The overwhelming majority were in for trafficking, and a small few were in for an unspecified "other" category.

"The black market might even be fueled somewhat by the fact that people won't be arrested anymore, because maybe more people will use," Campos said.

Enforcing the war on drugs costs the US more than $51 billion each year, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. Under the Controlled Substances Act, there are five categories of controlled substances known as schedules, which weigh a drug's medical value and abuse potential. The specific aim is to destroy and inhibit the international drug trade making drugs scarcer and costlier, and therefore making drug habits in the US unaffordable. This global proliferation of violence is one of the most prominent costs of the drug war. As the drug war continues, these racial disparities have become one of the major points of criticism against it. We've seen others put drugs into a pharmaceutical model, including the prescription of heroin to people with serious addictions. China carries out some of the harshest punishments for illicit drug trafficking. After heavily armed police responded to largely peaceful protesters with armored vehicle that resemble tanks, tear gas, and sound cannons, law enforcement experts and journalists criticized the tactics. If lawmakers decided to stop the war on drugs tomorrow, a major hurdle could be international agreements that require restrictions and regulations on certain drugs. "I think it's more misleading than useful.". Cocaine, meth, and opioid painkillers are Schedule 2 drugs, so they're considered to have some medical value and high potential for abuse. They're pretty great, though they don't have much to do with the actual war on drugs.

There are other options. "One prime rationale for decriminalization was that it would break down that barrier, enabling effective treatment options to be offered to addicts once they no longer feared prosecution. , some of the nation's top drug policy experts outlined several alternatives, including allowing possession and growing but not sales (like DC), allowing distribution only within small private clubs, or having the state government operate the supply chain and sell pot. In 2013, it was back up to 25.5 percent. The report particularly favors a state-run monopoly for marijuana production and sales to help eliminate the black market and produce the best public health outcomes, since regulators could directly control prices and who buys pot. The balloon effect has been documented in multiple instances, including Peru and Bolivia to Colombia in the 1990s, the Netherlands Antilles to West Africa in the early 2000s, and Colombia and Mexico to El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala in the 2000s and 2010s.

When it comes to individual states in the US, the federal government argues that America's federalist system allows states some flexibility as long as the federal government keeps drugs illegal. This, he said, is the only complete answer to eliminating the black market as a source of revenue for violent criminal groups. These programs allow some addicts to satisfy their drug dependency without a large risk of overdose and without resorting to other crimes to obtain drugs, such as robbery and burglary. In response to the failures and unintended consequences, many drug policy experts and historians have called for reforms: a larger focus on rehabilitation, the decriminalization of currently illicit substances, and even the legalization of all drugs.

Americans, already skeptical of the drug, quickly latched on to xenophobic beliefs that opium somehow made Chinese immigrants dangerous. Alcohol, tobacco, and prescription painkillers are likely deadlier than other drugs because they are legal, so comparing their aggregate effects to illegal drugs is difficult.

