NEW STRATEGY IS NEEDED TO FIGHT DRUG WAR

THE NEWS of a killing field in Ciudad Juarez took me back six years to a
man with a warning.

I was driving along the dusty road that hugs the Rio Grande when I saw a
border patrolman sitting in his truck. I stopped. His name was Steve Evans.
He was guarding the river against illegal immigrants from Mexico during one
of those headline-making border blockades.

``Boring work,'' he said, ``but necessary. At least nobody's getting killed.''

We got to talking. It turned out he was much more than a sentry. Evans had
once worked with American and Mexican police by going undercover in Juarez.
A Mexican-American with classic mestizo looks and perfect Spanish, he
slipped right into the Juarez underworld.

After a few years, he said, he'd helped arrest some bandits, smugglers and
a notorious murderer. Then he had to return to uniformed duty. His face had
become too familiar on the Mexican side.

Evans knew the border, and what he said next surprised me, even though it
shouldn't have. ``The greatest danger to us and to them isn't illegal
immigration. It's drugs. We have the addicts and violence, and they have
the corruption and violence.''

THAT was six years ago. We couldn't imagine things getting worse along the
border.

It has.

Out there, technology follows life and politics. When illegal immigration
surged, the Border Patrol bought electronic probes disguised as desert
plants to spot border jumpers. Today, the latest gizmo is ground-piercing
radar.

American and Mexican forensics experts were using it this week to look for
a mass grave that might hold as many as 100 or so bodies, including some
Americans, courtesy of local drug lords and crooked Mexican police.

It stands to reason there could be more mass graves elsewhere.

The drug business in the United States grosses $100 billion to $200 billion
a year. No one really knows. But we do know the buyers are Americans. We
know that most of the heroin, cocaine and marijuana demanded by American
druggies is supplied by Mexican producers or middlemen, and much of that
comes right through the desert where I stood with Evans. You could call it
laissez faire capitalism.

We aren't losing the war on drugs. It's already lost. Yet the political
leaderships in both countries cling to the failed strategies of border
enforcement, crop eradication, mandatory sentencing and other futile forms
of suppression.

So what do we do now?

WELL, we need a new and intelligent war on drugs that would be politically
realistic and popular on both sides of the border. Here are the fundamental
first steps:

Provide free drug-rehabilitation treatment on demand to every American
addict, in or out of the justice system. It's simple economics: Reducing
the demand for narcotics stunts the supply. Just-say-no doesn't work.
Treatment works.

Mexico must start professionalizing its police forces. The United States
did so after Prohibition, the anti-alcohol ban earlier in this century that
succeeded only in creating mobsters, massacres and corrupt police. Mexico
is a poor country, but it can't afford dishonest cops anymore. By improving
the professional status, pay and training of police officers, Mexican
authorities would eventually win over their American counterparts who don't
really trust them right now. The United States can help by lending policing
experts and rewarding Mexico with increased foreign aid as its police improve.

Ordinary Mexicans would love it. They'd finally get the honest cops they
deserve in all aspects of law enforcement. Americans would benefit, too.
Their kids and neighborhoods would be exposed for far less drug use, and
prisons reserved for real criminals.

The body count in the failed war on drugs keeps rising. There's a better way.