Why Plan Mexico will Crash and Burn

Plan Mexico, the US military and police aid package to the Mexican government, is based on a failed “war on drugs” model. This model prioritizes criminalizing the drug trade at the expense of focusing on the harmful effects of drug abuse and addiction as a public health problem. The result has been a blood-soaked disaster.

The War at Home

The United States’ war on drugs kicked into high gear beginning with the Nixon administration in the 1970s. President Nixon increased the federal resources dedicated to prosecuting drug crimes and increased penalties for drug dealers. The Reagan administration followed suit and increased penalties for drug users, especially crack users. The first Bush administration continued the march to war by appointing Bill Bennett as drug czar. Rolling Stone’s Ben Wallace-Wells reports that Bennett once commented: “Two words sum up my entire approach: consequences and confrontation.”

Decades of drug war policy decisions were made based on rhetoric, not hard data. A 2001 report from the National Research Council on the drug war concluded, “The existing drug-use monitoring systems are strikingly inadequate to support the full range of policy decisions that the nation must make.... It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether and to what extent it is having the desired effect."

After decades and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on get-tough drug policies, the war on drugs’ collateral damage is painfully evident. The Drug Policy Alliance Network (DPAN) states that approximately 1.5 billion people are arrested each year in the United States for drug law violations, making the US the biggest jailer in the world—at the expense of US taxpayers. Even the chronically ill are fair game in the war on drugs: the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the federal government can prosecute medical marijuana patients, even in states where medical marijuana is legal. And the drug war is making US residents even sicker: because the federal government refuses to fund needle exchange programs, intravenous drug users are at high risk for hepatitis and HIV infection. Thirty-four percent of all reported new HIV infections are amongst intravenous drug users, with 75% of reported new HIV infections amongst women and children being in some way related to intravenous drug use. Needle exchange programs, while painfully under-funded and stymied by some states’ laws against the possession, distribution, and sale of syringes, are scientifically proven to lower infection rates.

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