Chapter 6. Greenhouse effect: the role of the executive power
6.1. A suitable enemy and a cultural surprise
proposal excluded a market model, and included only personal cultivation mechanisms, either domestic or in social cannabis clubs.
In this chapter, the analytical focus lies in tracing the attention shift that introduced cannabis into the macro political agenda in 2012. The analysis will proceed as follows: I will start by setting the scene of the executive power announcement to regulate cannabis, identifying the specific actors within the Uruguayan government that originally pushed for this reform. Following this, I will characterise this participation not as a mere involvement but as a surprising and conflictual irruption that created a
T J B H
done that, I will discuss in some depth why there was such a strong emotional clash of positions by analysing the relationships between why, how and by whom cannabis became regulated. Having outlined this second stage in the cannabis regulation process, I will conclude by making the case for the inclusion of politics moral foundations as a suitable framework to define more precisely the advocacy belief systems. Furthermore, I will contend that by engaging H (2012) moral theory it is possible to better grasp cross-cultural variations in drug policy change explanations more generally, a call already made by previous works in this field.
6.1. A suitable enemy and a cultural surprise
On the morning of the 13 May 2012, Uruguayans woke up to an impressive image that would be repeated ad infinitum in the mass media8; the CCTV cameras of the traditional La Pasiva restaurant, in the heart of Montevideo city, recorded the break-in of two young boys who, during a robbery, executed a restaurant worker at point blank. The Montevideo Police Chief quickly offered his view in the main news programmes; according to him, this violent robbery was not an isolated incident, but rather the template for many young and violent delinquents that are generally under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
This event catalysed a remarkable discontent in Uruguayan society regarding public safety and crime Brutal crime shocks Uruguay I Uruguayan society moved by La
P E A
8 According to FOCO consultant, between the 13th and the 18th of May Channel 4 showed the video 44 times;
Channel 10, 25 times; Channel 12, 23 times and Channel 5, 4 times. Between them, they accumulated 102 times in total, that is, almost once per hour throughout the week.
spontaneous demonstrations against violence spread through the country. Social media was full of
I M O U
Facebook, a public demonstration in front of the P building to express the indignation and impotence of the people, overwhelmed by this state of violence and feeling that what the government has been doing to stop it is far away from being effective U I 14/05/2012).
At the time, I was working on a project centred on desistance, re-entry and crime policy reform dynamics as part of the Criminology research group of the Faculty of Social Science, and I happened to witness this event. It was not a big demonstration for the country - around a hundred people were there - but, importantly, the rate of public figures present was remarkably high: I could identify representatives of every political party and of the National Workers Union (PIT-CNT). When asked
about the the unbearable state
of violence U
that forgets about the victims of violence and overprotects the delinquents F
I hyper-integrated
and crime link issue hit particularly strongly, crosscutting social classes and political parties.
Moreover, secondary data suggests that Uruguay represents a special, paradoxical case within the most violent continent in the world. According to the Latinobarometro, there is extremely low agreement that public policies targeting crime or drug trafficking are improving the situation (2% and 3%), and a very low perception of public safety (15%); yet, Uruguay remains as one of the
places regarding victimisation rates in the region (Lagos and Dammert 2012). Meanwhile, public safety
P
political affinities. In 2011, drugs followed public safety as an important concern for 21% of the Uruguayans and since then, though declining, it remained among the first four problems (Factum, 2014). Furthermore, the amount of time reserved for police news in the main Uruguayan TV news shows almost doubled between 2005 and 2009 (Silvera & Natalevich, 2012).
As Aboal, Campanella and Lanzilotta (2012) show, there has been an increasing trend in all types of crime since 1985, with an accelerated jump in the recessive phase of the economy (1999 2004) that was not followed by a re-equilibration after the economic recuperation in 2004, when crime rates kept as high as during the economic crisis (see graphic below). For the period 2005 2010 (the first Frente Amplio administration) among crimes against property, only the violent variants increased; 65%
T
urban regions of the country - Montevideo, Canelones and Maldonado-, more than doubling the rate compared to the rest of the country; 53.43 vs. 22.23 in 2010 (Aboal et al., 2012). Consequently, since 2004 Uruguay has been living a particular situation of improving economic condition, better income distribution and increasing violent crime rates.
