Was on drugs

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DEA agents during an exercise

"War on Drugs" ( "war on drugs" ) is a set of measures in the US - drug policy , the illegal against manufacture, trafficking and consumption of drugs are directed. The term was coined in 1972 by President Richard Nixon , probably in rhetorical reference to the 1964 introduced by his predecessor Lyndon B. Johnson policy of " War on Poverty " ( "War against poverty" ). Synonymous terms are used in many drug prohibition countries today. The effect of such measures is controversial because the definition of goals is unclear and successes are difficult to prove. Critics complain that the use of the term measures against use and proliferation of certain drugs as warlike represents action and justifies.

approaches

The US Navy used hydrofoils to try to stop the illegal drug trade .

The "War on Drugs" comprises different methods that are intended to curb the use of illegal drugs:

  • Setting up and deploying specialized police units
  • Information campaigns to inform the public about the perceived or real dangers of using illegal drugs
  • economic pressure on the governments of the countries that produce illegal drugs to fight their cultivation or processing
  • Combating Money Laundering

In the USA, the DEA, which was founded in 1973, is primarily responsible for combating illegal drugs. Since 1988, the actions of the various organizations, ministries and authorities involved have been coordinated and monitored by the newly established “Office of National Drug Control Policy”.

The US has also participated in multinational drug trafficking operations such as: B. in Operation Solare .

To what extent information campaigns and health programs can fall under such a martial political slogan as the "war on drugs" is controversial, since under this name, as described, mostly repressive measures are expanded and gentle methods such as information, prevention and dropout programs are even restricted.

Impact on US society

The measures taken against drug users and drug dealers are a key reason why the United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world in relation to the total population (see: The prison system of the United States ). Since whole towns and branches of the economy are now benefiting from it, there is no particular interest in lowering this rate. Citizens' trust in the police is permanently shaken, as the success of the police officers is measured to a large extent by the number of arrests and so, for example, solving a murder is far less attractive than imprisoning dozens of small dealers. The resolution rate of capital crimes is therefore falling, especially in areas with many drug raids. Often innocent people get caught up in search activities and suffer disadvantages for which they are not compensated due to the rigid laws. It is noticeable that certain ethnic groups are strongly overrepresented among the prisoners. Although consumption within the same social class hardly differs among groups of different skin color, the vast majority of those imprisoned are African American , followed by Latinos . Some of the drug problems in the black population were caused by the US authorities themselves as part of the FBI program COINTELPRO . For example, the Black Panther Party was fought by FBI agents delivering drugs to African Americans who had previously had nothing to do with it and sometimes even campaigned against it.

In several large cities, the politically responsible are considering withdrawing their local police units from the prosecution of drug consumption and small dealers, and not least saving considerable financial resources for the police and the judiciary if their activities are not successful for society. In 2014, the City of Portland , Oregon, considered halving the Department of Drug Crimes and Moral Crimes and investing the money saved in defusing traffic accident black spots and emergency equipment for earthquakes and other major disasters. Santa Fe and Seattle offer addicts a way out of law enforcement if they partake in rehab , and in the New York borough of Brooklyn , a district attorney has announced an immediate termination of cases for possession of small quantities of unconditional marijuana.

Impact on US Foreign Policy

As part of the “War on Drugs”, the USA repeatedly intervenes in foreign policy, especially in the drug-producing countries. In 1989, as part of Operation Just Cause, over 25,000 US soldiers took part in an invasion of Panama that toppled Manuel Noriega . The USA accused him of involvement in the drug trade and used this as a reason for the invasion, but mainly to distract from the planned breach of the Torrijos-Carter treaties , the real reason for the invasion. The drug trade of the Noriega government was already known at the latest in 1986 when the Iran-Contra affair was cleared up and was actively supported by the CIA for political reasons.

The US government sponsors the Colombian drug control program Plan Colombia u. a. by sending military personnel, but above all by paying for private security services such as DynCorp . The security companies participate in the controversial programs to destroy coca plantations, which use highly toxic herbicides, and support the regular Colombian armed forces in the fight against left- and right-wing rebels.

The US drug control agency DEA is also active in Mexican cities near the border in cooperation with Mexican authorities.

At the same time, however, US authorities themselves repeatedly participated in illegal drug deals, including a. in the Iran-Contra affair , in which the CIA was involved in importing drugs from South America, in Haiti , Panama, as well as in China , Burma and Thailand and Afghanistan .

Afghanistan

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During the Soviet-Afghan War (1980–1988), the CIA provided intensive support to the Afghan fighters who waged a guerrilla war against the Soviet occupiers. The support consisted of a. from modern weapons, financial aid and military advice.

In addition, the CIA indirectly supported the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan and its processing into morphine or heroin (diacetylmorphine). The processes are very easy to carry out, but were largely unknown to the Afghans until then. Until then, the only illegal drugs that had been grown in Afghanistan were cannabis . The regions were each controlled by so-called warlords , who drove the cultivation, processing and trade in opium and heroin. They were also supported by the CIA with transportation, weapons and political backing.

