Description
The War on Drugs (WoD) in Colombia and Mexico is more than a failure that needs to be reformed, it is also unjust. Decades of enforcing international drug policies have exacerbated and perpetuated these countries’ pre-existing structural violence and poverty. To end the WoD, we must reconsider the normative rationales underlying drug policies and offer structural reforms capable of properly addressing the problems of concern. Thus, to develop more structurally fair drug control policy, we need an analytical framework based on justice. I propose using a global distributive justice framework, which is relational and structural, to support that: 1) we stand in relevant relationships with individuals around the globe via the illicit drug market, and 2) the global institutional order on drug control is coercive. If the WoD is proved to create relational conditions of injustice, influential states and their citizens have a moral responsibility to reform existing policies and rectify these injustices. Distributive justice can also assist in developing more appropriate policies that strengthen the presence of the civilian state, rather than the current militarised state. Especially, in historically abandoned places which criminal organisations rely on to thrive in the drug business.
