Trump’s War on Drugs

From Afghanistan to Iraq, the United States has long used drone strikes to take out people it alleges are terrorists or insurgents. It’s a legacy that started under President George W. Bush and greatly expanded under President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has taken this tactic to new extremes, boasting about lethal strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and declaring the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with narcotics traffickers.Trump appears to be merging the war on terror with the war on drugs. This comes as he’s simultaneously ramping up the use of troops to police inside American cities. It's a chilling escalation. But it’s not the first time we’ve seen a president stoke public fear and deploy overwhelming force in the name of law and order. In the modern war on drugs — which dates back more than 50 years to President Richard Nixon’s administration — the United States has produced laws and policies ensuring that collateral damage isn’t just tolerated, it’s inevitable.This is the prelude.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Om Podcasten

Collateral Damage is an investigative podcast series examining the half-century-long war on drugs, its enduring ripple effects, and the devastating consequences of building a massive war machine aimed at the public itself. Hosted by Radley Balko, an investigative journalist who has been covering the drug war and the criminal justice system for more than 20 years, each episode takes an in-depth look at someone who was unjustly killed in the drug war.The so-called “war on drugs” began as a metaphor to demonstrate the country’s fervent commitment to defeat drug addiction, but the “war” part quickly became all too literal, complete with helicopters, tanks, and suspension of basic civil liberties protections. All wars have collateral damage: the civilians, the noncombatants, the innocent people whose deaths are tragic but deemed necessary for the greater cause. Collectively, we’ve decided that the lives of these people were expendable — unfortunate but acceptable sacrifices for the impossible goal of a drug-free America. They are collateral damage, and these are their stories. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.