GOVERNMENT OF ARGENTINA THINKING OUT LOUD ON

C O N F I D E N T I A L BUENOS AIRES 001478 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/24/2018 TAGS: SNAR PREL PGOV EFIN KJUS PHUM SOCI AR SUBJECT: GOVERNMENT OF ARGENTINA THINKING OUT LOUD ON DECRIMINALIZATION OF DRUG USE AND IMPROVING PRECURSOR CHEMICAL CONTROLS REF: A. A. BUENOS AIRES 1137 ¶B. B. ASUNCION 702 Classified By: Ambassador E. Anthony Wayne. Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (SBU) Summary: Five Argentine Cabinet Ministers joined a host of other public and private figures October 9 to launch a two-day workshop on Argentine narcotics policies, offering the first serious public dialogue on decriminalization of consumption since President Fernandez de Kirchner mooted the idea publicly in early August. Minister of Justice Anibal Fernandez gave the most substantive remarks at the opening, lamenting the disproportionate use of public law enforcement resources to deal with individual drug consumers and small-time carriers and calling for a re-orientation of efforts toward prevention, health services to addicts, and improved law enforcement aimed at traffickers. He described continuing GOA efforts to close down illegal traffic in ephedrine, emphasizing that he had met with the Ambassador (in attendance at the opening) two months previously to coordinate an improved GoA response to the ephedrine challenge. He dismissed the idea that narcotics production had become a serious concern in the country. Notably absent from the proceedings was Dr. Jose Granero, the head of the national drugs policy agency (SEDRONAR),long in Fernandez's bureaucratic cross-hairs and a critic of decriminalization. While we anticipate only a modest chance that decriminalization will move forward in the current political climate, it is significant that the GOA is giving coherent and critical attention to the social costs of drug control efforts as practiced in the country. Fernandez's remarks were positive in that they publicly identified failures of coordination and enforcement in drug control. His discourse was supported by a simultaneously released report of a "Scientific Assessment Committee" that dismissed most Argentine efforts to date in drug control as failures, including efforts to halt money laundering, control cross-border trade, and deter rising consumption. End Summary. ¶2. (U) Ambassador and counter-narcotics officer attended the opening session October 9 of what was titled the "First Workshops on Public Narcotics Policies." The event's institutional host, President of the Public College of Lawyers of the Federal Capital Dr. Jorge Rizzo, joked that it had brought forth what was practically a Cabinet Meeting, with Ministers of Justice, Labor, Social Development, Interior and Foreign Affairs participating, along with top officials from the Ministries of Education and Health. Counter-narcotics issues gained much media attention following the ephedrine-linked triple homicide in August (reftel A),the capture of a Argentine-based Mexican trafficker in Paraguay in September (reftel B),and a continuing perception that trafficking and drug-related violence are on the rise in Argentina. Social Scientists Assert Drug Policy Failure -------------- ¶3. (U) The basis for the conference was release of recommendations by the Scientific Assessment Committee for the Control of Illicit Traffic in Drugs, Psychotropic Substances, and Complex Crime, coordinated by Dr. Monica Cunarro, a criminal lawyer in the capital. Cunarro emphasized several key findings from the report in her remarks, including that: -- 70 percent of those entering the Argentine legal system were there for the personal use of drugs and had been arrested not through investigation or intelligence work but through simple public exposure at transit checkpoints or other circumstances. -- The cost of the legal cases against individual users was equivalent to 40 percent of national spending on maternal health and double the spending on HIV/AIDS. -- The judicial system was buckling under the many minor cases, which were not tracked or cross-referenced effectively to deal with larger trends. -- Argentina's borders remained porous to traffickers. -- Money laundering laws were ineffective and have yet to result in one single conviction. -- There had not been a single judicial case launched against the misuse of precursor chemicals, including ephedrine. -- Demand and consumption of illicit drugs had never been higher. The Committee's report also criticized the GOA's failure to control alcohol and nicotine consumption, arguing that alcohol was related to 70% of criminal activity in the country. ¶4. (U) Cunarro also referred to a major survey released in July by the government's statistics agency, INDEC, detailing use (at least once) by respondents of tobacco (52.5 percent), alcohol (76.8),unprescribed tranquilizers (3.7),stimulants (.9),marijuana (7.2) and cocaine (2.0). Figures for all drugs other than alcohol and tobacco were highest in the city of Buenos Aires, with one-time marijuana use given as 19.6 percent of the population. Justice Minister: Tough on Traffickers, Soft on Users -------------- -------------- ¶5. (U) Fernandez repeated many of the study statistics and then built the groundwork for the government's case to decriminalize individual consumption. He called the criminal approach to consumers a long-running failure and noted that several European countries -- including Portugal, he said, acknowledging the presence of the Portuguese ambassador -- had introduced more tolerant rules toward consumers without an increase in consumption. He repeated the figure that 70 percent of criminal cases were related to individual drug consumption and noted that only four percent of cases resulted in convictions. Meanwhile the government was spending USD 1500 for each arrest