Finding our own way: Guatemala's Policy on Drugs

The Guatemalan National Commission for Policy Reform on Drugs delivered its preliminary Analytic Report on the Problem of Drugs in Guatemala a few days ago. Take a look at the report to see what Carlos Mendoza and his colleagues have to say.

Here's the brief English version:

After eight months of deliberation and gathering of information with different national and international governmental policy implementers, including the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), the Commissioners have concluded the following:

Guatemalan authorities do not have enough data to properly define the drug problem in the country. We do not know the actual extent of land where illicit drugs (poppy and marijuana) are cultivated in Guatemala. We are uncertain about the target population for synthetic drugs produced in laboratories recently dismantled by the National Police. We do not know basic facts such as the price of cocaine and its purity on the streets of Guatemala. These facts are needed to prove or disprove important hypotheses, like the one concerning drug traffickers paying in kind for local services (transportation or security, for instance). We have no idea about the current levels of consumption among the Guatemalan population.

The drug problem has been historically defined and framed by the U.S. Government, given the lack of interest shown by Guatemalan authorities in the past, as evidenced by restricted annual national budgets and the lack of information needed to understand the size of the problem. In this sense, the Commission has stated that the drug policy has been an orphan with a foster parent, and has recommended to the Guatemalan Government to regain custody of its own child.

The first step is to generate enough data about local production, trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs to properly define the problem and, after a rigorous evidence-based analysis, select solutions. Drug policies have to be defined in Guatemala, by and for Guatemalans. As has happened in the states of Colorado and Washington in its territory, the U.S. Government needs to respect our own space for innovation and experimentation. We are, indeed, finding our own way.

The Pan-American Post offers some thoughts.

Unlike other regional leaders like Juan Manuel Santos and Jose Mujica, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has cultivated a reputation as a crusader for widening the drug policy debate in the hemisphere, but has so far made no major push to enact reforms in his own country. However, last week saw some important progress on drug policy reform at a national level, when a civil society commission appointed by Perez Molina released a preliminary report on drug laws (.PDF file here) in the country on Thursday, as La Prensa Libre reports.

Like the OAS resolution, the report does not call for any radical changes. However, it raises some important points about drug policy in Guatemala, and its conclusion makes some sensible, albeit cautious, recommendations. For example, the report notes that Guatemala’s approach to drugs runs “counter to the legislative developments” elsewhere in the region, and that its failure to specify which amounts of drugs can be classified as destined for personal consumption rather than sale leaves considerable room for judges to impose their own standards. Among other recommendations, the commission calls for closer monitoring of black market pricing and purity data, for a deeper study of the “cost of the current drug policies” in Guatemala, and for a rigorous analysis of the size of the country’s illicit poppy crop.

According to the report, a final version will be presented to the president in December, and the commission’s mandate was recently extended to the end of this year. After that, it remains to be seen what will come of Perez Molina’s claims that the report “might lead to” a bill legalizing marijuana and poppy cultivation.