A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #34-25 - Blood, Money, and Saviors. The War on Drugs: The Thousand Masks of Empire (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Here we are again, the White House directors present us with the same 
"Empire Strikes Back" film, always with the same plot, but this time set 
on the coast of Venezuela, in Trumpian style. They're getting boring; 
these bloodthirsty, control-hungry vampires of power have truly lacked 
imagination. In this horror carousel, the great US power brandishes the 
flag of the war on drugs to justify its military projection. Yet another 
pretext, packaged-as is its wont-as a savior, to justify another war, 
but always to grab oil, resources, and power, and also to avert the 
imminent bankruptcy of the US.

The Trump administration has disturbingly intensified its rhetoric 
against Maduro, accusing him of leading a "Cartel de los Soles," of 
being a drug trafficker, and a "narco-terrorist." According to Trump and 
his supporters, a significant portion of the drug flow-especially 
cocaine-originates in Venezuela or passes through it. So, the brilliant 
plan this time is: let's devastate Venezuela's evil narco-state, put a 
pro-American puppet in charge, and save our unproductive youth, turned 
zombie-like by fentanyl (a synthetic opioid that has caused a wave of 
overdose deaths) on the streets of Los Angeles. Trump, however, has 
never given a damn about these allegations, but they're still excellent 
excuses.

However, independent observers and analysts have strongly questioned 
these accusations. As already mentioned in Massimo Varengo's excellent 
article (Umanità Nova, November 12), according to Pino Arlacchi, former 
director of the UNODC, Venezuela is not a narco-state: the accusations 
are not supported by concrete reports from international anti-drug 
agencies. Furthermore, as the website Contropiano reports, United 
Nations reports only marginally mention Venezuela, indicating that only 
a small fraction of Colombian drugs transit through the country.

In short, demonization based on drug trafficking appears in many cases 
to be a propaganda ploy, useful to legitimize further military pressure 
immediately following the investment, over the past two years, in 
weapons of mass destruction supplied to the friendly state of Israel to 
carry out the genocide in Gaza and maintain its apartheid policy.

According to recent press reports, the US has deployed a significant 
naval fleet in the Caribbean as part of "anti-narcotics" operations 
that, to many, sound like a revival of classic "gunboat diplomacy."

But what is the real loot? Behind these accusations, it is certainly not 
to be ignored that Venezuela is rich in enormous oil reserves and that 
its energy history is deeply intertwined with US interests. For decades, 
the United States has maintained a strategic interest in Venezuelan oil: 
just think of the oil nationalizations in Venezuela, the ever-varying 
power of PDVSA, the state-owned company, and Washington's response with 
sanctions and political pressure. Furthermore, this is certainly not the 
first time the United States has justified its intervention in a 
strategic country, including economically, with moral pretexts ("we are 
fighting the evil of drugs").

To understand the current situation, we must also look at the history of 
US imperialism, its strategies, and how control of resources (especially 
oil) has often guided its actions. Here are some examples.

- Plan Colombia: This is one of the most striking examples of how the 
rhetoric of the "war on drug trafficking" is being used for geopolitical 
and economic reasons. Plan Colombia, supported by the United States, was 
not only an anti-drug campaign, but also a security support operation 
aimed at stabilizing the region to protect strategic interests, 
including oil.

- Energy interventions in Latin America: The US has a long-often 
hidden-history of involvement in Latin American countries when natural 
resources are at stake. For example, Operation FUBELT in Chile 
(1970-1973) is one of the best-known cases. The CIA intervened to 
destabilize the Allende government, fearing that its policies could 
threaten American economic interests.

- Operation Condor: In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States supported 
transnational repressive networks in South America (Argentina, Chile, 
Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, etc.), ostensibly against "subversion," but 
with concrete consequences of political control and repression, often in 
collaboration with authoritarian right-wing regimes.

