The harsh laws that prohibit the possession and selling of drugs revolve around the need to not only curb production levels but also to reduce the rates of substance abuse in the ongoing war against the same. Subsequently, the penalties set against distribution, from the societal to international levels, are harsher in comparison to those of possession. After all, unlike the distributor, whoever possesses a drug may have a legal sanction to do so within specific parameters. For instance, in the United States, the use of medical marijuana to alleviate pain is acceptable in certain jurisdictions. Now, possession aside, this paper focuses on the War on Drugs with a particular interest in distribution as the grounds from which policies stem. In other words, much of the implemented tactics encompass prohibition laws on drug importation and the breakup of networks among drug dealers and the larger cartels. To that end, while the United States has laws to govern the side of demand, the federal government’s War on Drugs is mainly on the supply-side. Thus said, to understand the negative impact of the supply-side tactics in the War on drugs, there is a need to consider their impact on the economy, society, and political spheres before considering the possible alternatives that may work towards a win.
Foremost, central to the supply-side war is a system that operates just as a tax would. In other words, the penalties and charges placed on suppliers are high enough to warrant their reconsideration on the benefits of drug trafficking. As mentioned before, the law is harsh on distributors, and as one would expect, the most attention is on the international smugglers and local dealers who peddle cocaine, marijuana, and every other illegal substance available. A perfect illustration of the given claim is evident in Colleen Cook’s Mexico’s Drug Cartels (2008) where the report’s attention is solely on Mexico’s drug barons with little to no notice on the users. After all, there are very high chances that the production base in Mexico is also home to many users who evidently do not appear in the report. By that logic, a tug of war ensues in what should be a decisive battle: as the attention is on the traffickers, more people enter the drug scene. Eventually, it will be as though the nations engaged in the Drugs on War were only wasting time and resources.
With the given facts in mind, the social cost of a supply-side approach revolves around the government’s negligence of the public, who happen to be the buyers. When policies target the distribution channels of illegal substances, they tend to overlook the rates of consumption that eventually lead to social tensions, and fears if left unchecked. For example, in 1916, during the First World War, Britain witnessed a steady rise in the use of cocaine and other drugs among its populace. Now, there was little attention paid to the new phenomena and the government overlooked its chance to curb cases of addiction. Thus, as Marek Kohn’s Cocaine girls report, cocaine was initially a “women drug”; however, said women were of questionable morals, and the drug eventually made its way to the soldiers and the rest of the communities. To shed more light on the given claim, Kohn writes that the “prostitutes, actresses, [and] nightclub dancers” were the first individuals to indulge in the pleasures of illicit drugs. Ironically, nobody paid attention to the behaviors of the women and it is most likely that changing moods were easily dismissed because they were of the fairer gender. In fact, as though to prove mentioned accusation, West End raised alarms over the abuse of drugs after cocaine “became a threat to soldiers,” who were male and evidently of higher social standing than the women (105).
After all, the country was in the middle of the Great War, and any impairment to its forces meant an opening for the enemy to attack and the people were certainly against such a possibility. On the same note, drugs distort the society by rendering its users incapable of coherent thought and entirely dependent on the effects. Perhaps addictions are the worst case scenario that individuals have to deal with as cases of drug abuse rise. Still on Kohn’s writing, the author informs his readers that the women who relied heavily on the thrills of drug use, especially those residing in West End, became the depiction the “true nature of womanhood,” a flawed concept but adopted nonetheless. It is worth mentioning that gender disparities before the Women Suffrage Movement placed men at a predominantly superior position merely because they were male. Hence, women were the weak sex in need of their stronger male counterparts for guidance and protection. If drug abuse benefited nobody at the time, it certainly gave men more authority over the women, lest they become susceptible to drugs and engage in the immorality that came with the same.
Naturally, the identified social problems spill to the economy, and as nations lose money trying to combat drug trafficking, the people set those efforts back by making up the client base of narcotic distributors. About the government, Cook’s report mentions the 2007 decision by the American authorities to join forces with Mexico and Central America. Apparently, the alliance begot the Mérida Initiative: “a multi-year plan for $1.4 billion” that would go on to “combat drug trafficking and other criminal organizations.” At the same time, drug traffickers continue to provide addicts with different substances which happen to be the same ones against which the government is spending money. In other words, the economic problems that are stemming from supply-side approaches are double-edged as they place governments and their civilians at a monetary disadvantage. Concurrently, the higher “[drug] prices typically translate into higher crime rates by addicts.” The validity of the given claim is available in the section on social problems. When people use drugs, they become incapable of working and making something worthwhile out of their persons. In that sense, job opportunities become hard to come by and starvation would most likely set in unless a loved one decides to help the addicted individual. The problem is, while some are lucky to have loving families and friends, others are not and would end up living below the poverty line. Moreover, drug addiction does not care for the availability of funds as long as the person gets his or her dosage of the illicit substance. For that reason alone, crime rates would shoot up as addicted people resort to stealing as a method of having a constant drug supply. Thus, the government would have to deal with criminals within and outside its borders.
Multiple alternatives have theoretically worked in the minds of their designers, all of whom refuse the idea of supply-side strategies. First, just as it is impossible to eradicate alcohol, a “drug-free world” is an impossible feat no matter the amount of money and time spent on the same. Thus, the demands for drugs will continue to rise as more people engage in its abuse and go on to introduce others to the same. Secondly, as long as the United States focuses on combating drugs on a global scale, the government will never reach the objectives set for the War on Drugs. Naturally, when the primary methods solely concentrate on the supply-side, it may work on local distributors but in most cases, production would just shift to a new location. Thus, the only remaining solution is to treat drugs just as alcohol. When drugs are “taxed, controlled, and regulated,” possession and usage levels will significantly decrease, and the tax money will aid in other government projects that need more attention.
With the given argument in mind, alternative methods can work because at the moment, the battle of wit between the multiple countries' administration and the drug traffickers is what heightens the prices of illegal substances and increases crime rates.
Bibliography
Cook, Colleen W. Mexico’s Drug Cartel. Government Report, Washington: Congressional Research Service, 2008.
"Cocaine girls: sex, drugs, and modernity in London during and after the First World War." In Cocaine: Global Histories, by Marek Kohn, edited by Paul Gootenberg, 105-122. New York: Routledge, 2002.
