America Has a Drug Problem
According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics the leading cause of unintentional death for adults under the age of 45 is drug overdose. Even more concerning, the same source cites that over 1.12 million people have passed due to the same fate since 1999. These data points, from sources not limited to but including government agencies such as the DEA, FDC and NCDA , all point towards the same startling but expected trend: America has a drug problem. Ever since the demand for recreational opiate use became commonplace for civil war soldiers in the early 1800s, The United States has been deeply entrenched in the slew of issues that come with drug importation as it has caused more than a handful of trouble over the generations since the late 19th century.
For example, within the 1930s and 1970s, marijuana became the most commonly trafficked drug for importation from Mexican cartels. With the new drug in sight, millions of teenagers in the United States dabbled in its euphoric- type side effects, smoking what was recently deemed as “pot or grass” against their parent’s wishes. Despite growing evidence hinting towards how adolescents Marijuana use could lead to “slow cognitive development and lack of motivation” ( NIH ) due to trafficking, the drug continued to be illegally sold, bought, and imported despite mitigating efforts such as the infamous War on Drugs campaign ( championed by past presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Regan) that did little, socially, to end the drug-related epidemic. As such, strategies to combat illegal drug trafficking were often seen as ineffective and led to the United States being more susceptible to drug trafficking than fortified from it. Thus, the importation of illegal drugs into the United States stands as one of the largest threats to American National Security as it diminishes overall public safety and strengthens the international criminal organizations benefiting from illegal trafficking.
As previously mentioned, The drug epidemic sweeping throughout the United States has always been a contributor towards deteriorating public health amongst American citizens. Even while virus outbreaks, mass shootings and terrorist attacks still pose a major threat to the physical safety of American citizens, drugs are still among the top contributors to public health concerns in recent times. According to the Homeland Security 2025 Threat Assessment Report, Government statistics show that “US-Bound fentanyl smuggling and seizures [are expected] to remain high into the 2025” -2026 season. This makes sense as in 2025 about 48,000 people died from the drug, making up 70% of drug related deaths from that year. Additionally, the crisis drugs impose on American public health is also put into deep concern as children as young as 12 years old fall into the entangling grasp of addiction. As studies from the National Institute of Health show that “ substance use in adolescence… is a risk factor for the development of neuropsychotic disorders in adulthood”, it comes as no surprise that having addicted children growing into addicted adults could do serious damage to the United States economy. Data from previous election cycles spanning from 2005 to 2009 show how “120 billion dollars could be lost in absent productivity” and a whopping “11 billion dollars could be lost covering healthcare costs” if addicted adults begin to enter America’s work environment thus highlighting the possible consequences of governmental inaction towards the drug trafficking crises and weakening national security .
However, in light of public health being of major concern in the fight against illegal drug importation, another reason suggesting why the issue is critically damaging to American national security is the ways in which trafficking and supplying drugs to addicts in the states benefits international criminal organizations ( ICO ). Some of the most prominent ICO’s that exclusively smuggle drugs into the United States are the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel ( CJNG ) . While the Sinaloa Cartel has been infamously led by “El Chapo” Guzman — who is now serving a life sentence in the United States — and has led massive drug operations into the U.S since the 1990s, CJNG has formed as a splinter group from Sinaloa since 2010, making itself just as notorious and irrefutably dangerous. As the Counsel of Foreign Relations cites, as Latin American cartels smuggle drugs into the states, its group affiliates use the money to pay off judges, police, and politicians as a way to bribe the legal “referees” in seemingly democratic nations. Additionally, as these organizations grow in power they make it harder for the United States to maintain control over main drug trafficking hubspots and ports around the country, once again weakening national security and making Americans more susceptible to danger.
But even if America’s drug problem seems to have bleak prospects, the attempts to reduce concerns in public health and stop the growth of IOC’s through trafficking has impartially been influenced by the aforementioned War on Drugs and the passing of strict legislation to curb or dissuade drug use amongst American citizens. For example, the Harrison Law Enforcement Act of 1914 established the basis for drug law enforcement while later acts like the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 aimed to "effectively criminalize Marijuana” according to congress. The War on Drugs attempted to use counterterrorism and military intervention in order to halt the production of drugs especially after 9/11 and initiatives like First Lady Nancy Ragen’s “Just Say No” campaign tried to wean teens from trying illicit new drugs. Yet, all of the listed attempts to decrease drug trafficking into the states only worked partially as progressives movements such as the Civil Rights Movement, Sexual Revolution and Psychedelic Revolutions of the 1960s increased ideas of how privacy rights should be at the cornerstone of American democracy. To make a long story short, nobody at the time enjoyed the idea of the government telling them what they could or could not put into their bodies no matter if that was contraceptives, alcohol or drugs. With these developments, most of these initiatives failed but not without the birth of new ones attempting to fix what old government programs and reforms could not. In order to face drug trafficking in the United States, organizations like the Drug Policy Alliance ( DPA ) and RAND health aim to advocate for drug regulation reform policies and heavier government surveillance on substance smuggling across the border. By engaging in Harm reduction strategies ( HRC ) and actively lobbying congress members and senators, groups like the DPA are able to support National security interests along with federal government agencies aimed at protecting it.
America still has a long way to go when it comes to safeguarding national security as it is known that the act of trying will never successfully accumulate to perfection. Drugs will still be smuggled into the United States against all prospects of protection making it one of, if not the, most dangerous threat to common American life. As it is statistically shown to disadvantage public health and provide criminal organizations with the power they need to continue operating, it may become difficult to find hope. However, as The United States marches into the future, learning from its past mistakes when attempting to regulate illegal drug importation and use, it could confidently be asserted that the states won’t stop trying to limit illegal substance trafficking as refusing to find an answer to that issue is more problematic than not.
Works Cited:
N NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY. 2026.
Lilienfeld, Scott O., and Hal Arkowitz. “Just Say No?” Scientific American Mind, vol. 25, no. 1, 19 Dec. 2013, pp. 70–71, www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-just-say-no-doesnt-work/, https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamericanmind0114-70.
Office Of National Drug Control Policy. “How Illicit Drug Use Affects Business and the Economy.” The White House, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ondcp/ondcp-fact-sheets/how-illicit-drug-use-affects-business-and-the-economy.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10558564/
National Security Council. “Transnational Organized Crime: A Growing Threat to National and International Security.” The White House, 2025, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/eop/nsc/transnational-crime/threat.
https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs38/38661/drugImpact.htm
“Homeland Threat Assessment | Homeland Security.” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2026, www.dhs.gov/publication/homeland-threat-assessment?os=wtmb&utm_source=chatgpt.com. Accessed 16 May 2026.
