Venezuela

The Headlines: Invasion, Drugs, and Old Excuses in a New Package

I didn’t want to write about this. In fact, I decided not to. Politics turns my stomach these days. It’s such a divisive topic; I’m not sure any discourse is beneficial. But here we are. And here we go:

At the start of 2026, the United States launched a dramatic military operation inside Venezuela that culminated in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. The White House publicly justified the action with charges against Maduro for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism, framing the intervention as part of a broader U.S. counternarcotics effort. 
But the context, the global outcry, and even public statements from U.S. officials, including emphasis on rebuilding Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, raise serious questions about the sincerity of the “drug war” rationale.

As critics from multiple political perspectives point out, Venezuela is hardly the primary source of the substances most harming American communities. Venezuelan oil reserves and her history of geopolitical struggle appear front and center in the unfolding crisis.

That leads me to a painful but overdue question: Are we repeating the same failed logic of “supply side” drug policy instead of confronting the real challenges of addiction here at home?

Before I talk about why supply-side interdiction has failed for decades and what research strongly suggests works better, let’s take a minute and look at where we are today.

Why We’re Here (or Pretending to Be)

The U.S. government’s narrative is familiar: heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, and other illicit substances decimate families and communities; therefore, military force against drug sources and transit points is justified as national defense.

This is the same logic that powered the War on Drugs since the 1970s, and the evidence from decades of research is painfully clear: supply-side tactics don’t meaningfully reduce addiction. In fact, they often make the problem worse by driving drug markets underground, increasing violence, destabilizing communities, and criminalizing vulnerable people rather than helping them.

Let’s break down what decades of research actually say about drug supply, access, and addiction.

1. Supply Reduction and Its Discontents

Historical Analogs Show Limited Impact

Prohibition in the United States teaches an early lesson. When alcohol was illegal from 1920 to 1933, supply didn’t disappear, it went underground. People still drank, but now in uncontrolled, unregulated environments that spurred organized crime and unsafe products. The same dynamic plays out with illegal drugs: making a drug harder to source does not eliminate demand. It just drives profit to criminal networks that have every incentive to protect or expand their markets.

Empirical Studies Highlight Substitution and Unintended Outcomes

A prominent review of U.S. opioid policy found that efforts to reformulate OxyContin to make it harder to abuse didn’t reduce overall opioid mortality. Users switched to other opioids instead. This empirical observation highlights a core limitation of simple supply restrictions: users often substitute one substance for another, driven by availability, leaving overall addiction mortality unchanged.

Modeling Suggests Treatment Reduces Costs More Than Arrests

Simulation research on opioid use disorder demonstrates that treatment-oriented policies (arrest diversion, overdose diversion) can meaningfully reduce societal costs and improve health outcomes, while traditional arrest priorities have much smaller impacts. Diverting more eligible individuals from jail into treatment and continuum-of-care services shows consistent promise.

So the data suggest that supply interventions by themselves don’t meaningfully reduce addiction, they often simply reshuffle where and how substances are accessed.

2. Addiction Is a Demand Problem First

Anyone who has worked in counseling, public health, or community safety knows this intuitively: addiction is not fundamentally about drugs being present. It’s about why people use them, how they use them, and what support structures (or lack thereof) exist around them.

Environmental Factors Matter

In landmark animal studies addicted rats were provided a rich, stimulating environment with social mates and toys. Turns out, these rats consumed far less morphine than isolated rats given the same access. Researchers took this as evidence that context matters at least as much as access in determining whether individuals use (or misuse) substances.

While rats aren’t human beings, the broader theoretical implication is powerful: social environment, opportunity, mental health, trauma, and community support exert a tremendous influence on addiction patterns.

Reduced Use is itself a Valuable Outcome

A recent study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Institute on Drug Abuse showed that even reducing drug use (not just eliminating it) correlates with meaningful improvements in cravings, depression, and quality of life for people struggling with stimulant use disorders. That reframes addiction treatment success away from an exclusively abstinence-only model toward a harm-reduction, patient-centered paradigm. In our mad rush toward abstinence we missed the tangible benefits of simply reducing use.

This perspective acknowledges a simple truth: focusing solely on cutting supply ignores the deeper, psycho-social drivers that keep people in cycles of use.

3. Harm Reduction Works

If supply disruption and criminal interdiction don’t meaningfully reduce addiction, what does?

In the U.S., harm reduction has robust evidence supporting it.

Needle Exchanges, Naloxone Distribution, and Community Engagement

Federal and state harm reduction efforts aim to prevent overdose deaths and infectious disease transmissions and to serve as bridges to treatment. Programs that distribute naloxone (an opioid overdose reversal drug) at syringe service sites significantly cut deaths, often by increasing contact with healthcare and counseling services.

These aren’t abstract theories, they save lives today by operating within communities and building trust. That trust, in turn, increases the likelihood that someone will accept treatment when they’re ready.

Public Health Reduces Long-Term Demand

Preventive education, mental health support, employment opportunities, and stable housing are all part of the broader demand-side ecosystem. Without addressing these elements, any supply reduction is like trimming weeds without tending the garden.

4. The War on Drugs Has Been a War on People

Beyond ineffectiveness, supply-side drug policy has broken lives and communities.

Mass Criminalization and Community Trauma

For decades, U.S. drug policy prioritized arrest and incarceration for users and small-scale dealers, disproportionately affecting communities of color and people in economic distress. That approach did not meaningfully reduce drug use rates but did tear apart families, destabilize neighborhoods, and contribute to cycles of poverty and recidivism.

