Republicans complain about how we have an “open border” and how Biden needs to “deport thousands of illegals” among other things. This nonsense is going to increase in the lead-up to next year’s presidential election and is going to become nauseating.
The reality is that the history of the drug war started in 1971 when Republican Richard Nixon was in office, and the drug war over the last 52 years has completely failed to reduce trade in drugs, instead only reducing the tools we have to track down violent criminal gangs which destabilized entire countries.
Today a triangle trade exists, where the United States sells guns to Mexico, Mexican cartels transport drugs up to the United States, and drugs are produced throughout Latin America from Colombia up to the United States. Guns are very easy to acquire in certain US states, like Texas, and the consequences are felt across the continent.
The violence created by the criminal drug cartels then convinces people to move to the United States to work, which is where the calls to just send people back to Mexico (and other countries) come into play.
But simply sending people back without dealing with the problem is not going to solve the problem.
For 20 years the United States has used deportation as its only weapon against the drug cartels. It is the least effective tool we have, and it doesn’t deter immigration from Latin America to the United States. It is like trying to cut down a tree with a herring. To quote King Arthur, “it cannot be done.”
What we can do is sever two legs of the triangle trade in full, which we have complete control over.
The first thing is we can decriminalize drug use and make it so people can get medical treatment without fear of incarceration. This will reduce the demand for drugs, pushing down the price, and reducing the benefits of being engaged in the drug trade. This will bankrupt many drug cartels, which are businesses. Reducing the revenue of drug cartels is the most effective strategy. This is an economic war and we need to use economic tools.
After reducing the imports of drugs to the United States by reducing demand, we need to then cut down on the exports of firearms to Mexico. The way we do this is to require everyone who purchases a gun in the United States to have a license, pay for insurance, and be a citizen of the United States before they are allowed to own a gun. This will significantly reduce the ability of drug cartels to purchase guns in the United States, and it won’t be as easy for them to fight back against Mexican authorities.
We need to see the drug trade as an economic war, not a military-based war. Military-based solutions have been tried for half a century and they have failed. It is time for the United States to reduce drug trade using economic tools, which will actually work.