- Nicaragua: During the 1980s civil war, the Contra rebels, supported by 
the CIA, were accused of trafficking cocaine to finance their fight 
against the Sandinista government. Declassified documents show that NSC 
(National Security Council) officials were aware of the links between 
some Contra commanders and drug traffickers. A Senate investigation (the 
"Kerry Committee") found that some funds earmarked for the Contras came 
from intermediaries connected to drug trafficking. Some sources claim 
that the US exploited the "narco-terrorism" narrative to justify 
military support for the Contras.

- Afghanistan: Opium and strong American responsibility. More and more 
real and complex evidence is emerging of CIA involvement in the Afghan 
poppy fields. During the Soviet invasion (1980s), the US, through 
Operation Cyclone, supported the mujahideen, some of whom, like 
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, used the CIA's help to build opium trafficking 
networks and heroin laboratories. More recently (2004-2015), the CIA 
reportedly launched a secret project to sabotage opium production: 
planes flew over the fields of Helmand and Nangarhar to disperse 
selected poppy seeds, with low concentrations of alkaloids, so that the 
resulting plants genetically contaminated native crops, reducing the 
purity of the opium. The US's political and military support for groups 
that, in turn, exploit opium as an economic resource is clear. The 
secret planting program demonstrates a sophisticated form of 
"alternative warfare": not targeting farmers directly, but seeking to 
degrade the quality of the poppy to reduce the value of the opium. 
Authoritative documents and analyses support the idea that the CIA and 
the US gained a strategic (and partly economic) advantage from the opium 
trade in Afghanistan, especially during the Soviet war.

It is also necessary to examine the international and health-related 
dimensions of addiction to understand the issue of drug trafficking 
beyond its geopolitical perspective.

According to the latest UNODC World Drug Report 2025, global 
non-alcoholic drug use has increased significantly: in 2023, 
approximately 316 million people between the ages of 15 and 64 used at 
least one illegal substance, compared to 5.2% in 2013. The most commonly 
used substances are cannabis (approximately 244 million users), followed 
by opioids (61 million), amphetamines (30.7 million), cocaine (25 
million), and ecstasy (21 million). Furthermore, the cocaine market 
peaked in 2023: illegal production is estimated at 3,708 tons, a 34% 
increase over the previous year. This global boom, according to the 
UNODC, fuels a vicious cycle: greater demand -> greater production -> 
more crime, violence, and instability. On the other hand, from a health 
perspective, the UN reports that only a small portion of people with 
substance use disorders receive adequate treatment: its report 
highlights a significant "treatment gap." In short, addiction is 
increasingly prevalent, yet resources invested in healthcare systems are 
not keeping pace with the problem: punitive policies often prevail over 
public health ones, and not only in the "liberal" United States.

We must also ask, for example, what might happen if the United States 
stopped using resources to threaten, intimidate, and attack, and instead 
invested those same resources in a comprehensive public health plan for 
its own population, with a genuine focus on addiction. This is the 
question we must ask not only those targeted by the war, but also those 
who pay for it, and try to understand how things could be done 
differently. Many experts denounce the dominant strategy in the fight 
against drugs-especially the one exported by the United 
States-privileging repression and criminalization over treatment, 
prevention, and harm reduction. The organization Harm Reduction 
International, for example, published a report criticizing the 
allocation of resources: much of the money is directed toward "war" 
rather than evidence-based health policies (Harm Reduction 
International). This model not only fails to sustainably reduce the drug 
market, but often causes direct harm to vulnerable communities, 
criminalizes drug users, exacerbates inequality, and threatens human 
rights. The real "narco-state" is the imperialist logic that uses the 
pretext of drugs to justify violent interventions and exploitation, 
while ignoring the real needs of suffering people.

