MEXICAN PROGRESS ON DRUGS

What a difference the change in government from virtual dictatorship to a
committed democracy has made in Mexico. The transformation since President
Vicente Fox took office just over a year ago was demonstrated recently with
the arrest of Benjamin Arellano Felix, chief of the Tijuana drug gang. The
Arellano Felix family has been notorious not just for being above the law
but for owning Mexican law enforcement officers in the border area. It was
an occasion for rejoicing when news reached U.S. drug enforcement agents
that Arellano Felix had been arrested in Puebla at one of his hideaways.

As The New York Times reported, U.S. officials despaired of ever bringing
the ruthless drug kings to justice, quoting former DEA administrator Thomas
Constantine as saying that they had become more powerful than all the
agencies of the Mexican government put together. The gang's tentacles
reached far and wide. The Arellano Felix brothers began as small-time
smugglers but went on to trade in cocaine with Vladimiro Montesinos, the
corrupt former intelligence chief of Peru, and with the cartels in
Colombia. Their corrupt power made the border porous for methamphetamines
as well as cocaine and any other drug that would turn a profit on American
streets.

Mexican police and narcotics agents were in the pay of the brothers.

Anyone standing in their way was put on their murder list. Drug smuggling
will not come to a stop with the arrest of Benjamin Arellano Felix, who
told agents that his brother Ramon, who shared leadership of the gang, was
killed in a gunfight a month ago. DEA agents believe that although there
are eight other brothers, the organization will fall apart.

However, smaller drug gangs are expected to fight to replace the Arellano
Felix operation. Nevertheless, the arrest of the drug kingpin is a sign
that even the most powerful of the Mexican drug lords no longer has impunity.

When President Bush visits Mexico, the two heads of state will have an
important victory to celebrate in the war on drugs. But as Raul Ramirez
Baena, a human rights prosecutor in Baja California, told the Times: "The
fundamental forces of the drug trade remain intact, particularly the demand
for drugs in the United States, and increasingly in Mexico. As long as
there is that demand, there will be drug cartels to feed it." President Fox
has made headway in the war against the supply side of the drug scourge.

President Bush should take up the challenge by attacking the demand side,
where, unfortunately, there is no good news to report.