Livia Romano

“A War Not Worth Winning: More Thoughts on the Ongoing War on Drugs”

January, 2010 Print Edition

While there has been a decrease in support from the current administration, the War on Drugs remains a problematic, confusing, and surprisingly tender issue for Americans.  The young scholars of Claremont McKenna College are no exception; in conversations with fellow students, I have heard a wide range of defenses for current drug laws. Some of the more paranoid individuals “want to know that it is not okay for a homeless person on crack to wander around my neighborhood” (real quote).  Others more compassionately maintain that they want to keep drugs away from America’s youth.  Still others are under the bizarre impression that the decriminalization of drugs will result in a nationwide Woodstock revival.  I would like to draw attention away from these theoretical impressions and refocus it on the disturbing and real impacts that this nation’s drug laws have beyond our borders.

Before looking abroad, I would like to note briefly that the tough anti-drug laws in our country have done nothing to curb drug use. A 2008 report by the World Health Organization marked the United States as the world leader in illegal drug use: sixteen percent of Americans admit to having used cocaine, and forty-two percent claim to have used marijuana at least once in their lifetime. In contrast, the Netherlands – which has a notoriously lenient drug policy – happens to have very low rates of drug use: only two percent of Dutch have used cocaine and only one fifth of the population has tried marijuana.  The case of Sweden and Norway provides another example of the inability of such laws to reduce abuse. While Sweden employs a zero-tolerance approach to drug use, neighboring Norway has adopted a more liberal approach, yet drug use in both countries is nearly identical.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University reports that federal, state, and local governments spend almost half a trillion dollars every year on these policies, seventy-one percent of which goes toward incarceration, probation, parole, juvenile and criminal courts, and health care costs. Less than two percent is allocated for prevention and treatment. Furthermore, a 2008 study by Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University’s Department of Economics, which examined the budgetary implications of drug legalization, suggests that legalization would save the United States roughly $44.1 billion per year in expenditure on enforcement and prohibition. These figures indicate that the current drug policy is both expensive and ineffective – a regrettable combination, even in a strong economy.

Unfortunately, America’s drug laws are devastating to more than just our budget. In 2000, the Clinton administration approved the controversial “Plan Colombia” which, though advertised as an effort to build peace, provided millions of dollars for an increase in counterinsurgency military forces and other programs aimed at the prevention of drug trafficking in Colombia. Since the authorization of such policies and others similar to it, the United States has regularly performed aerial fumigations of herbicide to destroy crops of coca, used in the production of cocaine. On little more than a suspicion, toxic herbicides are sprayed over vast portions of the South American rainforest, contaminating not only illicit but also legal farms, water sources, natural wildlife, and people. To many peasants struggling to make a living, the lack of infrastructure, political instability, and the influence of drug cartels make it difficult to bring legal crops to the market. When their farms are destroyed, they migrate deeper into the rainforest and accelerate deforestation by clearing away the endangered ecosystem to make room for new farms. In the decades that the practice has been in place, aerial fumigation has devastated civilian health, communities, and acres of rainforest – but not drug production.

Even more frightening, and potentially hazardous to the environment, is the potential use of a killer-fungus which targets coca and poppy plants. This is not science fiction. The fungus, called fusarium oxysporum, was seriously considered as an option for the eradication of illicit crops in South America. This method has not been used due to its potentially irreparable disruption of plant life and the possibility that its use may be perceived by other countries as biological warfare.

This environmental destruction is overshadowed by the real violence inflicted by drug cartels that, given the illegality of the drug trade, have risen to the task of supplying the United States’ high demand for illicit drugs. The national media estimates that there were 7,600 drug-related deaths in Mexico in 2009, topping the previous record of 6,500 in 2008. Drug prohibition in the United States can be said to be indirectly responsible for these deaths, because the forced subversion of the supply of these heavily demanded products is precisely what brings such cartels into existence, and makes them wealthy and powerful.

The United States also has a more direct line of responsibility for these deaths. Mexican police assert that virtually all the weapons used by drug cartels are from the United States. Though some weapons are smuggled across the border, some are also weapons that the American government furnished to the Mexican military through programs like the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement and Foreign Military Financing that are easily transferred into the hands of cartels by corrupt officials.

These issues reached their controversial peak during the Bush administration, but despite the illusions of improvement from our current president, the United States still continues to fumigate and militarize South America. President Obama did, indeed, cut funding for such programs, but he has approved their continuation in 2010. While I have limited this discussion to South America, similar phenomena occur around the globe.

We have observed that prohibition of drugs is extraordinarily expensive and does not decrease drug use. Fumigation methods designed to curb drug production in South America cause deforestation, health hazards, water contamination, and community displacement. Military funding to achieve stability facilitates better-armed drug cartels and leads soaring death rates. Our prohibition of highly demanded products is responsible for the subversive, dangerous black market from which all these atrocities stem.

The majority of the fears Americans have about the legalization of drugs are at best conceivable, at worst ludicrous; nevertheless, they are all theoretical. The destruction of life which prohibition laws cause beyond our borders, however, is painfully real. I hope that those who support current drug policy out of ignorance or stubbornness consider legalization of drugs as a reasonable option to weaken drug cartels, decrease global violence, and prevent unnecessary environmental destruction.

Just last year, the Argentine Supreme Court threw out the arrests of six men in the city of Rosario for possessing small amounts of marijuana.  In its decision, the Court stated that “Each individual adult is responsible for making decisions freely about their desired lifestyle without state interference. Private conduct is allowed unless it constitutes a real danger or causes damage to property or the rights of others.” We only wish that such clearheaded reasoning someday makes its way northward.