Contextual Essay

Drug consumption has been part of our society for centuries. They have been used over time for various purposes like medicine, religious rituals, or to simply get high. Using terms like “The Mexican Drug War” or “The US War on Drugs” are misnomers that fail to express how these wars are a joint construction of each other. Mexico provides drugs and the United States provides a profitable market for these illegal drugs. Despite the constant persecution and punishments, we enact on those who use or sell drugs, the consumption of drugs is unlikely to end. The United States has very strict and severe consequences for people who consume drugs and sell drugs. According to a report by the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit research organization that seeks to expose the broader harm of mass incarceration, “there are about 450,000 people behind bars for drug possession, trafficking, or other nonviolent drug offenses. That is about one in five of all incarcerated people are behind bars for a drug offense.”^​*​ The matter of fact is that no matter how much we pursue and punish drug offenders, people will continue to consume drugs and those who profit from them will continue to sell them. 

The United States consumes an enormous amount of drugs and the amount continues to grow. America’s consumption of drugs comes at a very high price, one close to “150 billion spent in 2016 on cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana, 50 percent more than in 2010”^​†​  The illegality of drugs and the multibillion-dollar market it crates has fueled the Mexican Drug War for decades and it has had devastating effects in Mexico and the United States. Both of these wars depend on each other and feed off each other. After decades of fighting these wars with very little success, it is obvious that we need a new approach – one that can end both of these wars simultaneously. In this essay, I argue that the best way to put an end to the war on drugs in the United States and The Mexican Drug War is by decriminalizing the consumption of drugs in the United States.

The use of drugs in the United States has not always been illegal. As Aileen Teague, a professor of international affairs at the University of Texas A&M, explains that in the early 20th century, the use of addictive drugs was controlled and taxed by the government of the United States.^​‡​ When the United States saw the potential effects that these drugs could have, they proceeded to put restrictions on these drugs. In 1914 fist restrictions on drugs were imposed when the United States enacted the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act which had three mandates: 1. All transactions should be registered with the Federal Government. 2. A sales tax was to be imposed on the sale of such substances. 3. A medical prescription was required to buy any drug. These restrictions were pretty mild at first, but as Gabriela Rocio, a journalist that specialized in Latin American and economic history, states “By 1922 a range of different court rulings had transformed the Harrison Act into a total prohibition.”^​§​ The time that followed after total prohibition is when the United States and Mexico began to see a rise in the misuse of drugs and violence. 

During the 1920s, the United States and Mexico saw more strict laws regarding the consumption and commercialization of drugs. Both governments went down hard on drug traffickers after they predicted that “the ‘drug problem” could be solved if the drug producers could be controlled. But as Gabriela Recio states ” It is interesting to note that not only the United States government focused on solving the ‘supply-side’ of the drug problem; Mexico had adopted a similar strategy at both federal and state levels. Nevertheless, it seems that the US strategy was somewhat incomplete since drug consumption was climbing among it”^​¶​ During the 1920s, the United States and Mexico saw the implementation of stricter prohibition laws, and alongside that, they also saw the emergence of powerful and dangerous black markets that took advantage of the United State’s multi-billion dollar appetite for drugs.

The founder of this war on drugs that has shaped our society into what it is today is President Nixon. In 1971 when President Nixon claimed drugs were enemy #1 and with that, he planted fear towards drugs and drug users in the heads of Americans. President Nixon was able to get the American public to support the anti-drug laws, campaigns, and administrations that we have in place today. In 1973, Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration. With the DEA, the United States had a police force specially dedicated to persecuting drug traffickers and drug users. The war on drugs took a new turn when “Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which appropriated $1.7 billion to fight the drug war. The bill also creates mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses, which are increasingly criticized for promoting significant racial disparities in the prison population because of the differences in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine.”^​#​ Crack cocaine had a harsher sentence than powder cocaine and crack cocaine was mostly used by black and brown people.

