MEXICO RIGHT TO BE OFFENDED BY DRUG CERTIFICATION

It's not fair, it isn't working and it doesn't serve a purpose." That pithy
judgment, by Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox, is of the annual process
the United States uses to certify whether Mexico and other drug-producing
countries have "cooperated fully" in the fight against drugs.

Fox has promised to give high priority to this issue in his meeting today
with President Clinton, pushing to end the U.S. certification program. His
judgment is right, and the administration may even agree; certainly Gen.
Barry R. McCaffrey, National Drug Control Policy director, has said much
the same.

But so far Congress has fiercely resisted any change, because the present
situation serves U.S. party politics too well.

In 1985, corrupt Mexican officials had a hand in the torture and murder of
Kiki Camarena, a Drug Enforcement Agency agent. An outraged Congress passed
legislation requiring that the State Department annually assess each
country involved in producing or trafficking in illegal drugs to the United
States. Those found not to have cooperated fully with U.S. drug control
efforts would be subject to a variety of economic sanctions. Each year much
of Latin America has gnashed its teeth when the scolding report appears.

It is a sense of insult rather than potential injury that provokes this
hostility, because the threat of decertification seems decreasingly
credible. Sanctions are rarely imposed, and mean little when they are.

In the past decade only Colombia, among Latin-American countries, has ever
been decertified; that was for the two years after the revelation that Cali
traffickers had bankrolled President Ernesto Samper's campaign.
Decertification had almost no consequence for Colombia. U.S. agencies
continued to work with their counterparts as before.

Meanwhile, Mexico, the principal transshipment country for U.S. cocaine and
a producer of heroin and marijuana, has never been decertified, though its
drug control has been riddled with corruption at the highest levels for the
past four years. In 1998, its top drug official was convicted of taking
bribes from the principal trafficker.

Persistent corruption has deep roots in the political history of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and in the country's rural
poverty. U.S. pressure for change can't be expected to be more than a minor
influence on either, particularly if that pressure is seen as adversarial
rather than supportive.

Certification rests on a common-sense moral claim. Drugs that damage our
society are produced elsewhere. If foreign countries could stem the flow,
the United States would be less harmed.

But Mexico and other Latin-American countries with large drug-trafficking
problems have a compelling argument, too: The world's largest drug market
is what generates their problems. No producer country is essential; Bolivia
has all but abandoned the cocaine business, but Colombia has stepped up
production to fill the gap.

Tough policies may affect which countries produce and distribute the drugs,
but they have little prospect of reducing the flow to the United States.
If, however, we could cut demand, then the whole Latin-American industry
would decline.

Producer countries argue that they are the ones hurt by the U.S. failure to
curb demand, since trafficking breeds corruption and creates violent gangs
with a strong economic base. These countries are thus pressing for a mutual
evaluation process under the Organization of American States.

In fact, certification doesn't further U.S. or Latin-American goals. What
it has done is serve a Republican Congress well in whipping a Democratic
administration. And for six years before that, it served a Democratic
Congress equally well in whipping a Republican administration.

Each year sees threats to overturn Mexico's certification, as Congress has
the right to do within a 30-day period. The threats spark some headlines
but little action. The OAS process, already in effect, results mainly in
watered-down reports that offend no one and do not allow Congress a pulpit
or an active role.

Certification is a demonstrable flop. Morally suspect, it ignores the U.S.
contribution to the drug flow problem. The assumption driving it is that
the producer countries can restrict the production of psychoactive
substances, even though the United States -- spending $35 billion on drug
control -- can't. And it greatly complicates the already strained U.S.
dealings with Mexico.

The outrage that certification generates in Mexico is simply not worth the
slight value it may have in helping curb drug use here. Only shrinking
demand at home, whether by better targeted enforcement or treatment, can
reduce our country's drug problem.

Reuter, a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of
Maryland, is a visiting scholar at the Urban Institute, in Washington, D.C.