18 Facts About America's Long and Costly War on Drugs

18. Winning, losing, or is it a draw?

As early as 1988, the RAND Corporation, at the behest of the federal government, produced a study which found the use of the military to prevent drugs from crossing American borders was not cost effective. It also found that the cocaine cartels of Colombia actually realized an increase in profits as a result of the American led War on Drugs. RAND also listed seven consecutive studies prepared independently over nine years which came to the same conclusion. In response, military interdiction efforts were increased. In the mid-1990s RAND conducted another study for the Clinton administration, which reported that reduction in demand was more than twenty times more effective in reducing drug trafficking than attempting to stop it at its source, or blocking it at the borders. American efforts to combat drugs using the military continued.

By the early 2000s, leading critics were pointing out that to have a negative effect on cartel profits about 75% of their shipments would have to be seized. The same critics stated that the US stopped only about 15-30% of shipments of heroin and cocaine. Reducing the supply while ignoring the level of demand caused the price of drugs on the street to increase, sending larger profits to the producers. By the year 2010 it was widely accepted by economists, health care professionals, prison administrators, and some politicians that the War on Drugs had been an abysmal and expensive failure. Nonetheless, in 2005 the United States spent more than $7 billion dollars on the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of marijuana users alone, retained the policy of treating it as a gateway drug, and continued to prosecute a War on Drugs which has shown little sign of abating in the twenty-first century.