War on Drugs: The Background

Evidence indicates that the legal repression of drugs is legitimate and necessary.

June 17 marked 40 years of the initial War on Drugs, declared by former U.S. President Richard Nixon. The war has not been able to diminish consumption, stop cultivation or reduce trafficking. It is clear that it is time to implement policies that tackle the social causes for the consumption and trafficking of drugs.

The last Central American Security Conference precisely reflected the levels and gains reached in the war against trafficking and organized crime. Some say it was concluded that the United States will continue providing consumers and weapons … and we will provide the money, deaths [and] poverty. Others, such as the two candidates who met during the June 24 presidential forum, proposed that the solution was decriminalizing drugs, similar to throwing in the towel.

This topic renders grand and precipitous theories. It remains surprising that the conclusion is taken for granted that legalization will reduce consumption or will put an end to drug trafficking, because we are facing something which puts the lives of many at stake; and we have to learn from others’ mistakes, witnessing what takes place in countries that have opened their hands [to such policies].

In Holland, they have legalized the sale [of drugs] in authorized establishments for recreational use … but they are lamenting the increase in consumption, causing an uneasiness in society due to the harmful effects that the drug causes in the national consumers, not to mention the crime originating in other countries.

In California, with a law that allows the selling of marijuana, they have confirmed that the ones who lose with legalization are the most vulnerable: the young and the old. In Great Britain, when they reduced penalties for possession and trafficking of certain drugs, the course of action created in many the impression that cannabis and other drugs are practically innocuous. The number of youth with physical disorders and patients going to hospitals in Great Britain for mental health problems increased by a third in three years. Liberalizing drugs is not successful without ample action toward prevention [of usage].

People were created to live; you cannot permit something that facilitates death. And the decriminalization [of drugs] sends the message that drugs are not bad, which is why they are legal. But drugs continue to be mortal, especially among youth and children.

As authorities in Mexico (Zenit.org) insisted, it is an error to believe and propose that it is better to deal with drug trafficking and leave the criminals to work in peace, organizing their territories and respecting their business of death. This line of attack, [they] insisted, far from overrules violence, “[it] justifies the actions of criminals.” Nothing indicates that liberalizing drugs is going to reduce the number of addicts. The likely [outcome] is increasing sales to more favorable prices.

Evidence indicates that the legal repression of drugs is legitimate and necessary. One only needs to do so intelligently, but that is another issue: Not what should be done, but rather the best way to do it.