Hollow

The recent capture of Mexican drug czar Joaqu’n "El Chapo" Guzm‡n was hailed as a major victory in the endless War on Drugs. El Chapo (Spanish for Shorty) had reached the sort of worldwide mythical status of gangsters like Al Capone and Pablo Escobar, mostly through his elaborate escapes from custody and the intense manhunts that followed. But even if Mexican officials are able to keep him under lock and key this time, what is his removal from the illegal drug industry likely to change? The short answer: nothing at all.

Like Escobar and Capone, El Chapo ruthlessly rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most powerful men on Earth–the sort of origins story that lends itself well to cultivating such intense interest from the masses. His wealth was staggering, his reach seemed limitless, his drug empire rivaled Fortune 500 companies in both scope and profit, and he was routinely named to high-profile lists, such as Forbes’ Most Powerful People in the World.

El Chapo was also ruthless in a manner that makes the word seem inadequate–though not in a way that is particularly noteworthy among his lesser known cartel rivals. He reportedly beheaded enemies, failed associates or people who just got in the way of his Sinaloa Cartel’s business dealings, leaving the heads (sometimes a pile of them at once) in the streets of the village for further effect.

The billionaire drug kingpin’s made-for-the-movies escape from a high-security prison in 2015, in which engineers he’d reportedly sent to Germany to master tunneling successfully squired him to freedom through an impressively-constructed underground maze, elevated him to the highest echelon of popular culture. The embarrassment to the Mexican government for losing him and the related swelling of the prize for U.S. officials who could claim his scalp led to an impossible-to-price manhunt that likely rose into the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, all told.

However, as El Chapo himself pointed out in the only real interview he’s ever given, his absence is unlikely to have even the smallest impact on the trade of the drugs he trafficked–mostly heroin, meth, cocaine and marijuana–the vast majority of which was sent north to meet the endless American demand for illegal narcotics.

Should it fail, the competition is more than capable of absorbing El Chapo’s share of the market. In fact, his own rise to power coincides with a government crackdown on rival cartels in the early Ô90s, and Mexico’s ascent in the worldwide narcotics trade itself came on the heels of the fall of Escobar and his Medellin Cartel in Columbia, further aided by that country’s temporary success in taming down its organized crime syndicates during the confused time following Pablo’s death.

Between 1998 and 2008, the U.S. alone spent nearly half a trillion dollars waging the War on Drugs. During that same span, use of opiates increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent, and cannabis 8.5 percent, according to the Global Commission on Drug Policy. The U.S. continues to spend over $50 billion each year. There is a drug arrest in the United States every 19 seconds.

There is also the disparity among the poor and minorities to consider. Surveys and studies consistently show that middle class and affluent whites are just as likely to try or use drugs as poor people or minorities. But because drug transactions between the poor are more likely to take place in public and therefore be easier for police to target, they are statistically much less likely to get arrested or charged (and have better access to a quality legal defense if they are).

Surely, vicious criminals like Escobar and Guzm‡n should be hunted and punished for their violent crimes against members of our society. But if we think that the policies of either "cartel-decapitation“ (hunting the top bosses of the biggest organizations) or petty criminalization (arresting the small, domestic, street level sellers and then expensively incarcerating them for long periods of time) will suddenly begin to work, despite decades and decades of proof that it doesn’t, well É what’s that thing they say about the definition of insanity?

The bottom line is that villains like Escobar and El Chapo are created by a failed system that places outsized rewards on behaviors we ostensibly aim to eliminate. Both were born into the drug trade because their fathers chose to farm the only crops that would afford them the chance to feed their families in their respective countries, a dynamic that only existed because of the insatiable demand for those crops in a wealthy country that criminalized them, which drives up the price at market.

The sad reality is that whether you are a farmer, a truck driver, a banker, a lawyer, or even an accountant, your best chance of making a living in a country with a narcotics-driven economy is going to be in aiding criminal operations in their endeavors to export their products to the United States and a handful of other wealthy developed nations. It’s not about the bosses as much as it is about the line workers and bean counters. El Chapo simply rose to the top of that broken system. Without the American demand for the product, the system wouldn’t even exist–and neither would most of the criminals.

According to the Department of Justice, our country's illegal drug trade is dominated by 900,000 criminally-active gang members who are affiliated with some 20,000 street gangs in more than 2,500 cities, with Mexican drug cartels in direct control of around 10 percent of those markets.

In any honest analysis, one quickly sees that the War on Drugs has accomplished less than nothing once you discount the hollow victories of solving the very problems our prohibitions have themselves created. Meanwhile, there is an overwhelming abundance of evidence that decriminalizing drugs and treating addiction as an illness is not only infinitely more cost effective, but more successful in terms of reducing abuse as well.