Fifty-one years ago, the United States launched the War on Drugs. The results are clear. The policy of federal drug prohibition, aimed at combating drug use, abuse, cultivation and distribution, brought a sledgehammer approach that has only compounded the problems associated with illicit drugs.
“It is, in my view, as I have indicated, drug traffic is public enemy number one domestically in the United States today, and we must wage a total offensive, worldwide, nationwide, government wide, and if, I might say so, media-wide,” Nixon told reporters on June 18, 1971.
The day before, in a message to Congress, Nixon called for “a full-scale attack on the problem of drug abuse in America,” which would entail increased “enforcement efforts to further tighten the noose around the necks of drug peddlers, and thereby loosen the noose around the necks of drug users.”
In practice, even after the slowdown of the ramp-up in incarceration in the 1980s and 1990s, it is people caught possessing drugs who make up the vast majority of those arrested for drug crimes.
In 2010, there were 1,638,846 drug arrests in the country. Of them, 1,342,215 were for possession, primarily (750,591) for marijuana.
In 2019, after considerable changing in drug laws, particularly with respect to marijuana, total drug arrests fell to 1,558,862, but the number of arrests for possession actually went up (1,351,533). Thanks to the marijuana legalization movement, marijuana arrests were down to 500,395 that year.
Since Nixon’s drug war has proven no more effective than alcohol prohibition did, Americans have been left with the concurrent harms of drug abuse, the harms of driving the market underground and the harms of overcriminalization.
From tainted drugs to the rise of crack cocaine and illicit fentanyl, thanks to Nixon’s drug war, illicit drugs became more dangerous or risky.
From the street gangs in American cities to the financing of international drug cartels wreaking havoc in Latin America and abroad, the War on Drugs has enriched those willing to engage in horrific acts of violence to control drug markets.
And from criminal records to the lost years of incarceration to the traumas of being locked behind bars, the drug war has saddled millions of Americans with experiences that only hold them back.
Today, most Americans recognize the folly of marijuana prohibition. Public opinion shows a vast majority support legalization. Accordingly, most states have legalized marijuana, in defiance of federal law, for medicinal or recreational purposes. To unwind the drug war at the federal level, Congress must follow through on ending federal marijuana prohibition once and for all.
Decriminalization of other recreational drugs should follow. The past half century has shown that bringing down the heavy hand of the state on individuals, disproportionately people of color and disproportionately low-income, does not stop drug use. It only introduces new and systemic problems.
A greater focus on treatment, drug education and prevention will go much further than continuing a war that has only succeeded in expanding the size and scope of government and enriching criminal enterprises.
It’s time to end the War on Drugs.
A version of this editorial was published last year.
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