War on Drugs

Regions: United States, Mexico, US-Mexico Border, Latin America
drug policycounter-narcoticsCold War

The War on Drugs encompasses the set of policies, operations, and institutions initiated by the Nixon administration in 1969 and expanded through subsequent presidencies. In the US-Mexico context, it produced a series of bilateral enforcement operations that paradoxically reorganized and modernized drug trafficking, pushing it from rural cottage industry into urban corporate structures with deeper state penetration and ultimately greater capacity for violence.