War On Drugs: Message From Colombian Ex-President Gaviria To Philippine President Duterte

César Gaviria, former president of Colombia, has a message he would like to send to the Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte and to the world. To convey it, he penned a very honest op-ed for the New York Times, summing up his experiences.

In office between 1990 and 1994, Gaviria served during the bloody crackdown on drugs, battling international drug trafficker Pablo Escobar.

"We Colombians know a thing or two about fighting drugs," he wrote in the NYT opinion column. Like Gaviria 25 years ago in Colombia, now president Duterte is running a campaign to purge the Philippines of drugs. According to a report by Amnesty International, more than 7,000 drug-related executions by police and vigilantes have taken place since Duterte took office.

"Taking a hard line against criminals is always popular for politicians. I was also seduced into taking a tough stance on drugs during my time as president," wrote Gaviria. However, instead of relying on law enforcement, Gaviria advised seeing drugs "as a social problem and not a military one", thus decriminalising consumption and providing treatment for drug abusers.

"Throwing more soldiers and police at the drug users is not just a waste of money but also can actually make the problem worse. Locking up nonviolent offenders and drug users almost always backfires, instead strengthening organized crime," noted Gaviria. He also called for improving public health and safety, reinforcing anticorruption regulations, combating money laundering, and investing in sustainable development.

Why should Duterte or anybody else take Gaviria's advice? "Trust me, I learned the hard way," wrote the former-President in his op-ed. And it's always better to learn from somebody else's mistake than to make it yourself.