Presidency 1980 - FTP Directory Listing

InternationalU.S. to drugsa "low priority" by TransportationSecretary Goldschmidt (right).Drug-carrying ships will now gothrough the Yucatan Channel,through the Gulf of Mexico to theHouston area. Numbers of Houston'scustom officials normally assignedto monitor drug trafficking,have been sent to Florida to workon the refugee problem.Another possible route woulddeposit drugs in the Tampa area.Other routes go up the East Coast,heading for Boston, Cape Cod andMaine.Coast Guard officials contactedby this news service expressedalarm and disgust with the apparentinability of the Carter administrationto understand the seriousnessof the drug inflow and howadministration actions are makingthings worse.These observers, who havewatched the Carter administrationsystematically cripple and destroyall drug enforcement efforts, knowthat such actions are not merelyincompetent.—Donna LevitWorld Bank aids drugsin Latin AmericaThe biggest drug pushers in theworld are not in the "Golden Triangle"of Southeast Asia, nor inColombia, South America, nor arethey the "French Connection."They are to be found in Washington,D.C., housed in the sharedheadquarters of the world's twolargest international financial institutions,the World Bank and theInternational Monetary fund.Through deliberately excessiveloan "conditionalities" imposed onThird World countries, these twoinstitutions have caused the enforcementof brutal austerity policieswhich have gutted those nations'economies and forced themto turn to drug production on amassive scale.IMF/World Bank policies have atwo-fold purpose: (1) the conversionof the underdeveloped ThirdWorld into marijuana, coca andpoppy farms, whose lucrative revenueswould go to fill IMF/WorldBank coffers in the form of debtrepayment and (2) the saturationof the United States with drugs.To achieve that second goal, theU.S. "pot lobby" has a clear startegy.According to a spokesmanfor the Washington, D.C.-basedNational Organization for the Reformof Marijuana Laws(NORML), "If enough of these(Third World) countries go with(drug) legalization, the UnitedStates may perceive the more enlightenedtrend and get the idea."The campaign to force ThirdWorld countries to legalize drugcultivation and export is not new.Two years ago, a World Bank seniorofficial for Latin America declared:"I haven't looked at Colombia'sdrug industry, although I've justreturned from Bolivia, and I knowthat the coca industry there ishighly advantageous to producers.In fact, from their point of view,they simply couldn't find a betterproduct. Its advantages are thatno elaborate technology is required,no hybrid seeds, the landand climate are perfect. . .."And, according to an IMF officerfor Colombia: "(Marijuana production)would not destroy the nationaleconomy. From an economicviewpoint, the marijuana is just acrop, like any other. It brings inforeign exchange, and provides incomefor the peasants."ColombiaThe Colombian "pot lobby"—which closely coordinates its legalizationstrategy with the UnitedStates marijuana lobby—has scoredmajor successes in the pastmonths. The government of TurbayAyala was seriously weakenedby the M-19 terrorist incident inBogotawhich gave the upper handto domestic and international "humanrights" forces that largelyoverlap the legalization drive.• In early March, Defense MinisterCamacho Leyva withdrew3,500 trained antidrug troops fromthe Guajira Peninsula, Colombia'sillicit drug plantation, ostensiblyto redeploy the troops to the terrorist-occupiedDominican Embassyin Bogota. In reality there hadbeen intense pressure from forcesas diverse as the ex-chief of thesecret police, Jose Joaquin Matellana,and the liberal financier ErnestoSamper Pizano, who pleadedJuly 1980 / War on Drugs 9