Presidents Join in Declaring War on Drugs
Months of maneuvering produce statement on crossborder narcotics trade.
By MARK FINEMAN, Times Staff Writer

MEXICO CITYIt took 15 months of charges, countercharges, scandals and
suspicion between the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs and the
neighbor that supplies much of them.
But in a garden ceremony Tuesday, the presidents of Mexico
and the United States issued a joint declaration of war on the drug
gangs that feed America's $49billionayear habit. Ernesto Zedillo
and Bill Clinton signed a 97page document that paints a stark and
candid picture of a narcotics trade that has defied both nations'
efforts to stop it, and promises a joint strategy to combat it by the
end of the year.
"Let's be frank here," Clinton declared after the signing
ceremony. "On the American side, the problem is we have less than
5% of the world's population and we consume half the drugs. . . .
Our second problem is that while we are increasing our capacity to
deal with it, we have not succeeded in reducing the demand or
completely controlling the border on our side.
"Now, the Mexican problem is that narcotraffickers can
destroy the fabric of civil society. . . . They'll go after places with
open spaces and a vulnerability to organized money and violence."
It took the two governments more than a year of wrangling to
admit the scope of the problem. The process leading up to the
"U.S.Mexico Binational Drug Threat Assessment" that Clinton and
Zedillo signed spoke volumes about the sensitivities of the issue.
"When we started this, we were at loggerheads," a Clinton
administration official said of the joint effort merely to assess the
drug threat, let alone to overcome it. The first few sessions were
characterized by traditional fingerpointing, with Mexico blaming
America's drug habit and U.S. officials citing widespread Mexican
corruption as the biggest cause of the vast supply of drugs in U.S.
cities.
The document originally was due out in Februarythe same
week Mexico's top counternarcotics official was arrested and
accused of collaborating with Mexico's most powerful drug cartel.
But again, the politics of drugs intervened: That arrest, just weeks
before Clinton had to certify to the U.S. Congress whether Mexico
was cooperating as an ally in the drug war, drove official U.S.
concerns about Mexican corruption to new heights and delayed the
report.
The final report handed to Zedillo and Clinton by U.S. antidrug
czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey and Mexican Atty. Gen. Jorge
Madrazo Cuellar is a candid assessment of a problem that both
leaders conceded neither country can solve independently.
One sentence in the report sums up the confessions of both
nations: "While the United States has one of the greatest problems
of drug abuse in the world, Mexico has grown to be one of the
world's most significant drug producing and transit countries."
The U.S. position in the report asserts that cocaine use in
America has declined by 50% from its 1979 peak but concedes:
"The central issue for the United States is that the rate of drug use
involving young people between the ages of 12 and 20 has been
rising since 1991."
Of the $49 billion Americans spent on illegal drugs in 1993the
last year for which data are availableit states that $31 billion went
for cocaine, $7 billion for heroin, $9 billion for marijuana and $2
billion for other illegal drugs.
The "globalized" industry generates tens of billions of dollars in
illicit profits every year.
Although the report details dozens of federally funded U.S.
programs to reduce the demand for illegal drugs, it stresses that far
more must be done.
As for demand south of the border, the report notes that
consumption here traditionally has been among the world's lowest
but "the problem of [drug] consumption and dependence is
increasing in Mexico."
It is Mexico's role as a drug supplier that the threatassessment
addresses in the most candid terms. It describes the Mexican drug
gangs that are instrumental in meeting U.S. demandciting Amado
Carrillo Fuentes as "the most powerful drug trafficker operating
from Mexico." And it details some of the corruption that has helped
traffickers flourish.
The report cites official corruption cases such as that of former
Mexican antidrug czar Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo as "a
key component in the drug traffickers' strategy."
"Drug trafficking . . . poses a clear threat to national security, as
well as generating corruption by incorporating public servants in
their efforts," the report states. "The tremendous wealth and power
of the narcotraffickers threaten to undermine the legitimacy and
effectiveness of lawenforcement."
In gauging the importance of Tuesday's assessment, though, an
administration official concluded: "We've got a common threat
assessment. Now we need a common strategy."

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