(Originally written March 25, 2010, but never published)
Earlier this week I traveled to Brussels to participate in the kick-off event of the third round of the Th!nk About It blogging competition, sponsored by the European Commission and the European Journalism Centre. The topic for this round is sustainable development and global cooperation, and specifically how the Millennium Development Goals can be met by the target year of 2015.
One of the most amazing things I found was that Europeans and others from around the globe overwhelmingly like Americans, even though they may dislike our foreign policy just as much. One speaker during the conference remarked “Americans are among the nicest, most generous people you will meet” even as he expressed his disbelief that we could support such outrageous foreign policy initiatives as those implemented by Bush (to be fair, Obama has continued many of these policies, so he's not off the hook either).
In particular, the War on Drugs has been devastating for American relations with developing countries such as Columbia, Bolivia, Peru, and Afghanistan that cultivate the crops used to produce narcotic drugs such as cocaine and heroin. In addition to providing a large source of income for these countries, these crops are an important part of the native culture. Among the Andean Indians of South America, chewing cocoa leaves to get relief from hunger and fatigue while working in the fields is the equivalent of coffee and cigarette breaks in our society. Who are we to say that people around the world can only enjoy the drugs our society deems acceptable?
Instead of oppressing these people's culture and livelihood, we should find a way to work together to combat our drug problems. One incentive for growing these crops is that prohibition makes the price of drugs artificially high, so if we were to legalize and regulate drugs we could reduce price and therefore supply and at the same time reduce outrageous spending by our government on drug control policies that not only have failed to reduce the supply and demand of drugs, but actually resulted in increased rates of drug use and availability.
In Afghanistan, Al-Queda understood that the people depended on the poppy harvest for their livelihood, and they were able to gain so much support because they chose to work with the population instead of destroying their source of income and an important part of their culture. We have the ability to solve so many global problems such as drug use and terrorism, but it can only be done if we choose to work with the rest of the world, not against them.
