War on Drugs
The
War on Drugs is an initiative undertaken by the
United States to carry out an "all-out offensive" (as
President Nixon described it) against the
prohibited use of certain legally controlled
drugs.The
Congressional Research Service of the
Library of Congress noted in a 1989 report that the nation's war on drugs could be considered to have started in
public policy dating to November
1880, when the U.S. and
China completed an agreement that prohibited the shipment of
opium between the two countries. By February 1887, the
49th Congress enacted legislation making it a misdemeanor for anyone on American soil to be found guilty of violating this ban. It became officially the "war on drugs" in the 1930s, with the marijuana scare that banned possession and cultivation of
cannabis (including
hemp).
The "War on Drugs" sought to cause a massive surge in cost for illicit mind-altering substances. It succeeded in this aim, from the perspective of mark-ups, in turn raising the market value of the trade in highly targeted drugs such as
cocaine and
heroin to over a trillion dollars. However, it failed in terms of retail prices in the long term. This has had several prominent sociological, economic and political effects. A case in point is the South American country of
Colombia, which had developed a commodity market to manage its imports and exports by the late
1960s. The subsequent actions taken by the American government included dumping surplus corn and grain into the Colombian market below market prices, depressing domestic production. The following decades showed a substantial rise in demand for
cocaine in America. A number of economically depressed Colombian farmers in several remote areas of the country began to turn to what became a new, illicit
cash crop for its high resale value and cheap manufacturing process. Local
coca cultivation, however, remained comparatively rare in Colombia until the mid-
1990s. Drug traffickers originally imported most coca base from traditional producers in
Peru and
Bolivia for processing in Colombia, until eradication efforts in those countries resulted in a "
balloon effect".
Nixon's modern-day "War on Drugs" began in
1971. He characterized the abuse of illicit substances as "America's public enemy number one." This coincided with Colombia's depressed domestic market, providing a fertile ground for the exploitation of the American hunger for narcotics. Thus began the rise of a culture that is still romanticized in popular media;
drug cartel groups and families including
Pablo Escobar's reign over
Medellín became the norm in areas where the drug trade was an important part of the local economy. The political implications of the "War on Drugs" are extensive and the impact of the program has been far-reaching.
Furthermore, according to a report released in
March 2006 by the
Justice Policy Institute, commissioned by the
Drug Policy Alliance, America's "
Drug-Free Zones" are ineffective at keeping youths away from drugs, and instead create strong
racial disparities in the judicial system.
Around the turn of the
20th century, a perception of widespread abuse of
cocaine caused policy-makers in the U.S. to consider
drug abuse a serious social problem rather than as cases of personal failures.
In 1988, towards the close of the
Reagan Administration, the
Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) was created to centrally coordinate legislative, security, diplomatic, research and health policy throughout the government. In recognition of his central role, the director of ONDCP is commonly known as the
Drug Czar.
Despite the Reagan Administration's high-profile public pronouncements, secretly, many senior officials of the Reagan administration illegally trained and armed the
Nicaraguan Contras, which they funded by the shipment of large quantities of cocaine into the United States using U.S. government aircraft and U.S. military facilities.
[ p. 99]Subsequently, the U.S. government certified that the Colombian government had taken steps to improve respect for human rights and to prosecute abusers among its security forces.
*Office of National Drug Control Policy
*Arguments for and against drug prohibition
*Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
*Gary Webb
*Illegal drug trade
*Legal issues of cannabis
*Marijuana Policy Project
*Prison-industrial complex
*Prohibition (drugs)
*Students for Sensible Drug Policy
*Supremacy Clause
*Harm reduction
*Demand reduction
*United Nations Drug Control Programme
*Opium War* National Drug Threat Assessment 2006 from the United States Department of Justice
* War On Drugs: Legislation in the 108th Congress and Related Developments, a 2003 report (in PDF format) from the Congressional Research Service via the State Department website
* National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign
* Drug War Facts
* Drug War Distortions
* The Anti-drugwar Over 100 years of Headlines
* Wasted in the War on Drugs report by Citizens Against Government Waste
* Cato Institute Drug Prohibition Research
