US Drug Policy in Bolivia

[Otto]

October 23, 2003
Bolivian Leader's Ouster Seen as Warning on U.S. Drug Policy
By Larry Rother

"On a visit to the White House last year, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada told President Bush that he would push ahead with a plan to eradicate coca but that he needed more money to ease the impact on farmers. Otherwise, the Bolivian president's advisers recalled him as saying, "I may be back here in a year, this time seeking political asylum." Mr. Bush was amused, Bolivian officials recounted, told his visitor that all heads of state had tough problems and wished him good luck. Now Mr. Sánchez de Lozada, Washington's most stalwart ally in South America, is living in exile in the United States after being toppled last week by a popular uprising, a potentially crippling blow to Washington's anti-drug policy in the Andean region.
(...)
In Colombia the eradication push has succeeded in substantially reducing coca acreage and is helping the government in its fight against leftist rebels. But such successes have often pushed cultivation farther south to Bolivia and Peru. 
The eradication campaign is supposed to be coupled with an "alternative development" program to encourage farmers to grow crops like pineapples, bananas, coffee, black pepper, oregano and passion fruit on land once devoted to coca.
Though the United States has earmarked $211 million for such projects here in the last decade and helped raise the incomes of a growing number of peasant families, critics say the money is not nearly enough to compensate all of those whose livelihoods have been destroyed by eradication campaigns."
(continues at)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/international/americas/23BOLI.html?th=&pagewanted=print


"those whose livelihoods have been destroyed" reminds me of our friend Zoyd and little Prairie who are not victims of Zoyd's addiction but of the measures of those engaged in the so-called "War on Drugs".

Otto
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