Securitizing Drugs

Drug related crime has been a security issue ever since the criminalization of drugs, as demand for narcotics certainly has not ceased. The ‘securitization’ of an issue, according to the Copenhagen school, is a process applied through an actor (in this case, United States government) that deems a subject matter (in this case, organized crime and trafficking) to be a security risk towards an entity (in this case, human security and national security). In 1971 president Richard Nixon declared the ‘war on drugs’, and named it "public enemy number one", which generated the last process of securitization, an audience. The ‘war on drugs’ is not exclusively unique to the United States, as it encompassed a global security issue that is closely analyzed

Since the initiation to securitize drug trafficking, ample amount of money and effort has been devoted to this issue, but it remains unsolved. Why has there been no effective solution to stop the trafficking of narcotics? While it appears that the attempt to securitize the issue is well warranted, the policies implemented seem tenuous at best, as the focus on the ‘war on drugs’ may be misplaced, and seem to be causing further security issues to deal with.

The serious effects of drug trafficking are initially seen in the 1980s, as the cocaine craze, engulfed the United States’ populace, creating a huge market demand. The mighty drug syndicates in Colombia filled this demand and according José Hemando Gomez, “the value of cocaine trafficking peaked in 1982 at US$2,191million” (HARTLYN, 1993, p. 10) Colombia has often been branded a failed state, as a result of the sovereign government’s inability to have effective control over the nation (Peter Hough, 2015, p. 227). Weakened state structures allowed the rise of transnational drug syndicates to influence Colombia and create a misconception that drug