CANADA HAS HAND IN MEXICAN BLOODSHED

On Dec. 6, 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 put in buckets and left near the residence of a state governor.

As horrible as it was, it was a day like any other.

Last Monday, Mexico's attorney general told reporters the record-high
rate of drug-related murders in 2007 had 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. We read the occasional story and see a picture now and then of
a sheet drawn over a corpse that was somebody's son. But there's
little analysis or concern here. Why would there be? 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 unfolding 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 -- the
little bush whose leaves are the source of cocaine -- surged in the
Andean regions of Bolivia and Peru, where coca has been grown since
time immemorial.

Colombians became the chief middlemen in the burgeoning trade,
smuggling cocaine by sea and air, through the Caribbean, into Florida.
Miami boomed. 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.
government threw everything it had -- DEA, FBI, Coast Guard, Navy --
at the smugglers. And it worked. The lines of supply were severed.

But supply always finds a way to demand. That's Economics 101. Ronald
Reagan acknowledged as much in an unguarded moment.

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. Pablo Escobar was shot dead. The Medellin and
Cali cartels were wiped out.

And once again, it made no difference. Coca production soared in
Colombia, more than compensating for losses in Peru and Bolivia. 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, the reader 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 United Nations 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 other officials stationed around the world fight the War on
Drugs every day. Very simply, this country has never done anything but
aid and abet the drug policies issuing from Washington D.C.

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 City and Tijuana to look at the Mexican drug
trade. I met with Jesus Blancornelas, a brave editor who had narrowly
escaped assassination by gangsters annoyed by his newspaper's frank
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. The gangsters who tried to kill him
are all dead or imprisoned. But 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. Of that we can be certain.

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.

Dan Gardner is an Ottawa Citizen columnist.