Infelicitous 40: The Anniversary of the U.S.’s War on Drugs
June 17, 2011 marked a little-known, yet significant, anniversary in U.S. history – the U.S.’s war on drugs turned an infelicitous 40. Four decades, one trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives later, we must pause and reevaluate not only whether this war’s costly means justify its ends, but if its methods actually work.
The Ill-Fated Origins of the War on Drugs
President Richard Nixon initiated the “war on drugs” in June 1971, when he denounced drug abuse as “public enemy No. 1.” With this pronouncement, he catapulted the country into a decades-long stalemate founded largely on fallacious data, virulent prejudices and ill-calibrated policies. Despite personally appointing the members of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, President Nixon refused to read the 1972 report in which the authors advocated decriminalizing marijuana for personal use. Instead, he categorized marijuana as a Schedule I substance, an official classification for narcotics with “high potential for abuse [and] no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” Shortly thereafter, in July 1973, President Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to consolidate government agencies and coordinate the war on drugs.
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