DRUG-TRADE IN MEXICO KEPT ALIVE BY U.S. DEMAND

Only lightly noted on this side of the border, our neighbor Mexico is
engulfed in bloody, violent combat with and between death-dealing drug
cartels.

In a stunning reversal for President Felipe Calderon's crusade to
subdue the drug trade and its perpetrators, Edgar Gomez, the national
police chief and lead anti-cartel crusader, was assassinated this
month outside his Mexico City home. "This could have a snowball
effect, even leading to the risk of ungovernability," Mexico City
sociologist Luis Astorga told The Washington Post.

Yet it's hardly unique. More than 20,000 Mexican troops and federal
police are struggling against the private armies of rival drug lords.

Literally hundreds of officials and police have been murdered in the
struggle -- about 6,000 in the last 2 1/2 years, far beyond U.S.
casualty counts in Iraq. Further drenching the country in blood, mass
executions and even beheadings have been reported.

Talk about a national security issue for the United States! We share a
2,000-mile border with Mexico; it's our second-largest trade partner,
especially huge in agriculture.

Millions of families are related across the border; thousands of
Mexicans regularly cross over for work. Yet cartel murders of police
are commonplace, and 30 percent of police in Baja California alone are
estimated to be on a drug cartel payroll.

There's a U.S. response before Congress right now. It's President
Bush's request for a so-called Merida Initiative -- a $1.4 billion,
three-year program to undergird the Mexican government's anti-drug
efforts with helicopters and other military equipment, training for
Mexican police forces, plus phone-tapping, mail-inspection and
Web-surveillance programs.

But there's substantial congressional skepticism about aid that could
flow to the notoriously unaccountable, often corrupt, Mexican military
and police forces. And then the tough, basic question: Realistically,
how much could U.S. aid of roughly $500 million a year do to stem the
gargantuan illegal drug trade that now flows across the Mexican border
- -- about $23 billion a year by U.S. Government Accountability Office
estimates? And is the problem really Mexico -- or (BEG ITAL)our(END
ITAL) demand for drugs? There are three much smarter steps that a
rational United States would take.

First, face up to where the Mexican cartels get their weapons of
death. Virtually all, including pistols, grenades, high-powered
ammunition and assault weapons such as the AK-47, are smuggled from
U.S. territory, across the border into Mexico, where the gangster
elements pay premium prices for them.

The weapons are often purchased legally at gun shows in Arizona and
other states where loopholes permit criminals to buy guns without
background checks. Then, corrupted Mexican customs officials wink an
eye at the smuggling.

Our obvious answer: Seal all gun show sales loopholes, requiring
checks on every purchaser. And reinstate the U.S. ban on assault gun
purchases that Congress, under gun lobby pressure (and with Bush
administration acquiescence), let expire in 2004.

A second smart move: Reduce demand for drugs on the U.S. side through
treatment for addicted individuals. Consider cocaine alone.

The RAND Corporation, in a study for the U.S. Army and White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy, found that dollar for dollar,
drug treatment is 10 times more effective at reducing its use than
drug interdiction.

Our big mistake: Making Mexico the villain when it's really the
victim. And it's "a familiar game," notes Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug
Policy Alliance: "U.S. leaders blame another country for our failure
to reduce drug misuse here at home. That country escalates its war
against drugs but asks the U.S. to pick up part of the tab. Aid is
given, but it ends up having no effect on the availability of drugs
in the United States.

Politicians in Washington point their fingers again, and the cycle
continues." Indeed, patterns of the international narcotics trade show
that whenever some source of production or smuggling route gets
clamped down, drug production and drug-trafficking gangs quickly
regroup elsewhere.

Third and most basic of all: recognize that while prohibition of
socially disallowed drugs can increase their cost, it can never halt
demand. Why? Desire for mind-altering substances (opiates, alcohol,
whatever) is virtually built into the human psyche.

Americans might recall the counsel of the late Nobel Prize-winning
economist Milton Friedman, who learned the immense dangers of
repressing demand as he watched America's misadventure into alcohol
prohibition, and how it triggered the Al Capone-era wave of gang wars:
"Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics
of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law
enforcement officials. ... Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But
criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for
society, for users and nonusers alike."

So now comes the Merida Initiative -- fueling the drug wars, foisting
the consequences of our misguided prohibition onto an already
beleaguered neighbor. Will we never learn?