More than 50 years ago, US President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be “public enemy number one” and declared what would soon be known as the “war on drugs” campaign.
The initiative aimed to rid American streets of marijuana, end trafficking, and create a safer environment for citizens.
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Instead, decades of punitive policing and militarised crackdowns have resulted in record overdose deaths, one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and more than $1 trillion spent on drugs that have not had a discernible impact on drug availability or demand, according to Center for American Progress estimates.
The drug war in the US reshaped policing and criminal justice, disproportionately putting Black communities in jails. Similar conflicts broke out in Latin America as a result of US-backed operations that exacerbated cycles of corruption and organized crime.
Today, there are record-breaking overdose deaths linked to fentanyl, and many states have legalized it.
Here’s a look at how the drug war began and what its effects are both nationally and internationally as the Donald Trump administration appears prepared to launch military action against Venezuela over claims that the South American nation’s government is causing narcotics trafficking into the US.
What is its history and current state?
At a tumultuous political moment, Nixon declared the war on drugs. In addition to growing drug use among young people, rising heroin use in soldiers returning from Vietnam, and years of protest and growing antiwar sentiment, the late 1960s had witnessed a rise in heroin use.
A punitive system was established under Nixon’s administration, which included new federal agencies, tougher penalties, and rhetoric that viewed drug use as a threat to national stability.
A Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, who in 2016 claimed the administration saw two main “enemies”: the antiwar left and Black Americans, later revealed the political logic behind the decision. The government instead associated “hippies” with marijuana and Black communities with heroin, and then heavily criminalized both because it was unable to demonize dissent or race.
He claimed that the goal was to destabilize and discredit those communities by robbing their homes, detaining leaders, and portraying them negatively on television.
“Did we realize that our lies about the drugs were true?” He said, “Of course, we did.”
Under President Ronald Reagan, the campaign grew even more intensely in the 1980s. The marijuana possession sentences were made stricter by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984.
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 established minimum sentences, which in turn caused significant racial disparities in prison terms. Those found with 5 grams of crack cocaine and a minimum five years in jail were exempt from the law. The maximum sentence was the same for those found with 500 grams of the much more expensive powdered cocaine.
After the passage of the law, Black Americans’ prison sentences increased by fivefold: from 50 for every 100 000 to 250 for every 100 000.
Successive administrations continued to support these strategies through the 1990s and 2000s. In a controversial “three-strikes” approach, a third violent felony conviction must be sentenced to a mandatory life sentence, as well as increased federal funding for prisons under Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill.
Under the Bush and Obama administrations, little has changed.
The debate over drug use started to change in the 2010s, especially as the opioid crisis, which was driven by the expansion of the legalization of marijuana, was uncovered by the evidence that punishment couldn’t stop addiction.
Trump has now turned his attention to America’s extended neighbourhood, despite upholding many of the domestic policies that have been in place over the past 50 years. Trump authorized US military strikes on dozens of boats close to Venezuelan waters in recent weeks, presenting the situation as a new wave of “narco-trafficking,” despite opposition claims that it is a plot to impose a new regime and remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The US has not yet provided any publicly supported evidence to support its claims that the ships it has bombed were narcotics-carrying or that they were entering its territory.
arrests and mass imprisonment
Drug trafficking dominated the US prison system from the middle of the 1970s until the early 1980s.
At its peak, police made 1.6 million drug arrests annually, primarily for possession. According to federal data, these arrests increased the number of US prisons from about 300,000 in the early 1970s to more than 2 million now.
The hardest hit were black neighborhoods. Black Americans are significantly more likely to be detained despite the prevalence of drug use among various racial groups. The Sentencing Project estimates that, despite making up less than 15% of the country’s population, Black people are behind more than one in four drug arrests in the US.
They were 3.7 times more likely than white people to be detained for marijuana possession in 2010.
The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act and the disparate sentences for those found guilty of possessing crack and powder cocaine, according to research from Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, significantly contributed to this racial imbalance in the rate of punishment.
Many more Black people were jailed than wealthier, white people who used powder cocaine because crack was less expensive and more readily available in poorer, predominately Black neighborhoods.
One of the larger arguments against focusing on drugs, which is claimed to reduce crime overall, was lost. After Reagan’s 1984 crime law was passed, murder rates in the US actually increased, and they did so until 1991.
The US continued to fail in its efforts to address addiction as a public health issue at the same time. As law enforcement increased, money was put into treating and providing mental health care. The environment promoted other forms of consumption in place of reducing use.
The focus on reducing drug trafficking has not changed. More than 1.1 million drug-related arrests were made by police in 2019, the majority for possession. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, there are currently about 360, 000 people in prison nationwide on drug charges, and hundreds of thousands more are serving time on probation or parole for drug-related offenses.
It hasn’t been helpful. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, today, the US is experiencing its most fatal drug crisis ever, with over 100, 000 overdose deaths per year, largely caused by synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Americans between the ages of 18 and 44 are currently the leading cause of death from overdose.
How Latin America became a part of the “war on drugs”
The US and its borders did not continue to be the only countries where the drug war continued. Washington funded and trained militaries and police forces in Latin America to combat drug trafficking directly in the 1980s.
According to the Latin America Working Group, the US invested at least $10 billion in Colombia between 2000 and 2000, a large portion of it going toward security forces and the fumigation of coca crops.
Coca cultivation eventually returned to record levels, but civilians paid a high price, according to Colombian human rights organizations and the country’s Truth Commission. Between 1985 and 2018, an estimated 450, 000 people were killed in the conflict.
A government offensive launched in Mexico in 2006, supported by US intelligence and equipment, resulted in a wave of turf wars and cartel fragmentation. More than 460, 000 people have died since then, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, and tens of thousands have vanished.
Cartels expanded into extortion, fuel theft, and human trafficking, while corruption spread among local governments and police.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), these crackdowns caused traffic to move more frequently through Central American nations like Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
