This week the government of Colombia is launching an advertising campaign in Europe to publicly tackle the demand side of the War on Drugs equation, no doubt hoping that it will be more effective than its war on supply.
Going for a visual, as opposed to a literal, bang, it is planning to tie in the increasing consumption of cocaine by Europeans with the deleterious effects associated with its current production in the South American nation.
The ads, which the Colombian government hopes European governments will pony up to fund their placement on billboards and in public transport systems, will feature such images as a European suit with “an over-sized nose – alluding to his cocaine habit – laying landmines in a field. Another shows him wielding a chainsaw on a charred, deforested hillside.”
The idea, in a nutshell, is that because the likes of FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia–Ejército del Pueblo) lay down mines to protect coca fields - resulting in the deaths of kids wandering on to dangerous ground - and hillsides are being deforested to grow the crops that eventually find their way up the noses of users, cocaine isn’t the “champagne drug” that people think it is. No demand, no supply. No supply, no problems. Ergo, think before you snort. It’s a powerful and communicable idea and it will be interesting to see how much of a dent it has with cocaine users.
But isn’t there something missing here? Yes, reduced demand would mean less production. But are the criminal elements that are part and parcel of the production of illicit drugs inherent in the production of intoxicating substances themselves, contrasted with, say, the manufacturing and distribution involved in the (legal) alcohol or tobacco industries? While the ads publicise the destruction of rain forests, what about the aerial spraying of coca fields? And, as for the FARC, their presence has a lot more to do with just drugs.
The problem that the government and people of Colombia face is that the mess that Colombia and the War on Drugs is in cannot just be captured in a nutshell.
