How 44 Years of the United States War on Drugs Has Undermined Mexico Aileen Teague - History News Network
go to original May 12, 2015

How The War On Drugs Betrayed America (TestTube)

This June marks 44 years since President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs, marking an unprecedented mobilization of U.S. resources to combat the drug trade domestically and abroad. The reason? A fear that narcotics use, especially during the Vietnam War era, posed a grave threat to society. Or perhaps, more accurately, drugs threatened authority figures during a period of large-scale revolution against social norms across much of the western world.

With a perceived increase in U.S. drug use, Nixon deployed the now ubiquitous war on drugs metaphor to generate increased funding for drug control. “Public enemy number one in the U.S. is drug abuse,” Nixon said to Congress in 1971. “In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” With this address came a complete discarding of any sort of prevention and treatment solutions to drug abuse, and the wholehearted embrace of a “war” within our own borders.

Enter Mexico, 1969. For years, Mexico’s domestic supply of psychoactive raw materials (cannabis, peyote, opium poppies, hallucinogenic mushrooms, etc.) concerned authorities on both sides of the border. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and a host of other popular figures had trekked to Mexico in the 1950s for the specific purpose of acquiring psychoactive substances. Throughout the 1960s, many others—hippies, students, and sympathizers of the antiestablishment culture—followed suit.

Months after coming into office Nixon ordered the border shut down in an operation known as “Interception” to cut off the flow of Mexican marijuana coming into the U.S. But as the complete shutdown of border commerce debilitated the Mexican economy, it was clear that Interception was also intended to force Mexico into complying with newly established U.S. drug policies such as supply-focused initiatives and more intense marijuana policing.

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