War On Drugs

Picking up the Pieces of the War on Drugs

In 1998, the UN held a conference under the slogan A Drug Free World- We can do it!
as a rally cry to unify countries on the global drug issue. (Gardner, 2007) The international war
against drugs was by no means new, in fact the US had been immensely increasing their budget

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on drug control since the early 70s. Still, this was a bold statement. At the conference, all of the
major global powers made a commitment to eradicate all illegal drug use by the year 2008. The
UNs drug chief at the time, Pino Arlacchi (2008), sets the tone for the meeting by saying "there
are naysayers who believe a global fight against illegal drugs is unwinnable. I say, emphatically
they are wrong. To conduct the fight against illegal drugs the UN would set a projection for
the next 10 years to eliminate most of the plants that create illegal drugs, attempt to destroy all of
the underground drug market, and eradicate the USs demand for drugs. (Gardner, 2007) Talking
about accomplishing these things was not new, but promising to accomplish this by 2008 was a
gutsy move. Nevertheless, they were determined.
Over the course of the next ten years the US increased its federal budget from 16 billion
dollars, to 20 billion dollars, in fact that number continues to grow today. Of course, 10 years
later in 2008, next to no improvements in drug usage were found. Evidence shows they managed
to slightly increase drug prices, and make drugs marginally more difficult to attain, but there
were still no statistically significant changes in drug use. (Economics, 2015) Regardless of the
results, or lack thereof, the UN continues today persistant on using the same plan. So far this
year, between the federal and state expenses on enforcing drug policy they have managed to
spend $38,107,173,061, and counting. (Drug War Clock, 2015)
As I mentioned before, one of the UNs tactics to completing its ten year drug deadline
was the systematic eradication of most plants that produce drugs. A specific example of this was
a plan implemented in 1961 by the United States, known as aerial spraying. Due to Plan
Colombia, developed in 2000 as a cooperation agreement between Colombia and the United
States designed to bring down drug cartels, Columbia is the only country in the world that allows
aerial spraying. (Veillette, 2005) Essentially, United States contractor's spray glyphosate

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herbicide onto areas where the plant is grown, areas that are often inhabited. An article written on
the Aponte Indians says 80 percent of the children of the community has fallen ill. "Rash, fever,
diarrhea and eye infections -- it started after the spraying. Because before that time about 10
percent of the children was ill: normal illnesses like the flu or the mumps. (Royen, 2000)
Obviously, correlation is not causation, but theres little room to denounce that as a coincidence.
In fact after investigating the effects of the herbicide, neighbouring Ecuador has required
Columbia to avoid spraying within 10 kilometers of their shared border.
Not only does this technique have collateral damage on the locals, but not surprisingly
has environmental damages as well. There are issues caused by the spray that affect local plants
and animals, but what is doing more harm is the consequential destruction of land. The constant
pestering from the US on coca farmers has done very little to stop them from growing. Cocas
ability to preserve well, and sell at high price makes it an attractive crop for farmers to grow. As
a consequence, what spraying coca fields has done is merely force coca farmers to retreat deeper
into the jungle, where they have to destroy more forest to grow their crop. Thus, creating a
vicious cycle of land destruction.
Now, what about the effects on the United States? As a result of our drug war, and of
course many other factors, we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Weve all seen the
numbers, we have 25% of the world's imprisoned population, but only 5% of the worlds total
population. (Nadelmann, 2015) With 48% of our prisoners being convicted of drug offenses, and
the recidivism rate of all drug offenders being 77% (2010), its clear we are doing something
wrong. We have put ourselves in an odd conundrum, where prison clearly doesn't bring down
drug use, yet we use prison sentencing as our main method of fighting drugs.

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In a TED talk conducted by human rights activist Ethan Nadelmann, he discusses the
realities facing our country's war on drugs, and asks the question of what the war on drugs has
really done for the world. Evidence shows that just about every human civilization has used
drugs in some form or another, which implies an inclination towards drugs that has been around
as long as humans have. Contrary to common political belief, its clear that demand for drugs
will not disappear, and as a consequence, neither will a supply. People tend to think of
prohibition as the ultimate form of regulation, when in fact it represents the abdication of
regulation. (Nadelmann 2015) What this paradoxically tells us, is that by regulating drugs, we
are forcing underground drug trade to occur, without the ability to regulate it. We saw this same
occurrence with the prohibition of alcohol, and now that the prohibition of alcohol has been
removed, we have seen most, if not all, of that black market vanish. No matter what we do, there
will always be a supply, and a demand for drugs. It is better we accept the challenge of living in a
society with drugs, than force the catastrophic illegal drug trade to continue.
Many of the people against decriminalization come from conservative, and almost always
religious backgrounds. I found some information online about this group, but many of my
extended family fit this persona just about perfectly. So, I interviewed seven of my friends and
family about their feelings on drugs. I gave them guided questions, but I kept as much of my bias
out of the discussion as possible. What I found strange, is just about every person said one thing
in common. Every single one of them told me they felt it would be wrong to let drugs run wild
legally, and most of them spoke to me with a sense of if its available then everyone will start
using. One woman, who will remain nameless, told me of something she had read about online.
She said they experimented on rats, where every time the rat pressed a button they were given
something that made them feel happy. What most of them did was press the button over and over

