U.S. led anti drug wars have failed, expert tells Panama conference

Using violent repression in the “war” against drugs doesn’t work and policies against drug trafficking, especially those headed by the United States have failed said a world expert in Panama on Wednesday.

Hans Mathieu, director of the Friedrich Ebert Security Foundation, in Germany was speaking at a regional security conference.

"The current policy has failed" he said and warned that "the violent repression does not work anymore” He noted that "the biggest business of organized crime remain the drugs"and that Latin American consumption is comparatively lower than in the U.S., where synthetic substances have begun to shift to cocaine and heroin.

Mathieu said the internal correlation of forces in the United States shows that drug policy is "paralyzed" and  has joined the failed policies of immigration restriction. He pointed out that in several U.S. states possession and consumption of marijuana has been decriminalized, to varying degrees and levels, , and in late 2009, Congress established the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission.

In 2009, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, in collaboration with multiple agencies, developed the first regional mapping of organized crime, and identified the impact on security, the weakening of democracies and the high mobility of the drug and money-laundering business.