U.S. Taxpayers Spent Almost $13B To Fund Global War On Drugs In The Past Decade, Report Shows

Nearly $13 billion in U.S. taxpayer money has gone to fund worldwide counternarcotics activities since 2015, often coming at the expense of efforts to end global poverty while at the same time contributing to international human rights violations and environmental harms. That’s according to a new report issued on Wednesday by two organizations critical of the war on drugs.

The 47-page document, jointly published by the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and Harm Reduction International (HRI), consists of what it describes as a “follow-the-money data analysis” that looks at anti-drug spending allocations across various government departments as well as case studies from Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines.

Authors wrote that the analysis “demonstrates how U.S. assistance has supported and expanded destructive and deadly anti-drug responses in low- and middle-income countries around the world.”

The $13 billion figure, the report says, “is more taxpayer money than the U.S. government spent over that decade on primary education or water supply and sanitation in low- and middle-income countries” and also greater than U.S. foreign aid over the same period “for all of Southern Africa or Central America.”

It’s also “about 300 times the total amount of U.S. foreign aid over that decade for women’s rights organizations in low-and middle-income countries around the whole world,” it adds.

DPA said in an email about the report that the topic is “especially timely as President-elect Trump and members of his administration threaten to ramp up the global war on drugs and increase punitive responses to international drug markets.”

For fiscal year 2025 alone, the report says, President Joe Biden “requested $1 billion for international ‘counternarcotics’ activities,” about half of which ($480 million) would be allocated to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), while about $350 million would have gone to the State Department.

“The role of the United States in exporting the destructive war on drugs to other countries is unparalleled,” DPA and HRI said in an executive summary of the findings. ”

Harm Reduction International & Drug Policy Alliance

“Since 1971, the U.S. has spent more than a trillion dollars on the war on drugs, prioritizing law enforcement responses and fueling mass incarceration within its borders,” it says. “It has also played a leading role in pushing and funding punitive responses to drugs internationally.”

In terms of money earmarked for global aid efforts, the report says, a growing amount of drug war funding has “even come from the same U.S. official development assistance budgets that are supposed to help end global poverty and support other sustainable development goals.”

The U.S. contributed “more than half of the about $1 billion in official development assistance” since 2013 that’s been earmarked for counter-drug efforts, it adds.

A separate HRI report published about a year ago found that from 2012 to 2021, 30 donor countries spent $974 million in international aid funding on drug control. That included $70 million spent in countries where drug charges can carry the death penalty.

As in the new report, the earlier analysis found that the U.S. led all nations in terms of funding from global aid, providing about $550 million. Next came the European Union ($282 million) followed by Japan ($78 million), and the United Kingdom ($22 million).

Harm Reduction International & Drug Policy Alliance

In terms of the harms of the drug war, the new report points to “human rights abuses, rising HIV rates, aerial fumigation with toxic chemicals, and militarized responses in various regions.”

In Colombia, for example, aerial fumigation led not only to crop destruction but also displaced and caused health harms in resident communities.

In the Philippines, which has seen vigilante killings of drug users and distributors, millions of USAID money went to fund what the report calls “forced rehabilitation” of drug consumers. Meanwhile, it says, HIV rates have risen sharply, with the country seeing the highest increases in the Asia-Pacific region from 2010 to 2021.

“An estimated 29% of people who inject drugs in the Philippines are living with HIV,” the report says, but many harm-reduction services are unavailable: “Sterile injecting equipment is considered illegal by the Philippines Dangerous Drugs Board and is thus hard to access.”

In Mexico, meanwhile, the report says tracking U.S. drug war spending is difficult. Despite the country being one of the largest targets of anti-drug efforts, sweeping portions of publicly available information on counternarcotics spending is redacted.

Almost $13 billion of U.S. taxpayer money has been allocated to international “counternarcotics” activities since 2015. That’s more than was spent on international education, water supply, sanitation, and women’s rights.