According to People's Dispatch, the naval operating cost for US ships 
deployed in the Caribbean (in a hypothetical operation against 
Venezuela) is estimated at at least $18 million per day. A US-Venezuela 
war, if conducted on a large scale with the goal of "winning" and 
stabilizing, could cost tens of billions of dollars, a very high figure 
even for the Pentagon, and unsustainable without serious budgetary 
impacts. Let's say between $20 and $50 billion. With that same $20 to 
$50 billion (or more), the United States could implement a highly 
ambitious but realistic plan for universal or near-universal public 
healthcare, strengthening addiction treatment, prevention, and mental 
health, and greatly reducing domestic social suffering. Shall we make a 
much more conservative estimate and reduce spending to, say, $10 billion 
a year? With $10 billion, it's realistic to build an ambitious public 
plan to treat a significant number (1-2 million) of people with 
addictions in the US, including staff training, harm reduction programs, 
home services, and I think you could even offer free Venezuelan coffee, 
come on.

If the state invested in care, not punishment or intimidation, it would 
demonstrate responsibility toward its citizens (which, in theory, is the 
only reason a state should exist according to certain questionable 
democratic models of the social contract). Instead of sending aircraft 
carriers and naval fleets, it could build recovery centers; instead of 
bombing foreign bases, it could distribute naloxone and psychological 
support. Such a program would not only tackle the fentanyl epidemic from 
within, but would also shatter the narrative that the state deals with 
drugs only for security reasons. It would demonstrate that true security 
is life, not control; that politics is not about domination, but about 
service and solidarity.

Recent data, for example, show that fentanyl seizures in the United 
States have exploded: between 2017 and 2023, seizures increased by 
1,700%, with a significant portion of them being pills; one report noted 
a 30.6% drop in fentanyl-related deaths in one year. According to 
Reuters, the overall decline in overdose deaths is also attributable to 
public health measures (naloxone distribution, therapeutic support), not 
just repressive policies.

Let's imagine a radical plan, a national free public health program in 
the US, whose pillars include, on the one hand, massive prevention 
efforts in schools, communities, and the most vulnerable urban areas, 
with addiction education campaigns; and, on the other, a plan focused on 
treatment and rehabilitation, with free or subsidized clinics for 
substance use disorders, including a strong focus on harm reduction 
(substitution therapy and psychoeducation).

We cannot forget that part of the drug addiction epidemic in the United 
States is rooted in inadequate social policies: a weak welfare system, 
growing inequality, and inadequate public health care that over the past 
twenty years have left millions of people vulnerable, exposed to stress, 
loneliness, and despair. When the state fails to provide material 
support-stable employment, healthcare, solidarity-many end up seeking 
relief and refuge in drugs. This creates a fertile ground for pain to 
thrive. This social ill is not solely the fault of those who suffer from 
it: the state itself is jointly responsible, not only by omission, but 
also by action. And it is not just a contemporary phenomenon. Already in 
the 1960s and 1970s, the massive use of LSD, marijuana, and other 
psychedelics in the hippie movement was not entirely unrelated to state 
maneuvers. Historical documents suggest that the CIA, as part of Project 
MK-ULTRA, funded research on LSD and experimented on young members of 
the counterculture. If the state is an indirect or even direct architect 
of those "sociocultural experiments," who can assure us that it hasn't 
laid the foundations for a much broader epidemic today, fueled by 
poverty, inequality, and a healthcare system that prefers to criminalize 
addiction rather than treat it?

We cannot accept that the rhetoric of security and morality conceals 
profound economic interests, control, and resource exploitation. 
Ultimately, the real solution lies not in war, but in social issues, in 
healthcare, prevention, and treatment. Investing in public health, harm 
reduction, education, and rehabilitation means addressing addiction for 
what it is: a human issue, not a geopolitical scapegoat. A free and just 
world is not built with aircraft carriers or sanctions, but with 
dignity, solidarity, and true freedom.

The state always has its hands stained with blood, corruption, and 
suffering. Let's stop asking violence to become solidarity, let's stop 
asking war to become peace, let's stop asking oppressors to create 
freedom, let's stop asking and take it all back!

Gabriele Cammarata

https://umanitanova.org/sangue-soldi-e-salvatori-guerra-al-narcotraffico-le-mille-maschere-dellimpero/
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