Reos Partners Supports “Game-Changing” Scenario Project on Drugs in the Americas

On April 15, 2012, the presidents and prime ministers of the countries in North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean held a private meeting during their Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia. The chair of the Summit, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, raised a concern that had been troubling him for some time: that the “war on drugs,” which his country and others in the hemisphere had been pursuing at enormous cost for 40 years, was not being won. In spite of progress in some areas, the problems of drugs have remained terribly and frustratingly stuck, with continued high levels of addiction, incarceration, and violence. “Sometimes we all feel that we have been pedaling on a stationary bicycle,” he said. “We look to our right and our left and we still see the same landscape.”

Santos knew of Reos Partners’ transformative scenario planning work from an influential project about the future of Colombia, Destino Colombia, that we worked on together in 1996. He was also familiar with the work of our partners, the Bogota-based Center for Leadership and Management (CLG in Spanish) in promoting debates and dialogues about leadership challenges on policy matters of key importance in Colombia and the region. Santos proposed to his counterparts that they endorse the use of the scenario planning methodology to explore drug policy in the Americas. At the press conference that followed the private meeting, Santos announced: “We, the region's leaders, held an invaluable discussion on the global drug problem. We agreed on the need to analyze the results of the current policy in the Americas and to explore new approaches to strengthen this struggle and to become more effective. We have issued the Organization of American States a mandate to that end.”

A few weeks later, the Organization of American States (OAS) engaged Reos Partners, together with CLG, to lead the scenario process to “explore new approaches.” At the same time, the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) led a parallel and interconnected process of constructing an extensive “analytical report” of the drug situation, with the involvement of more than 50 leading experts in the drug field.

To initiate the scenarios process, Reos, CLG, and the OAS put together a staff team from across the Americas (including Reos representatives from Montreal, New York, Guatemala City, and São Paulo); conducted dialogue interviews with 75 leaders from throughout the hemisphere, including current and former heads of state; and invited 46 exceptional individuals—from security, business, health, education, indigenous cultures, international organizations, the justice system, civil society, and politics—to form a scenario team.

The scenario team’s task was to construct relevant, challenging, plausible, and clear scenarios of what could happen in the future regarding drug policy, based on current trends and including relevant political, economic, social, cultural, and international dynamics. These scenarios would not be forecasts of what will happen or recommendations of what should happen over the coming years. The goal was to create radically different ways of understanding—and responding to—“the drug problem.”

The team undertook this task through seven days of meetings (during two workshops in Panama City) and hundreds of emails, as they collaboratively and iteratively wrote their report. The product of this collective creative effort was a set of four scenarios (see summary table). In addition to representing different ways of viewing the problem, the scenarios also illustrate the opportunities and challenges that each of these responses could produce.

On May 17, 2013, Joaquin Moreno of CLG and I accompanied the Secretary General of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, as he presented the report of the scenario team and the companion analytical report to President Santos in Bogota. Santos commented: “The four scenarios in this report allow us to analyze the issue of drugs through considering what could happen in the future. They are not recommendations of what should happen or forecasts of what will happen; they simply provide us with realistic options, without prejudices or dogmas.… I am committed to continuing to promote a deep, serious, and responsible debate with regional and global leaders, experts, universities, and think tanks to start—the sooner the better—generating new responses to addressing this serious problem that continues to plague humanity.”

Newspapers, television and radio stations, think tanks, and bloggers throughout the Americas and Europe have given the report voluminous and favourable coverage. The Guardian’s headline was: “Western leaders study 'game changing' report on global drugs trade.” The Royal Institute of International Affairs called it “a watershed in the international debate on drugs and organized crime.” The Council on Foreign Relations said: “Most international reports simply gather dust. This one won’t. It offers the basis for a long-overdue conversation.”

The scenario report provides a new, provocative, and reasoned framework and language for undertaking what Mr. Insulza referred to as “the long awaited discussion” of the problems of drugs, within and across countries in the Americas and beyond. We in Reos are happy to have contributed to getting the work to this stage and are grateful for the teamwork achieved among the Reos, CLG, and OAS teams. We look forward to continuing with this effort.

Four Scenarios for the Drug Problem in the Americas, 2012-25

The first scenario is called Together. In this scenario, the drug problem is seen to be part of a larger security problem, with weak state institutions unable to control organized crime and the violence and corruption it generates. Given this perspective, the attempted response is to strengthen the capacity of judicial and public safety institutions to ensure security, through greater professionalization, better partnering with citizens, new success indicators, and improved international cooperation. This response offers opportunities for improved safety, increased credibility of state institutions supported by increased public confidence and taxation, and renewed partnerships throughout the hemisphere. But implementing this response also poses daunting challenges: the need to rebuild state institutions in the face of opposition from entrenched interests; weak, patchy, and lagging international cooperation; and the “balloon effect” of criminal activities shifting to places with weaker institutions.

The second scenario is called Pathways. In this scenario, the drug problem is seen to result from the current attempt to control drugs through criminal sanctions (especially arrests and incarceration of users and low-level dealers), an approach that is producing too much harm. Given this perspective, the attempted response is to try out and learn from alternative legal and regulatory regimes, starting with cannabis. This response offers opportunities to develop better drug policies through experimentation; to reallocate resources from controlling drugs and drug users to preventing and treating problematic use; and to shrink some criminal markets and profits through regulation. The challenges in implementing this response include the need to manage the risks of experimentation, especially in transitioning from dealing with drugs through the criminal justice system to allowing drugs to be sold in regulated markets (possibly leading to increases in problematic use); and the need to deal with contraband and new inter-governmental tensions that result from differences in laws between jurisdictions.

The third scenario is Resilience. In this scenario, the drug problem is seen to be a manifestation and magnifier of underlying social and economic dysfunctions that lead to violence and addiction. The response is to strengthen communities and to improve public safety, health, education, and employment through bottom-up programs created by local governments, businesses, and non-governmental organizations. This response offers opportunities to create more inclusive, less violent, and healthier communities, which take an active role in fighting crime and drugs. The challenges in implementing this response are insufficient resources and capacities of many local organizations to address these problems; and the lag time before this response reduces drug-related crime.

The fourth scenario is Disruption. In this scenario, the drug problem is seen to disproportionately and unfairly affect countries where drugs (especially cocaine) are produced and through which they transit. The response is to abandon the fight against (or to reach an accommodation with) drug production within and transit through their territories. This response offers the opportunity to reduce violence; to increase attention to domestic rather than international priorities; and to free up resources currently being spent on security and law enforcement. The challenges in implementing this response are reduced enforcement, which allows the expansion of drug markets and profits; the possible domination of states by criminal organizations; and conflicts over violations of international treaties.