— Drug Policy Alliance (@DrugPolicyOrg) December 4, 2024

Funding counternarcotics efforts has also contributed to a more armed and violent drug war, the report says, calling increasing militarization a “defining feature of Mexico’s war on drugs that has been supported by the U.S.” Encouraged by administrations here, successive presidents in Mexico have stepped up the military’s role in policing drug activities as well as handling other civil tasks.

U.S. support for Mexico’s drug war “has had devastating impacts on communities,” DPA and HRI concluded, “contributing to militarization of law enforcement, increased violence, repression, and an erosion of democratic institutions.”

The two organizations end the report with a list of recommendations for the federal government, U.S. civil society and journalists as well as taxpayers in general.

Regarding the government, the report calls on officials to “divest from punitive and prohibitionist drug control regimes” and cease using foreign aid “as ‘leverage’ and as a means to pressure low- and middle-income countries to adopt or maintain punitive drug responses.”

It also urges investment research as well as funding evidence-based treatment and human rights-focused harm reduction efforts—including an end to the ban on using federal funds to purchase syringes.

The report also says increased transparency is needed, advising not only the government to be more open but also journalists and civil society organizations to demand more accountability in how taxpayer funds are spent.

It says news outlets should “conduct further, in-depth-investigations into how U.S. money has been spent on drug control internationally, including how it was justified, any results claimed, and any direct or indirect impacts that may have undermined other goals or aid rules.”

Of taxpayers themselves, the report says individuals should “demand integrity and transparency in the government’s international spending, including that from limited aid budgets” and demand that more public money “flows to evidence-based and health- and human rights-centered measures, not for punitive drug control abroad.”

Another group, the International Coalition on Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice, published a report last year looking at environmental harms of the drug war, warning that efforts to address climate change must be paired with drug policy reform.

As policymakers, governments, NGOs and activists work to craft urgent responses to protect tropical forests, which are some of the largest carbon sinks on the planet, that report said, “their efforts will fail as long as those committed to environmental protection neglect to recognize, and grapple with, the elephant in the room”—namely “the global system of criminalized drug prohibition.”

United Nations (UN) bodies have also urged a shift away from punitive drug policies, which they link to increases in wider harms.

A statement from UN special rapporteurs, experts and working groups earlier this year said that the drug war “has resulted in a range of serious human rights violations, as documented by a number of UN human rights experts over the years.”

“We collectively urge Member States and all UN entities to put evidence and communities at the centre of drug policies, by shifting from punishment towards support, and invest in the full array of evidence-based health interventions for people who use drugs, ranging from prevention to harm reduction, treatment and aftercare, emphasizing the need for a voluntary basis and in full respect of human rights norms and standards,” the statement said.

The UN experts’ statement also highlighted a number of other UN agency reports, positions, resolutions as well as actions in favor of prioritizing prevention and harm reduction over punishment.

It pointed, for example, to what it called a “landmark report” published by the UN special rapporteur on human rights that encouraged nations to abandon the criminal war on drugs and instead adopt harm-reduction policies—such as decriminalization, supervised consumption sites, drug checking and widespread availability of overdose reversal drugs like naloxone—while also moving toward “alternative regulatory approaches” for currently controlled substances.

That report noted that “over-criminalisation, stigmatisation and discrimination linked to drug use represent structural barriers leading to poorer health outcomes.”

Advocacy to reform the global war on drugs comes as international bodies and national governments across the world consider adjusting their approaches to drug control and regulation.

Late last year, for example, 19 Latin American and Caribbean nations issued a joint statement acknowledging the need to rethink the global war on drugs and instead focus on “life, peace and development” within the region.

A year ago, a separate UN special rapporteurs report said that “the ‘war on drugs’ may be understood to a significant extent as a war on people.”

“Its impact has been greatest on those who live in poverty,” they said, “and it frequently overlaps with discrimination directed at marginalised groups, minorities and Indigenous Peoples.”

In 2019, the UN Chief Executives Board (CEB), which represents 31 UN agencies including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), adopted a position stipulating that member states should pursue science-based, health-oriented drug policies—namely decriminalization.

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