Learn More: Full Overview

Because the Law Enforcement Action Partnership was founded (as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) to end the War on Drugs, and because the War on Drugs has effects around the world, LEAP remains dedicated to studying the impacts of global drug policy. We call attention to both the disastrous impact of the War on Drugs on other nations and the innovative drug policy solutions other nations are pioneering.

Fostering Crime and Corruption Abroad

Most of the burden of our War on Drugs—in terms of violence, governmental corruption and rampant crime—falls not within the US but on the producer and transit countries, particularly Mexico, most of Central America, and Afghanistan. Through foreign aid and military assistance contingent upon keeping drugs illegal and fighting those who produce or transport drugs, the US has forced these countries to the frontlines of our War on Drugs. Since local citizens cannot vote against these coerced drug policies, the US is undercutting democratic accountability across the globe.  

The harms are immense. Profits in the $300 billion global illegal drug industry flow to terrorist groups and international criminal networks, and those profits are protected through murder and extortion. Attempts to quash these groups lead to massive bloodshed; the Mexican Army’s battles with drug cartels cost 10,000 lives every year.¹ Police rarely solve the killings, even as headless and burned bodies are found outside Mexico City. Courts barely function, and journalists and politicians are muzzled by fear.² Also, as immigrants to the US have been deported for involvement in drug gangs, the US has exported its gangs to Central America. Today, Honduras and El Salvador are two of the most violent countries in the world, largely because of gangs that began selling drugs in Los Angeles.

These global consequences return to haunt the United States. Democracy is weakened. Drug cartels fund the terrorist groups that threaten American national security. The gang and cartel violence in Central America and Mexico drives thousands of children north every year, where they are preyed upon by human traffickers, forced to hide in a country that does not want them, incarcerated in inhumane, expensive detention centers, and deported.

In Afghanistan, which supplies about 90% of the world’s demand for opium poppy, the U.N. has declared the crop illegal. UNODC estimates the ultimate street value of Afghan opium at $68 billion.³ The criminalization of opium poppy has fostered corruption among government officials and the Afghan National Police, as they are paid to look the other way or actively participate in the drug trade. Corruption undercuts the credibility of the government, further driving the insurgency, and Taliban rebels gain local support by protecting the crop—fueling our longest-running conflict and resulting in the deaths of US soldiers and Marines.