The War on Drugs

Any attempt to shut down the trade in drugs such as heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine or weed invariably sets off a chain of events that just makes things worse, leaving a trail of death, illness, violence, slavery, addiction, crime and inequality across the globe. Everyone loses – except, in a weird kind of way, the drugs themselves.

Responding to a series of bans in the 2010s, Chinese chemists repeatedly tweaked the molecular formula of Spice until it had mutated from a mildly powerful ‘legal high’ sold to school kids on the British high street into something capable of causing chaos and misery in the UK prison system. This is the story of how Spice went from the head shops to tabloid-terrorising “zombie drug."

For half a century, prohibition has been causing chaos and misery worldwide. Any attempt to shut down the drugs trade invariably sets off a chain of events that just makes things worse, leaving a trail of death, illness, violence, slavery, addiction, crime and inequality across the globe. The War On Drugs is a war in which everyone loses – except, in a weird kind of way, the drugs themselves.

Hand grenades in coffee shops. A wave of assassinations. Rocket launchers fired at media offices. The murder of a lawyer representing a gangland informant. Recent developments have got people asking the question: Is the Netherlands turning into a narco-state?

In 2001, Portugal decriminalized all drugs. Meanwhile, the police in the Philippines have spent the last four years shooting thousands of addicts dead in the street.

In the late 2000s, a global cocaine and ecstasy drought led to the rise of a new drug that changed the way people get high forever: Mephedrone. Legal, dirt cheap and as easy to order online as pizza, for a while mephedrone boomed in countries worldwide. Within a few years, it had been outlawed almost everywhere, but not before introducing a generation to the online drugs market – where narcotic oblivion is only ever a few clicks away.

In the 1990s and early-2000s, the War on Drugs tried to stop smokers worldwide getting high on hash. However, this led to the UK getting its very own domestic ‘skunk’ industry – an ultra-violent shadowland populated by gangs, pushers, lab slaves, granny growers and millions of young people putting their mental health at risk.

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán turned Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel into the most powerful drugs gang on the planet. But when, in 2016, he was arrested for the third and final time, it unleashed a tidal wave of violence as rival gangs battled for supremacy in the power vacuum left behind.

Any attempt to shut down the trade in drugs such as heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine or weed invariably sets off a chain of events that just makes things worse, leaving a trail of death, illness, violence, slavery, addiction, crime and inequality across the globe. Everyone loses – except, in a weird kind of way, the drugs themselves.

In the US, African-Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of white people – with over half sentenced for drug crimes. This is not a bug of the War on Drugs, it’s a feature. Since their earliest beginnings, drug laws have been explicitly built around targeting ethnic minorities. We trace this horrifying story – right up to how the War on Drugs is perhaps the key driver of racism in policing today.

Around 500,000 people in California are addicted to methamphetamine. Out of a population of almost 40 million, that’s one in every 200 people. But this goes way beyond the US: Meth is raging across Mexico, the Philippines and South-East Asia too.

Going on a shroom, DMT or acid trip may not sound like a conventional therapy session, but there’s a psychedelic revolution going on in the world of mental health treatment. Illegal drugs previously associated with hippies and raves are now being used to treat PTSD, depression, anxiety, addiction and obsessive disorders.

From the coca leaves illicitly grown in the jungles of South America to the lines snorted in nightclub toilets around the world – the global cocaine trade alone is worth 100 billion dollars a year.