From: Christic Institute <christic@igc.org>
Subject: CAUSES & CURES: MILITARY FAILS
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 11:44:11 GMT

/* Written 12:45 pm  Apr  8, 1992 by christic in cdp:christic.news */
/* ---------- "CAUSES & CURES: MILITARY FAILS" ---------- */
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CAUSES AND CURES: `THE MILITARY OPTION HAS FAILED'

By the Rev. Dr. JAMES A. FORBES JR.

[Dr. Forbes is senior minister of the Riverside Church in New York
City and also serves as chair of the Causes and Cures National
Board. In his address to the National Teleconference he summarized
the report of the Task Force on Drug Supply. The full text of this
report is available from the Christic Institute. See the note at
the end of this file for more details.]

Is the ``war on drugs'' really reducing coca production in South
America, or opium production in Asia?

The Causes and Cures Task Force on Drug Supply and Source Countries
found that the Administration's military option has failed. When
coca fields are destroyed in one region, cultivation simply spreads
to another region or across the border to another country.
Moreover, the military oligarchies in South America subsidized by
this policy are often, in fact, in league with the drug syndicates.

The military option misses the point that Third World countries are
trapped by the global economic depression, by the collapse of
markets for their traditional exports, by the burden of debts they
cannot pay, by unjust political and economic structures that
condemn the urban and rural poor to hunger and destitution. The
drug industry is an alternative source of hard currency for the
debt-ridden economies of drug-producing countries and a source of
employment for the impoverished peasant class. Unless the United
States and the rest of the industrialized world take decisive
action to reduce the Third World's debt burden and find markets for
substitute crops, the economic pressures that drive drug production
in the Third World will not disappear.

Just as the ``war on drugs'' at home concentrates its fire on the
victims of the drug trade--the small-time users and dealers in the
poorest neighborhoods of our cities--the Administration is waging
war in the Third World against peasant farmers who have no other
means to support themselves and their families. The Task Force on
Drug Supply and Source Countries found that this policy virtually
ignores the international infrastructure of the drug trade--the
drug cartels that smuggle cocaine and heroin into the United States
and launder their profits through United States banks and
international financial institutions.

The Task Force found that military aid to drug-producing countries
does not reduce production, is usually misused for military
campaigns against leftist guerrillas and strengthens the hand of
the military oligarchy in its power struggle with
democratically-elected civilian governments. It calls for the
discontinuation of these programs and the reallocation of military
spending in our national drug budget to programs that will work.

                            *    *    *

Our _Policy Report_ on the drug crisis includes the final report of
the Task Force on Drug Supply. Copies are $7 each, and full
citations are provided. For a complete catalogue of books,
magazines and videos on covert operations, drug trafficking,
addiction and treatment, please use one of the e-mail addresses
posted below or write us at the following address:

                     Causes and Cures Campaign
                        Christic Institute
                  1324 North Capitol Street, N.W.
                      Washington, D.C. 20002
                          (202) 797-8106

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