and USD 5000 for each case brought to trial. These resources, he insisted, could be better used to combat traffickers and rehabilitate addicts. Argentina's consumption problem, he said, was neither significant nor growing. (Labor Minister Carlos Tomada, however, had previously in the morning's remarks noted rising employer and union concerns about drug use by workers in the country.) ¶6. (U) The Justice Minister used the speech to dismiss as "unimportant, isolated incidents" the discovery of drug laboratories in Greater Buenos Aires, insisting that Argentina's principal challenge was the trafficking of narcotics from other countries to markets in Europe, Asia, and North America. "Someone has made it all up," he said of stories that cartels were establishing production facilities in the country. He also questioned again the common wisdom that the cheap and destructive drug being used in poorer areas, "paco," was a cocaine derivative, saying that more study of the substance was required. Still, Fernandez acknowledged the GOA's failure to coordinate against trafficking, particularly a failure to share information between national and provincial law enforcement agencies. He announced a new government plan to better monitor and control precursor chemicals, including ephedrine, through coordination between the Health Ministry, Justice Ministry, and SEDRONAR, the government drug control policy agency. At the speech, Fernandez revealed that he had convoked law enforcement agencies to a conversation with Ambassador Wayne on ephedrine prior to the publicity of the triple homicide because he recognized the growing challenge. He mentioned the DEA along with European partners in pledging continued cooperation with international partners. International Cooperation a Must -------------- ¶7. (U) Foreign Minister Taiana's short remarks at the conference were positive, focused on the need for international cooperation and coordination giving the global and flexible nature of drug trafficking. He underscored the human cost of the drug trade, both for users and those caught up in trafficking. He also emphasized that Argentina would respect human rights as it increased enforcement actions. Interagency Squabbles -------------- ¶8. (C) Jose Granero, head of the government's counter-drug policy agency SEDRONAR, was noticeably absent from the October 9 event. SEDRONAR responds directly to the presidency and Granero, a friend of the Kirchners from Santa Cruz province, holds the post despite apparent mutual antipathy between him and Minister Fernandez. Granero told Poloff over lunch September 30 that Argentina's extremely weak and politicized judicial and law enforcement institutions were not prepared to seriously address growing trafficking. Asked about prospects for change, he replied simply that it would not occur while Fernandez was on the job. Fernandez had attempted to limit SEDRONAR's ability to regulate ephedrine and had prohibited the coast guard, national police and border police, all under his ministry, from reporting drug seizure information to SEDRONAR. Fernandez's attempt to shift control over ephedrine imports from SEDRONAR to INTI, a national technical standards agency with no experience in the area, had failed, but he had inserted the Ministry into official processes on precursor chemicals. Granero was also critical of decriminalization (something we have heard from other officials involved in counter-narcotics as well),expressing his concern that it will lead to increasing consumption. Ephedrine Challenge -------------- ¶9. (SBU) Granero has also noted that SEDRONAR had faced a huge challenge in controlling precursor chemicals, having to compile lists of thousands of legitimate users (including for fuels). On ephedrine, SEDRONAR had been hampered by a law that provided no real grounds for rejecting applications by legitimately registered businesses, including pharmacies, and that this had led to Argentina's exploitation by traffickers sending the product to Mexico or processing it in Argentina. A public joint decree issued September 17, 2008, by the Ministries of Justice and Health and by SEDRONAR had changed that, prohibiting the import of ephedrine by pharmacies or individuals and allowing drug manufacturers to import it only with approval by SEDRONAR and the Health Ministry's medicines inspection agency, ANMAT. The regulation does not appear to control the import of finished medicines with ephedrine as an ingredient (i.e., antihistamines). ¶10. (U) In her 9 October conference remarks, Prosecutor Cunarro had critiqued the idea that a non-ministerial office like SEDRONAR could have operational regulatory and law enforcement duties related to counter-narcotics. She described the agency as akin to the video game "Pacman," swallowing up functions from other ministries inappropriately. Comment: Decriminalization Far From Done Deal -------------- ¶11. (SBU) Fernandez and Cunarro put forward a number of cogent critiques of Argentine counter-drug policies in building their case for decriminalization, but it is not evident that the idea is generating broad support. It is a notion that will find supporters and opponents among both the Kirchner camp and the political opposition, so it is not clear what the winning Congressional coalition would look like to change the law. It would also require some expenditure of presidential political capital to succeed, and the Casa Rosada may choose to conserve that resource for other objectives. In the meantime, our focus will be on responding to and encouraging any concrete GOA efforts to increase its effectiveness against trafficking and nascent illegal drug production in the country, including achieving better control of precursor chemicals. Notably, DEA's concrete cooperation with GOA law enfoircement agencies continues to bear good fruit. WAYNE