought a proliferation of maquiladoras — companies operating in duty-free free-trade zones— to the north of Mexico and a massive increase in cross-border commercial traffic. In other words, freer movement of goods in a continent that represents “the world’s largest illicit drug market” according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. NAFTA also brought an influx of cheap, subsidized U.S. crops — including corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice — resulting in the collapse of northern Mexico’s agricultural sector. Some farmers shifted to marijuana, which is 1,000 times more lucrative than corn, pound for pound. The rest were in need of work.

Basically, NAFTA helped create ideal conditions for the rise of a lucrative cross-border drug and gun trade.

Governments responded by escalating the war on drugs, with devastating impacts on citizens and their communities throughout North America. An estimated 100,000 Mexicans have died or disappeared in drug-related violence, and the U.S. has the highest prison population in the world with over 2 million citizens behind bars. Of these, roughly 500,000 Americans are incarcerated on any given night for a drug law violation. At the same time, death from overdose and HIV/AIDS among injection drug users has taken thousands of lives in the U.S. and Canada. Add to all of that the pain of the families of those directly affected and the communities that have suffered these losses.

Twenty years after NAFTA’s signing, it’s time to finally acknowledge the drug market is a part of our integrated economy. In turn, we need to negotiate a modern, 21st century drug policy that addresses the health and safety issues across the region and undermines the illegal profiteers.

The good news is, there’s cause for optimism. The Organization of American States in particular is providing refreshing leadership through member states like Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala calling for a discussion about alternative approaches to the enforcement-heavy war on drugs. And some jurisdictions are implementing bold new paradigms on their own. Similar to the moves in Colorado and Washington, Uruguay became the first country in the world to authorize a legal, regulated market for adult cannabis use.

The current overemphasis on criminal justice approaches to drug control in North America has sidelined a variety of programs that can minimize the harms related to the drug trade and substance use, including public health promotion and prevention programs. It has also curbed economic and social advancement for drug-producing countries.

A North American Drug Policy Agreement could serve as a powerful statement of shared responsibility in addressing the trans-national drug problem. Such an agreement should include provisions for the consuming countries (U.S. and Canada) to reduce demand through social development and improved access to health responses. But it should also map out a legal, regulatory control framework for drugs that are currently illicit. This would reduce the violence within the drug trade, and all of the other prohibition-related harms that are far more destructive to communities and countries than substance use itself.

Yes, it would mark a departure from 40 years of restrictive, prohibitionist policies, but as Stephen Harper himself has noted, “the current approach is not working.” It’s time to try something else.

About Donald MacPherson

Donald MacPherson is the Executive Director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition and one of Canada’s leading figures in drug policy. In 2000 he published Vancouver’s groundbreaking Four Pillars Drug Strategy that precipitated a broad public discussion on issues related to addiction.