The speakers for the event were Sanho Tree, the director of drug policy at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C., and Kate Harris, the western Massachusetts coordinator for the Massachusetts Green Party and a delegate of a Witness for Peace trip to Colombia.
Andrew Epstein '02, a member of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, said the impetus behind the forum was "to educate the student body and the community about the recent events that have occurred in Colombia and to emphasize how significant the United States' contribution is."
Tree, an alumnus of Hampshire College, opened the lecture with background information about how America's war on drugs is affecting Colombia's people.
A handout distributed at the event detailed some of the underlying issues addressed by the speakers. "In the guise of a war on drugs, the United States has become partners with Colombia's armed forces in a counter-narcotics campaign that is devastating that country and stepping up the levels of violence on all sides," it said. "The two-year $1.3 billion U.S. aid package that was approved last year goes almost entirely to the Colombian military."
Tree said that the recently passed $1.6 billion American aid package for the drug war was disguised "as an anti-drug bill, but many of us believe that it is anti-insurgency, anti-guerrilla."
"Anything with the word 'anti-drug' in it passes automatically in Congress," he added.
Tree cited something he called the balloon effect, in which illicit crops move from place to place rather than disappear entirely. "Because we squeezed on Bolivia and Peru, the problem popped up in Colombia with a vengeance."
"Drugs are more plentiful than ever, of higher purity and cheaper than ever," said Tree. "We have been lashing out at other countries and blaming the supply rather than demand."
"Being tough is not the same thing as being effective," added Tree. He cited a study done by the Rand Corporation that looked at "controlling cocaine." The study showed that to reduce the cocaine in the U.S. by one percent, it would be "23 times more effective to fund drug treatment than eradicate drugs at their source." According to Tree, the international market for drugs is driven by demand from rich countries, poverty in drug-producing countries and escalated demand for "otherwise useless weeds."
"Prohibition is what makes the value for these products," said Tree. "One ounce of marijuana is worth its weight in gold."
"Cocaine and heroine are worth many, many, many times their weight in gold," he added.
The primary method of eradicating cocaine production in Colombia is fumigating coca crops, Tree said. "We have fumigated close to 70,000 acres of one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth."
Harris, who spoke second, is a member Witness for Peace, a group that sends people to areas of the world which they find potentially volatile and where there may be violations of human rights. "I got a feeling of what those people feel everyday," Harris said of the Colombian people, who she was in contact with on her trip. "You are the enemy and you are under surveillance."
Harris also spoke adamantly against the U.S. involvement in the region, specifically in terms of fumigation of coca crops. "If you [outside observers] go in and visit, if you do all the research on the Internet that you can possibly do, there is just no way that you can support this," she said.
"I had never cried so much in my life, seeing what we are doing to the people and the Amazon rainforest," said Harris. She added that aerial fumigation often misses its target and sometimes sprays food crops and people with chemicals. "The planes went over, and it killed all their fish, all their chicken … They are eating these fumigated crops … Babies are covered in sores and are vomiting."
Harris also said that the audience needs to be proactive and speak out against the war on drugs in Colombia. "What we can do is tell our government, 'No more military aid and no more fumigation aid … If you are going to address the drug problem, address it here at home.'"
Students with a wide variety of interests and backgrounds attended the talk. "I went because I was interested in the conditions of the drug war and the people of Colombia," said May Nguyen '04. "Everyone kept saying how the war on drugs in Colombia closely resembles the situation in Vietnam over 26 years ago."
"I thought the presentation of the material was a little biased and that was a little disappointing. I felt like I wasn't there to be convinced about any one side of the story but to learn about all the different aspects of the situation and assess it myself. Overall, though, I enjoyed the talk very much," added Nguyen. "As a matter of fact, I think we only scraped off the first layer of the situation, and I would like to learn more about it."
Foreign Policy Forum member Penelope Van Tuyl '03, who helped organized the lecture, said she hoped to provide a less one-sided panel, but did not feel she could forgo the panelists who agreed to participate in the lecture. "Though I would have liked to be able to present a more balanced Plan Colombia panel or debate, I certainly wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to bring such a knowledgeable speaker as Sanho to the campus," said Van Tuyl.
"I'm really pleased with how the panel turned out," she added. "We had a really diverse, engaged, well-informed audience. I was especially happy to see we drew a mix of students and community members."
"I hoped to gain some understanding of a situation I didn't know much about," said Teo Tokunow '04. "I had seen the main speaker, Sanho Tree, in a documentary the day before, and I expected that we would give a very detailed account of the reasons behind, and results of, U.S. policies in Colombia."