Drug use is a victimless crime. But the fact that we express our own preferences when we use drugs and don’t hurt anyone else in the process has not prevented the state from wanting to nanny us away from them: every country in the world has anti-drug legislation, an while some have experimented with relaxation of legislation of the use of marijuana – the most widespread and harmless recreational drug – most have a blanket prohibition of all recreational drug use.
Some countries are draconian in their drug policies: in Iran, more than 500 people are executed annually for drug offences; the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is openly encouraging extra-judicial killings of drug dealers; and countries such as Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia all have strict anti-drug policies and apply the death penalty for offenders.
In the US, the largest illegal drugs market in the world by far, the War on Drugs was officially declared in 1971 by President Richard Nixon, who proclaimed drug abuse to be America’s “public enemy number one” and started a major escalation in drug demand and (primarily) supply reduction policies. Since then, the US has been at the forefront of anti-drug policy, at home and abroad – but what has it achieved? And at what cost? Let’s have a look.
We can start with the financials. Since Nixon’s escalation, it is estimated that more than one trillion dollars have been spent on the War on Drugs. The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that today the US spends over $58 billion on an annual basis on policing, penalising and preventing the import, sale and use of drugs, about one third of the entire law enforcement and incarceration budget.
Incarceration is a big part of that. The US imprisons more people per capita than any other nation: it is estimated that in 2016, 2,298,300 Americans were locked up in jail or prison, equivalent to 0.71% of the population, while almost twice that number again formed part of the larger “correctional population”, which includes offenders on parole and probation. For perspective, in 1971, when the War on Drugs was declared, the prison population was around 300,000. In 2016 alone, 456,000 people were incarcerated for a drug law violation. 85% of all drug arrests are for possession only, most of marijuana, a recreational drug with no recorded deaths on its conscience. Preposterously, there is a much greater risk of loss of life coming from the enforcement of anti-marijuana laws than from the actual drug itself.
It is especially black communities that have been devastated by criminalisation of drugs. A whopping 4.7% of adult black males are estimated to be locked up, most for drug related offences. Because whole neighbourhoods are dominated by drug criminals and users, and because a drug-related conviction typically results in a restriction of education and job opportunities, many communities see their young grow up suffering from drug addiction or joining the gangs and starting a life of crime – which comes with other dangers than being thrown in prison: some parts of larger cities – notably Chicago – are literal war zones due to turf wars between drug gangs. The whole sad affair is a vicious circle which significantly contributes to suppressing black communities and reinforcing racial division in America.
And it is not just at home in the US that people’s lives have been irrevocably changed for the worse by the American government’s pursuit of drug criminals. The effects are felt across the world; Latin America in particular has been devastated by the crime wave unleashed by the War on Drugs. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine and has been on the front line of the War on Drugs for 30 years. In the 1980s and 90s the powerful cartels fought a war with the US funded Colombian government which may have cost over 100,000 people their lives and cost billions of dollars. While Colombia is now more peaceful, today Mexico is at the forefront of American efforts to prevent drugs from being smuggled over their borders, and predictably, violence has followed: estimates are of up to 150,000 people killed in the Mexican drug war to date.
So, what has the War on Drugs, with all its financial and human costs, achieved? It’s hard to say, but nothing is not a bad guess. Laughably, despite all the efforts of the state to prevent drug use, in 2013, an estimated 24.6 million Americans over the age of 12 had used an illegal drug in the past month, about ¾ of that being marijuana. One hard fact is that the War on Drugs has done little, if anything, to dent the availability and consumption of drugs.
It has made them much more expensive though: the vast majority of the market value of recreational drugs is risk premium for the distribution chain rather than production cost, and the fact that illegal drugs are not taxed only marginally counters the cost of making them available to the market. So drugs are big business: it’s estimated that the US revenue for cocaine sales alone was $34 billion in 2013. Another unintended consequence of the War on Drugs is that some of the most dangerous drugs are the synthetic varieties which are made in laboratories (such as crystal meth, of Breaking Bad fame) – a direct response to the risk and expense of smuggling organic drugs over international borders.
Of course, buying your drugs off a dodgy street dealer comes with uncertainty about the quality of the product – sometimes with deadly results, from impurity or overdosing. If drugs were legal we’d buy them from our local store and they would be produced by trusted corporations, which would come with massive improvements in safety .
One of the saddest results of drug criminalisation is that users get caught up in bad habits, not just because they interface with the criminal underworld when they go shopping, but also because the cost of the product requires funds which are often easier obtained through crime or prostitution – occupations which are more tempting to people already on the fringes of society. Many lives spiral into abuse rather than use as an effect of the alienation from civil society which comes with drug habits.
When you add it all up, it is hard to believe anyone still sees any sense in the War on Drugs. It is true that some drugs are dangerously addictive and have serious health consequences, but the facts are staring us in the face: apart from being a draconian assault on individual liberty, the criminalisation of drugs and the aggressive enforcement of anti-drug laws is also one of the single most overwhelmingly destructive policies pursued by any government, anywhere. It should be ended immediately.