AN AMERICAN PROBLEM

This year the killings just across the Mexican border made headlines
as much for their brutality -- including beheadings -- as for their
numbers, more than 5,000.

It is nothing short of mass slaughter as drug gangs torture and kill
rivals and use the same tactics against Mexican soldiers, police,
judges, journalists and anyone else who goes against them.

Here in the Unites States, we can perceive the bloodshed as a Mexican
problem. Or we can think about it more accurately -- as an American
problem.

After all, what is fueling the drug gangs' violence, which often
spills into our border towns? The answer is control of smuggling
routes leading into the United States, where millions of addicts and
recreational drug users buy an estimated $23 billion worth of illegal
drugs a year.

CBS News recently interviewed Bill Gore, the undersheriff of San Diego
County and a former FBI agent. Gore told the network American drug
users should realize they have blood on their hands.

Illegal drug use "is not a victimless crime," Gore
said.

It is a point that needs to be reflected in this country's public
policies and laws. For all of the logical-sounding aggressiveness
contained in our ongoing war on drugs, the results are pitiful.

A recent Government Accountability Office report documented that just
a fraction of the thousands of tons of drugs bound for the United
States from Mexico every year is intercepted.

Our view is that drug interdiction should continue, along with another
program of the same size and scope -- that of treating addicts. The
number of treatment centers in this country nowhere near reflects the
size of the addiction problem, which also contributes heavily to crime
in our cities.

Cutting America's appetite for drugs is a solution that could take
decades, but it is the solution that has the best chance of working.