AS DRUGS POUR IN, LEGALIZING POT NO LONGER A PIPE DREAM

A recent Government Accountability Office report on drug interdiction
in Mexico is so bleak you have to wonder, what's the point? From 2000
to 2005, the GAO says, the amount of marijuana flowing into the
United States from Mexico increased 44 percent. Cocaine shipments to
the United States increased 64 percent. Heroin production for U.S.
consumption nearly doubled.

The National Drug Intelligence Center estimates that the total value
of the illegal drug trade between Mexico and the United States at
between $8 billion and $23 billion.

The upper end of that range has eye-popping significance.

Mexico's economy relies heavily on trade with the United States. At
the upper end of the range, the illegal drug trade is equivalent to
14 percent of the total value of Mexico's legal exports to the United States.

Illegal drugs are probably Mexico's second-leading export to the
United States, lagging only behind oil. It is not as though nothing
was being done during the period GAO studied.

The U.S. gave Mexico nearly $400 million to assist in drug
interdiction. Cartel leaders were targeted. Extraditions to the U.S.
increased. A new federal police force was formed to bypass corruption
in other agencies.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is taking even more aggressive
action. Regardless of the good will and stern intentions of Mexico's
senior federal leadership, however, the money in the illegal drug
trade simply overwhelms the rule of law at the local level. That's a
serious problem, for Mexico and the U.S.

So, what to do about it?

Decriminalization for recreational drug use has been a safe haven for
those who believe that locking up people strictly for drug use is
wrong or have concluded that the war on drugs is futile. I've rested
comfortably there for years.

However, removing criminal sanctions for drug use won't dismantle the
destructive and dangerous criminal supply networks that have taken
deep root in Mexico and, increasingly, here in the United States.
Only a legal means of production, distribution and sale will do that.

That's a far less comfortable proposition. Making the production and
sale of drugs commercially available, particularly hard drugs, is unnerving.

Perhaps legalizing just marijuana would make the problem manageable.
A federal study says 6 percent of the population over the age of 12
had used marijuana in the previous month. That's nearly 15 million people.

About 1 percent of the U.S. had used cocaine in the previous month.
The numbers for meth and heroin were even lower, two-tenths of 1
percent and one-tenth of 1 percent respectively.

Marijuana accounts for more than 60 percent of the proceeds of the
illegal drug trade between Mexico and the United States, according to
the NDIC estimate.

So, perhaps the line on legalization, rather than decriminalization,
can be drawn at marijuana. Perhaps that would give Mexican officials
a fighting chance to get on top of the remainder of the drug trade
and install the rule of law locally. Legalization of marijuana would
be a big step into the unknown.

Despite the claims of incautious legalization advocates, usage would
undoubtedly go up as prices dropped, product became more available
and convenient, and risks disappeared.

The experience of other countries with legalization of marijuana and
some harder drugs is mixed, at best. Recreational drug use becoming a
visible part of a culture isn't a good thing.

What the United States would be like with legal recreational drugs is
unknown. But sometimes the known is so bad that a trade for the
unknown is the best course of action.

That point has been reached regarding the legal status of marijuana.

Robert Robb is a columnist for The Arizona Republic.