The role of the United States in exporting the destructive war on drugs to other countries is unparalleled. Since 1971, the U.S. has spent more than a trillion dollars on the war on drugs, prioritising law enforcement responses and fuelling mass incarceration within its borders. It has also played a leading role in pushing and funding punitive responses to drugs internationally. This has continued despite clear evidence that such approaches don’t work to achieve their stated aims (ending drug use and sales) while having devastating effects on rights and health, including mass criminalisation, disease transmission, repression and displacement.

This report demonstrates how U.S. assistance has supported and expanded destructive and deadly anti-drug responses in low- and middle-income countries around the world.  It also presents new follow-the-money data analysis on U.S. international drug control spending by various government departments and budgets. This includes official development assistance (ODA) intended to support poverty reduction and other global development goals; and three case studies – Colombia, Mexico, and the Philippines – to reveal the damage done by this spending.

The 2023 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report by the U.S. State Department described a “whole of government approach” to drug control and a strategy of deep collaboration and “capacity building” with counterparts in other countries. A vast and complex global network of U.S. government agencies, programs, and activities has been developed in the ongoing “war on drugs.”

U.S. support for drug enforcement internationally includes financial, material and technical assistance. The U.S. drug war bureaucracy is expansive, involving numerous agencies of the government, including the Department of Defense (DOD), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), State Department, Department of Homeland Security, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as well as the infamous Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), under the Department of Justice (DOJ). By 2023, the DEA had 93 foreign offices in 69 countries.

• Over the decade between 2015-2024, a total of almost $13 billion of U.S. taxpayer money was allocated to “counternarcotics” activities internationally.
• For fiscal year 2025, the President requested $1 billion for international “counternarcotics” activities. Almost half of this request was to be received and spent by the DEA ($480 million); the second largest planned intermediary for this spending was to be the State Department’s INL bureau (about $350 million).
• Separate budget documents from the involved departments contain further detail on where and how international drug control funding is to be spent. For instance, the U.S. Department of State’s 2023 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) showed that Latin America was budgeted to receive more than half ($225 million) of the total $375 million for “counternarcotics” requested by the department and its agencies (including INL and USAID). Colombia was to be the largest single country recipient ($115 million).
• Aid donors (led by the U.S.) spent almost $1 billion of their ODA on “narcotics control” projects in dozens of low- and middle-income countries over the decade 2013-2022. No donor contributed more to these “narcotics control” budgets than the U.S.
• Controversially, the U.S. has been increasingly classifying drug control spending as ODA: in 2020, it counted just over $30 million like this; in 2021 that figure was $309 million (and while it dropped to $106 million in 2022, this was still higher than earlier years).
• Profit-making companies are also benefiting from this ODA spending on “narcotics control.” The top “channel” for this spending has been private companies (“private sector institutions,” receiving $244 million over the decade) followed by the governments of countries funded ($202 million), and then multilateral organisations such as UNODC ($77 million).

The U.S. government spends more on international “counternarcotics” activities than it does on education, water supply, sanitation, and women’s rights in low- and middle-income countries: Almost $13 billion of U.S. taxpayer money has been allocated to “counternarcotics” activities internationally since 2015, by various government departments and from various budget lines. This amount is more than the U.S. government spent over that decade on primary education or water supply and sanitation in low- and middle-income countries around the world.

Funding meant to end global poverty is going to “counternarcotics” activities. A growing amount of this “counternarcotics cash” has even come from the same U.S. official development assistance budgets that are supposed to help end global poverty and support other sustainable development goals while doing no harm: No international aid donor has spent more on “narcotics control” than the U.S. (contributing more than half of the about $1 billion in official development assistance that has been spent on this controversial sector since 2013.

Funding for “narcotics control” and “counternarcotic activities” has resulted in human rights abuses, rising HIV rates, aerial fumigation with toxic chemicals, and militarised responses in various regions.

Damaging effects internationally have included:

• Human rights abuses and rising rates of HIV in the Philippines, where millions of dollars from USAID have supported “forced rehabilitation” of people who use drugs amidst a drive to expand “drug-free communities”.
• Ongoing struggles for truth and justice in Colombia, for communities that were displaced or who suffered health consequences of U.S.- funded crop destruction activities, including aerial fumigation with toxic chemicals.
• An enormous amount of repression in Mexico, where the U.S.-supported war on drugs is increasingly militarised, making it harder for civil society to hold the government accountable for these activities and their impacts.

The U.S. government should:

• Divest from punitive and prohibitionist drug control control.
• Stop using taxpayers’ money to support punitive drug responses around the world, including the use of U.S. foreign aid, which is supposed to help end poverty and achieve global development goals, for “narcotics control” activities.
• Cease using aid as a means to pressure low- and middle-income countries to adopt or maintain punitive drug responses.
• Be more transparent about international spending on drug-related activities, regardless of what budget line this money comes from.
• Increase investments in evidence-based and health- and human rights-centred harm reduction initiatives that align with global development and other commitments – including by reorienting funding for punitive and prohibitive responses to drugs.
• Use metrics aligned with global development commitments to evaluate the success of international aid programmes.
• Expand access to evidence-based treatment and support harm reduction services, including by ending the ban on using federal funds to purchase syringes.

Civil society and journalists in the U.S. should:

• Demand greater transparency in how U.S. taxpayer money is spent.
• Conduct further, in-depth investigations into how U.S. money has been spent on drug control internationally, including how it was justified, any results claimed, and any direct or indirect impacts that may have undermined other goals or aid rules. In addition to identifying harms of this spending, further investigations should also expose who might benefit from it, including private companies that profit off government contracts for international drug control projects.
• Build public awareness on the use and impacts of taxpayer funds to support damaging punitive drug policies around the world.
• Call for a divestment from punitive drug responses and investment in community, health and justice, including harm reduction.

U.S. taxpayers should:

• Demand integrity and transparency in the government’s international spending, including that from limited aid budgets.
• Demand that support from public budgets flows to evidence-based and health- and human rights-centred measures, not for punitive drug control abroad.

The OECD should:

• Solicit and listen to advice from health and human rights experts, as well as people who use drugs, on whether to remove “narcotics control” from their list of categories of spending eligible to be counted as aid.
• Conduct and publish a thorough review of all ODA spent on “narcotics control” so far, whether any spending breached guidance on this category, and including the high level of redactions in this data and the use of national security or other justifications by donors to withhold details about funded projects.
• Increase transparency of all current and previous aid spending, making data and details of projects easier to access, to facilitate accountability.