WAR ON DRUGS BEING LOST, OVERHAUL NEEDED

Narcotics-Related Violence Shows Systemic Failure In Drug Fight

Take a look at the havoc in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, a lawless
no-mans-land situated across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. It is
the capital of the Mexican-monopolized North American illegal drug
business and an exploding assemblage of murderous warlords and foot
soldiers.

The human and economic cost of the drug gang firefights is staggering.
The body count for 2008 was upwards of 6,000 that included
traffickers, police, soldiers and innocent civilians. The most tragic
victims of the bloodshed are the teenage boys from the broken,
impoverished barrios, which serve as incubators of crime and violence.
Lured by the status and power that comes with cartel membership, they
are recruited to become little daring assassins, or "sicaritos." The
towns and cities of Mexico are overrun with narcotic syndicates
engaged in disastrous turf wars whose gangsters mercilessly gun down
opposition and torch business storefronts.

Drug-related murders may or may not have hit American border towns
like El Paso hard enough to warrant a troop surge of sorts. Today,
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas will again entreat Department of Homeland
Security Chief Janet Napolitano to order 1,000 National Guard members
to defend the U.S.-Mexico border. She and President Barack Obama have
both talked of this issue with tempered neutrality and not the firm
attitude the worsening situation demands.

Beefing up border patrol operations can only stop U.S. markets from
being flooded with cocaine, heroine and marijuana for so long. The
blood spilt in Mexico's narco-mafia war will soon trickle into the
U.S. and place an inestimable strain on law enforcement authorities.
And with the narcotics industry as agile and resilient as ever,
traffickers will find new smuggling routes. This is a bi-national
security dilemma and not enough is being done, especially in Mexico.

A joint initiative to regulate arms sales, coordinate intelligence
gathering and arm counter-insurgency personnel with sophisticated
equipment would ideally subdue violence in an institutionally sound
country. But Mexico is certainly not that. Its fragmented federal
government, despite President Felipe Calderon's pledge to end
organized crime, is teeming with bribed police officers and a
compromised judicial system.

It seems like no failsafe solution exists to give the dream for a
drug-free world any tangibility. Choking off the drug supply by
rounding up kingpins will leave a power vacuum for the thuggish
middlemen to fill. And exacting harsh punishment does nothing to seal
up the permeable U.S.-Mexico border. Prohibition does nothing to curb
demand and cram down the street price in consumer countries.

In fact, it shifts production to places like Afghanistan and opens up
new export markets in newly industrialized nations. Arguments from
pro-retaliation camps who want to see cartels crumble and their lords
imprisoned are moralistic and myopic.

It is time for policy reassessment. It is time to scrap what is not
working and welcome unconventional and controversial approaches to the
table. What I am going to say next will be an uncomfortable suggestion
to some. So I urge you, reader, to keep an open mind.

The unending violence on the streets and ever-present legislative
deadlock in the halls of government is giving new traction to the case
for drug legalization. The champions of the policy change to legalize
drugs point to the illegal market with its rising death tolls and
heavy incarceration rates. They also argue that the current system
incentivizes black market trade for designer drugs contaminated with
dangerous chemicals. Regulating of the quality of wholesale quantities
of narcotics would ensure street drugs are not cooked up in basement
labs and cut with poisonous chemicals.

Decriminalizing narcotics in bullet-riddled countries where the
streets run red with the blood of young men and the police parade
around like drug lords with badges is an unpalatable option.
Initially, affording access to new consumers will create new addicts.
Eventually, decriminalization will shift the focus of funding from
punitive and reactionary measures to educational approaches which
address underlying demand.

International drug policy is in a messy situation. The flawed efforts
to suppress supply and cut demand are debased by righteous fear. And
it appears that when the appropriate formula becomes a matter of
supply and demand, the human element is forgotten altogether.
Regardless of how calculated the response is or how holistic the
intervention, suffering will abound and criminality will thrive.

Drug legalization may be rife with complicated loopholes and ethical
ambiguity. But it may be the only approach that can end the violence
fueled by renegade cartels and subversive law enforcement officers. It
may be able to repair the war-torn neighborhoods of Northern Mexico
and arm children with a future and not with guns - because the way we
are fighting the war on drugs is not working.