Ted Cruz recently asserted that the United States military needs to be sent to Mexico to attack the drug cartels head-on.
This is a bad idea. But so is the drug war itself, both constitutionally and logically.
Forty-six years and one trillion dollars after its start, President Richard Nixon's War on Drugs is still going, with 300,000 people currently in jail on drug charges. Meanwhile, 26 times as many people suffer from alcoholism as do heroin abuse, and eight times as many die from alcohol abuse as do heroin.
Many who support the war do so with the best of intentions, but has it really helped? Or has it done more harm than good, like the Prohibition of the 1920s? Is this war even legal in the first place?
James Harrigan and Antony Davies discuss these questions in this week's Words and Numbers. Watch the conversation below or on our YouTube channel, or listen to it on SoundCloud.
For more on this, see:
- Drug War at Odds with Constitution
- The Still-Raging Drug War Ruined Millions of Lives in 2015
- If We Step Up the Drug War, You'll Be a Victim
- How Prohibition Makes Drugs More Potent and Deadly
- Want to Stop Gun Violence? End the War on Drugs
- How the Drug War Hurts Development
- Legal Pot Takes a Bite Out of Drug Cartels
- Portugal Won the War on Drugs By Giving It Up
- Caffeine, the Law, and Me
- Ted Cruz Suggests US Military Response to Mexican Cartels
- The Staggering Death Toll of Mexico's Drug War
And for research, see:
Antony Davies
Dr. Antony Davies is an Associate professor of Economics at Duquesne University, and co-host of the podcast, Words & Numbers.
James R. Harrigan
James R. Harrigan is a Senior Editor at the American Institute for Economic Research. He is also co-host of the Words & Numbers podcast.