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

a problem when contextualized with the other obstacles the United States faces. Porter laments our prisons full of drug offenders, that were most likely jailed with very minor possession charges, whose cases would merit medical support in other countries.

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

to as the most significant indicator of the failure to make drugs harder to obtain is the 74% price drop of cocaine since the 1980’s. In his words, “Prices match supply with demand. If the supply of an illicit drug were to fall… we should expect its price to go up.” However, as the numbers show, that’s the exact opposite of what happened. One thing that the United States government achieved, but Porter still counts as a failure, was locking up drug offenders. According to his sources, about half of federal prison inmates are in for drug-related crimes. Porter makes a good point that the United States already struggles with over-imprisonment, and it doesn’t help that a huge portion of those imprisoned are small time drug offenders. Lastly Porter unpacks why Americans’, and particularly drug addicts’, health has not been helped at all. Porter quotes that “Americans who inject drugs are four times as likely to have H.I.V. as British addicts and seven times as likely as drug-injecting Swiss”. Porter effectively uses this statistic to not only show the failures of the American operation, but also to exemplify countries that through different means have found success in improving the health of their citizens.
Although he briefly mentions the growth of cartels and violence caused by the war on drugs, Porter does not spend nearly enough time delving into the topic.

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

alcohol.
Overall, Porter’s article does an effective job at using the statistics of the last 30 years to question the effects of the War on Drugs. While he doesn’t disagree with the goals of the War, he shows that the criminalization and “no excuse” methods used may have been a mistake. He also points to other countries like Britain and Sweden that we can learn from moving forward. Lastly, he suggests, but doesn’t fully analyze, how the War was fundamentally backwards from the start. Porter’s article is great at understanding how things have gone so far, and can start the conversation on what to do regarding drugs moving forward.