International Drug Policies: Interdiction and Law Enforcement

One of the most prominent areas of international drug policy is that governing interdiction and law enforcement (which includes the eradication of narcotic crops, covered in its own entry). A military term that belies the involvement of the armed forces in this theater of the war on drugs, interdiction is the act of interfering with the movement of enemy troops or supplies, whether by disrupting their transit or destroying them. In the “War on Drugs,” this means attacking the supply chain of drugs and, to a lesser extent, the assets and personnel of drug cartels. Interdiction efforts are by their nature implementations of supply-side policies, concerned with the manufacturer/distributor side of drug transactions rather than the end user.

The United States plays a leading role in ...