Report
The colossal failure of militarized drug control promoted for decades by the United States is finally being recognized.
At the levels of governance and civil society, Latin America has emerged as a world leader in the drug reform movement—while Washington suffers from a credibility problem.
Rodrigo Uprimny and Diana Esther Guzmán
Drug addiction creates the need to consume more and more drugs, which have less and less effect. Something similar has happened with drug policy.
Ordinary people and politicians alike are often wary of openly discussing drugs. But over the past three years, debates around drug policy have gone mainstream in Latin America.
On the changing drug culture of his Rio favela since the Pacifying Police Units (UPPs) were introduced.
Brazil is now a major transshipment point for cocaine, and the federal government is mobilizing military forces in the favelas and on the border. As Brazil is compared with its powerful North American neighbor, some say it’s too little, too late.
The media casts coca growers in the Chapare region as 'nouveau riche' drug trafficking peasants, but most drug workers are young men without land or hope of decent jobs, not unionized coca growers.
Why marijuana should cost as much as tomatoes, not gold, and how one medical cannabis dispensary occupies a legal grey area to make it happen.
To stymie the drug trade, Mexico needs to address criminal violence rather than detaining and processing petty criminals.
In Ecuador, reducing sentences and releasing prisoners has diminished prison overcrowding and allowed for the reintegration of poor Ecuadorans into society.
Poor women across Latin America are triply discriminated against: within the drug trade, within the legal system, and within prison walls.
Rosa Julia Leyva Martínez spent 12 years in prison for transporting a few packets of heroin. Now she’s bringing a message of hope to thousands.
On living in fear in Mexico and how the drug victims’ movement is fighting back.
Washington’s most compliant Andean ally, Peru—not Colombia—is now the world’s leading source for cocaine on the global market.
In his portraits of coca farming communities in Bolivia’s Yungas region, Bear Guerra exposes the human impact of both the U.S. war on drugs and Bolivian President Morales’ drug policy innovations.
Hannah Hetzer and John Walsh
In 2013, Uruguay was the first nation in the world to legalize marijuana—not through ballot initiatives, but through deliberations within the national legislature.
Bocafloja’s poetry explores the changing nature of conceptions of death in Mexico and the effect of living in a permanent state of terror as a consequence of repressive drug policies.
The question today is no longer whether there is a need to reassess and modernize the UN drug-control system, but rather when and how to do it.
In the 1980s, Neill Franklin went undercover to arrest both organized crime leaders and small-scale dealers. He now advocates drug legalization and job growth to reduce drug-related violence.
The Obama administration has expanded its financing of Mexican and Central American military forces—many of whom committed the mass killing and torture of political opponents and indigenous communities only two decades prior.
Linda Farthing and Kathryn Ledebur
Bolivians are protecting their traditions and livelihood—and stopping drug trafficking simultaneously.
