"[5] In 2023, the UN high commissioner for Human Rights stated that "decades of punitive, 'war on drugs' strategies had failed to prevent an increasing range and quantity of substances from being produced and consumed.

During the Civil War (1861–1865), millions of doses of opiates were distributed to sick and wounded soldiers, addicting some;[16] domestic poppy fields were planted in an attempt to meet shortages (the crops proved to be of poor quality).

[25] In the civilian population, physicians treated opiates like a wonder drug, prescribing them widely, for chronic pain, irritable babies, asthma, bronchitis, insomnia, "nervous conditions", hysteria, menstrual cramps, morning sickness, gastrointestinal disease, "vapors", and on.

[71][72] Scholars have posited that the act was orchestrated by powerful business interests – Andrew Mellon, Randolph Hearst, and the Du Pont family – to head off cheap competition to pulp and timber and plastics from the hemp industry.

Anslinger, backed by his Canadian counterpart and policy ally, Charles Henry Ludovic Sharman, successfully argued against this view, and kept the focus on increasing global prohibition and supply control measures.

With the 1946 Lake Success Protocol, he helped to make sure that law enforcement was represented on the UN's new drug policy Supervisory Body (today's International Narcotics Control Board), and that it did not fall under a public health-oriented agency like the WHO.

According to the United States Sentencing Commission, reporting in 2012: "Before 1951, mandatory minimum penalties typically punished offenses concerning treason, murder, piracy, rape, slave trafficking, internal revenue collection, and counterfeiting.

The act largely repealed mandatory minimum sentences:[112] simple possession was reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, the first offense carried a maximum of one year in prison, and judges had the latitude to assign probation, parole or dismissal.

In a 2016 Harper's cover story, Ehrlichman, who died in 1999,[132] was quoted from journalist Dan Baum's 1994 interview notes: "... by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.

[140] During Nixon's term, some 70% of federal anti-drug money was spent on demand-side public health measures, and 30% on supply-side interdiction and punishment, a funding ratio not repeated under subsequent administrations.

[152] In January 1982, Reagan established the South Florida Task Force, chaired by Bush, targeting a surge of cocaine and cannabis entering through the Miami region, and the sharp rise in related crime.

[177] During this period, state and local governments initiated controversial drug policies that demonstrated racial biases, such as the stop-and-frisk police practice in New York City, and state-level "three strikes" felony laws, which began with California in 1994.

The report found that "African Americans [were] 3.73 times more likely than whites to be apprehended despite nearly identical usage rates, and marijuana violations accounting for more than half of drug arrests nationwide during the previous decade".

[8] Others have argued that large amounts anti-drug foreign aid money, training, and equipment actually goes to fighting leftist insurgencies and is often provided to groups who themselves are involved in large-scale narco-trafficking, such as corrupt members of the Colombian military.

While there is a degree of interpretative flexibility, "each of the treaties encourages – and often requires – that member countries put in place strong domestic penal provisions" to deal with illicit drugs; punitive policies have been the common approach.

In 2021, Gustavo Gorriti, journalist and founder of corruption-focused IDL-Reporteros news media, wrote a sharply critical editorial in the Washington Post on the impact of 50 years of the war on drugs on Latin America.

[citation needed] The efforts of the US and Colombian governments have been criticized for focusing on fighting leftist guerrillas in southern regions without applying enough pressure on right-wing paramilitaries and continuing drug smuggling operations in the north of the country.

Moreover, the state continues to share sovereignty with a range of violent nonstate actors, including rebel groups and rightwing paramilitaries allied with drug traffickers and wealthy landowners.

"[270] The Washington Office on Latin America concluded in 2010 that both Plan Colombia and the Colombian government's security strategy "came at a high cost in lives and resources, only did part of the job, are yielding diminishing returns and have left important institutions weaker.

"[271] One of the first anti-drug efforts in the realm of foreign policy was Nixon's Operation Intercept, announced in September 1969, aiming to severely reduce the amount of cannabis entering the US from Mexico,[272] by government estimates the source of 80% of the US supply.

[276] As of 2024[update], the DEA considers the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, tied to materials and services from China, as the major source of synthetic drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine, posing the biggest threat to the US.

Beginning in 2008, the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) has provided the seven countries with equipment, training, and technical support for law enforcement efforts, and the US has advised taking an intelligence-based approach.

In 2017, eradication once again became the main initiative; the US military launched an aerial campaign involving B-52 bombers and F-22 fighters striking a network of drug labs that turned out to be mostly empty compounds, though there were significant civilian casualties.

[298] A US House committee report released in April 2024 found companies making fentanyl precursors in China can still apply for Chinese state tax rebates and other financial benefits after exporting the product.

[303][304] The social consequences of the drug war have been widely criticized by such organizations as the ACLU as being racially biased against minorities and disproportionately responsible for the exploding United States prison population.

[320] Resources that could be allocated to address the root causes of drug abuse, provide rehabilitation and treatment programs, or support communities affected by drug-related issues, are instead used to manage the considerable prison population.

Critics argue that focusing solely on incarceration fails to address the underlying social factors contributing to drug abuse and perpetuates a cycle of criminality without offering pathways to recovery and reintegration into society.

In 1957, a belief at the time about drug use was summarized by journalist Max Lerner in his work, America as a Civilization: "As a case in point we may take the known fact of the prevalence of reefer and dope addiction in Negro areas.

One argument holds that drug prohibition, as presently implemented, violates the substantive due process doctrine in that its benefits do not justify the encroachments on rights that are supposed to be guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution.

[383] Alternatives to the predominantly punitive, law enforcement approach to the war on drugs in the US fall under two broad categories: a public health orientation built around education, prevention and treatment, and decriminalization or legalization with regulation similar to the handling of alcohol.