Eduardo Porter Drug War Analysis

In his article “Numbers Tell of Failure in Drug War”, Eduardo Porter, economic journalist for the New York Times, argues that despite the billions of dollars spent and countless number of lives lost, the War on Drugs has been a complete failure. Porter particularly wants us to review the methods used by the American government regarding drug control, in order to more successfully protect United States citizens and their health. He writes that the last thirty years has been spent fighting a war that cannot be won. Porter points out that in those 30 years, general use of hard drugs, as well as use of illegal drugs by teenagers, has not declined, but actually increased. Additionally, Americans on average don’t think drug use is even much of

As he writes, Eduardo Porter effectively displays the failures of the “War on Drugs” through his statistical review, and lays the groundwork for why it actually encouraged cartels, and incentivized violence. Porter destroys the notion of a successful drug war by unpacking the goals of the war, and the results of those goals. Porter supports his argument by pointing to the statistics of specific examples of these results. To start, Porter suggests that the goal of the war was to protect Americans’ and their health by making drugs harder to obtain, punishing those involved with drugs, and reducing drug-related violence. He then goes through each of these goals, and demonstrates how they fell short. The statistic he points

The War on Drugs ignored a few fundamental truths when setting out to destroy the source of, and market for, illegal drugs in the United States. First, that markets for illegal substances are essentially impossible to destroy. In the late 1970’s the United States started an operation to destroy the cocaine production in Columbia, the world’s largest producer of the substance. Over the next 10 years, the amount of cocaine leaving Columbia continued to increase, despite the huge effort. Second, the War on Drugs failed to realize that outlawing certain objects or substances promotes criminals, and subsequently increases violence. Porter includes in his article that if marijuana were to legalized in California, “Mexican drugs cartels would lose about… $6.5 billion” a year. When substances are illegal, it gives criminals and their organizations a huge source of income. A perfect example of this comes from the United States alcohol prohibition of the 1920’s. Prohibition gave criminals a market to make money, and thus the infamous mobs were born. Mobs, as many know, were some of the most powerful and violent groups in American history, and were born out of the criminalization of