Nobel Prize Winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez Suggests Solutions to Colombian Drug Problems

INTERNATIONAL April 1995

Nobel Prize-winning novelist and unofficial Colombian spokesperson Gabriel Garcia Marquez is speaking out about the devastation caused in his country by the cocaine trade (James Brooke, "Cocaine's Reality, by Garcia Marquez," New York Times, Mar. 11, 1995, p. 3).

Marquez says the Colombian government should fund research to develop a synthetic alternative to cocaine. American chemists could then capitalize on the cocaine market, similar to the way American marijuana growers took over that market in the early 1980's.

Marquez said the cocaine trade has turned honest farmers and youths into criminals. "The drug traffickers taught people that they were stupid to work," Marquez said.