For decades, the United States has responded to drug trafficking primarily through domestic law enforcement and public health frameworks. Those approaches matter, but they hit a wall when drug supply chains are protected by political power abroad. At that point, local enforcement is reacting to the problem, not shaping it. Networks that operate across borders, launder billions of dollars, and exploit weak or corrupt institutions are not meaningfully deterred by incremental policing alone.
Recent U.S. actions involving senior Venezuelan officials accused of narcotics trafficking underscore this reality. When drug production and distribution are intertwined with state authority, the distinction between criminal enterprise and national security becomes difficult to ignore. In those cases, policy choices send a signal about whether the United States is willing to impose real costs on actors who enable large-scale trafficking, or whether those actors can continue operating with relative impunity.
Provisional CDC data show that drug overdose deaths remain at historically high levels in the United States, with tens of thousands of Americans dying from overdoses each year. In some cases, reductions in overdose deaths reflect emergency interventions rather than meaningful declines in drug availability, reinforcing the gap between surface-level metrics and underlying supply conditions. That reality makes it hard to argue that current strategies are meaningfully constraining supply. Communities bear the burden through lost productivity, public safety challenges, and strain on healthcare systems, while enforcement spending continues to rise without commensurate reductions in harm.
Treating drug trafficking as a national security concern does not mean discarding law enforcement or public health responses. It means recognizing that deterrence plays a role that those tools cannot fully replace. Policies that target high-level traffickers and their political protectors can change incentives in ways that incremental enforcement cannot, particularly when those actors operate beyond the reach of traditional criminal justice tools.
There are legitimate tradeoffs. Security-based approaches are costly and must be narrowly defined to avoid mission creep. But drug policy should be evaluated by outcomes, not intentions. A meaningful reduction in supply should be reflected not only in lower death rates, but also in changes to availability, purity, and price. The relevant question is whether strategies reduce supply, limit harm, and hold accountable those who profit most from illicit networks.
Venezuela serves as a reminder that drug policy does not stop at U.S. borders. When foreign regimes tolerate or enable large-scale trafficking, the consequences do not remain abroad. They arrive in American neighborhoods. A policy framework that treats transnational drug networks as what they are, organized threats with political protection, stands a better chance of producing real domestic results.
Anthony Velasquez is a Pacific Research Institute communications associate.
