The drug 'Prohibition' has made traffic in illegal substances an attractive and profitable business, and fostered criminality and corruption at all levels.

The United States, however, proceeds as if it were unaware of this fact. Colombia, with its scarce resources and thousands of murders, has wiped out numerous gangs and filled its prisons with drug-related delinquents. At least four of the major drug lords have been incarcerated and the biggest of them all finally cornered. (Pablo Escobar was killed by the Colombian police on December 2nd.)

Meanwhile some 20 million drug-addicts in the United States are supplied daily with no problem, an impossible feat without large and highly efficient internal networks for sales and distribution.

Things being as they are, the efforts to find a solution can no longer founder on debates over war and liberty. For once they should take the bull by the horns and focus on means to administer the legalization of drugs. In other words, putting an end to the self-serving, pernicious and useless war that the consumer countries have imposed on us. This means confronting the problem of drugs in the world as a primordial issue of an ethical and political nature, which can only be defined through global agreement, with the United States in first line. This obviously entails firm commitments on the part of consumer countries towards the producer countries.

For it would not be fair, although it is highly probable, for those who have borne the horrible costs of the war on drugs to derive no benefits from peace. In other words, we should not suffer the fate of Nicaragua, which in war was the world's top priority and in peace has been completely forgotten.

1st signatory:

Gabriel García Márquez - Nobel Prize for Literature