War on drugs

In the late 1960’s early 1970’s, amid an unpopular war President Richard Nixon declared that illegal drugs were a “national threat” (Andrews, P.274) and began the War on Drugs. In previous discussions we analyzed if the domestic War on Drugs lead by the United States government and the many agencies was successful or not, however in President Nixon’s campaign against illegal drugs in the United States he pushed a strong “strike at the supply” (Andrews, p.275) foreign drug war as well. Books like Smuggler Nation by Peter Andrews, Blowback: The Mexican Drug Crisis by Paul Gootenburg and films like American Drug War: The Last White Hope by Kevin Booth offer a critical portrayal of the results of the United States foreign drug war, from their involvement in eradicating drugs by force in Latin and South America to their diplomatic tactics in Europe the results of the United States War on Drugs abroad was a failure.

Prior to Nixon’s global agenda on battling drugs abroad and the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) there was the FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The FBN was the front running agency in the United States fighting the spread of illegal drugs, notably responsible for the massive use of propaganda in post war America. The FBN was also involved in pursuing “mobsters” like Charles “Lucky” Luciano suspected of importing drugs into the United States from Europe. Later the FBN would be combined with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and form the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) in 1968 and were a part of the Justice Department (Andrews, p.275). Later to reach his goal of global enforcement, and “strike at the supply” Nixon created the DEA in 1973 by combining all agencies that deal...

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...xico went from a third U.S. supply to 75% of the supply found in the United States (Gootenburg, p.9). In addition to the increase in drugs being smuggled, the Mexican drug cartel Gulf Forces were known to have hired the “Los Zetas”, a known hit squad, who were formally an anti-drug military unit trained by the United States (Gootenburg, p.10). Also after the disruption of the French connection and a need for quality heroin many different suppliers began smuggling into the U.S. by the mid to late 1970’s including Mexico and Southeast Asia (Schneider, p. 183). Overall the United States global war on drugs was not successful in stopping the growing, processing and smuggling of drugs into the U.S., as stated by former DEA agent Celerino Castillo III “we have more drugs today than we did ten years ago…that shows something bigger that is not being shown”(Booth, 5:00mins).