The aim of the CIA was presumably to expose the Soviet soldiers stationed in Afghanistan to cheap heroin and to make them dependent, as had happened to numerous US soldiers in the Vietnam War . Another goal was probably to bring the drug problem to the Soviet Union as part of the Cold War and the fight against communism. This goal was largely achieved and in 1988 was one of the main reasons for the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, along with the large number of dead young conscripts and over 50,000 wounded.

Despite controls by the Soviet authorities, large quantities of heroin and hashish made their way from Afghanistan to the neighboring Soviet Union. The drug problem increased rapidly. The war was already very unpopular in the Soviet Union, the worsening drug problem and the very high costs of the long war are likely to have accelerated the dissolution of the Soviet Union . In this respect, the operation was a success from the US perspective.

The production of opium was continued by the Afghans even after the war ended, but the country sank into a war between the respective warlords, from which the Taliban emerged victorious. However, opium cultivation only reached its extreme proportions a few years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 . Afghanistan now accounts for around 95% of the world's (illegal) heroin production. The western troops, mostly US soldiers, have orders not to intervene in the cultivation of opium. Guerrilla tactics have since turned against the US and its allies themselves, and 2010 was the bloodiest year yet for the US and the Western coalition.

science

While the investigation of central problems and the evaluation of the measures taken play a major role in many areas of public life (economy, medicine) , scientific papers dealing with the mechanisms and effects of prohibition are few and far between.

A secret report by the British government from 2005 declares the "anti-drug war" a failure. This report was only partially published by the UK government in July 2005, but the withheld pages were made public through a report in the UK newspaper The Guardian . The report comes to the following conclusions:

  • The increasing use of so-called “hard drugs” in the last 20 years has had negative effects on users, their families and society as a whole.
  • The illicit drug market is highly developed, so attempts to intervene have not resulted in any demonstrable damage to the market at any level:
    • The production of illegal drugs in developing countries is primarily due to poverty and a lack of alternatives; combating them only shifts production from one country to the next.
    • The interventions cause price increases and thus increase the attractiveness of this economic sector.
    • The currently achievable seizure rates of around 20% are easily cope with the backers who take over the transport to Europe due to the high profit margins. Seizure rates of at least 60% would be required to make the business unprofitable.
    • Small dealers who are arrested can be replaced quickly. The arrests therefore do not seriously jeopardize a permanent supply of the markets.
  • As a result of the last few years:
    • The market for so-called "hard drugs" has grown dramatically.
    • Heroin and cocaine prices in the UK have halved over the past decade despite confiscations.
    • The prices are not high enough to discourage newbies from getting started.
    • The prices, on the other hand, are high enough to generate high levels of crime and harm from drug addicts who have to finance their addiction.
  • The cost of drug addiction to crack and heroin addiction is £ 16 billion a year in the UK (£ 24 billion if other social and health costs are included).
  • The 280,000 "severely damaging" heroin or crack users regularly come into contact with treatments or the judiciary, but because of the addictive pressure they only stay in drug replacement programs for a short time or see no benefit in their existence. The government needs to work more effectively with drug users when they come into contact with government agencies and find ways that they do less harm to society.

Political motivation / Ehrlichman quote

John Ehrlichman was Nixon's chief domestic policy advisor from 1969 to 1973 and was part of his inner circle. In a conversation with the journalist Dan Baum in 1994, he commented on the domestic political motives for the later proclamation of the "War on Drugs" :

“The 1968 Nixon campaign and the following government had two enemies: the anti-war leftists and the blacks. Do you understand what I mean by that? We knew we couldn't forbid being anti-war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and the blacks with heroin and severely punishing both, we could discredit those groups. We could arrest their leaders, search their homes, end their meetings, and denigrate them on the news night after night. Did we know we lied about the drugs? Of course we knew that! "

literature

Non-fiction

Literary theming

Media reports

Web links

Commons : War on Drugs  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Jump up ↑ Drugs: America's Longest War on YouTube , Arte documentary dated October 4, 2016
  2. ↑ a b What If US Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs? In: CityLab , May 15, 2014
  3. ↑ English Wikipedia article "Allegations of CIA drug trafficking" with sources.
  4. ^ Alfred W. McCoy: The politics of heroin: CIA complicity in the global drug trade: Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America, Colombia . revised edition. Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago 2003, ISBN 1-55652-483-8 , pp. 385 .
  5. ^ A b Alan Travis: Revealed: How drugs war failed. In: The Guardian . July 4, 2005. Retrieved February 19, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Martin Bright: Secret report says war on hard drugs has failed. In: The Guardian . July 3, 2005, accessed February 19, 2017 .
  7. ^ Dan Baum: Legalize It All. In: Harper's Magazine . April 2016. Retrieved February 19, 2017 .