Drug War – Nathan Fuller

The war on drugs is doing just fine

The domestic war on drugs has long “failed” to curb drug use and supply, an unrealistic goal, because that wasn’t its true intention; rather, the war on drugs has been a war to incarcerate black and poor people and to grow the police state. Similarly, we can see how the U.S. war on drugs in Afghanistan isn’t “failing” unless you believe official claims about their objectives. Because while the U.S. may not be meeting its publicly stated objectives, the military industrial complex blooms like poppies

Ryan Devereaux writes ‘Surprise: U.S. Drug War in Afghanistan Not Going Well.’ He details a new report from the U.S. Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, claiming that “despite spending over $7 billion to combat opium poppy cultivation and to develop the Afghan government’s counternarcotics capacity, opium poppy cultivation levels in Afghanistan hit an all-time high in 2013.” These so-called “failures” have been “consistently documented for years.”

One reason that poppy levels have been growing for so long is that U.S. Marines have actively protected their cultivation. According to Geraldo Rivera’s framing, Marines “tolerate cultivation” of opium in Afghanistan as recently as 2010 for “security reasons,” because if it was destroyed, the population would turn against the U.S. Continue reading “The war on drugs is doing just fine”