Can Colombia Solve Its Drug Problem Through Peace?

May 22, 2015 | Jon Lee Anderson
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In 1971, President Nixon announced the U.S. “war on drugs,” which every President since has carried forward as a battle standard. Until recently, most Latin American governments have cooperated, and in return have received intelligence, equipment, and, perhaps most importantly, financial assistance. The overall investment has been huge—the federal government now spends about fifteen billion dollars on it each year—with the net result that drug use has proliferated in the U.S. and worldwide. In the drug-producing countries, where drug consumption was negligible at the start of the American effort, the criminal narcoculture has attained ghoulishly surreal proportions.

Over the course of the past few years, a growing number of Latin American governments have begun to challenge U.S. policy and to call for a radical rethinking of the war on drugs, including widespread decriminalization. A handful of leftist governments, such as those of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, have gone so far as to end their cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, alleging that U.S. drug policy is a new form of Yankee imperialism. Uruguay, under the former President José Mujica, became the first country to legalize state-sponsored production, sale, and use of marijuana.