Brazil Threatens to Shoot Down Drug Trafficking Planes

The Brazilian parliament has passed and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has backed a law that lets the Brazilian military shoot down planes suspected of carrying drugs. With prohibition and interdiction failing to stem the tide of drugs in the Americas, this escalation is a sign of desperation. Best of all, in order to reassure people that there won't be any chance of mistakes a procedure for firing is in place that suggests any suspected planes will have left Brazilian airspace by the time all nine steps have been carried out.

Brazil is a major transit point for cocaine. Coca grows in the Andes, Brazil has huge stretches of rain forest (despite the years of deforestation in a silly effort to create farmland) and there are too few cops around to prevent coke producers from operating. So long as the blow was only going to North America, it was merely a source of trouble in relations with the Yanks. But the American market for coca derivatives is saturated (or "matured" if one prefers business school jargon) and running into competition from much cheaper crystal meth, and Brazil has become a major market for some traffickers.

Rather than legalize and tax, though, the South Americans have taken a page out of the North American play book, and they have turned their military into drug-fighting forces. Colombia's civil war has gone on thanks to illegal drugs for around 30 years. Brazil is luckier in that it isn't fighting a civil war just now. However, Colombia has shot down a dozen such planes this year, and Peru is going to restart its policy of shooting planes down.

The Peruvian case is interesting and foreshadows what the Brazilian defense minister may face some day. Back in 2001, five people including an American missionary and his daughter were killed when the Peruvian air force mistakenly shot down their plane which had suffered communications troubles. The Peruvians thought they were drug runners and the rest makes for unhappy endings.

Drugs are not particularly good for human beings. Refined coca, in particular, lacks redeeming social qualities. But enforcement of prohibition now has the largest country in South America committing its air force to shooting down civilian aircraft. If the plane in question is about to crash into a skyscraper, that is one thing. If it is maybe, possibly, potentially carrying Inca nose candy, shooting it out of the sky is quite another. It is a waste.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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