International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 147

International Journal on Criminology
At this stage of my research, I have still not found any sources indicating in
total how many agents and employees of various kinds are on the payroll of the
U.S. federal government to fight the war on drugs, including the whole set of manpower
and personnel directly or indirectly part of the tangle of agencies, institutes,
and other organizations specifically devoted to the war on drugs being waged by
the United States.
The astronomical figure of the total annual expenditure alone, which is
traceable via the sources that I have been able to access and can be arrived at by
adding the budget allocations of the federal government, the states, and the international
partners in this war, makes it possible to assume that this system quite
legally finances the lifestyles of a lot of people, who objectively have no interest in
there being a halt to the war on drugs conducted by the United States.
And this line of inquiry ignores the likelihood that there are masses of people
who illegally subsist or make their fortunes from the trafficking created by the
laws from the war on drugs.
Avenues for Possible Interpretations
Department of Justice statistics for 2009 indicate that cannabis is the most
important drug within the DEA’s activities, especially in the border states
in the southern United States. Between 1995 and 2009, the highest number
of arrests made in relation to a federal offense corresponded to illegal-immigration
offenses, followed by drug-related offenses, which more than doubled
during this period. In total, 28,347 people were arrested in 2009 because of drugs;
6,852 of those arrests—around 20%—were related to cannabis. 88
Since Oregon brought in its initiative in 1973, almost half the states have legalized
the consumption of cannabis for therapeutic use, that is to say to treat diseases
for which laboratory-produced medicines have not proved effective. These
states are: California, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Arizona,
New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arkansas, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Vermont,
Maine, Illinois, Florida, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
Delaware, Maryland, Washington, DC, Hawaii, Alaska, and North Carolina. 89
This situation respects the legal framework established by the international
agreements to which the United States is a signatory and of which it is the intellectual
progenitor. The preamble to the 1961 convention reads, “Recognizing that the
medical use of narcotic drugs continues to be indispensable for the relief of pain
and suffering and that adequate provision must be made to ensure the availability
of narcotic drugs for such purposes. ”90
88 https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fjs09.pdf.
89 Cannabis sur ordonnance, directed by Raphaël Hitier, France, 2017, documentary film.
90 http://www.ecad.net/uncd-english/84-un-convention-on-drugs-1961.
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