I read an opinion column titled “If You Want to Help Ecuador, Stop Snorting Cocaine,” by Juan Pablo Spinetto, in Bloomberg, which claims that the violence in Ecuador is intrinsically linked to the rise in cocaine use in the United States. and Europe, our main trading partners, with whom we have been in friendly relations for centuries.

The damage caused to Ecuador, thousands of deaths and injuries, the destruction of its production apparatus, the contamination of all its institutions and the serious impact on democracy, among others, are the consequences of the unrestrained use of cocaine in the northern countries, which caused five times more production of this alkaloid in Colombia than at the time of the famous drug dealer Pablo Escobar Gaviria (80s of the last century).

What has changed

That’s enough! The problems of these permissive societies cannot be solved by consuming cocaine from the supply; Well, that strategy didn’t work for decades, and it won’t work now either. This phenomenon must be faced from the demand side, because we are talking about rich societies that can pay for the use of this and other narcotics. It is not understood that these populations are increasingly encouraged to use narcotics, as a result of a multitude of reasons that I will not mention due to space limitations in this column.

According to the United Nations (UN), the United States and Europe consume more than 50% of the world’s cocaine, which represents almost 1,200 tons of narcotics, worth approximately 1.5 billion dollars, which do not return to the Putumaya jungles, but are laundered in international banking and engage in activities such as prostitution, human trafficking, illegal migration, illegal mining, arms sales, kidnapping, extortion, corruption and more.

We fought in worse places

Do not send weapons to Ukraine!

Corruption should be understood as a structural phenomenon within developing societies, but when we talk about corruption due to the drug trade, which made it possible to destroy the institutionalization of countries, as shown by the case that the Prosecutor’s Office called Metastases, we see how the Reach of the tentacles of mafias and cartels affects the fabric of democratic societies and contaminates them in all their spheres.

Wow friends!, one would say.

It is estimated that 1,000 tons of cocaine were produced in the Andes region in 2019, and that figure will double by 2022. Today, about 2,400 tons are produced.

With this amount of narcotics, developed societies are faced with a deep moral dilemma: while eating healthy, helping the noble goals of human rights, democracy and freedom, they consume cocaine, which kills and causes deep damage to countries like Ecuador. Please stop it, friends from the north; This will be the only way to end this horror that Ecuador is experiencing. (OR)