Evaluation of the United States drug war policy abroad: a case study in Colombia

Abstract

As the United States continues to recover from the greatest recession since the Great Depression, the U.S. government must find cost savings. Therefore, this project aimed to find efficiencies through reallocating funds from a program proven ineffective. U.S. foreign aid programs such as Plan Colombia, in conjunction with Colombian President Uribe's "Democratic Security" strategy, caused a significant drop in murder rates, the number of displaced people, and the number of kidnappings in Colombia over the last ten years. The purpose of beginning the drug war in Colombia was to interdict the drugs at the source. However, as a result of the "balloon effect" into Peru and Bolivia and technological advances by the narco-traffickers, the net result of interdiction has been virtually zero. Additionally, the source of the United States' drug problem is not in Colombia, but with the user and his or her demand for illicit drugs. Therefore, this project recommends aligning funding to support rehabilitation and prevention programs that will reduce the likelihood that a person will have the desire to abuse drugs again. Though there are possibly negative short-term effects of this policy, this project shows that the long-term effect favors rehabilitation and prevention.