NATION'S DRUG STRATEGY KINDER, GENTLER

Eva Bertram and Kenneth Sharpe set up and then attack a false premise
in "The Drug War Corrupts Absolutely" (Opinion, Oct. 4). They would
have readers believe that the nation's "war on drugs" is founded on
the flawed premise that we can solve what is essentially a domestic
problem by fighting it abroad.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy has stated in clear terms
that the top priority is to educate our youth about the dangers posed
by illegal drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Spending on drug prevention has
increased by 33% in the past three years--a greater increase than in
any other area of drug control. Gen. Barry McCaffrey tells those who
want to wage a war on drugs to start it at their kitchen table by
talking to their children.

Bertram and Sharpe refuse to accept the inherent rationality of a
balanced strategy that seeks to educate the inexperienced, treat the
addicted, shield borders from drug trafficking and punish criminals.
They cannot acknowledge an ongoing shift in policy in favor of
prevention and treatment. They ought to consider how the current
strategy is advancing--in greater depth and with better research and
scientific support--some of the very issues they suggested in their
own previous publications.

JAMES R. McDONOUGH Director of Strategy Office of National Drug
Control Policy, Washington

Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Fax: 213-237-4712
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Pubdate: Sunday, 4 October1998
Author: Eva Bertram, Kenneth Sharpe
Note: Eva Bertram, a Policy Analyst, and Kenneth Sharpe, Professor of
Political Science at Swarthmore College, are coauthors of "Drug War
Politics: the Price of Denial."

MEXICO - THE DRUG WAR CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY

WASHINGTON-- "Progress" and "cooperation" are the official watchwords
Washington likes to use to describe the U.S.-backed drug war in
Mexico. The cheery rhetoric is essential to protecting relations with
Mexico. When reality intrudes and the official drug-war story
threatens to unravel, the story is revised. Just how deeply corrupting
the drug war is on Mexico's political institutions and, ultimately, on
U.S.-Mexican interests is glossed over, if mentioned at all.

The most recent need for damage control came with news that top
investigators in a new, U.S.-trained antidrug unit in the Mexican
attorney general's office may have ties to powerful drug cartels. Some
senior officials of the elite unit failed lie-detector tests, giving
rise to concerns that high-level drug investigations, and sensitive
intelligence shared by U.S. agents, may have been compromised.

It's a too-familiar story. The unit was created, with great fanfare
and talk about progress and cooperation, 18 months ago, after the
chief of its predecessor, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was arrested
in February 1997 for selling protection to one of the country's most
powerful drug lords.

Ironically, Gutierrez had been packaged as a step forward. U.S.
drug-policy director Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey called him a man of great
"integrity . . . patriotic, honest, dedicated." Gutierrez had been
brought in to rebuild the previous antidrug agency, which also had
been created to replace a corrupted predecessor.

Gutierrez's appointment was part of a much-trumpeted move by President
Ernesto Zedillo to draft the military into antidrug enforcement, after
the ineffectiveness and corruption of the civilian police force became
overwhelming. Despite warnings from critics on both sides of the
border about involving the military in a civilian law-enforcement
mission, U.S. officials shamelessly pushed Zedillo to call in the
troops. The military would get tough with the drug traffickers, and
its more professional image would play well in the United States.

But now the drug war is corrupting the military. Last year,
information gleaned from Mexican defense-ministry files indicated that
10 generals and 22 other military officers were under investigation
for alleged ties to traffickers. In early September, 40 soldiers, all
trained by elite U.S. Special Forces, were removed from duty at the
Mexico City airport after investigators alleged that the soldiers had
helped smuggle cocaine-filled suitcases into the United States.

Despite the shadow cast by all this negative news on the drug war, the
United States and Mexico continue to spin stories about bilateral
cooperation, because painting Mexico as an unreliable ally in our drug
war threatens other U.S. interests. Good-neighbor relations with
Mexico are essential to protect the commerce created by free trade and
the steady flow of investments, loans, tourists, oil and immigrant
labor between the two countries. These relations so deeply affect the
economies, environment, labor and stock markets, banking systems and
human rights in both countries, and demand such constant goodwill in
negotiations, that neither government can allow Mexico to be branded a
bad neighbor in drug control.

So both sides repeatedly invent "bold new initiatives" in the drug
war: new antidrug units, new screening mechanisms, new training
programs. Both sides publicize arrests of corrupt officials and drug
busts. The initiatives and announcements are then trumpeted as
evidence of progress and cooperation.

When reality blows the cover stories apart, U.S. officials wring their
hands in dismay, shake their fingers at the Mexicans, then invent
another bold new initiative to show that all is still cooperation and
progress.

But these official stories do more than mislead. They conceal a
second, more dangerous myth: If only the Mexicans and other Latin
governments would seriously fight the U.S.-sponsored drug war, we
could ameliorate abuse and addiction in the United States.

This reassuring fairy tale blinds us to the ways in which high profits
and porous borders doom the war on drug traffickers from the outset.

By driving up and sustaining prices, the drug war ensures the trade's
high profits. For example, a gram of cocaine would probably fetch
around $15 a gram in the absence of a drug war; it currently commands
approximately $150. Yet, the war on supply will never drive the price
high enough to lower addiction in the United States. Rather, it will
maintain profits at levels sufficient to ensure a seemingly endless
supply of traffickers and to generate the estimated $6 billion a year
these traffickers spend on bribes in Mexico alone, bribes used to
corrupt police and military officers, judges and politicians.

Drugs also are so easy to smuggle that there are always new ways to
elude border controls. McCaffrey reported that U.S. border inspectors
searched more than 1 million railway cars and commercial trucks
entering from Mexico last year. They found cocaine on six occasions.
Growing border traffic, promoted by U.S. free-trade policies, makes
the interdiction task even more daunting: In 1996, 75 million cars and
3.5 million trucks and railway cars entered the United States from
Mexico. Even with the best cooperation and minimum corruption,
interdiction as a strategy is not going to produce much progress on
drug problems in the U.S.

On another level, a dogged pursuit of the drug war tends to undermine
many important interests we share with Mexico. U.S. pressure on Mexico
to get its military involved in the drug war is at crosscurrents with
the democratization of Mexico, a goal central to U.S. policy. The
Mexican military is increasingly charged with abusing human rights, a
problem that may worsen. As U.S. training and resources make soldiers
better able to track and apprehend drug traffickers, they become more
efficient at extracting higher payoffs for nonenforcement. The more we
unwittingly encourage this corruption and turn a blind eye to human
rights abuses, the more difficult it will be to build and sustain
democratically accountable security forces in Mexico.

The drug war already has poisoned U.S. relations with Mexico. When the
United States conducted Operation Casablanca, an undercover sting on
Mexican soil, earlier this year, it did not inform the Mexican
government of the operation on the ground that Mexicans couldn't be
trusted with the information.

After 26 Mexican bankers were indicted for money laundering as a
result of the sting, the Mexican government reacted angrily. Zedillo
urged, "We must all respect the sovereignty of each nation so that no
one can become the judge of others and no one feels entitled to
violate other countries' laws for the sake of enforcing its own." U.S.
officials claimed they had alerted Mexican authorities of the sting,
but the operation left relations strained.

Regrettably, stories to protect Mexico's image as a loyal drug-war
ally will continue to be told and retold, and they will continue to be
dashed by reality. But as debate focuses on how much progress we are
making against the widening corruption in Mexico, we risk missing a
deeper truth. Fighting drug abuse at home through a war on supply
abroad is not good policy, and it will make us both bad neighbors.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry