Neil Woods - How policing the war on drugs harms people and the planet

Policing practices in the war on drugs are characterized here as counterproductive drivers of violence, corruption, and environmental degradation. The use of police informants and the aggressive pursuit of drug-related arrests incentivize systemic violence, as law enforcement agencies often deprioritize public safety to secure information chains that bolster internal statistics. These enforcement dynamics undermine community trust and often prioritize enforcement over the foundational police principle of protecting life, thereby fueling criminal networks that now wield significant financial power globally. Beyond immediate local harm, drug prohibition inadvertently facilitates major environmental damage by funneling resources into illicit economies that exploit natural resources through deforestation and illegal resource extraction. Meaningful policy reform requires moving toward harm reduction models that disrupt these cycles of violence and corruption, ultimately emphasizing the need for a unified social movement to address the underlying structural failures of drug prohibition on a global scale.