It has been five decades since former US President Richard Nixon declared a so-called “war on drugs”, a war that is estimated to have cost more than one trillion dollars.
Despite the vast amount of money spent, the war is far from over. President Donald Trump now claims a wall on the border with Mexico will stop drugs from coming into the country. However, with the majority of drugs arriving via legal ports of entry, can the wall stop them?
In the Arena, Derek Maltz, former head of the special operations division at the US Drug Enforcement Administration and Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, debate whether the so-called “war on drugs” has failed.