- Fighting war against drugs
Implementation
Despite 2 years of extensive herbicide spraying source country eradication, the U.S. estimates show that there has not been any net reduction in Colombian coca cultivation – the net coca cultivation has actually increased 50 percent.
Claim
To achieve a one percent reduction in US cocaine consumption, the United States could spend an additional $34 million on drug treatment programmes, or 20 times more, $783 million, on efforts to eradicate the supply at the source.
Counter-claim
Major US campaigns against cocaine trafficking began in the early eighties. In 1982, the average retail price for a pure gram of cocaine was $433 ($1,500 in 2025 dollars). In 2025, a pure gram of cocaine sells for an average of $150. In other words, despite over forty years of “war” against drug traffickers, cocaine is now 90% cheaper in the United States than it was when the war began. On a per capita basis, cocaine is not as popular now as it was in the 1980s, but the plummeting price is still primarily a function of increasing production and distribution efficiency.
The point of the “War on Drugs” is not to win it, but to keep it going. Keeping it illegal and maintaining some barriers to its entry into the country obliges cartel bosses to pay bribes to officials and politicians.
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SDG
