Fighting a War with Yourself: A Losing Battle

June 17^th, 1971. President Nixon speaks at a press conference and declares that drug abuse is number one problem in the United States. In effort to resolve this pressing issue, Nixon declared a war on drugs and created the Drug Enforcement Administration, commonly known as the DEA. “We will wage an all-out war on drugs,” President Nixon stated. Flash forward over forty years later, and many would be inclined to agree that we are still fighting this war. We are proverbially entrenched within our own nation, the battles we fight are not for countries or oil, but for ourselves. In the almost four and a half decades since Nixon’s address, countless legislations have passed and agencies created in effort to combat the spread of drug abuse throughout our country, but it feels as if the problem is only getting worse. In my earnest opinion, we have not lost the war on drugs, but neither have we won it. After all, how can you win a war you are helping to perpetuate?

Every conflict has its costs, whether won or lost, and the war on drugs is no exception. Let’s speak plainly of the financial costs, and note that the United States federal government spent $15 billion dollars in 2010 for funding the various efforts against the war on drugs (Drugsense.org, 2015). Local and state governments spent a combined estimate of $25 billion dollars additionally. Over the years, the US has spent over $1 trillion dollars in the war on drugs (Richard Branson, 2012), and what do we have to show for it?

Additional costs for fighting the war on drugs are no less important to remember. Part of the costs for fighting this war translate into the money required to maintain the overcrowded prisons and correctional facilities that are brimming with individuals serving time for relatively harmless drug offenses. Men and women found with only small amounts of drugs such as marijuana become incarcerated for disproportionate amounts of time. At the time of this writing, over 300,000 people have been arrested for drug law offenses in 2015 (Drugsense.org, 2015); and we are only three months into the year. Continuing at this rate, one can only predict that we will run aground and be unable to house all the individuals being arrested for drug law violations.

Speaking of prediction, one of the most important costs to consider is that of the future. What will this cost us, cost our nation, to continue at this unsustainable rate? The war on drugs, as we currently fight it, is impractical. Confusing and contradicting legislation, disproportionate enforcement based on race and socioeconomic status because of these poorly constructed laws, and money blindly being funneled in an attempt to “arrest our way” out of the problem of drug abuse are all contributing factors to the debacle that has become of the war on drugs. How much money will be wasted, and how many people will lose their lives either physically or via incarceration before we realize we must change the way we think before we can change the way we act? Because attempting to win this war on drugs is just that, an attempt to change human behavior. If we are to have any hope to avoid the heavy cost of our future, we must eliminate the need for people to abuse drugs, not just lock up every user we find.

In summation, the war on drugs has not been won or lost; however we are fighting an uphill battle with ourselves. Attempting to arrest our way out of this problem has proven for over four decades to be costly, both in terms of finance and loss of human life, and inefficient. Continuing on this course will cost us our future, in the form of the system crashing down around us, unless we alter the way we approach the problem. Drug abuse is certainly a problem, do not infer that I think otherwise. But instead of attacking and stigmatizing those who abuse drugs, we need to focus on the other social factors that cause people to abuse drugs, and eliminate them. Eliminate the demand, and you eliminate the supply. For too long, we have tried the reverse, and it has most certainly failed. Once again: Eliminate the demand, and you eliminate the supply.