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constantly trying to get more dopamine. What does that say about what people will do with
drugs? Plus, what if someone in my family gets involved with drugs? Imagine the damage
addiction will do to families. Though she couldnt remember all the information about the study,
what she basically described to me was a study on the process known as conditioning, in
psychology.
That was a fundamental idea that shaped many of their mindsets on drugs. I agree, and
understand much of what their saying, they very much believed it would cause mayhem if we
allowed morally wrong drugs to be legal. But if we take a look at cigarettes, we see something a
little different. Cigarettes are a completely legal, highly addictive drug, that is widely known to
kill, especially over long periods of usage, yet they arent by any means running rampant through
society. Infact, they are at an all time low in usage among adults and youth. (CDC, 2011) The
reality is that yes, if we made cigarettes illegal, usage would probably go down. Sadly, like what
we have seen with every other substance prohibition, with no regulated market a black market
will more than likely take its place. Nobody wants that, so what we have wisely chosen to do is
educate our youth, and use media to dramatically reduce the usage of cigarettes. The same social
stigma surrounding cigarettes would likely be used with drugs. Do we want drug usage to
increase? Absolutely not, but the reality is that history has shown us a drug free society will not
be possible. Creating regulations that allow drug use to occur in the safest and healthiest way
possible is absolutely vital. To further this point, Im going to go back to the comment made by
the woman, when she said Imagine the damage addiction will do to the families. Lets say you
have two kids, one's an alcoholic, and the other is addicted to heroin. Is it fair that your alcoholic
son has a massive system dedicated to rehabilitating him in the healthiest way possible, while the
other is in constant fear of incarceration? What will probably tear your family apart even more

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than his addiction, is him being sent into prison. Would it truly be worse for your son to have
easy access to legal drugs, and have systems in place to get him better, than him being put in jail
for it? And lets be honest, chances are, its not that much harder for that same son to get access
to drugs now. So, decriminalization is not for the purpose of giving people better access to drugs.
This system is truly designed for many of the desperate addicts who need help becoming healthy,
rather than putting them in prison.
Seeing that the UNs Drug Free World was not realistic, in 2001 Portugal passed a law
decriminalizing all drug use in the country. From an ideological point of view, Portugal
essentially stopped treating users as criminals, and rather began treating them as patients with a
disease. As a result, their health care, and judicial programs, have been designed for the
treatment and rehabilitation of users, rather than their punishment. There was not much data
collected before the bill was passed, but evidence shows that since then, the countrys drug issue
has been positively affected. Within five years of drugs being decriminalized, the number of
people looking for rehabilitation more than doubled, the spread of HIV from sharing needles
declined, and drug use among teens declined. (Szalavitz, 2009) What the policy was able to do
was bring down many of the social stigmas surrounding drug use, that we see here in the United
States. Addicts can freely talk about their issues with no fear of repercussion, and are better able
to get adequate help as a result.
The important question lies in whether this can, and should be done on a global scale. 19
highly respected members of the global community came together to form the Global
Commission on Drug Policy Reform. This group included several former presidents from
countries such as Mexico and Brazil, and nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. The article
briefly discusses a series of eleven evidence based guidelines we should follow to globally tackle

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our current drug issue. A handful of the most important guidelines are to be sure the drug policy
is: evidence based, differentiated between substances, focused on harm reduction, flexible and
culturally sensitive, proportional and considers human rights, developmental, respondent to the
needs of the society as a whole.
There is no perfect solution to the drug issues we face, but we have been looking at drugs
the wrong way for quite some time. The United States has fought drugs with an equally moral,
and illogical conviction. If we follow the path of reasoning, and science we come to one
conclusion, while global politics are taking us to a dramatically different place. Its time we look
past our previous convictions, see the atrocities inflicted by the infamous War on Drugs, and
begin to rebuild our perspective on drugs, to lead to a healthier society. The real challenge we
face is being able to live with drugs, rather than to eradicate them.