To: Otto Perez Molina, President of Guatemala, Roxana Baldetti, Vice-President, Guatemala, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, President, Mexico, Juan Manuel Santos, President, Colombia, Ricardo Martinelli, President, Panama, Porfirio Lobo, President...
Support Guatemalan president's call for drug legalization
President Molina, we applaud and support your proposal for drug legalization in Central America and beyond.
Vice-President Roxana Baldetti, we support your efforts to promote this proposal to the Central-American leaders.
We fully support Guatemalan request to open a debate on drug legalization at the Sixth Summit of the Americas on April 14-15, 2012. President Obama, we urge you to not stall the courageous process initiated by Guatemala, and to allow a truthful debate to take place. We urge you to show the courage and vision to add your positive contribution to the debate.
President Calderon and President Santos, we urge you to throw the full support of Mexico and Colombia behind the Guatemalan proposal.
Presidents Martinelli of Panama, Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica, Funes of El Salvador, Lobo of Honduras, and Ortega of Nicaragua, we urge to add the support of your countries to the Proposal advanced by the Guatemalan Government.
Despite the enormous resources wasted on it, the War on Drugs has failed, bringing destruction and chaos all over the world, affecting particularly the Central American region, thanks to its position on the major transit route to the US. Prohibition is the worst possible form of control as it leaves control in the hands of powerful criminal organizations. The time has come to seek more realistic and pragmatic approaches, asking the simple but fundamental question: “Are organized societies capable and willing to manage and control psychoactive substances, instead of leaving it to organized crime?”
Global re-legalization under a multi-tiers “legalize, tax, control, prevent, treat and educate” regime with practical and efficient mechanisms to manage and minimize societal costs is the only realistic long-term solution to the issue of illegal drugs. Far from giving up and far from an endorsement, controlled legalization would be finally growing up; being realistic instead of being in denial; being in control instead of leaving control to the underworld. It would abolish the current regime of socialization of costs and privatization of profits to criminal enterprises, depriving them of their main source of income and making our world a safer place.
Why is this important?
On Saturday February 11th, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina declared that, following discussions with Colombian President Santos, he will present a proposal for drug legalization in Central America at the April 14-15 Summit of the Americas. Guatemalan Vice-President Roxana Baldetti will begin a tour of Central America to discuss the proposal with regional leaders and garner support for it, starting with Panama, Costa Rica and Salvador on February 29th. Unsurprisingly, the move was greeted by a quick rebuke from the US government.
President Molina’s initiative is unprecedented and marks the first time since the launching of the War on Drugs by Richard Nixon in 1971 that a foreign head of state actively challenges the US-led policies of drug prohibition and try to build a coalition against it. A former general of the Guatemalan army, President Molina has impeccable credentials to launch such a move: he was elected in November 2011 on a law-and-order platform, pledging to restore security to the country. Guatemala is on the major transit route from Colombia to the US and drug violence has exploded there over the past few years, turning this already impoverished and unstable country into one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
We all need to show our support to President Molina and his potential Latin American allies. We also need to put pressure on the Obama administration to ensure that it doesn’t stall Molina’s proposal, and that it allows a truthful debate to take place at the April 14-15 Summit of the Americas and beyond.