Why the war on drugs is failing.

The world is coming to realize the drug war is failing because of an ever-resilient enemy: the consumer who fuels the drug business.  Where there is a demand, there will be a supply. “In 2010, about 200 million people took illegal drugs… 40,000 tons of marijuana, 800 tons of cocaine, and 500 tons of heroin” (Der Spiegel, February 22, 2013).

Addiction is the key to the problem! “No matter how cheap heroin is, most people won’t buy it, regardless of the price. But addicts will always pay. They have no choice, or else they wouldn’t be addicts. To them, it doesn’t matter what the drugs cost. That’s the economy of drugs” (ibid.).

After 40 years of waging a worldwide drug war, the costs are staggering. The U.S. alone spends about $15 billion annually, while 60,000 people in Mexico have died in the past six years in the drug war. The Taliban uses drug money to buy weapons, while the Colombian government is in a constant battle with drug cartels. What is the answer?

At a 2012 Summit of the Americas meeting, 30 national leaders met with a new tactic in the war on drugs—legalization. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said, “If the world decides to legalize (drugs) and thinks that that is how we reduce violence and crime, I could go along with that” (ibid.). Their thinking is that legalizing drugs is a revolutionary tactic which could destroy the mafia-type drug trade and provide increased taxes to national governments.

However, Yuri Fedotov, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, disagrees. He commented that, “If drugs are legal, access becomes easier, and something that is legal is taken more often.”  “Alcohol, a legal drug, kills about 2.3 million people worldwide each year. Tobacco kills 5.1 million. With illegal drugs, on the other hand, the numbers are much lower, with 200,000... falling victim…. For the UN, this number illustrates the success of prohibition” (ibid.).

Global morals are declining, and what was once “unthinkable” is becoming modern reality.  Drug use is a terrible consequence of human beings giving into “the lust of the flesh” and turning away from the truth of God (Galatians 5:16; 1 Peter 2:11; Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).  The war on drugs will not end until Jesus Christ returns to the Earth and sets up His Kingdom and the world is taught the right way to live (Isaiah 30:20-21). For more information on the impact of drugs and solutions to the problems, review our article Why We Get High.