Global Consequences of Militarized Drug Policy

Internationally, supply side tactics have produced spillover violence and governance instability without demonstrable decreases in addiction. Mexico’s decades of conflict between cartels and state forces, Colombia’s internal strife linked to coca cultivation, and now allegations of U.S. military action in Venezuela all illustrate a failed philosophy that equates interdiction with prevention.

And this is worth noting: most illicit drug use in the U.S. does not originate in Venezuela. Independent fact-checking has cast doubt on claims that Venezuelan drug supply is a major source of U.S. overdose deaths, and the administration has yet to provide transparent evidence for the substance amounts it claims were intercepted.

Yet, our actions are there for all to see: We move troops, impose a blockade, and seize oil tankers that would otherwise be exporting crude, actions far beyond what would be expected if the genuine goal were reducing drug supply alone.

5. What Research Actually Says About Effective Policy

Here’s the bottom line from decades of addiction science and public health research:

Supply reduction alone is insufficient.

- Policy modeling shows treatment and diversion programs greatly improve outcomes.

- Supply suppression often yields substitution effects or pushes markets underground.

Demand reduction, health support, and harm reduction work.

- Harm reduction policies reduce overdoses and disease transmission and increase access to treatment services.

- Reducing use correlates with improved mental health outcomes.

Addiction is fundamentally a public health issue, not a national security battlefield.

- Environment, trauma history, economic opportunity, and social support shape patterns of use far more than distance from the source does.

6. A Better Way Forward

If we took research seriously here’s what a smarter U.S. policy would look like:

Treat addiction as public health

Expand treatment access; normalize medication-assisted care; make harm reduction services widely available.

Decriminalize users, not just substances

Focus law enforcement on profit-driven elites and violent networks, but keep people struggling with addiction out of the criminal legal system wherever possible.

Build social supports

Jobs, housing, mental health care, trauma-informed services, these address why people turn to drugs.

International cooperation

Work with other countries to strengthen public health infrastructures rather than using military force that destabilizes governments.

Drugs Don’t Die on Battlefields

If the U.S. genuinely wanted to reduce addiction within its borders, the evidence suggests it would invest far more in treatment, harm reduction, and community resources, and far less in bombs, blockades, and occupations cloaked in drug-war rhetoric.

The history of drug policy shows that supply constraints alone fail to prevent addiction. They fail at home and they fail abroad, frequently leaving devastation in their wake. The real leverage points lie in addressing root causes, social determinants, and public health infrastructures, not chasing sources across national borders without solid evidence that they are causally driving domestic addiction rates.

And here’s the harshest truth: in the case of Venezuela, the focus on drugs may be less about controlling substance flows and more about controlling oil and geopolitical influence.

Real reform won’t come from foreign interventions. It will come from acknowledging that addiction is a human problem, one that deserves compassion, evidence-based care, and public health solutions, not missiles.

Now, Maduro is no saint. In July 2024 they held an election where Mauro’s opponent, Edmundo Gonzales, received 70% of the vote. So Maduro, clearly, claimed victory. Most agree it was a fraudulent victory. Maduro’s human rights track record is bleak at best. Plus, he buys really ugly track suits. But none of that warrants the hundreds of millions of dollars, tax dollars, it has cost to capture this leader. The Navy is spending $18 million a day in the region. I can think of a thousand ways to put that money to better use. Mackenzie Scott has given over $26 billion dollars to nonprofits, literally changing lives by the thousands. Maybe someone should ask her what we should do with $18 million a day? Ah, there’s the problem. She’s too smart to get involved with US politics.

Maybe I’m wrong about all of this. I made an agreement with myself years ago to embrace my strong views, but be willing to change those views when presented with the evidence. I think the evidence supports my views here, but I’ll gladly admit when I’m wrong. So what if, in the coming weeks, drug use dramatically slows in our country? What if the supply dries up now that we’ve sank the boats and those who are struggling with addiction suddenly decide to make different choices? Maybe they just say “no”? Or learn to get high on life? If it turns out that kidnapping a bad man and his presumably bad wife results in reduced instances of addiction, you’ll find me writing an apology post and promptly joining the Venezuelan Boat Bombing consortium.

If you’d like to read some boring research on the topics I’ve discussed, here you go:

Alexander, B. K., Bruce, B. K., & Brewer, J. M. (1978). Effect of early and later colony housing on oral ingestion of morphine in rats. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior.

Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow. New Press.

Alpert, A., Powell, D., & Pacula, R. L. (2018). Supply-side drug policy in the presence of substitutes. Journal of Health Economics.

Becker, G. S., Murphy, K. M., & Grossman, M. (2006). The market for illegal goods: The case of drugs. Journal of Political Economy.

Caulkins, J. P., et al. (2016). Considering marijuana legalization. Oxford University Press.

Ciccarone, D. (2019). The triple wave epidemic. Current Opinion in Psychiatry.

Felbab-Brown, V. (2014). Drug trafficking, organized crime, and violence. Brookings Institution.

Hawk, M., et al. (2017). Harm reduction principles for healthcare settings. Harm Reduction Journal.

Krebs, E., et al. (2023). Modeling public health and public safety outcomes of opioid policy. Systems Science in Public Health.

Miron, J. A., & Zwiebel, J. (1991). Alcohol consumption during Prohibition. American Economic Review.

National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2024). Reduced drug use as a meaningful treatment outcome.

Volkow, N. D., et al. (2016). Neurobiologic advances from the brain disease model of addiction. New England Journal of Medicine.