Americans Like Drugs. Killing Drug Traffickers Won't Change That.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “America Loves Cocaine Again—Mexico’s New Drug King Cashes In.” It’s a detailed account of the return of cocaine amid a recent drop in fentanyl use by Americans. “Cocaine sold in the U.S. is cheaper and as pure as ever for retail buyers,” according to the article. The drug has seen a 154 percent increase in consumption since 2019. 

For a variety of reasons, the U.S. is the most significant illicit drug market in the world, with the most drug users. Though 45 percent of Americans describe the problem of drugs in the U.S. as “extremely serious,” drug use is a growing trend. About 25 percent of Americans reported past-year use of “illicit drugs” in 2024—an increase of three percentage points since 2021—according to the 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.  

Many Americans have gone from tolerance of psychoactive drug use to active participation at scale, and demand is edging up. However, public drug use and the rise in fentanyl overdoses in cities such as Portland, San Francisco, and Baltimore have spurred public outcry. Given that the country’s annual drug overdose death rate doubled between 2015 and 2023, it makes sense that 52 percent of Americans feel the U.S. is “losing ground on the illegal drug problem,” according to a Gallup poll. 

It appears the president agrees. On September 15, President Donald Trump posted a video on his Truth Social account showing U.S. forces killing three people during the destruction of another alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. Two weeks ago, a similar strike killed 11 people on a vessel the Trump administration alleged belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. 

While the president has justified these strikes as a necessary escalation against “extremely violent drug trafficking cartels” that he claims “POSE A THREAT to U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital U.S. Interests,” data indicate that drug trafficking, like drug use, is predominantly a domestic issue. 

Out of 12,004 nationwide drug trafficking convictions, 78 percent (9,362) involved U.S. citizens, according to the Cato Institute. The trend remains even in regions along the Southwest border, typically seen as cartel havens, where U.S. citizens account for nearly 72 percent of drug trafficking convictions. Similarly, in the Gulf of Mexico and districts along the Caribbean, U.S. citizens account for 68 percent of convicted drug traffickers. 

In July, the president signed the HALT Fentanyl Act, which permanently classifies fentanyl-related substances as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act. The president has repeatedly cited fentanyl trafficking as justification for his positions on tariffs and immigration. However, most of the fentanyl seizures by U.S. authorities happen at legal ports of entry, and data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission show 86 percent of those sentenced for trafficking fentanyl were U.S. citizens.

Given the data on who’s doing the trafficking and the president’s frank statement to Fox News that “you’ll never really solve the drug problem unless you do what other countries do, and that’s the death penalty for drug dealers,” it’s understandable to question the effects on Americans of this escalation in the war on drugs. Only a few countries carry out executions for drug trafficking offenses; the list includes human rights luminaries like Singapore, Malaysia, Iran, and Brunei. 

Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, David Bier, describes the president’s legal authority for the strikes as fictitious. “If this is an act of war, then Congress must authorize it under the Constitution,” says Bier. “But it’s not an act of war since the combatants are defined by their criminal violations of U.S.-controlled substances laws, and the law spells out the consequences for those offenses. Moreover, the president is…intentionally killing the people on the boats, which shows that this isn’t about the substances being trafficked, but rather illegally raising the penalty for drug trafficking to capital punishment.”

For decades, the U.S. spent billions exporting the same extrajudicial method of drug control recently carried out by the Trump administration, without credible evidence of a dent in domestic drug consumption. 

Since most traffickers to the U.S. are citizens, killing suspects at sea is a hollow show—attacking supply while ignoring the demand that fuels it.

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