THE LONG ARM OF THE DRUG WAR

Washington quashes yet another mild reform in a neighboring country.

THE RISE AND FALL of Mexican drug-law reform over the last two weeks
has been, for drug legalizers, a dizzying high followed by a
painfully abrupt crash. U.S. drug authorities laid down their usual
bummer: No user is going to get off easy on their watch. And thanks
to the United States' overwhelming power and influence, their watch
extends everywhere.

Mexico isn't the first nation to suffer side effects from America's
estimated $30-billion-a-year drug war. A 2003 attempt by former
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien to liberalize drug possession
laws met with threats from U.S. drug czar John Walters that the
tougher resulting border security could hold up U.S.-Canadian trade,
and the idea soon went up in smoke. Colombia has been for years the
site of what is essentially a damaging and expensive proxy war in the
service of the United States' delusion that it can wipe out cocaine production.

Still, both cops and heads must have been hallucinating if they
thought Mexico's mild reform proposals would have ushered in some
kind of lotus-eaters' utopia, a permanent Altered State down Mexico way.

The legislation, which passed Mexico's House and Senate with
President Vicente Fox's initial support, would have legalized the
possession of minute quantities of substances such as pot, cocaine
and heroin (5 grams of pot, 0.5 grams of cocaine -- only a few lines
- -- and 25 milligrams of heroin), in an attempt to focus
drug-enforcement resources on larger-scale dealers. But sales, and
possession beyond the tiniest weekend's worth, would have remained
illegal. State and local cops would have been dragged into a Mexican
drug war that had heretofore been federal, increasing the total
resources spent on drug enforcement -- and introducing more cops to
the lure of drug-money corruption.

Even before this policy, you could beat a possession rap by
convincing a Mexican judge that you're an addict. The quantities
allowed under that definition have been undefined; the new law would
have defined them, in an effort to eliminate judicial corruption.

As the bill came perilously close to receiving Fox's signature, White
House drug officials raised the fear that Mexican border towns would
become out-of-control party towns for thrill-seeking U.S. youth.
(What else is new?) Border city cops spouted nonsense about how the
new policy would lead to unmanageably rowdy public chaos, as if
potheads and junkies are an energetic bunch, or as if any substance
creates more troublesome public inebriation than already available
alcohol. Because sales still would have been illegal under the new
law, warnings by U.S. officials -- from the mayor of San Diego to the
spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy -- that the
proposal would have led to a drugged-out free-for-all just don't fly.

Trade in other commodities, even damaging ones such as cancer-causing
cigarettes or obesity-triggering sugary soft drinks, doesn't generate
the rampant violence and corruption of the illegal drug business. The
ugly side of drug trafficking isn't inherent in the drugs. It arises
because illegal businesses by definition demand artificially high
profits, lack peaceful institutions for settling disputes (if you
can't take your opponent to court when you feel ripped off, you might
feel more compelled to shoot) and attract risk-seeking,
violence-prone types to begin with.

When drugs are outlawed, only outlaws deal drugs. If it weren't
illegal, the sale of narcotics would be no more prone to violence and
corruption than the sale of cola or cigarettes.

Reform far more radical than what Mexico contemplated would
drastically reduce, not exacerbate, the serious problems associated
with drug-law enforcement.

WE ARE fortunate enough not to have rebel armies funded by profits
from the illegal coca market within our borders. And we can afford
not to care about the thousands of murders a year and dangerously
rampant police corruption in Mexico caused by the drug laws we refuse
to let it change.

Americans angry about Mexican immigration complain that the country
is exporting its troubles to us. In fact, with our drug-war bullying,
we're exporting our enforcement troubles back to Mexico, adding to
the problems that make so many people want to come here to begin with.

The White House's disproportionate panic can't be explained by any
actual damage the law could have caused. Maybe U.S. drug warriors
realized that if we saw firsthand, right across the border, just how
unnecessary are the laws against drug possession, the futility of
making 1.7 million drug arrests each year would be exposed, and
that's never a happy thought for any bureaucrat. In Amsterdam, where
pot, hash and mushrooms can be sold freely in certain shops, surveyed
use of most drugs is lower than in the United States, illustrating
that legalization does not equal everyone getting high. The social
order still stands.

Experienced drug users have an ethic: You don't force other people on
your trip against their will. Pity that U.S. drug policymakers can't
be that sensible.