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As drugs continue to flood America, sender countries and
their apologists stateside are increasingly arguing that
the deluge across U.S. borders is America's own fault. That
message is growing in the wake of President Clinton's
recent decision to fully certify Mexico as cooperating in
the antidrug fight and to continue for a second year the
decertification of Colombia. The
wedon'tneednostinkingcertification argument goes like
this: The United States is the world's largest market for
drugs. Basic economic theory says supply follows demand.
Therefore, suggest the critics, the drugsupplying
countries deserve not censure, but understanding as market
players. Why doesn't the U.S. government wake up and smell
the marijuana?

Indeed, Latin critics have a point. Can anyone deny that
millions of Americans do engage in recreational drug use?
Or that they create the demand that drives much of the drug
trade? Or that America is the great proselytizer of free
markets?

Yet, officials such as Mexican Secretary of Foreign
Relations Angel Gurria ignore a fundamental point: Most
Americans deplore drugs rather than do drugs. Most
Americans want to keep drugs illegal rather than
decriminalize them.

And according to the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, most young people who abstain from using drugs do
so because of parental disapproval or fear of violating
drug laws.

But what about the failure of Prohibition, ask the
liberal and libertarian critics of U.S. drug policy? The
answer is simple. If Prohibition was a failure, it was,
above all, a political failure. To suggest that the drug
war is doomed because Prohibition was repealed is to
ignore the difference between political outcome and
individual outcome. Experts note that it took more than a
generation after the repeal of Prohibition for the per
capita levels of alcohol consumption to mimic the levels
seen before Prohibition went into effect.

The Mexican and Colombian governments are engaged in
stereotyping. In seeking to shift blame, leaders such as
Colombian President Ernesto Samper, whom other Colombian
officials have accused of accepting a $6 million campaign
donation from drug interests, are trying to impute to the
American people as a whole the values of the drugabusing
minority and their ideologically driven apologists. (But
Samper's decision on March 5, to suspend cooperation with
the United States to eradicate drug crops calls his
sincerity into question.)

The political dimensions of such arguments should not be
overlooked. Most disturbing is the implication that the
laws of the marketplace should prevail over the principle
of democracy and laws passed by the elected representatives
of the people. Critics of U.S. antidrug laws of
certification and interdiction are so intent upon choking
the debate over official corruption in Latin America that
they speak as if drugs are legitimate simply because there
is a market for them. Let's consider the record. Didn't the
Bush and Clinton administrations routinely assure the
American people that official Mexican cooperation was
improving? Today, the brother of former Mexican President
Carlos Salinas is in jail and still cannot reasonably
explain $120 million is his Swiss bank account, Mexico's
drug czar is under arrest for corruption, a top money
launderer has been allowed to walk out of the Mexican drug
czar's office since the drug czar's arrest and Thomas A.
Constantine, the chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, is in effect telling Congress he trusts
Mexican law enforcement agencies as far as he can toss a
lead pinata.

Against a backdrop of facile, selfserving arguments on
the part of Mexico and Colombia, and incompetent
assessments of Mexican cooperation by the White House,
Congress should now act. In defense of American families,
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (DCalif.) deserves support in the
Senate for her initiative to decertify Mexico. The House
should follow suit.

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As drugs continue to flood America, sender countries and
their apologists stateside are increasingly arguing that
the deluge across U.S. borders is America's own fault. That
message is growing in the wake of President Clinton's
recent decision to fully certify Mexico as cooperating in
the antidrug fight and to continue for a second year the
decertification of Colombia. The
wedon'tneednostinkingcertification argument goes like
this: The United States is the world's largest market for
drugs. Basic economic theory says supply follows demand.
Therefore, suggest the critics, the drugsupplying
countries deserve not censure, but understanding as market
players. Why doesn't the U.S. government wake up and smell
the marijuana?

Indeed, Latin critics have a point. Can anyone deny that
millions of Americans do engage in recreational drug use?
Or that they create the demand that drives much of the drug
trade? Or that America is the great proselytizer of free
markets?

Yet, officials such as Mexican Secretary of Foreign
Relations Angel Gurria ignore a fundamental point: Most
Americans deplore drugs rather than do drugs. Most
Americans want to keep drugs illegal rather than
decriminalize them.

And according to the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, most young people who abstain from using drugs do
so because of parental disapproval or fear of violating
drug laws.

But what about the failure of Prohibition, ask the
liberal and libertarian critics of U.S. drug policy? The
answer is simple. If Prohibition was a failure, it was,
above all, a political failure. To suggest that the drug
war is doomed because Prohibition was repealed is to
ignore the difference between political outcome and
individual outcome. Experts note that it took more than a
generation after the repeal of Prohibition for the per
capita levels of alcohol consumption to mimic the levels
seen before Prohibition went into effect.

The Mexican and Colombian governments are engaged in
stereotyping. In seeking to shift blame, leaders such as
Colombian President Ernesto Samper, whom other Colombian
officials have accused of accepting a $6 million campaign
donation from drug interests, are trying to impute to the
American people as a whole the values of the drugabusing
minority and their ideologically driven apologists. (But
Samper's decision on March 5, to suspend cooperation with
the United States to eradicate drug crops calls his
sincerity into question.)

The political dimensions of such arguments should not be
overlooked. Most disturbing is the implication that the
laws of the marketplace should prevail over the principle
of democracy and laws passed by the elected representatives
of the people. Critics of U.S. antidrug laws of
certification and interdiction are so intent upon choking
the debate over official corruption in Latin America that
they speak as if drugs are legitimate simply because there
is a market for them. Let's consider the record. Didn't the
Bush and Clinton administrations routinely assure the
American people that official Mexican cooperation was
improving? Today, the brother of former Mexican President
Carlos Salinas is in jail and still cannot reasonably
explain $120 million is his Swiss bank account, Mexico's
drug czar is under arrest for corruption, a top money
launderer has been allowed to walk out of the Mexican drug
czar's office since the drug czar's arrest and Thomas A.
Constantine, the chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, is in effect telling Congress he trusts
Mexican law enforcement agencies as far as he can toss a
lead pinata.

Against a backdrop of facile, selfserving arguments on
the part of Mexico and Colombia, and incompetent
assessments of Mexican cooperation by the White House,
Congress should now act. In defense of American families,
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (DCalif.) deserves support in the
Senate for her initiative to decertify Mexico. The House
should follow suit.