(Photo: Flickr / Olivier Lalin)
The United States has dumped billions of dollars into Central American security forces in recent years in the name of a militarized war on drugs. The approach, now widely regarded as a failure, has increased corruption, deteriorated human rights and exacerbated conditions that led to mass migration, with nothing to show in terms of the stated goals of curbing trafficking.
According to drug policy expert Sanho Tree, a fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies, the prohibitionist approach is doomed to fail because it does not tackle the underlying social issues driving the drug trade.
“We’ll never stop this war by amplifying the motivational feedback loop of the very adversaries that we are trying to stop,” Tree told teleSUR by phone from New York, adding that poverty, despair, and alienation are key factors behind narcotrafficking. He argued that prohibitionist drug policy is an “equal opportunity corrupter” for governments and security forces.
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