Global Distributive Injustice and the War on Drugs in Colombia and Mexico

The phrase 'the war on drugs has failed' is ubiquitous. It is often paired with purely domestic cost-benefit analyses, claiming that its unintended consequences are caused solely by domestic factors. This view disconnects international agents from global structural conditions that actively harm distant strangers. Moreover, this disassociation results in charity-based demands for humanitarian assistance, which are echoed in international drug conventions that call for cooperation to assist 'developing countries' in tackling the global drug problem and mitigating its unintended consequences.
The underlying distributive injustices perpetuating these wars are rarely examined. In the case of the drug wars in Latin America, there is no existing research applying a global distributive justice approach to identify injustices perpetuated, and the resulting distributive justice obligations to address upstream structural conditions.
In response, this thesis examines the drug wars through a distributive justice lens to identify how current policies exacerbate inequalities and disproportionately affect vulnerable agents. It proposes a global distributive and structural justice framework to evaluate how drug policies result in macro- and micro-level structural injustice, which triggers a moral obligation by key agents to rectify these harms. It provides empirical evidence of the causal relationship between the global institutional order of drug control and prohibition and the worsening conditions of structural violence and poverty in Colombia and Mexico.
Consequently, the application of such a framework helps to demonstrate that current drug policies are actively causing harm to opium poppy and coca farmers in Colombia and Mexico. Such harms underscore how structural coercion, which is morally more egregious than structural violence, further entrenches vulnerability among the most disadvantaged agents. It also unjustly constrains those already worse off, while empowering privileged agents to strengthen their current positions in the global social structure. As a result, this thesis helps to identify globally interconnected agents to support activating distributive justice obligations towards the most vulnerable agents in Colombia and Mexico.