The Failure of the Drug War

The White House has recently put out a report that the war on drugs in Colombia is failing. As it is, US-financed aerial fumigation offensives have failed to curb the supply of cocaine in Colombia. Today's drug producers are more enthused. They replenish as quickly, or quicker, than the government can fumigate crop. Critics of the war on drugs have called it a failure.

The US has spent over three billion dollars fighting cocaine and heroin production in Colombia since the turn of the century. Since then, many initiatives have tried to slow or halt the production of drugs; all the while, the price of cocaine and heroin in the US continues to drop, indicative of the fact that the supply is not diminishing.

If the war on drugs is a failure, would supplying more money help? It seems to me that the war on drugs is being fought incorrectly. With so many people in Colombia convinced that cocaine is their only means of sustenance, the war on drugs would do well to focus more on initiatives to better the quality of life in Colombia and to offer alternatives to coca cultivation. The war on drugs, a substance within which some of us have trouble seeing the intrinsic evil, can only be fought in ways that provide incentive to do something else.

The war on drugs, the US and Colombian governments must begin to realize, will not be won with planes and guns.