The war on drugs is a collossal failure, wreaking havoc on Latin America and fueling a stream of illegal immigrants into this country, says Robin Kirk. Kirk is co-director of the Duke Human Rights Center at Duke University's Franklin Humanities Institute and a lecturer in anthropology at Duke University.
From Duke University, this is "Glad You Asked," where we consider the question, “What should we be talking about this election season?”
"My name is Robin Kirk. I’m the co-director of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. One thing I haven’t heard either the Democrats or the Republicans talk about seriously is our failed war on drugs.
"The reason it’s important is because the drug trade is a dramatically destabilizing force in Latin America. It’s behind the migration of so many Central American children to the United States because they’re fleeing the drug gangs that have taken control of many Central American cities.
"They’ve turned cities like Tegucigalpa in Honduras into war zones for young people, so young people either have to join the gangs or die, and that’s why so many of them are flooding into the United States as refugees. They’re fleeing a drug war in their own homes, in their own cities. And they see the United States as a refuge.
"It’s been tremendously damaging in Latin America and tremendously damaging here in the way we have lost so many generations of people to minor drug offenses and to addiction.
"We have as much or more cocaine coming into the United States as ever. It’s purer than ever. We really need to take a good hard look at the drug war and figure out a better way to manage drug consumptions, to help people who need help, to legalize it where we can, to be able to take the crime out of it.
"The trade in illegal drugs has been with us for decades. We are never going to completely stop it. We had better figure out a better way to manage it."
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