The role of the United States (US) government in funding and promoting the global war on drugs is unparalleled. Since 1971, the US government has spent more than a trillion dollars on the war on drugs, prioritizing law enforcement responses and fuelling mass incarceration. Harm Reduction International and the Drug Policy Alliance commissioned a study to examine how US government financial and material assistance has supported and expanded destructive and deadly punitive drug responses in low- and middle-income countries.

Annual National Drug Control Budgets and wider US government documents and financial data, including on development assistance, were analysed to assess international drug control spending by various US government departments and budgets between 2015-2024. Further analysis and expert interviews informed case studies on US punitive drug control funding in the Philippines, Colombia and Mexico.

The research identified almost $13 billion of US taxpayer money spent on ‘counternarcotics’ activities internationally between 2015-2024. This exceeds the amount spent in the same time period by the US government on development assistance for primary education, or water supply and sanitation. Among aid donor countries, the US was the largest contributor to ‘narcotics control’ projects, spending more than $620 million over the past decade, including in countries with the death penalty for drug-related offenses. Case studies explored US government funding and forced rehabilitation in the Philippines; transparency gaps in funding for ‘counternarcotics’ activities in Mexico and ongoing struggles for truth and justice in Colombia where US-funded crop destruction included aerial fumigation with toxic chemicals.

The global war on drugs uses and reproduces harmful mechanisms of racial and imperial control and subordination, within and between countries worldwide. Drug policy should be decolonised and power transferred from wealthy governments to local communities. International funding and material support should be scrutinised and reoriented to prioritise health and justice.