CLINTON SPEAKS THE TRUTH ON DRUGS

WASHINGTON -- It's an indictment of our fact-averse political culture
that a statement of the blindingly obvious could sound so
revolutionary. Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug
trade," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on her
plane Wednesday as she flew to Mexico for an official visit. "Our
inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the
border ... causes the deaths of police, of soldiers and civilians."

Amazingly, U.S. officials have avoided facing these facts for
decades. This is not just an intellectual blind spot but a moral
failure, one that has had horrific consequences for Mexico, Colombia,
Peru, Bolivia and other Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Clinton deserves high praise for acknowledging that the United States
bears "shared responsibility" for the drug-fueled violence sweeping
Mexico, which has claimed more than 7,000 lives since the beginning
of 2008. But that means we will also share responsibility for the
next 7,000 killings as well. Our long-running "war on drugs,"
focusing on the supply side of the equation, has been an utter
disaster. Domestically, we've locked up hundreds of thousands of
street-level dealers, some of whom genuinely deserve to be in prison
and some of whom don't. It made no difference. According to a 2007
University of Michigan study, 84 percent of high school seniors
nationwide said they could obtain marijuana "fairly easily" or "very
easily." The figure for amphetamines was 50 percent; for cocaine, 47
percent; for heroin, 30 percent.

At the same time, we've persisted in a Sisyphean attempt to cut off
the drug supply at or near the source.

When I was The Washington Post's correspondent in South America, I
once took a nerve-racking helicopter ride to visit a U.S.-funded
military base in the Upper Huallaga Valley of Peru. It was the place
where most of the country's coca -- the plant from which cocaine is
processed -- was being grown, and the valley was crawling with Maoist
guerrillas who funded their insurgency with money they extorted from
the coca growers and traffickers. Eventually, the coca business was
eliminated in the Upper Huallaga. But now it's flourishing in other
parts of Peru, and last year authorities there seized a record 30
tons of cocaine -- meaning, by rule of thumb, that at least 10 times
that much was probably produced and shipped.

In Colombia, I saw how the huge, brutally violent Medellin and Cali
cocaine cartels threatened to turn the country into the world's first
"narco-state." The Colombian government, again with U.S. assistance,
managed to pulverize these sprawling criminal organizations into
smaller units, but the business continues to thrive -- and to provide
most of the cocaine that finds its way to the American market.

Last year, Colombian authorities seized 119 tons of cocaine.

Money from the drug trade sustains the longest-running leftist
insurgency in the hemisphere. Ever inventive, the Colombian
traffickers have gone so far as to build their own miniature
submarines to smuggle illicit cargo into the United States. And now
Mexico has become the focal point of the drug trade, with its cartels
blasting their way to dominance in the business of bringing
marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine and other drugs to the American
market. Violence among drug gangs, not just along the border but
throughout the country, has reached crisis levels.

The government's strategy is to break up the big cartels, as the
Colombians did. But even if authorities succeed, the industry will
live on. In the case of Mexico, there's a complicating factor: This
is a two-way problem. While drugs are being moved north across the
border, powerful assault weapons -- purchased in the United States --
are being moved south to arm the cartels' foot soldiers.

Clinton's statement about "shared responsibility" recognizes that if
we expect Mexico to do something about the flow of drugs, we're
obliged to do something about the counterflow of guns. First, though,
let's be honest with ourselves. This whole disruptive, destabilizing
enterprise has one purpose, which is to supply the U.S. market with
illegal drugs.

As long as the demand exists, entrepreneurs will find a way to meet
it. The obvious demand-side solution -- legalization -- would do more
harm than good with some drugs, but maybe not with others.

We need to examine all options. It's time to put everything on the
table, because all we've accomplished so far is to bring the terrible
violence of the drug trade ever closer to home.