Figure 8. Crime, unemployment and GNP rates evolution, Uruguay (1990 2010)
Source: (Aboal, Campanella, & Lanzilotta, 2012, p. 10) References:
Total crime
Unemployment (right axis) GNP (left axis)
According to my research participants, underpinning this state of affairs regarding public safety, there
U
namely, the paradoxical correlation of an improving economic situation and increasing violent
crime rates- C Los Pastabaseros
users]. The free base cocaine users came to epitomize everything that was wrong in Uruguay, becoming cause and consequence of failure in an otherwise increasingly prosperous society. Free base cocaine is a crack-like drug that appeared in the Southern Cone markets around 2001-2002 in the context of the regional economic crisis (TNI, 2006). According to specialists, it came as a by-product
dynamics. Free base cocaine is an intermediate stage of the cocaine production process, resulting in a cheaper, stronger and more toxic substance (Pascale, Negrín, & Laborde, 2010). By 2011, slightly more than 25% of the women and two out of five men declared to have committed the crime for which they were imprisoned under the influence of some drug; for 60% of the women and 47% of the men, the drug was free base cocaine (Vigna, 2012).
The free base cocaine problem was politically important for the cannabis debate because it made drug policies climb up the political agenda, reframing drug use as something other than a lifestyle or value conflict. Thus, for example, the impact of free base cocaine in the political system was so important
A U
was created specially to deal with this issue. As the parliamentary transcripts of the day register:
There has not been in the last 50 years another phenomenon similar to free base cocaine in
F
citizen who face the fact of living in an unsafe society, confronted by the possibility of being robbed, wounded or murdered by some of these boys who, in the desperation provoked by addiction, are compelled to attack others without weighting any consequence C Representantes, 7/04/2010).
we [the Partido Colorado] also feel that free base cocaine is an epidemic that goes forward and deteriorates society, as already happened in other European countries such as Spain, and their
19 I
development in any aspect of their personal life, because it was truncated by addiction (Cámara de Representantes, 7/04/2010).
As pointed out by the former Partido Colorado presidential candidate and current senator Pedro Bordaberry in the national election campaign:
I A
that it is possible to improve the situation. By doing only one thing, we will improve by 30, 40%...
Do you know what it is? Kicking free base cocaine out of Uruguay: declaring war to free base
cocaine P C 17/10/2009).
For the Frente Amplio senator and partner of former president Mujica, Lucía Topolansky:
F U J B
[Partido Colorado], and we should not forget about that, it is the cause of these crime rates (Redacción 180, 14/05/2012).
A doctor and cannabis reform activist specialised in drug treatment, reflected during the interview:
Culturally, what started to happen was very rough for us. Uruguay has a long history of pacific T types of crimes are typically linked to these types of substances, such as free base cocaine D
interview).
As the quotes above expose, the Uruguayan political elite mainly framed the problem of free base cocaine as a threat to stability and cohesion: as a factor breaking the ethics of the community by having negative effects towards as an that deteriorates and
As it was previously reviewed (section 2.3.1.), although the normalisation process of cannabis experienced in North America and Europe interacted in different ways with the moral shocks related with crack and heroin use in the 1980s and 1990s, a common factor observed in the literature is that
T
Portugal, cannabis decriminalisation appeared as a by-product of a wider harm reduction strategy mainly concerned about hard drugs use (Van het Loo et al., 2002; Hughes, 2007). In the Dutch case, the market separation between soft and hard drugs became a key motivation for the public endorsement of the coffeeshops system (Cohen, 1994; Grund & Breeksema, 2013).
Suitable moral enemies such as crack, heroin or free base cocaine and their consumers, may be useful to be feared and hence fought, uniting the other side, making it possible for priorities to change, focusing all attention on certain phenomena, and forgetting about other problems. However, as the criminologist Nils Christie (1986) notes, suitable enemies will not be defined in ways that threaten
centrally positioned and relatively powerful groups in society, who eventually can organise themselves and resist the negative labelling, objecting the definition of the problem as a real problem. Thus, by 2011, 0.2% of the Uruguayan population mostly composed of young lower class people- that declared to have used free base cocaine in the last month, might be a suitable enemy. However, the 4.9% - mostly composed of young middleclass and educated people- that declared to have used cannabis in the last month is less fitting (OUD, 2011). Thus, as explained by a member of the Judicial System, a drug policy approach started to emerge. In the Uruguayan case, free base cocaine shifted the political attention to the drugs topic at the same time as reframing cannabis as a
I
market.
