The Problem

The Worldwide War on Drugs has long been shown to be an absolute disaster. Increasingly, countries around the world are clamoring for an end to the deadly, costly, and unwinnable policy calamity. Numerous international blue ribbon committees have come out strongly on the need to dismantle the policies, and major protests assailing the drug war have been held in scores of cities throughout the world. The array of harms wreaked by the criticized policies is mind-numbing. These include human rights violations, seizures and/or destruction of properties, and thousands of deaths per annum. Other drug war ills include the spread of diseases (especially HIV), unparalleled enrichment of violent organized criminal enterprises, discriminatory enforcement, wholesale displacement of villages, mass incarceration, corruption on a vast scale, and the wasting of billions of dollars in anti-drug expenditures.

Among the drug war’s dysfunctions are some 160,000 dead in Mexico’s drug war between the cartels and the government, within a mere decade (2006–2014). An additional 25,000 have disappeared and a whopping 280,000 have been displaced, typically never to return. Some 13,000 are estimated to have been killed in the Philippines since 2016 (mainly extralegal execution, government supported vigilantism, etc.), though officially, fewer than 4,000 thereby perished. In Malaysia, most drug executions only involve marijuana or hashish, both among the least harmful of all drugs. In Iran, where many are executed, 75% of all executions of recent years have involved drug offenses. State executions for drug crimes overall, sometimes for mere possession, have exceeded 1,000 deaths in some years, excluding China. China’s execution numbers are state secrets, but are suspected to exceed all other nations’ figures. Almost all of these are considered gross violations of human rights by the UN, despite the organization’s pro-war rhetoric.

The drug war has also bred widespread corruption internationally. For instance, the former Wachovia bank was sanctioned for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money, while British banking behemoth HSBC admitted to laundering billions. More recently (2017) Citibank was fined nearly $100 million for such crimes, while earlier, American Express was similarly sanctioned. Notably, no one was jailed. In one of the most egregious instances of corruption, male DEA agents were discovered utilizing sex workers provided by the cartels.