Potential for abuse isn't clearly defined by the Controlled Substances Act, but for the federal government, abuse is when individuals take a substance on their own initiative, leading to personal health hazards or dangers to society as a whole. When asked about full legalization, Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert who supports decriminalization, pushed back against the concept. To these experts, the answer is decriminalizing all drug possession while keeping sales and trafficking illegal a scheme that would, in theory, keep nonviolent drug users out of prison but still let law enforcement go after illicit drug supplies. Many argue that any move toward legalization of use, possession, and sales is in violation of international treaties. In these cases, it's actually up to people whose private property was taken to prove that they weren't doing anything illegal instead of traditional legal standards in which police have to prove wrongdoing or reasonable suspicion of it before they act. But there have been many documented cases in which police abused civil asset forfeiture, including instances in which police took people's cars and cash simply because they suspected but couldn't prove that there was some sort of illegal activity going on. When black defendants are convicted for drug crimes, they face longer prison sentences as well. The disproportionate arrest and incarceration rates have clearly detrimental effects on minority communities. The connection was part of the rationale for making it 100 times easier to get a mandatory minimum sentence for crack cocaine over powder cocaine, even though the two drugs are pharmacologically identical. "Stories of Chinese immigrants who lured white females into prostitution, along with the media depictions of the Chinese as depraved and unclean, bolstered the enactment of anti-opium laws in eleven states between 1877 and 1900," Knight wrote. As of 2012, the US had spent $1 trillion on anti-drug efforts. In Mexico, for example, drug cartels have leveraged their profits from the drug trade to violently maintain their stranglehold over the market despite the government's war on drugs. Colombia's neighbor to the east, Venezuela, is now the departure point for half of the cocaine going to Europe by sea. So they exempted alcohol and tobacco from the definition of controlled substances. "Unfortunately, there hasn't been a strong commitment to building the criminal justice system and the police.". Ironically, the shift is partly a by-product of a drug-war success story, Plan Colombia. The US spent $7.6 billion between 2002 and 2014 to crack down on opium in Afghanistan, where a bulk of the world's supply for heroin comes from. As a result, public decapitations have become a particularly prominent tactic of ruthless drug cartels. A similar model could be applied to other drugs. For example, in a January 2015 report about marijuana legalization for the Vermont legislature, some of the nation's top drug policy experts outlined several alternatives, including allowing possession and growing but not sales (like DC), allowing distribution only within small private clubs, or having the state government operate the supply chain and sell pot. Over the next couple decades, particularly under the Reagan administration, what followed was the escalation of global military and police efforts against drugs. The escalation of the criminal justice system's reach over the past few decades, ranging from more incarceration to seizures of private property and militarization, can be traced back to the war on drugs. The war on drugs "drove a lot of the activities to Central America, a region that has extremely weakened systems," Adriana Beltran of the Washington Office on Latin America explained. In the case of the war on drugs, the question is whether the very real drawbacks of prohibition more racially skewed arrests, drug-related violence around the world, and financial costs are worth the potential gains from outlawing and hopefully depressing drug abuse in the US. The US has been fighting a global war on drugs for decades. Concerns about a new, exotic drug, coupled with feelings of xenophobia and racism that were all too common in the 1930s, drove law enforcement, the broader public, and eventually legislators to demand the drug's prohibition. Generally, drug policy experts agree that this tradeoff is worth it. In comparison, the threshold for powder cocaine, which is more popular among white than black Americans but pharmacoligically similar to crack, is 500 grams. Even if the drug war has successfully brought down drug use and abuse, its effects on budgets, civil rights, and international violence are so great and detrimental that the minor impact it may have on drug use might not be worth the costs.

Cocaine was similarly attached in fear to black communities, neuroscientist Carl Hart wrote for the Nation. A 2014 study by Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, suggested that prohibition multiplies the price of hard drugs like cocaine by as much as 10 times. Mark Kleiman, one of the nation's leading drug policy experts, argued both would be considered schedule 1 substances if they were evaluated today, since they're highly abused, addictive, detrimental to one's health and society, and have no established medical value. A few drugs are enormously dangerous in the short term but not so much the long term (heroin), or vice versa (tobacco). Much of this is explained by what's known as the balloon effect: Cracking down on drugs in one area doesn't necessarily reduce the overall supply of drugs. Between 1986 and 2007, the median bulk price of crack cocaine fell by around 54 percent. They also consider the socioeconomic implications of banning a substance, and whether those potential drawbacks are worth the gains of potentially reducing substance use and abuse. Similarly, the federal government helped militarize local and state police departments in an attempt to better equip them in the fight against drugs. Moreover, decriminalization freed up resources that could be channeled into treatment and other harm reduction programs.". Although the child migrant crisis is fairly unique in its specific circumstances and effects, the series of events a government cracks down on drugs, trafficking moves to another country, and the drug trade brings violence and crime is pretty typical in the history of the war on drugs. It may be helpful to think of the scheduling system as made up of two distinct groups: nonmedical and medical. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon formally launched the war on drugs to eradicate illicit drug use in the US. .

Miron argued that even if sales or distribution are legalized, the harder drugs could be taxed and regulated similarly to or more harshly than tobacco and alcohol, although he personally doesn't support that approach. The drug war also led to several some unintended negative consequences, including a big strain on America's criminal justice system and the proliferation of drug-related violence around the world. Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, gave the example of an alien race visiting Earth and asking which land animal is the biggest. A 2014 study by Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, found that prohibition multiplies hard drug prices by as much as 10 times, so legalization by eliminating prohibition and allowing greater access to drugs could greatly increase the rates of drug abuse. ), Drug courts, which even some conservatives like former Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) support, are an example of the rehabilitation-focused approach. After some drug trafficking was pushed out of Mexico, gangs and drug cartels stepped up their operations in Central America's Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Instead, drug production and trafficking shift elsewhere, because the drug trade is so lucrative that someone will always want to take it up particularly in countries where the drug trade might be one of the only economic opportunities and governments won't be strong enough to suppress the drug trade. After the US stepped up the drug war throughout the 1970s and '80s, harsher sentences for drug offenses played a role in turning the country into the world's leader in incarceration. Various groups have complained that these increases in police power are often abused and misused. Experts and historians widely consider this policy, popularly known as Prohibition, a failure and even a disaster, since it led to a massive black market for alcohol that funded criminal organizations across the US. A similar model could be applied to other drugs.

