Exit Strategy

Designing an 'exit strategy' for the war on drugs

The uncomfortable truth is that despite decades of aggressive government crackdowns, U.S. drug use and drug-related crime are as high as ever. Made profitable by prohibition, violent criminal enterprises that purvey drugs are flourishing. Harsh criminal sanctions, even for minor drug possession, have packed jails and prisons. Public coffers have been drained of funds for critical preventive social services. Internationally, we’re discovering that the U.S.’ heavy-handed campaign of illegal drug eradication in countries such as Colombia is about as successful as we’ve found our parallel military adventure into Iraq.

Despite the stunning $4.7 billion we’ve spent since 2000 on planes fumigating Colombia’s coca crop, farmers there are producing just as much cocaine as before our aerial assault.

Back home, “street” prices for cocaine have dropped and purity remains high. Prohibition has failed equally to stamp out markets and quality, or increase street prices for heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana. The drug war kicked off by President Nixon in the 1970s, and copied by state and local governments nationally, costs $40 billion or more a year. It is a massive, embarrassing, destructive failure.