REMEMBER THE WAR ON DRUGS?

It is good to see Mexico and the United States working together to
battle the drug cartels that deliver hundreds of tons of illegal
drugs to American consumers every year, killing more than 2,000
Mexicans annually along the way. Still, the Bush administration's
proposed $1.4 billion counternarcotics aid package falls far short of
what is needed to confront the problem.

If Washington is serious about stopping the northward flow of
cocaine, heroin and other drugs, it must begin an aggressive campaign
to stop the southward flow of money and high-powered weapons that
finance and arm the cartels. And there must be a far more serious
effort to curb Americans' use of illicit drugs.

Federal financing for drug prevention and treatment programs has been
steadily declining since 2005. Yet so long as there is demand, the
narcotics will always find a route, through Mexico or some other way.

There is not a lot of talk these days about the war on drugs, but the
traffickers are more than holding their own. The National Drug
Intelligence Center estimates that Andean cocaine arriving in Mexico
for transshipment north jumped from 220 tons in 2000 to 380 tons in
2006. Mexican heroin production for the United States market went
from 9 to 19 tons in the same time. In Mexico, defeat is measured in
bodies: more than 2,000 last year and 1,100 in the first six months
of 2007, including drug dealers, police officers, journalists and bystanders.

For the first time, Mexico is seriously turning to the United States
for help, and Washington is eager to respond. Even then, the proposed
aid package -- starting with $500 million to help train and equip
Mexican law enforcement tucked into the White House's request for the
Iraq war -- looks shockingly inadequate when compared with what the
drug dealers have at their command.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, between $8
billion and $23 billion in proceeds from the drug trade flowed
illegally across the border into Mexico in 2005. The cartels have
used that enormous financial clout to corrupt Mexican law enforcement
on an unparalleled scale. The traffickers' firepower -- likened to
what American soldiers face in Afghanistan and Iraq -- also eclipses
the puny arsenal of Mexico's police forces. Mexican officials
estimate that 90 percent of the guns they confiscate are smuggled in
from the United States.

The good news is that Mexico and the United States finally recognize
that they are on the same side in this battle. It is a vast
improvement over Washington's perennial finger-wagging. Mexico's
resolve to take on drug trafficking, rather than dismissing it as an
unsolvable problem, is also welcome. But it is only a start.