Back in 1979, Colombia’s former President Alberto Lleras Camargo made a remarkably accurate prediction: that the Colombians of the future would have their reputations stained by war and drugs, and that this would largely be the fault of zealotry on the part of US officials bent on enforcing prohibition on the world. Some 30 years later, a growing consensus exists that Lleras was right: drug prohibition has been a catastrophe, one borne disproportionately by Latin American countries.
The issue has been raised in a recent report by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which concluded that the war on illicit substances has failed in its stated objective of reducing the cultivation, commercialization and consumption of drugs, whilst creating a highly lucrative illegal industry based on violence, which has decimated local societies.
