William O. Walker III
Efforts to control the production of and traffic in illicit drugs, commonly referred to as "the war on drugs," seem like a relatively recent phenomenon. The visibility of struggles since the late 1970s against drug organizations, or "cartels," based in the prosperous Colombian cities of Cali and Medellín did much to shape that perception. Narcotraffickers, as major figures in the South American drug business are called, were responsible for the influx of powdered cocaine, crack cocaine, and, increasingly since the late 1980s, heroin into the United States.
Public awareness of drug control as an aspect of U.S. foreign policy likely began with Operation Intercept in August 1969. U.S. officials designed Intercept as an intensive effort to curb the flow of marijuana and other drugs from Mexico into California. Within two years, as narcotics like heroin began entering the United States in unprecedented amounts from various points of origin, President Richard M. Nixon had declared a war on drugs, calling them a serious threat to the security of the nation.
The Colombian, Mexican, and other examples illustrate the fact that campaigns to control drugs have a history of their own, unknown though they may be. The impetus for international drug control, commencing at the beginning of the twentieth century, arose from concern among industrialized nations, most notably the United States, about the havoc that drugs could potentially wreak upon society. Alarmed at the incidence of opium smoking in their new colony in the Philippines, U.S. authorities acted to stamp out the practice among the overseas Chinese population. They discontinued Spain's contract system under which Chinese smokers had purchased opium from licensed dens. Surprisingly elimination of the Spanish system actually increased the availability of smoking opium in the islands and led as well to a greater incidence of usage by the Filipinos themselves.
The motivation behind opium prohibition was simultaneously moralistic and economic. In the eyes of reformers and U.S. officials, good Christians only consumed intoxicants like tobacco and alcohol if they consumed any such substances at all. The smoking of opium betokened spiritual degradation if not personal depravity. Moreover, colonials habituated to opium and opiates were deemed unproductive subjects who potentially could weaken a market economy. Drug usage therefore had no place in the American empire or, for that matter, in any colonial setting.
For nearly a century the United States clung to the idea of control at the source as the only possible path to effective drug control. Whether at international parleys or through bilateral and regional diplomatic efforts, U.S. officials steadfastly pursued this goal. At the same time, as this essay demonstrates, drug control did not, indeed could not, exist in a vacuum isolated from other foreign policy concerns. Ultimately this state of affairs meant that control at the source had to give way to competing, often more important, priorities. During World War II, for instance, drug policy reflected the exigencies of global war by encouraging the production of raw narcotic material should it be necessary for the medical needs of the Allies. Throughout the Cold War, U.S. drug control officials frequently subordinated their traditional objectives to larger security considerations. This practice all too often entailed countenancing involvement with illicit drugs by so-called security assets. In the 1990s, as the Cold War ended, efforts by the United States to promote comprehensive drug control abroad became indistinguishable from the very issues of governance and state stability. This was particularly true in the Andes, most notably in Colombia, and to a lesser extent in Mexico.