Conclusions and Results Abroad – Econlib

The Impact of the War on Drugs™ Abroad

In 1996, Chuck Grassley of the Senators’ Coalition on International Narcotics Control testified that recent polls had shown the following results: 80% of Americans consider it their biggest foreign policy concern To stop the smuggling of illegal drugs into the United StatesThe Senator, The Clinton administration, which elevated the importance of treatment, As a guarantor of national security, it has long implemented an active interdiction policy.At the time, the United States was the world’s largest market for illegal drugs, a position it still holds today. Much of the supply comes from foreign countries, including Mexico, Afghanistan, Colombia, Peru and China. As a result, efforts to reduce the supply of illegal drugs are not limited to domestic crackdowns, but also include attempts to disrupt production in other countries.

While such foreign policies are widely supported at home, they also have serious negative effects on the countries involved. Indeed, as Foldvary (2013) points out, U.S. drug policies have a destabilizing effect, creating violent cartels, emboldening existing insurgents, fueling drug lord imperialism, and tending to create underground shadow states. The tools often used in these failed efforts are familiar to even the most casual observer of contemporary U.S. foreign policy. Foreign aidThese include military and police support and training, intelligence and counterinsurgency operations, development programs, and nation-building efforts (Pembleton & Weimer, 2019). The goals of recipient countries are often not fully aligned with domestic drug policies, further contributing to instability.

Project Columbia The joint Colombian-US operation has its roots in the struggle between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an armed guerilla organization that was one of the main factions in the civil war dating back to 1964. In 1998, President Andrés Pastrana, hoping to gain FARC’s trust and support in promoting peace, granted them an area of ​​land roughly the size of Switzerland as a demilitarized zone where military and law enforcement personnel could not enter (Rosen, 2021). To repay President Pastrana’s good faith, FARC transferred their criminal activities, including kidnapping, extortion, illegal mining, and drug production and trafficking, to the newly granted autonomous zone.

Pastrana sought U.S. assistance in ending Colombia’s civil war and the power that organized crime wielded over Colombian citizens. Not wanting to involve the U.S. in Colombia’s armed conflict, the Clinton administration redirected Pastrana’s “Plan Colombia” initiative to align with its own interests in ending the ability of Colombian guerrillas and drug cartels to smuggle drugs into the United States. While Pastrana recognized the role that drug production played in destabilizing the country, his initial concern was containing the FARC, which included the manual destruction of agricultural crops. In exchange for U.S. financial assistance, he eventually agreed to redirect 80 percent of aid funds to strengthen police and military operations, which would later play a key role in preventing the aerial spraying of herbicides on coca crops.

There are conflicting views Whether these measures were effective in reducing supplyUS officials claimed that Colombian coca production had fallen by 75 percent between 2001 and 2011, while UN monitors reported only a very small decline. There is no question that Colombia needed assistance and therefore had to circumvent US interests, and in 2007 then Colombian President Uribe assured the Bush administration of continued cooperation by rebranding the insurgents as narco-terrorists, thus aligning with US hopes of fighting both the global drug supply chain and terrorism. While Uribe had some success in dismantling the larger guerrilla and criminal gangs, they were replaced by smaller organizations that were harder to identify. Moreover, drug trafficking continued unabated, and the buildup of anti-drug forces had a kind of balloon effect of pushing some of the production to neighboring countries such as Peru and Panama, increasing Mexico’s importance as a distribution and trafficking center and exacerbating the country’s own destabilization problems linked to US drug policy.

in Previous PostIn 2006, I pointed out that because the bulk of drug production takes place outside U.S. borders, much of the violence occurs elsewhere, shifting this very real human suffering overseas and concealing it. Aligning with U.S. interests didn’t work well in Colombia in the 1980s, when attempts to capture and extradite popular drug lords were met with nationalist opposition, and then powerful traffickers felt emboldened to murder inconvenient government officials (Bagley, 1988). It’s still not working today. Coca production hit a historic peak in 2020, The biggest producers and traffickers are paramilitary groups. Trained and funded by the US as part of the anti-drug campaignThis violence, social instability, and the expansion of drug cartels and organized crime are being replicated in countries such as Central America, Mexico, and Afghanistan where the United States exerts its hegemonic influence to wage the War on Drugs™.

Conclusion

I gave this series a title Overview of the social costs of drug prohibition, Somewhat long, but concise compared to the length of the ongoing dialogue needed on this issue. This self-justifying set of policies aimed at disrupting supply cannot succeed as long as there is demand. Without a commitment to harm reduction measures, demand is and will remain stubbornly inelastic. Meanwhile, our prison system continues to expand, central to perverse incentives centered around cheap labor and political power. To fill those prisons, police have become increasingly like military occupiers, too often focusing their efforts on already disadvantaged subgroups, helping to create the cycles of poverty, crime, and recidivism that they ostensibly aim to end. This criminalization of public and mental health issues results in more preventable deaths as treatment is stigmatized and often not an option, while the potency of drugs is increased to maintain profit margins. Not only is violence present within our communities, but it pales in comparison to the violence and instability that domestic drug policies cause in countries where illicit dealers emerge to meet our demand. Yet, despite all these costs imposed on society, demand and supply remain constant and unabated.