For the second time in three years, local crime novelist Don Winslow has taken out a full-page ad in a national newspaper criticizing the governments war on drugs, an issue that has formed the backbone of several of his bestselling books.

The Julian residents newest salvo is in Sundays New York Times, framed as a series of posts on Twitter from Winslow to President Donald Trump, who uses the social media platform often to air his thoughts.

Winslow, 63, has spent almost 20 years researching and writing about drugs Americas appetite for them, the Mexican cartels that torture and kill each other to control distribution, the police on both sides of the border who try to stem the tide or corruptly become part of the flow. His books The Power of the Dog and The Cartel are violent, searing and critically acclaimed epics about the cost and futility of the war.

In addition to his novels, hes written about the subject numerous times in essays for major newspapers and magazines in the U.S., Mexico and Europe. He favors legalization, treatment and rehabilitation instead of mass incarceration.

In an essay published last week on Time.com, Winslow criticized Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions for being either woefully or willfully ignorant of the facts surrounding drugs. Both have called for a renewed crackdown emphasizing law enforcement instead of public-health strategies.

After five decades of this war, drugs are cheaper, more plentiful and more potent than ever, Winslow wrote. If thats Trumps idea of success, Id hate to see his version of failure.

He added, Rather than make a real effort to address the drug problem at its roots at a time when more Americans die from opiate overdose than from car accidents Trump and Sessions hand us fantasies such as the border wall, which will do nothing to slow the flow of drugs, and facile, intellectually lazy lock em up soundbites that make for good politics but horrible policy.

In May, Trump said the cartels have literally taken over towns in the U.S. The drug epidemic is poisoning too many American lives, and we are going to stop it in many different ways, he added. One of them will be the wall.

In 2015, Winslow took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post urging Congress to change directions with the nations drug policy. The only way to win the war on drugs is to stop fighting, he wrote. A half-century of failed policy, $1 trillion and 45 million arrests have not reduced daily drug use at all.

Winslow is currently on a tour promoting his newest book, The Force, which came out Tuesday. Its about the leader of an elite New York Police Department unit caught up in corruption while fighting the influx of drugs and guns to the city.

The author will be at Warwicks in La Jolla on Monday and at Mysterious Galaxy in Clairemont on Friday.

RELATED: Don Winslow calls 'The Force' the cop novel he's always wanted to write

john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com

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Crime novelist Winslow calls out Trump on drug wars - The San Diego Union-Tribune