IN MEXICO, FALTERING, NOT FAILED

BOSTON -- Mexico is not a failing state, as it has become fashionable
to say. What has failed is our "war on drugs." That failure and the
drug-related violence wracking Mexico suggest it is time to open a
national discussion on legalizing drugs.

About 6,600 Mexicans were killed in fighting involving drug gangs last
year, and alarms are going off in this country. The U.S. Joint Forces
Command, former drug czar Barry R. McCaffrey, former CIA director
Michael V. Hayden, former House speaker Newt Gingrich and any number
of analysts have speculated that Mexico is crumbling under pressure
from drug gangs.

But "failed state" is the sort of shorthand that Washington has a way
of turning into its own reality, the facts be damned. The Mexican
government isn't on the verge of losing physical control of its
territory, stopping public services or collapsing. But it is under
tremendous pressure and has only nominal control in some places,
including border cities such as Tijuana, near San Diego, and Juarez,
which sits cheek-by-jowl with El Paso. Army troops patrol the streets,
but the police, courts, journalists and citizenry are cowed by the
less-visible but more-ruthless drug cartels.

As Luis Rubio wrote in a recent report for the University of Miami's
Center for Hemispheric Policy, "There are regions of the country where
all vestiges of a functioning government have simply vanished," while
in the rest, "the climate of impunity, extortion, protection money,
kidnapping and, in general, crime has become pervasive."

The government of President Felipe Calderon bristles at Mexico's being
called a "failed state" and notes that much of the violence is
occurring between drug cartels, provoked by the government's own
campaign against them. Tourists can still frolic safely on the
beaches. But it is also true that the government has no hope of
defeating the heavily armed and extraordinarily rich cartels, which
earn between $15 billion and $25 billion a year in profits. Mexico's
strategy, at a cost of all that blood, is merely to readjust the
balance of power with the cartels.

What that means for us is sobering. The flow of drugs won't stop. And,
as a report by the Joint Forces Command says, "Any descent by Mexico
into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious
implications for homeland security alone."

According to the U.S. National Drug Threat Assessment, the Mexican
cartels already have operations in 230 U.S. cities. Their violence is
close behind, in a rash of murders and kidnappings across the border
states.

Some want to accuse the Mexicans of a pernicious lack of character,
but that is throwing stones from a glass house. Much of Latin America
faces similar threats, and at the root of the problem is financing
provided by American consumers and the failure of the drug war we have
been pursuing for 30 years.

American taxpayers currently spend about $21 billion on trying to
reduce drug supplies and on domestic enforcement, according to the
Office of National Drug Control Policy. Of that, $14 billion is spent
just on jailing drug offenders. The number of people incarcerated for
drug offenses increased an incredible tenfold to 500,000 in 2007, from
50,000 in 1980.

And all for nothing. Cocaine is still so readily available that its
street price is a quarter of what it was in 1981. Heroin prices,
supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, have fallen as well, while coca
leaf and cocaine production in the Andean region are at historic
highs. Home producers of marijuana and illicit lab creations are
equally thriving. Two of our past three presidents, and now our
Olympic hero Michael Phelps, have tried drugs.

Latin Americans are increasingly angry over the cost they pay in lives
and in the corruption of their democracies. A report released this
month by a commission headed by three of Latin America's most
respected and moderate former presidents -- Fernando Henrique Cardoso
of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia --
concludes: "Confronted with a situation that is growing worse by the
day, it is imperative to rectify the 'war on drugs' strategy."

That report and a host of recent others by U.S. law enforcement groups
and researchers call for treating drugs more as a health issue, as
with cigarettes and alcohol, instead of a criminal one. Some call for
legalizing marijuana, and possibly other drugs, altogether. We did the
same to end Prohibition 75 years ago. Yet, even discussing the
legalization of drugs is so taboo that U.S. policy is frozen. The
darkening clouds across the United States and the rest of the
hemisphere dictate a change.