Nearly 52 years ago, on June 17, 1971, United States President Richard Nixon announced that “America’s number one public enemy in the United States is drug abuse. To combat and defeat this enemy it is necessary to undertake a new total offensive (…) it will be a worldwide offensive that will deal with the problems of the sources of supply (…) It will encompass the entire government (…) If we are to have a successful offensive We need more money. Accordingly, I ask Congress for $155 million in new funding, which will bring this year’s total amount in the budget for drug abuse, both control and treatment, to more than $350 million.”
Thus began the war on drugs to which most of the world’s governments joined due to pressure from the Americans.
In that year, 6,771 Americans died from an overdose of some drug, a figure that today seems ridiculously low if we consider that an estimated 108,712 died from an overdose in 2022, mainly fentanyl.
Between 1971 and 1990, the number of deaths from overdose remained at minimum levels: from 5,684 per year on average in the period 1971-1980, it dropped to 3,777 per year on average in the period 1981-1990.
However, starting in 1993 the numbers began to grow each year and during the period 1991-2000, the annual average number of deaths rose to 9,601. It was in 1999 when the number of deaths –16,849– exceeded four digits.
In the 2001-2010 period, the annual average number of deaths reached 30,815. This average increased to 58,995 in the 2011-2020 period, being in 2020 when the annual number –106,699– exceeded five digits.
From June 17, 1971 to December 31, 2022, 1,322,270 people died from this cause in the United States, despite the fact that the government of that country spent just over a trillion dollars fighting drugs. To this number we must add who knows how many people and dollars around the world.
Dying apparently does not scare those who use drugs because, according to the World Drug Report 2022 of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in 2020, approximately 284 million people (one in 18 people between 15 and 64 years old) had used a drug in the last 12 months, an increase of 26% compared to 2010.
The numbers indicate that the War on Drugs is totally lost.
Despite this, the governments of the world insist on maintaining the same strategy that they have followed for little more than half a century.
Joe Biden announced yesterday a five-point plan to combat the use of fentanyl, in Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador created a commission to combat the illicit trafficking of synthetic drugs, firearms and their ammunition and today the secretaries of Foreign Affairs, National Defense, Navy, Security and the Attorney General of the Republic to meet with US officials in order to see how they solve the problem.
Everything is more of the same and that is why they will fail in their attempts. Things will not change as long as all drugs are not legalized and the money that is used today to combat them is allocated to prevention and rehabilitation campaigns.
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