Time to Declare Victory in the War on Drugs?
by Robert Roy Pool
Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. Richard Nixon declared war on drugs and cancer. Ronald Reagan declared war on the Federal government itself, declaring that the Federal government was not the solution to our problems, it was the problem. And, most famously, George W. Bush declared war on terror.
None of these wars has ever ended, and there is little hope they ever will, although cancer is retreating in the face of major advances by our medical researchers. But the rest of these wars have all either ended in defeat or in long, intractable, inconclusive conflicts. What, then, has been accomplished by declaring war on two social problems, our own government, and an extremist political tactic?
Not much. The metaphorical idea of war is inappropriate in all these examples, but it is most inappropriate when applied to drugs. Richard Nixon declared war on drugs in 1969. The war consists of a law enforcement “war” on those who traffic in illegal drugs and those who use them, and a mostly rhetorical war on our own young people.
It has produced astounding results. Millions of Americans have been incarcerated since 1969 for drug offenses, and billions of dollars worth of illegal drugs have been seized by our police agencies, yet illegal drugs are as readily available now as they were in 1969, and several new drugs have created new problems.
If this is the outcome after 40 years of real and rhetorical combat, then we should be honest and admit that a war has been valiantly waged and drugs have won. The police agencies, the proponents of prohibition, the criminal justice system, the prison system, and the millions of citizens convicted of drug crimes have all lost. So have American taxpayers, who shelled out hundreds of billions of dollars for drug enforcement, prosecution, and prison time for offenders since 1969. While all this money and effort was being spent, the problem of drug abuse has only grown worse.
The matter has taken on increased urgency since Felipe Calderon became President of Mexico in 2006. Faced with vicious, powerful drug cartels eating way at the foundations of civic order, Calderon acted swiftly and aggressively to attack them. While we have conducted a law enforcement and rhetorical “war” on drugs for 40 years, Calderon and his military forces and the Federal police agencies in Mexico have conducted a real war, a military conflict that has taken the lives of more than 7,000 people.
This is more than 22 times the number of Americans who died in Iraq in 2008. And in some respects, Mexico’s real war on drug dealers is more critical to our long-term security than the war in Iraq.
I grew up in McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley just seven miles from Mexico. The Mexican city of Reynosa, across the river from McAllen, is among those cities hardest hit by drug violence. This violence has severely impacted the economy on both sides of border, reducing tourism and trade, and has prompted the Mexican Federal government to occupy Reynosa with military force. Thousands of citizens have assembled in Reynosa to protest the presence of so much military in their city, but the Federal government, determined to capture or kill any drug lords it can locate in the border state of Tamaulipas, has refused to withdraw the army.
<< previous next page >>