The article “The Never-Ending Drug War: Obstacles to Drug War Policy Termination” by Renee Scherlen and the “Wasted: The American prohibition on thinking smart in the drug war” article by Moises Naim explains how the drug war has failed. Policies have been implemented domestically and intentionally to fight against the illegal drug business and usage but this has been in vain. The paper will compare and contrast the opinions and views of the two article authors.
Both the article claim that the drug war has been in vain since it was launched by President Richard Nixon. Policies have been put in place since then but nothing seems to be working. The articles claim that politics is one of the factors which hinder the success of the drug war due to the policies implemented. According to Naim “the United States, today is both the world’s largest importer of illicit drugs and the world’s largest exporter of bad drug policy. He also explains that the United States also focusses on reducing the supply of the drugs in the other countries rather than dealing with the high demand in the country. These are misplaced policies which cannot help the country achieve the objective of the drug war. Scherlen also argues that the price and purity of illicit have not been negatively affected. This is because for instance, “the price of a pure cocaine is lower compared to the price in 1990” (68). Market disruption and supply reduction are factors which well implemented can be used to increase the prices of the illegal drugs which can, in turn, result in the reduction in the number of people who take the drugs. This is a good way of fighting the drugs but due to political interests, the same has never been put into practice. This is why the country and the world are still having a war on drugs. The drug dealers also support the government in a way like during the elections a factor which hinders proper enactment of a good policy to eradicate the drug abuse. For example, “The Pentagon. Senior U.S. military officers know both that the war on drugs is bankrupt and that it is undermining their ability to succeed in other important missions, such as winning the war in Afghanistan” (Naim).
The difference between the two articles is that Scherlen argues that policy termination is the only way to a successful drug war while Naim on the other had claimed: “that governments urgently need options beyond eradication, interdiction, criminalization, and incarceration to limit the social consequences of drugs”. The policy termination process is an expensive and few people support it. The termination process is also slow and thus this is a hindrance to the adoption of the process by the government. If the government considers adopting the process, this can help them address the issue of drug abuse, trafficking among other things. This is because the policy termination process can highlight “prospective gains (for example, emphasis on the tax to be generated by policy termination) while emphasizing current losses (for example, persistent failure to achieve goals)” (Scherlen, 73) and this will influence the effectiveness of the process. Although Naim, on the other hand, suggests a better way to address the drug issue, he claims that the smart thinkers think that declaring the drug war as a public health crisis is the only way to end the drug war. This brings contradiction and makes the drug war process more complicated.
Works Cited
Naim, Moises. "Wasted: The American Prohibition on Thinking Smart in the Drug War." Foreign Policy 172 (2009): 168.
Scherlen, Renee. "The never-ending drug war: Obstacles to drug war policy termination." PS: Political Science " Politics 45.1 (2012): 67-73.
