DRUG-FIGHTING AGENDA FOR 2 PRESIDENTS

In a matter of months, both Mexico and the United States will inaugurate
new presidents, bringing new governments to power in Mexico City and
Washington. That will be an ideal time to reassess and rethink the efforts
both countries are making against the metasticizing cancer of the narcotics
trade.

The two new presidents would do well to start with a sense of urgency.

They should be able to agree that drug trafficking threatens both
countries, if in different ways and to varying degrees. They should also
see clearly enough that the supposed "war" against drugs is being lost on
both sides of the border.

"We need a better relationship between Mexican and U.S. law enforcement,
including regu-lar communications," says Errol J. Chavez, special agent in
charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's San Diego office. "We also
need to develop an effective strategy focusing on the key traffickers, like
the Arellano Felix Organization in Tijuana," Chavez adds.

That improved cooperation, however, would require that the new Mexican
government curb the rampant police corruption that sabotages so much of its
anti-narcotics efforts.

Of the two countries, the peril posed to Mexico is by far the most serious.

Mexico's President-elect Vicente Fox surely knows that his country's
half-dozen biggest drug-trafficking cartels, including the Tijuana-based
Arellano Felix Organization, have long since become a law unto themselves.
None of Mexico's law-enforcement and security agencies, up to and including
the Mexican army, has proved a match for these ruthless criminal cartels.

Despite occasional Mexican government victories over the narco-traffickers,
the drug trade flourishes. U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow was
accurate, if impolitic, last February when he said, "the world headquarters
of drug trafficking is in Mexico."

Tons of drugs pour over the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border every week.
Billions of dollars in drug profits -- perhaps $20 billion or more a year
by some estimates -- enrich the cartels and finance their pervasive
corruption of Mexican law enforcement and government. The deadly violence
that attends this trafficking in cocaine, heroin, marijuana and
methamphetamine further weakens Mexico's shaky hold on the rule of law.

Without that rule of law and decent government to enforce it, Fox must know
that Mexico cannot achieve its dreams of becoming a fully modern,
prosperous and democratic nation. It is just that stark.

For Washington, the stakes are also huge.

The federal government calculates that almost 14 million Americans
regularly use illicit narcotics. Drug use dramatically increases the
incidence of serious and violent crimes. Drug abuse kills more than 50,000
Americans each year and damages millions of families.

Drug legalization, the imagined remedy suggested by some, would prove no
panacea. Would Americans really want the government facilitating fixes for
millions of addicts? Should government be making drug use easier and
cheaper? Would legalization lead to less or more drug use and abuse? What
message would legalization send to millions of impressionable youngsters?

The answers are suggested by legalization's zero political prospects.

Drug education and treatment programs can, over time, reduce the demand for
illegal narcotics. But that is a slow process at best.

What happens to Mexico in the meantime ought to be a priority question for
the next U.S. president. Geography alone dictates that whatever threatens
Mexico's transition to a functioning democracy with a growing economy
presents a potential threat to the national security of the United States.

So, paying only cursory attention to the drug threat from Mexico won't be
an acceptable option for the next U.S. president and administration.
Instead, Mexico and drugs should be high on a national-security,
foreign-policy, international law-enforcement agenda.

For his part, President-elect Fox has already outlined an impressively bold
crime-fighting, anti-drug agenda. Three days after his stunning electoral
victory on July 2, Fox vowed to reorganize federal law enforcement
completely and attack rampant police corruption.

"To the criminals, those who commit violence and live outside the law, they
should know the one thing we don't want in Mexico is criminality, violence,
drug trafficking, organized crime.

The new, reoganized police agencies Fox is proposing under the command of a
federal Ministry of Public Safety offer hope for better law enforcement.
But Fox also knows that the drug traffickers have repeatedly penetrated,
compromised and corrupted virtually every newly organized police formation.
That means Fox will need help from the United States in vetting these new
units to identify the already corrupted.

Fighting corruption in Mexico is a long-term task, not something that can
be accomplished in a single six-year presidential term. But Fox can begin
this monumental job. With encouragement and, where appropriate, assistance
from the United States, real progress is possible. Certainly without better
law enforcement, there can be little hope for improved results in Mexico
against the traffickers.

Both presidents could also agree that the unilateral U.S. certification
process determining whether countries are "cooperating fully" with the
United States against drug trafficking is counterproductive. It should be
repealed. In place of this inherently insulting exercise, so resented by
Mexico and other countries, a negotiated set of bilateral measurements of
anti-drug effectiveness would be preferable.

President Clinton and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo agreed on a limited
set of these measurements last February. Fox and his U.S. counterpart could
expand them to good effect.

At a minimum, say U.S. law enforcement and government sources, these should
include:

- - Regular extradition of Mexican drug kingpins wanted for crimes in the
United States.

- - Close and constant U.S.-Mexico collaboration on a program of vetting and
training members of elite anti-narcotics units.

- - Expanded permission for U.S. military cooperation with Mexican police and
armed forces on anti-drug missions.

- - Improved cooperation between Mexican and U.S. law enforcement on all
cross-border drug cases.

Unless at least some of this is accomplished, beginning soon after the two
new presidents take office, the plague of drug trafficking along America's
Southwest border with all its attendant evils will only get worse.

Caldwell is editor of the Insight section and can be reached via e-mail at
robert.caldwell@uniontrib.com