Dr Ugs again...

HSBC, a bank that has branches on most high streets in Britain, has been laundering drug money ($7 billion from Mexican cartels – amongst other naughty proceeds), and its executives are very, very sorry. I bet they are! Although, that said, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation has prior form on this, if you count the Chinese opium trade, which it financed.

As was pointed out before, the drug trade is a profitable business. Estimates suggest it accounts for at least 1% of global GDP. That may not sound like much (though $3-400 billion sounds more tasty) but 1% is where many significant profit margins are poised right now.

This is, of course, the logical result of neo-liberal “light-touch” regulation combined with the capitalist prerogative of competitive accumulation. It begs a question. The ruling class is like a tightly knotted fist. From warmongering politicians, to scabby print-barons, to corrupt cops, to light-fingered bankers, they are in it together and they look after their own. Behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Given they are depraved and decadent, even by their own standards, shouldn’t we just lock up every rich person and throw away the key? If we let them out they’ll only do it again.

Dr Ugs

Interesting news, well, almost news, the suggestion has come from the Summit of the Americas, that there may be a coming yielding in the war on drugs:

... Largely due to the efforts of Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina, who in the Guardian issued a passionate argument on behalf of reform, proposing "to abandon any ideological position (whether prohibition or liberalisation) and to foster a global intergovernmental dialogue based on a realistic approach – drug regulation".

Is this the beginning of the end of the war on drugs?

Although Obama has been clear that he opposes all forms of decriminalisation and legalisation, he admitted that drug reform was a debatable issue, stating: "I think it is entirely legitimate to have a conversation about whether the laws in place are doing more harm than good in certain places." Perhaps even more telling was Harper, who conceded at a press conference that the drug war was "not working".

This is not your run of the mill set of public figures calling for decriminalisation of this, legalisation of that, but heads of state suggesting a change of policy, maybe even a ceasefire. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, let's remember a few things:

1) This is an issue of political economy. Drugs make money. Crack cocaine is the single most profitable commodity on Earth. The world's great financial centres are heavily implicated in laundering. If drug money ceased to flow the world would certainly plunge into recession. This is a powerful impediment to any shake-up.

2) This is an issue of geo-politics. Poor nations, and poor farmers within poor nations, suffer because they have to export primary commodities at larger relative cost, which are vulnerable to fluctuations in price. Drugs are a sure fire cash crop. Prohibition helps keep said farmers down at heel, it reinforces the power relationship between Global North and South and also strengthens the hand of the cartels.

3) This is an issue of class, race and policing. The war on drugs ploughs the road for more and more agressive and invasive policing of working class and ethnic minority communities, who are the intended victims of all policing.

These are three important obstacles blocking liberalisation. Prohibition is a 20th century phenomenon. It is often attributed to the campaigning of Harry J Anslinger, who explicitly linked prohibition with race. Of course prohibition was a much bigger movement. For example, UN Convention of Psychotropic Drugs requires all member states to prohibit the manufacture and sale of LSD25 (amongst other substances).

Prohibition is inbuilt into the way the ruling class does things, how it governs. This issue will be very difficult to shift.