The first year of Donald Trump’s scandalous second term in the White House has seen some historic changes in drug policy – though not necessarily for the better.
Since September, the US military has been conducting controversial air strikes across the southern Caribbean sea, bombing boats allegedly transporting drugs into America. At the time of writing, these strikes have claimed at least 115 lives.
“What [Trump] has been doing since September 2nd is killing a bunch of fishermen,” Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations who was involved in intercepting drug runners off the Colombian coast, told TalkingDrugs.
“I say fishermen because even though he says that they are drug-carrying boats, he has presented absolutely no evidence,” Vigil added. “He has preferred to kill them rather than do what we’ve always done: coordinate with the Coast Guard, intercept the boat, and if they’re carrying drugs, they take the crew members into custody so that the DEA can interview them and try to determine who the sources of supply are.”
So far, the only indication that any of the boats were running contraband has been from a report in the New York Times, which found traces of cannabis washed ashore from a shipwreck, a substance that is legal in forty out of fifty American states.
“Donald Trump says that there was a lot of fentanyl coming from South America. No, that is not true,” Vigil asserted.
On 3 January, the Caribbean campaign culminated in the US conducting military strikes on Caracas and sending in special forces to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who was subsequently indicted as the ringleader of the so-called Cartel of the Suns. But given how the Justice Department itself now admits the organisation doesn’t actually exist, and how justifications for US intervention have shifted away from drug-running boats to talks about Venezuelan oil, this suggests that Maduro’s extraction had ulterior motives, and all the drug talk was just deadly political theatre.
Rather, Trump’s flexing over Latin America can be seen as a revival of the Monroe Doctrine – named after 19th Century American President James Monroe, who sought to keep the Americas within Washington’s “sphere of influence.” Trump’s recent actions, dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine” by some observers, involves cultivating loyal allies across the Western hemisphere and even territorial acquisitions by force, such as Trump’s threats towards Greenland and the Panama Canal.
The right-wing government of Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding libertarian leader Javier Milei has played along, and was rewarded with a $20bn bailout. Colombia’s progressive president Gustavo Petro did not, beefing with Trump over the war in Gaza, the Caribbean boat strikes, and the treatment of immigrants. Shortly after snatching Maduro, Trump accused Petro of being an insidious kingpin flooding the US with white powder from his “cocaine mills,” and threatened to serve him the Maduro special. Petro, a rather volatile personality himself, warned America not to “awaken the jaguar.” Eventually, the two made up in an hour-long phone call earlier in January… at least for now.
Both Petro and Milei have expressed openness to drug reform, although political realities have hindered any progress.
While many Venezuelans were overjoyed at seeing Maduro – under whom their homeland has spiralled into catastrophe – in cuffs, the evidence that he is a coke-dealing mastermind is shaky at best. There’s no evidence Petro participated in narcotrafficking, though the same can’t be said for others in his family.
Bomb some, pardon others
A year ago, as one of his first acts in office, Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the whizz kid behind the infamous dark web market Silk Road, most likely to appease the libertarian wing of his base, who’ve long been campaigning for his release. Ulbricht founded the Silk Road on libertarian ideals – by his words, it was not just about making money but making a difference.
“Silk Road has already made an impact on the war on drugs,” he once wrote as his alter-ego, Dread Pirate Roberts.
“The effect of the war is to limit people’s access to controlled substances. Silk Road has expanded people’s access. Every single transaction that takes place outside the nexus of state control is a victory for those individuals taking part in the transaction.”
Whatever the politics of the matter, Ross was sentenced to life without parole for a non-violent crime, and his release was a minor victory for drug reformers.
But then there’s Juan Orlando Hernández, another drug-dealing heavyweight. As the former president of Honduras, JOH came to power in the aftermath of the 2009 coup d’etat, backed by the United States, in which the previous president Manuel Zelaya, accused of being a communist, was kidnapped by the military and put on a plane to Costa Rica in his pyjamas. JOH oversaw an iron-fisted campaign against gangs and drugs. But this was all a cover: at the same time, JOH was striking deals with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, as well as Honduras’ own Cachiros clan.
In 2022 he was arrested and extradited to the United States, where he was convicted of facilitating the transit of 400 tonnes of cocaine and sentenced to 45 years imprisonment. For a while, it looked like he would spend the rest of his life in a cell solving newspaper crosswords, until December last year when he was suddenly pardoned by the commander-in-chief.
Continuing the Donroe Doctrine, Trump has been blatant about his meddling in Honduras’ recent elections, threatening to withdraw aid if his favourite candidate, Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura, didn’t win. Tito and JOH belonged to the same conservative National Party, and Trump’s pardon could have been an attempt to rally the voters. JOH had also hired an influential PR firm, BGR Group, which has the ear of Trump confidants such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to lobby on his behalf.
Meanwhile at home, Trump signed an executed order in December to downgrade cannabis from Schedule I, the most serious category, to Schedule III, on par with codeine. The move marks a major shift in federal cannabis policy. However, cannabis remains a federally restricted drug, meaning that despite its legality in certain states, you can still theoretically get in serious trouble for transporting it across state borders, even if both have legalised cannabis.
The move will allow cannabis growers to write off expenses from their taxes and see their bottom line grow by around 20% to 30%. Indeed, standing right next to Trump as he signed the executive order in the Oval Office was Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve, one of the country’s biggest cannabis firms. Rivers lobbied hard to get Trump’s attention, including through a $750,000 donation to his inauguration fund.
“It’s certainly progress,” remarked Amber Senter, a cannabis business owner in Oakland, California.
“We’ve been regulating cannabis like plutonium and had it classified the same as some very harmful hard drugs. I see this as progress, but it’s not justice. There’s still people sitting in prison for the very same thing that the business owners are doing to make billions of dollars in profits.”
Bombing drug boats with no drugs, boosting the cannabis industry while keeping it illegal, hauling presidents before court while pardoning actual, convicted dealers – what does this all tell us? That while he might talk a big game about protecting the bloodstreams of America’s innocent youth, Trump’s drug war is not ideological, it’s transactional: you kiss the ring or you’re useful somehow, you get a pass. But if you’re a Venezuelan fisherman, a minor league pot dealer, or an immigrant, there’s not much you can offer to the billionaire and his rich friends now running the White House.
