A War that Can’t Be Won: Binational Perspectives on the War on Drugs

Conclusion: A War That Can’t Be Won?

311 Introduction In this volume a group of both Mexican and U.S. scholars analyzed the war on drugs and presented nuanced evidence from both sides of the border about the complexity of “fighting” clean wars on drugs. The chapters written by these scholars bring a special vantage point to the study of drug wars that heretofore has not existed, that is, a binational U.S.–Mexican perspective, emphasizing the “consequences” of an increasingly militarized conflict. We wanted to do so because we know that the war on drugs knows no borders and it has to be understood as a transnational phenomenon in its causes and consequences. Through this binational and borderlands perspective, the overall lesson of this volume is that the drug war wreaks special consequences on the borderlands of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. In effect, the death toll has been staggering , reaching nearly one hundred thousand deaths in Mexico alone, by some accounts. It is also clear that most do not know how to “end” the war on drugs. There appears to be no clear “exit” strategy in sight, and there is no clear measure of “success.” Consequently, most chapters stopped short of advocating a position on the drug war itself or on changing policy toward illegal drugs, whether that change involved decriminalization or outright legalization with a regulatory and taxation system behind it. Here we aim to sort through some of the key implications that contributing analysts have sketched in this volume for shaping new ways of thinking about drug wars and drug Conclusion A War That Can’t Be Won? Tony Payan and Kathleen Staudt 312 · Conclusion policies in Mexico and the United States and at the national, state, and local/municipal levels in both countries. We begin with an assessment of where we are now, a forty-plus-year drug war, overwhelmingly dominated by U.S. priorities, strategies, and tactics, and with a far-reaching agenda that radiates in both bilateral and multilateral directions, including to the United Nations. Our intention is to analyze various gradual steps to “de-Americanize” the war on drugs, something suggested by Bollinger in 1994. The “war on drugs” is considered so cliché that even the White House in 2009 sought a name change to remove the war terminology (Wall Street Journal 2009; Drug Reporter 2012), and President Obama is seeking alternatives to de-escalate it without “expecting miracles,” as he put it in his customary restrained approach (Daily Beast 2012). In the second section we examine the role that bureaucracies play in creating and maintaining the war on drugs. Many government agencies have become materially and ideologically vested in the status quo and appear prepared to lobby hard to maintain the prohibitionist regime and preclude any alternative approaches, believing that they stand to lose much under a new drug regime. In a third section, we examine the emerging resistance to U.S. drug policy in Latin America. As it has become clear, several important Latin American nations are beginning to resist this fundamentally American prohibitionist policy. Several Latin American presidents and former presidents have in fact called for alternative options. Fourth, we draw important conclusions about the costs of the militarization of the U.S.–Mexican border, largely driven by the war on drugs. Finally, we deal with alternatives to the war on drugs. These alternatives are not easy by any means, and some are quite controversial. Moreover , depending on the alternative offered, the implications for law enforcement, regulation, taxation, and opportunities for crime are important and deserve to be thoroughly debated. The War on Drugs at Age Forty-Plus In September 2009 a conference on the war on drugs took place in El Paso, Texas (see http://warondrugsconference.utep.edu). Policy makers, health professionals, academics, journalists, and the general public were invited. During the two-day conference and numerous presentations, the attendees debated the record of the drug war at age forty-plus. The old adage “where you stand depends on where you sit” was in full display. Government officials, such as Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Conclusion · 313 administrator Anthony Placido, argued—amid PowerPoint slides with multicolor photos of supposed marijuana-induced brain damage—that alternatives to the war on drugs were not likely to resolve this thorny policy problem and that policy continuity, with greater vigor, was what the country needed. Any failures of the war on drugs, he implied, could potentially...