For more than 20 years, the United States has viewed the global drug trade as a serious threat to our national security because of its capacity to destabilize democratic and friendly governments, undermine U.S. foreign policy objectives, and generate violence and human suffering on a scale that constitutes a public security threat.

Over the years, the drug trade has grown more sophisticated and complex. It has evolved in such a way that its infrastructure—including its profits, alliances, organizations, and criminal methods – help facilitate and reinforce other systemic transnational threats, such as arms and human trafficking, money laundering and illicit financial flows, and gangs. The drug trade also serves as a critical source of revenue for some terrorist groups and insurgencies. Further, the drug trade plays a critical destabilizing role in a number of regions of strategic importance to the United States:

• In Colombia, all fronts of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are involved in the drug trade at some level, which includes controlling cocaine production, securing labs and airstrips, and at times cooperating with other organizations to transport multi-ton quantities of cocaine from Colombia through transit countries such as Venezuela to the United States and Europe.

• In Afghanistan, the Taliban continues to leverage its role in that nation’s $3 billion opium trade in order to finance insurgent and terrorist activities;

• In West Africa, weak governance and enforcement structures have permitted an explosion of drug trafficking, particularly in Guinea-Bissau, which could fuel wide regional instability; and

• Venezuela—due to government ineffectiveness, inattention, and corruption—has evolved into a major hub for cocaine trafficking, and also provides a dangerously permissive environment for narcotic, criminal, and terrorist activities by the FARC and the National Liberation Army.

Since 9/11, our international drug control and related national security goals have been to: reduce the flow of illicit drugs into the United States; disrupt and dismantle major drug trafficking organizations; strengthen the democratic and law enforcement institutions of partner nations threatened by illegal drugs; and reduce the underlying financial and other support that drug trafficking provides to international terrorist organizations. In a post-9/11 world, U.S. counterdrug efforts serve dual purposes, protecting Americans from drug trafficking and abuse while also strengthening and reinforcing our national security. The tools, expertise, authorities, and capabilities that have been used to successfully dismantle international drug organizations and their cells can be used to confront a wide range of transnational threats and help the United States achieve broader national security objectives.

In 2008, the United States will embark on a historic security partnership with Mexico and Central America. This partnership, forged during President Bush’s trip to Latin America in March 2007, aims to build a framework for regional security from the U.S. Southwest border to Panama. This framework for regional security will seek to produce a safer and more secure hemisphere, break the power and impunity of the drug organizations and gangs that threaten the region, and prevent the spread of illicit drugs and transnational and terrorist threats toward the United States.

The National Drug Control Strategy will complement and support the National Security Strategy of the United States by focusing on several key priorities:

• Focus U.S. action in areas where the illicit drug trade has converged or may converge with other transnational threats with severe implications for U.S. national security.

• Deny drug traffickers, narco-terrorists, and their criminal associates their illicit profits and access to the U.S. and international banking systems.

• Strengthen U.S. capabilities to identify and target the links between drug trafficking and other national security threats and to anticipate future drug-related national security threats.

• Disrupt the flow of drugs to the United States and through other strategic areas by building new and stronger bilateral and multilateral partnerships.