CANADA HAS A HAND IN MEXICO DRUG BLOODSHED

Last Sunday, at least 18 people were killed in the struggle to control
the Mexican drug trade. They included 10 suspected traffickers and a
soldier who died in a wild gunfight, and two men whose severed heads
were left near the residence of a state governor.

The record-high rate of drug-related murders in 2007 has doubled in
2008. As of Dec. 2, it stood at 5,376.

Canadians will be dimly aware that drug-related violence is soaring in
Mexico. But to us, this is just more bloodshed far away. It has
nothing to do with us.

Or so we think. In truth, the government of Canada is at least partly
responsible for the tragedy in Mexico.

To understand the connection, we need a bit of historical background.
In the 1970s, North American hipsters rediscovered cocaine. Demand
creates supply, as economists say, and production of coca plants
surged in Bolivia and Peru.

Colombians became the middlemen in the burgeoning trade, smuggling
cocaine through the Caribbean into Florida. It was the era of Pablo
Escobar, the Colombian cartels and Miami Vice.

Ronald Reagan revived Richard Nixon's "War on Drugs." The U.S. threw
everything it had at the smugglers. And it worked. The supply lines
were severed.

But supply always finds a way to demand. That's Economics
101.

Colombian traffickers shifted operations west, to Mexico. At first,
Mexican gangsters were junior partners, but increasingly they bought
the Colombians' shipments and took them over the border themselves.

The Americans responded by attacking the source -- coca crops in Peru
and Bolivia -- and by going after the Colombian heads of the major
smuggling rings. Once again, they succeeded. Coca production in Peru
and Bolivia declined. Escobar was shot dead. The Medellin and Cali
cartels were wiped out.

And once again, it made no difference. Coca production soared in
Colombia. And the dismantling of the big smuggling operations caused
many smaller decentralized groups to spring up.

The cocaine kept on coming. Volumes grew so steadily that the retail
price of cocaine on North American streets plummeted.

At the end of the 1990s, the American government poured billions of
dollars into "Plan Colombia," which called for stepped-up destruction
of drug crops and more attacks on traffickers. The U.S. also pushed
Mexico to go after that country's growing cartels.

Mexico did just that. All the big names -- the Mexican Pablo Escobars
- -- are now dead or in prison.

And that is why Mexico is going through hell today. Removing the
bosses removed the control they had over the trade. Now it's a
free-for-all as gangsters battle for market share.

Those pictures of Mexican corpses aren't images of failure. In the War
on Drugs, that's what victory looks like.

Fine, you might say. The whole thing is a bloody fiasco. But this has
nothing to do with Canada.

In fact, it has everything to do with Canada because, on the
international level, Canada is very much a soldier in the War on Drugs.

In 1988, the American government drafted a new international
convention on drug prohibition and took it to the United Nations.
Canada saluted and signed.

In 1998, American officials dominated a UN special assembly that
produced new commitments on drug policy. Canada saluted and signed.

When American officials asked other governments to contribute money to
Plan Colombia, Canada saluted and kicked in.

The Canadian military is involved in drug interdiction. Canadian
police and officials stationed around the world fight the War on Drugs
every day. This country has never done anything but aid and abet the
drug policies issuing from Washington.

Those policies have done absolutely no good. The War on Drugs has cost
hundreds of billions of dollars but there's more cocaine than ever
before. And more corpses.

In 2000, I went to Mexico to look at the drug trade. I met with Jesus
Blancornelas, a brave editor who had narrowly escaped assassination by
gangsters annoyed by his newspaper's coverage. The corruption goes to
the core of Mexican society, Blancornelas told me. And the violence
will only get worse. People called it "Colombianization."

Jesus Blancornelas died in 2006. Everything has unfolded as he -- and
many others -- said it would.

Eventually, order will be restored in Mexico. Either new bosses will
win control and rein in the violence, or officials will succeed in
driving the trade into some other unfortunate country. But the trade
will not be defeated.

And so the misery will continue, thanks in part to the complicity of
Canadian politicians and officials too foolish or cowardly to admit
that drug prohibition is a catastrophic mistake.