# If the War on Drugs Isn’t Failing—What Is It Actually Doing? April 17, 2026 ![Photo Event](/sites/g/files/omnuum12451/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-04/DSC02831.jpg?itok=U516D11j) For decades, the “war on drugs” has been widely described as a failure. Violence persists, trafficking adapts, and the human toll continues to mount across Latin America. But what if failure is the wrong way to understand it? At a recent gathering at Harvard, convened by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), four exceptional scholars and journalists challenged that assumption, suggesting that the drug war may be functioning less as a solution to narcotics and more as a system that shapes how violence is justified, organized, and sustained. Across the conversation, a shared idea emerged: the war on drugs is not only a set of policies, but a set of narratives—ones that travel from political rhetoric to institutional practice to everyday life. The discussion began with language. “War,” “security,” “defense”—terms that suggest urgency and protection—also carry the power to authorize. Journalist and professor Oswaldo Zavala described the drug war not as an effort to eliminate drugs, but as “a politics of extermination,” a framework that allows states to expand violence while obscuring its targets. In this formulation, language is not just descriptive; it becomes a kind of grammar through which intervention, militarization, and exceptional measures are made to appear necessary—even inevitable. The result is a system in which the United States sustains demand and profit, while countries like Mexico absorb the consequences: disproportionate violence, institutional strain, and deepening inequality. If language authorizes violence, it also travels. Journalist Boris Muñoz extended this idea beyond national borders, showing how drug trafficking narratives can be mobilized selectively in the geopolitical arena. In the case of Venezuela, he argued, the framing of drug-related threats often expands or contracts depending on domestic political priorities of the United States, functioning less as a consistent policy concern than as a flexible tool. In this dynamic, the persistence of the problem is not simply a sign of failure. It can also reflect its usefulness. The narrative remains powerful precisely because it remains unresolved. That same logic, panelists suggested, does not stop at the level of international politics. It also shapes how the drug war is produced and measured within the United States itself. Drawing on his reporting, *Boston Globe* journalist Andrew Ryan described how enforcement agencies construct public-facing stories of success—sometimes by inflating arrest numbers or portraying low-level individuals as high-ranking cartel actors. These practices reflect institutional incentives that prioritize visibility and measurable impact, even when they distort reality. What emerges is a version of the drug war that is legible and persuasive, but not always accurate—one that reinforces the need for continued enforcement while leaving deeper structures intact. If narratives shape how success is defined, they also shape how responsibility is understood—or avoided—on the ground. In Mexico, historian Rachel Nolan pointed to how official accounts of violence, particularly in cases of disappearance, often blur rather than clarify accountability. She described a growing “indistinction” between perpetrators and victims, and between state and non-state actors, where lines of responsibility become increasingly difficult to trace. At the same time, the expansion of military roles in civilian life has begun to reshape governance itself, raising broader questions about the limits of democratic oversight under conditions of sustained militarization. By the end of the conversation, the focus shifted from narrative to power. Attending the panel, Mexican writer Juan Villoro posed a question that lingered well beyond the room: in a system shaped by organized crime, military expansion, and international pressure, how much control does any one Latin American leader actually have? Is the president a central actor or one more player in a structure that exceeds any single administration? The panel did not offer a roadmap for reform. Instead, it reframed the question, providing a historically informed and critical view to the way we speak about criminality and violence in the region. Perhaps the most important issue is not why the war on drugs has failed, but what it has succeeded in doing: providing a durable language that justifies intervention, expands state power, and distributes violence unevenly across borders. See also:- [ Cambridge ](/locations/cambridge-office) - [ Mexico ](/locations/mexico) - [ Virtual ](/location/virtual) - [ Mexico ](/programs-initiatives/mexico) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)