Worried about the border? Oppose the War on Drugs

Americans across the political spectrum are justifiably disturbed by the unrest at our southern border. They’re rightfully concerned that, for the sake of all countries and individuals involved, the migrant caravan saga represents an unsustainable turn of events.

America’s national interest includes, but goes well beyond, a safe and orderly border. If the United States does not take major steps to counter the deepening chaos in Central America, many more people will continue to flee Central America.

In an earlier time, a vocal minority doubtless would agitate for the deployment of United States military personnel. But that is not want Americans want, and it is not something America is prepared to sustain. Even a border wall would be only a superficial “fix” that fails to address the root causes of instability prompting so many to seek refuge in the United States from Central America.

Instead of going down the dark road of a border wall and further deployments of the military, the U.S needs to end the drug war as we know it.

This approach has its limits and critics. But to pretend that the tide can be turned against the nexus of criminality, corruption and rule by terror spurred by the lucrative illegal drug trade by merely perpetuating the drug war is to ignore history.

The cartels will simply not decrease their power so long as the United States is such a magnet for illegal drugs. Unfortunately, despite an estimated $1 trillion in spending in pursuit of drug prohibition, millions of arrests and decades of effort, the market for illegal street drugs remains robust.

It is one thing to make the moral case that life-destroying drugs must not be legal. But the scale of destruction at issue today goes far beyond families and neighborhoods in the most drug-devastated areas. Current drug policy ensures that the cartels, and the global network of dirty money and violence they fuel, will continue to expand their own operations while capturing effective control of seemingly whole governments.

Anyone wondering just how bad such a situation can get can consider the case of Brazil, where prison gangs are now strong enough to cripple the country’s major cities and the police and federal government vie for influence in a competition of corruption. After a string of sensational failures of democracy, Brazilians have thrown themselves at the mercy of Jair Bolsonaro, a hardline would-be strongman beloved of the military. Take this recipe for civil disorder and throw in multinational drug cartels, and this is what now seems most likely to happen in many countries between Brazil and the U.S. itself.

For the past seven years, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, today made up of figures as diverse as former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Chile Ricardo Lagos, former Colombian President César Gaviria and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has called for significant drug policy reforms as a means of mitigating the harms of drug use and abuse.

Domestically, this entails the decriminalization of drug possession, the end of federal marijuana prohibition, serious analysis of the benefits of regulating currently illegal drugs, and a greater emphasis on treatment and rehabilitation.

This may not be a perfect approach — none is — but coupled with improved economic ties, it is the most promising way the United States can address instability throughout Central America.

Instead of going down the dark road of a border wall and further deployments of the military, the U.S. needs to end the drug war as we know it.