OAS
Body
Meets
to
Evaluate
Hemispheric
Nations'
Drug
Policies,
Could
Provide
Model
to
Replace
US
"Certification"
12/15/00
The Organization of American States' (OAS) Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD, for its Spanish acronym -- http://www.cicad.oas.org) is hearing this week in Washington, DC, from some 34 government-appointed experts, who will present the commission with the results of its first country-by-country survey of drug control efforts in the Americas. The study, known as the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM), is an outgrowth of the 1996 Hemispheric Anti-drug Strategy and, as such, reflects US efforts to export its drug policies to the rest of the Americas. But it also represents an opening for Latin American governments angered and humiliated by the annual ritual of "certification" by the US State Department of their compliance with American drug policy objectives. "If the MEM gets the credibility that we think it will," Mexico's ambassador to the OAS, Claude Heller, told the Austin American-Stateman, "it will weaken the need for unilateral certification." But it is up to Congress to shelve or renew certification, and Heller's is not the view of some congressional drug warriors. Rep. John Mica (R-FL), who has made a career out of talking tough on drugs from his soapbox as chairman of the House Government Reform subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy, and human resources, is adamantly opposed. "Would I let an international organization or another state decide whether a country should get financial aid, trade benefits, or international assistance from the United States?" asked the congressman. "When you think about it, it's almost farcical. No way." Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, was less hard-nosed but still skeptical. "I welcome any effort to make countries, including the United States, take the need for a counter-drug policy seriously," he told the American-Statesman, "but I'm concerned about the MEM because it looks like it could be a gimmick to water down accountability, and nobody needs that." Grassley's querulous concerns, however, do not seem to be borne out by an examination of the MEM's goals and methods. According to CICAD, "the objective of the MEM is directly to strengthen mutual confidence, dialogue and hemispheric cooperation in order to deal with the drug problem with greater efficacy." The MEM accomplishes its goals by using a comprehensive standardized questionnaire to ascertain each of the 34 countries' progress in meeting objectives in five broad areas: National Plans and Strategies; Prevention and Treatment; Reduction of Drug Production; Law Enforcement Measures; and the Cost of the Drug Problem. Many of the 61 questions, or "indicators," used to evaluate each country's progress betray the heavy hand of US drug control doctrine in shaping the MEM (questionnaire online at http://www.cicad.oas.org/en/mem/09matrix.pdf). From the establishment of a national anti-drug strategy to the ratification of international anti-drug treaties, the indicators consistently cite US-endorsed -- if not insisted upon -- positions as the correct ones. More disturbing for friends of civil liberties are the indicators for progress in the law enforcement end of drug policy. Borrowing copiously from baleful American models, the MEM cites such techniques and practices as the use of undercover investigations and informants, controlled deliveries of illicit substances, plea bargaining, and the criminalization of attempts and conspiracies to commit drug crimes as evidence of progress. But despite its general adherence to the US line of drug policy, the MEM has as one of its principles "the exclusion of sanctions of any kind," and for congressional drug warriors, that is the rub. Such language is a less than oblique jab at the US' self-appointed role as monitor of drug policy in the Western Hemisphere and its practice of sabotaging the economies of countries which fail to fall in line.
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