Most people (especially politicians) seem to approach politics as if there is one correct policy for everything and the best solution is to have the whole world (or at least the whole country) adopt it. I have a very strong fundamental disagreement with this viewpoint for a number of reasons, but the drug war is a perfect example of how it can fail horribly. We forced the whole world to adopt an extremely flawed and ineffective policy with awful side effects and essentially disallowed any country from exploring other options with the threat of war and CIA coups and economic sanctions.
I think that people ought to be able to choose what they put in their bodies and I would personally like to live in a place where I can use cannabis and, on rare occasion, responsibly consume other drugs without being a criminal. I can also understand wanting to raise your children in a place where drug use is not tolerated and people are not allowed full bodily autonomy. There is room in the world for a spectrum of (drug) policies, and there is no way to discover which ones work “best” in the real world unless they are allowed to be enacted. Furthermore, if you really want to live in a place with little drug use, allowing the people who are going to use drugs, regardless of policy, a society in which they can freely exist is the easiest way to get them away from you. Admittedly, this has game theory issues similar to the issues surrounding homelessness but drugs being totally FFA in very few places is probably an optimal outcome.
Regardless of where you stand on personal drug use, it is obvious that the drug policies of the Central and South American countries, as dictated to them by the US/EU, are a failure on every level. The state’s power to impact the forces of supply and demand is limited; the effect of disrupting supply is primarily an increase in price. Drugs are still plentiful everywhere and cheap for non-addicts, while being very expensive for addicts, who have an inelastic demand curve for drugs.
So, we have destabilized an entire region in exchange for an x% increase in the price of drugs, which corresponds to a <<x% decrease in the quantity demanded, directly increasing income for drug cartels. Additionally, supply crackdowns inevitably result in a shift towards more potent and dangerous drugs that can be smuggled more cost-effectively - i.e. fentanyl vs opium. The effect of making drugs expensive for addicts probably has very little impact on the incidence of drug addiction, by the time your costs rise due to tolerance, you are already addicted. Much of the real costs of addiction are nonmonetary, but the expense, as well as demand-side policies, do make an addiction much more likely to ruin your life.
In my opinion, what our drug policies have done to these countries (and/or communities within the US) would not be justified if it eradicated drug addiction from the world entirely. Given that it has done approximately jack shit on that front, I fail to see how anyone could support the continuation of the drug war without a perverse morality or a fundamental misunderstanding of the actual, real-world effects.
It guarantees the existence of powerful worldwide criminal organizations that will corrupt governments and cause havoc. It is directly responsible for a large number of people who would otherwise be productive citizens turning to a life of crime. The drug war is the primary excuse we have used to interfere in the politics of our southern neighbors, forcing them to adopt policies which are blatantly contrary to the best interests of their own people. At home, it distorts the mission of law-enforcement, poisoning their relationship with the segments of society most likely to be victims of crime, has perpetuated racial inequality more than any other policy in the modern era and was the main cause of civil liberties being taken away pre-9/11.
Ending the drug war does not mean that heroin needs to be sold at every 7-11, there’s a whole lot of middle ground to be explored.
