Winning the war against drug abuse

SOME 500,000 people die each year from drug abuse, says the World Health Organization. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that over 107,600 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021 – the highest yearly figure ever. Yet, since 1971, when then president Richard Nixon launched the “war on drugs”, massive resources have been dedicated to countering the production, distribution and use of harmful drugs. The reform group, Drug Policy Alliance, estimates that the United States alone spends US$51 billion annually and incurred US$1 trillion on the war on drugs between 1971 and 2021.

Many other countries spend heavily on their own wars against drug abuse, both of their own volition and, in some cases, incentivised because the US strongly urges them to do so. Nevertheless, the drug trade is big business and both supports and is supported by large criminal networks that no amount of arrests or disruptions seem able to break decisively.

Many of these networks are brutal in defending their turf from rivals and resisting law enforcement agencies: the havoc they have caused in a country like Mexico is just the most visible example. Their ruthlessness stems not only from the money to be made from trading in drugs, but from their determination to evade arrest or, under some jurisdictions, death, at the hands of law enforcement agencies. A sub-culture develops in which violence and illegality are accepted as normal.