Paradoxically, when in Uruguay the whole discussion about harm and risk reduction started to develop, another discussion and drug paradigm was also beginning: we started a path to differentiate between good and bad drugs. The good drug was marihuana, the bad drug
Even before cannabis legalisation, it was already very odd that in Uruguay somebody would go to prison for selling minor quantities of cannabis. Conversely, for free base cocaine there was a totally prohibitionist stance instilled among justice operators that used to frame and still frames free base cocaine as the mother of every public safety problem in the country (Prosecutor Organised Crime Court (id16), interview).
Moreover, as previously reviewed (section 5.2.), unlike free base cocaine users cannabis activism was made of a new type of organised political actor with lobbying capabilities, nucleated at the new rights
agenda. As the Partido Colorado A U
commission report noted with worry:
In the first year and a half of A
Commission started to change from free base cocaine effects to cannabis personal cultivation as a harm reduction solution Partido Colorado; Addictions Legislative Commission, Minority report, 2011).
Additionally, the drugs issue was reframed in Uruguay not only because of free base cocaine use but also because of drug trafficking dynamics themselves. Typically, the crimes that were linked with drug U a relatively important international money laundering hub (Sain, 2009; Derghougassian, 2009; Bagley, 2012; Durán-Martínez, 2015). Conversely, in recent years, public safety authorities were noticing with concern the rise of new violent ways of organised crime, leading to territorial disputes and score settlings in peripheral urban zones. According to the Attorney
G office:
The violent confrontations between drug trafficking gangs have been generalised. Until now, the problem of contracted killers did not appear in the scenery of the common people.
But this risk became concrete last Saturday, when this type of conflict unfolded on a public bus, and other passengers were used as a human shield. Most of these type of crimes remain unresolved. People form the neighbourhoods do not speak because they are scared of retaliations: it is the law of silence. The prosecutors of the Organized Crime Court have received life threats already D 2015/06/05)
According to the regional comparative data available provided by the UNODC, homicide rates in Uruguay are less than half the regional rate, but higher than in Argentina or Chile. Nevertheless, the
M I increased the most between 2011 and 2012 (by 35%) reaching the highest record since 1985, with 269 deaths (Ministerio del Interior, 2013). Score settlings were registered as a category of their own for the first time at national level in 2012 and immediately turned into the first cause of violent death in the country, followed by domestic violence for which Uruguay holds the shameful first place in South America (CEPAL, 2012). Within this context, the Uruguayan minister of the interior Eduardo Bonomi critically reflected in an interview:
For a long time, the left centred its attention on the economic, political and social projects but left the problem of crime unattended. They believed that social and economic policies would restrain crime by resolving the inequalities in society, and acted in consequence. It was not understood as necessary to elaborate public safety policies specifically, and when the topic was discussed it was in terms of tough or soft on crime but there were not any policies, strategies
“ M I
policies that have already proved to be of little help. But also within the left, that was posing a public safety framework completely naïvely and inadequately M I
interview).
In this way, the scandalous La Pasiva murder of May 2012 catalysed the remarkable discontent in Uruguayan society regarding the paradoxical situation of improving economic condition, better income distribution and increasing violent crime rates. As the aforementioned comparative data available in Latin America shows, within the most violent continent in the world, Uruguayans are exceptionally worried about public safety U
places regarding victimisation rates and extremely critical about public policies targeting crime and drug trafficking. Within this context, free base cocaine use and drug trafficking dynamics
something other than a secularised lifestyles value conflict as discussed in Chapter 5. In this way,
drugs climbed up
drug.
A Strategy for Life and Coexistence
To confront this lack of leadership regarding public safety that was threatening the Frente Amplio political project, almost one month after the La Pasiva scandal, on the 20th of June 2012, the Executive
P P “ C - M - 2015)- “
for Life and Coexistence T without any doubt we
population P F
years in government, the Frente Amplio (Robinson, 2014);
in the context of a growing country, where more and more social groups have access to a wider pull of material and immaterial goods, where both indigence and poverty are being reduced, marginality persists and diverse forms of social anomie and transgression increase (Presidencia, 2012, p. 3).