The 1990s also saw the birth of NAFTA – a free trade agreement between Mexico, the United States, and Canada. As the flow of goods grew, so did the flow of drugs coming from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. During the 1990’s the United States government, trying to disturb the trading routes from Latin America, strictly targeted drug supply in the Caribbean only to cause the Latin America drug trade to geographically shift into Mexico.^​**​ These two factors combined allowed a growing drug market where the United States spent “150 billion in 2016 on cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana.^​††​ Thus, drug trafficking became an extremely profitable activity in Mexico – a country where, according to a report conducted by the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy, “in 2016, 43.6% of the population lived in poverty.”^​‡‡​ 

The hopelessness brought by poverty and the spoils that drug trafficking money can bring makes joining one of these organized drug cartels a tempting option for a lot of people. Having an extremely profitable drug market across the border has caused several competing drug cartels to kill one another for control of trade routes into the United States. The huge amounts of money the cartels make, combined with the violent and aggressive attitude is enough to corrupt politicians, judges, and the police force. These factors combine to make The Mexican Drug War a reality, which has left a devastating toll on the public. Year after year, homicides and violence continue to grow in Mexico. For example, in 2018 “homicides, many linked to drug cartels hit a new high of almost thirty-six thousand. This trend continued in 2019, with about ninety murders daily”^​§§​ In addition, another factor that makes this drug war possible is that most of the weapons that end up in the hands of cartel members are American. As Aileen Teague explains “American-manufactured weapons in Mexico end up in the hands of cartels via Central American smuggling routes, or when cartel members seize them from Mexican public-security actors.”^​¶¶​ An ineffective government that does not provide security, widespread poverty, the profits that smuggling drugs into the United States can bring, and the smuggling of US guns into Mexico have all compounded the mass violence we have seen in Mexico since 2006.

The Mexican government has already proven to be inadequate to end the supply of drugs and the violence their citizens see daily. The United States has also not seen improvements in the number of people using drugs and dying from them. The best way to put an end to the drug problem on both sides of the border is by legalizing drugs. Although this approach may seem impossible, there is a country that has proven this can be possible. 

Portugal used to suffer from record-breaking overdoses and its prison population continued to increase. When the country’s problem with drugs did not improve, they decided to take a new approach. Portugal decided to decriminalize drugs and help drug users instead of punishing them. This does not mean that drugs became legal, it just means that if you are caught with a small number of drugs, instead of sending you to prison, the person is offered rehabilitation treatments and is also given assistance finding a job once they get clean. The United States is currently spending an enormous amount of money and resources to punish drug offenders. According to a report done by The Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit research organization that seeks to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization  “In 2015, the federal government spent an estimated $9.2 million every day to incarcerate people charged with drug-related offenses—that’s more than $3.3 billion annually.”^​##​ All of this money and resources could be used to positively change someone’s life. For example, it can be used to provide free rehabilitation opportunities, help people get a job once they are clean, or implement economic development projects in communities that have been or are at risk to be affected by drugs. 

The results from the action Portugal took shows that decriminalization is not only positive, but it can yield positive results as well. According to a report by the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization that seeks to best reduce the harms of both drug use and drug prohibition shows that – “Overdose deaths decreased by over 80%, the prevalence rate of people who use drugs that account for new HIV/AIDS diagnoses fell from 52% to 6%, and incarceration for drug offenses decreased by over 40%”^​***​ Portugal realized that their problem with drugs was a public health problem and it should be handled by the health system, not be handled by the criminal justice system. Both governments have tried to eliminate the supply side of the problem and neither has had any significant success. If the United States of Mexico arrests a cartel leader, there are a hundred more ready to take his place and enjoy the spoils that drug trafficking can bring. The current policies we have against drugs have proven to be unsuccessful at fulfilling their purpose as overdoses and incarcerations increase. Through decriminalization, the United States can reduce its drug epidemic, reduce the illegal market for drugs, and help end the drug war in Mexico.