Nobel prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called for the legalization of drugs and urged the Colombian government to end its "useless" war against drug traffickers, a local news magazine reported this week.
The Colombian edition of Cambio 16 published a letter Garcia Marquez sent to a judicial conference in Mexico - before the death of cocaine king Pablo Escobar - in which he accuses former U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush of using the war on drugs as an excuse to intervene in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America."There are more than enough reasons to believe that both presidents were only thinking of the interests of their governments," he wrote. "The war against drugs has been no more than an instrument of intervention in Latin America."
The Colombian government's fight against drug traffickers, notably Pablo Escobar and his Medellin cartel, has caused nothing but the death of hundreds of Colombians, he said.
"The result after 11 bitter years (of war) is delinquency on a grand scale, blind terrorism, a kidnapping industry, generalized corruption and . . . unprecendented violence," he said, adding that drug trafficking continues to be a problem for both producer and consumer countries.
"I believe that the first step toward a realistic solution to the global drug problem is to recognize the failure of methods being used to fight it," he said. "These methods, more than drugs themselves, have caused, complicated and aggravated the greatest ills (among) producers and consumers."