Blowing up fishing boats won't win the drug war
October 23, 2025
By Sanho Tree
The Trump administration has been blowing up fishing boats ... claiming without evidence that they’re “drug boats.”
These are extrajudicial executions outside any system of law ...
I’ve seen countless tragedies like these in my decades studying drug policy. Two were particularly egregious.
In 2001, the United States was using local air forces to shoot down alleged trafficking planes over the Peruvian Amazon. In this case, a surveillance plane flown by CIA contractors misidentified a pontoon plane and had it shot down. Instead of traffickers, they killed a missionary from Michigan named Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter.
The second case was an incident in Honduras in 2012 where the DEA and local forces mistakenly opened fire on a water taxi, killing four people — including two pregnant women — and then tried to cover it up ...
https://www.wakeweekly.com/columns/blowing-up-fishing-boats-wont-win-the-drug-war-2d03834a
Sanho Tree directs the Drug Policy Program of the Institute for Policy Studies. This op-ed was adapted from a congressional briefing ...
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Trump: We don't want to be the policemen of the world BY BRETT SAMUELS - 04/30/18
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20729427
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/385521-trump-we-dont-want-to-be-the-policemen-of-the-world/
“We more and more are not wanting to be the policemen of the world,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.
“We’re spending tremendous amounts of money for decades policing the world, and that shouldn’t be the priority,” he said. “We want to police ourselves and we want to rebuild our country. And the president understands that.”{mosads}
Trump ran on the promise that he would extricate the U.S. from foreign wars.
And release the Epstein files (2024) ?
It's called HYPOCRISY.
Why not legalize them and tax them like we do tobacco and alcohol? That would eliminate enforcement costs, make the supply safer, and generate billions in new tax revenue.
Historically speaking, drug prohibition is a relatively recent development that was driven by a moral reform mindset.
