DRUG WAR PRETENSES

President Clinton announced on Friday that he will participate in the
annual game of "Let's Pretend." The president will pretend that Mexico
is a cooperating partner in the War on Drugs, the United States will
continue to send Mexico aid that it and the Mexican government will
pretend will help to win the war, and citizens will pretend that it
all is helping the cause.

In 1986 Congress passed a law requiring the U.S. government to certify
each year that drug-producing and trafficking countries are
cooperating in the war. But in reality, in Mexico, especially since
the passage of NAFTA, the economic and diplomatic stakes are too high
for decertification, which could carry trade penalties.

Thus this annual ritual is a nothing short of an empty
exercise.

By most measures, the year has been a lackluster one for Mexican drug
warriors - despite a reported expenditure of $770 million by the
Mexican government.

Drug Enforcement Administrator Thomas Constantine says Mexico is
losing the drug war and claims Mexican drug traffickers have increased
their penetration into the United States. U.S. agents say Mexico has
done little or nothing to combat corruption, even among elite units
trained by U.S. drug agents and the CIA. Charges against a couple of
alleged methamphetamine kingpins were dismissed and the Mexican
government refused to extradite suspects nabbed by a U.S.Customs operation.

Seizures and arrests were down.

But the annual pretense of certification is only a small part of a
larger ongoing game of pretense and denial.

The government pretends that the drug war is a good idea. It pretends
that dealing with drug use as a law-enforcement problem rather than a
personal or medical problem doesn't make every aspect of drug use
worse rather than better.

It pretends that the end result of the war is something other than the
enrichment of brutal traffickers, the expansion of corruption, the
diversion of law enforcement resources from real crime, the creation
of crime that wouldn't have occurred otherwise, the death of innocents
and the imprisonment of people who should be in some kind of treatment
for an addiction instead.

Until citizens are ready to deal with this larger game of "Let's
Pretend," the annual pretense will continue.