DRUG WAR NEXT DOOR

Before you venture into Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, brace yourself to hear
Texans tell you that you're crazy. Visiting friends in neighboring El
Paso, Texas, a few days before Christmas, I was immediately warned,
"Don't even think about going into Juarez."

Just across the shallow creek known as the Rio Grande from El Paso,
one of the safest cities of its size in the nation, Juarez is a city
under siege, the worst victim of Mexico's growing wars between drug
cartels.

The tragedy is etched in daily news headlines. The day I arrived, two
Mexican police officers were ambushed, shot to death while sitting in
their patrol car. Just another bloody day in Juarez.

Hardly a day goes by without a new Juarez horror story in the El Paso Times:

"Man found dead with hands severed."

"Prominent Juarez lawyer, son among four found dead
Tuesday."

"Man found shot to death in trash drum."

"El Paso charities afraid to cross border."

"Juarez area slayings top 20 in new year."

Murders across Mexico more than doubled last year to more than 5,600.
That's more than the total number of Americans lost so far in the war
in Iraq. Most of those murders have been happening in border towns.
More than 1,600 were killed in Juarez, Mexico's fourth-largest city,
with a population of 1.7 million. The bloodbath of unspeakable
brutality includes kidnappings and decapitated bodies left in public
places as a grisly form of advertising.

"There have already been 20 murders in Juarez this year," Beto
O'Rourke, a member of El Paso's City Council, told me in a telephone
interview this week as President-elect Barack Obama met with Mexico's
President Felipe Calderon. "That doesn't include the kidnappings and
extortions. Ciudad Juarez is essentially a failed city at this point.
[Juarez authorities] can't guarantee your safety."

The situation is deteriorating so fast that "Mexico is on the edge of
abyss," said retired four-star Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a drug czar under
President Bill Clinton.

"It could become a narco-state in the coming decade," he said, and the
result could be a "surge of millions of refugees" crossing the U.S.
border to escape.

Something drastic needed to be done, O'Rourke, a fourth-generation El
Paso resident, decided. A proposed City Council resolution called for
more federal action on both sides of the border to reduce the flow of
guns and drugs.

But it wasn't strong enough. O'Rourke pushed things further by adding
12 words: "supporting an honest, open, national debate on ending the
prohibition on narcotics." The council passed it unanimously. Yet,
even a bid to talk about drug legalization was too much for El Paso
Mayor John Cook. He vetoed the bill, partly out of concern that
Washington might not take the measure seriously with the drug
legalization line in it.

Nevertheless, the controversy brought what has been rare American
media attention to Mexico's crisis by turning it into radio and
cable-TV talk fodder. That's a start.

Obama promised more American help to Calderon in a meeting that
focused on trade, Immigration and the drug war. President George W.
Bush successfully pushed the Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion
security package to help Mexico with high-tech equipment and anti-drug
training. The first $400 million, approved by Congress last year, has
begun to flow. But the rest of the funds could be slowed by the many
other financial pressures this country faces.

And Calderon faces mounting pressures on his 2-year-old campaign
against drug and gun smuggling. The campaign actually touched off much
of the fighting between the drug cartels. It has also exposed
corruption that touched the highest levels of his government. Even a
member of his security team was arrested for allegedly feeding
information to the cartels in exchange for money.

When you take a broad look at Mexico's growing carnage, it's easy to
see why El Paso's city leaders think drug legalization doesn't look so
bad. Mexico's drug problem is not the drugs. It is the illegality of
the drugs.

Legalization is not the perfect solution. But treating illegal drugs
in the way we treat liquor and other legal addictive substances would
provide regulation, tax revenue and funds for rehabilitation programs.
Most satisfying, it would wipe a lot of smiles off the drug lords'
faces.

Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board.