This cultural surprise relates to the gradual but resilient disjunction between expectations and perceived reality. The expectation was that after ten years of a left-wing government in a context of a growing economy the social and economic policies displayed favouring the most vulnerable groups within society should have restrained crime, turning Uruguay into a hyper integrated country one more time. However, the perceived reality was one of continuously increasing violence. Thus, the resilience of the paradox of crime ultimately reached critical mass, for it was further reasoned that the crime policies implemented until then were doubly lacking sound foundations. The problem was that, on the one hand:
current crime policies have proven to be of little efficacy and with a clear tendency towards brutality and injustice (Presidencia, 2012, p. 7). Yet, on the other hand: for many years the left has had a mono-dimensional discourse that explained crimes almost as a direct product of the neoliberal policies developed in the region since the second half of the 20th century. Nowadays this explanation, although still relevant, is clearly not enough P encia, 2012, p. 3).
T to defeat the fear in society P
2012, p. 1) was briefly exposed. This Strategy for Life and Coexistence included initiatives as diverse as the creation of a fund for the economic reparation of the victims of violent crimes and adjustments alongside a legal code pertaining to juvenile offenders (for a list of the fifteen proposals see annex 1).
M proposed: stiffening penalties for
police corruption and free base cocaine trafficking; the inclusion in the national budget of an integral strategy against problematic drug use, especially of free base cocaine; the creation of specialized
justice boards i narcomenudeo
commercialisation state monopoly. The person responsible for presenting this last proposal was the
M D F H the Uruguayan chancellery will fight
internationally for cannabis legalisation in the region, because this war [on drugs] was won by the
narcos F H “ L C P C 20/06/2012).
This event represented the first time that a member of the executive power publicly claimed their will to regulate cannabis in the country. According to the data collected, the aim to push forward cannabis regulation, while framing it as part of a wider Strategy for Life and Coexistence, came from a specific group within the government comprised of the Uruguayan president Mujica and two of his most trusted collaborators: the Minister of the Interior Eduardo Bonomi, and of National Defence, Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro. The three of them not only belong to the same political sector within the Frente Amplio, but also share a deep and long history together, which is important to highlight. Back in the 1960s, Mujica, Bonomi and Fernández Huidobro counted themselves among the co-founders of the National Liberation Movement Tupamaros a left-wing urban guerrilla group set up in the 1960s, in reaction to the rough social and economic situation of the time. Their fight was against occidental liberal capitalist imperialism, primarily represented by the United States, and the diffident national political elite that systematically overlooked the national common interest, uncritically following the
G A T front-runners, the three
U W
recuperation, the Tupamaros integrated themselves into the recently founded Frente Amplio, as the Popular Participation Movement (MPP) sector, and quickly became one of the most supported and powerful groups within the party. Although updated to modern democratic politics, time did not stop them from retaining their particular way of understanding politics as a tool to change the extant power
relations. As reported in the General considerations on strategy and tactics white paper co-authored by the three of them and discussed at a MPP-FA national meeting, in their opinion:
politics is not the art of the possible. If that was the case, politicians, even those who were left minded, would only need to be worried about administrating the course of events, and history, always alike, would repeat itself over and over again. Politics is the art of transforming what is necessary into what is possible MPP N D “
p. s/d).
As I will argue throughout the rest of this chapter, for them, cannabis selling was necessary if the problem was going to be defined as one of illegal supply violence, and it was them who made it possible.
6.2. The government’s irruption
U roposal to regulate cannabis and the possible
linkages with the political process that civil society and legislators were leading -described in the previous chapter-, became one of the most challenging puzzles of my fieldwork activities, as I kept bringing up this topic in formal interviews and informal discussions that took place as part of my participant observation. In this section, I will propose that, contrary to how it has been characterised by most of the reviewed literature on the topic, the attitude can be better characterised as an irruption, rather than simply a normal gradual involvement in the ongoing debate. This because it was sudden and highly controversial, significantly changing the parameters and actors involved in
linkages with the political process that civil society and legislators were leading -described in the previous chapter-, became one of the most challenging puzzles of my fieldwork activities, as I kept bringing up this topic in formal interviews and informal discussions that took place as part of my participant observation. In this section, I will propose that, contrary to how it has been characterised by most of the reviewed literature on the topic, the attitude can be better characterised as an irruption, rather than simply a normal gradual involvement in the ongoing debate. This because it was sudden and highly controversial, significantly changing the parameters and actors involved in