The medical group is the Schedule 2 to 5 drugs, which have some medical value and are numerically ranked based on abuse potential (from high to low). You can push on one and two of those maybe even three with different drugs but you can't get rid of all of them. If the war on drugs isn't meeting its goals, critics say these expansions of the criminal justice system aren't worth the financial strain and costs to liberty in the US. The question of legalization, then, goes back once again to considerations about balancing the good and the bad: Is reducing the rates of drug abuse, particularly in the US, worth the carnage enabled by the money violent criminal organizations make off the black market for drugs?

Alcohol still causes health problems that kill tens of thousands each year, it's often linked to violent crime, and some experts consider it one of the most dangerous drugs.

Since relapse is a normal part of rehabilitation, the threat of incarceration means a lot of nonviolent drug offenders can end up back in jail or prison through drug courts.). Alcohol and tobacco are also major parts of the US economy. Some of the funding, particularly from the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program, encourages local and state police to participate in anti-drug operations. That's another cash cow.". David Nutt, who led the analysis, suggested meth's harm score could be much higher in the US, since it's more widely used in America. It seems, however, that arrests for possession don't typically turn into convictions and prison time.

", The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images, Most recently, these fears of drugs and the connection to minorities came up during what law enforcement officials characterized as a crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s and '90s. Many of these children ended up in the US, where the refugee system simply doesn't have the capacity to handle the rush of child migrants. Some drugs are very harmful to individuals, but they're so rarely used that they may not be a major public health threat. "Nevertheless, we've seen a number of countries drop criminal penalties for minor possession of all drugs.

There are at least two huge caveats to this report. (However, the federal government still spends billions each year on conventional law enforcement operations against drugs.

Congress, for instance, massively increased penalties against crack cocaine in 1986 in response to concerns about a crack epidemic and its potential link to crime. The US began regulating and restricting drugs during the first half of the 20th century, particularly through the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, and the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Mexican officials incinerate 130 tons of seized marijuana. Drug use had become more public and prevalent during the 1960s due in part to the counterculture movement, and many Americans felt that drug use had become a serious threat to the country and its moral standing. Instead, most of the reduction in accessibility from the drug war appears to be a result of the simple fact that drugs are illegal, which by itself makes drugs more expensive and less accessible by eliminating avenues toward mass production and distribution.

"I am not prepared to accept this alternative.". One example: Trafficking crack cocaine, one of the few illicit drugs that's more popular among black Americans, carries the harshest punishment. But there's evidence that the drug war increases prices and decreases accessibility far beyond taxes and regulation could. And state governments can set up their own criminal penalties and schedules for drugs as well. Or they could limit drug use to special facilities, like supervised heroin-injection sites or special facilities in which people can legally use psychedelics.

The US, for example, has never enforced penalties on inciting illicit drug use on the basis that it would violate rights to freedom of speech. As the rank goes down to Schedule 5, a drug's potential for abuse generally decreases. For example, the US in the 2000s provided military aid and training to Colombia in what's known as Plan Colombia to help the Latin American country go after criminal organizations and paramilitaries funded through drug trafficking. None of this means the war on drugs is solely driven by fears of immigrants and minorities, and many people are genuinely concerned about drugs' effects on individuals and society.

The Sentencing Project explained the differences in a February 2015 report: "Myriad criminal justice policies that appear to be race-neutral collide with broader socioeconomic patterns to create a disparate racial impact Socioeconomic inequality does lead people of color to disproportionately use and sell drugs outdoors, where they are more readily apprehended by police.".

In a little over a decade, the U.S. spent nearly $8 billion to back Colombia's efforts to eradicate coca fields, arrest traffickers and battle drug-funded guerrilla armies such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. If the US, for example, ended prohibition, there's little other countries could do to interfere; there's no international drug court, and sanctions would be very unlikely for a country as powerful as America. Still, prohibition does likely make drugs less accessible than they would be if they were legal. This seems completely possible within the treaties.".