FAILING TO LEARN, U.S. RAMPS UP WAR ON DRUGS

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has received a minor flurry of
criticism this week for acknowledging that the United States - or at
least some people in the United States - bears some responsibility for
the explosion of drug-law-related violence in Mexico that has left
more than 7,000 Mexicans dead since January 2008. The trouble is that
she doesn't seem to be prepared to follow her comments to anything
close to their logical implications.

"Clearly what we've been doing has not worked," Clinton told reporters
on her plane at the start of a two-day visit to Mexico. "Our
insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our
inability to prevent weapons from being smuggled across the border to
arm these criminals causes the deaths of police, of soldiers and
civilians." She added that "neither interdiction (of drugs) nor
reducing demand have been successful."

Clinton is only partially correct. It isn't "our" insatiable demand
but the demand of a small subset of the population that fuels the drug
trade, but that fuel amounts to $15 billion to $25 billion a year.
With the vast profits that prohibition makes possible, the Mexican
drug gangs are tapping into the international black market in military
weaponry. Inspecting a few more vehicles crossing into Mexico won't
stop that trade.

Having acknowledged the enormity of the problems created by the effort
to enforce drug laws through military methods, what is the U.S.
government prepared to do about it? Well, a waggish definition of
insanity is continuing to do what you have been doing and expecting
different results, and that seems to be what the U.S. government has
in mind. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said last week
the government will send 500 more Border Patrol agents to the
2,000-mile border with Mexico, step up inspection of vehicles going
both ways across the border and send another $66 million to the
Mexican government. Good luck with that.

The war on drugs creates more victims than the drugs themselves do,
including plenty of innocent bystanders. When a policy fails, it's
time to consider changing it. The chaos in Mexico, which already has
seeped into Arizona, should be sufficient impetus.