MEXICO, U.S. CAN LEARN FROM BOGOTA

BOGOTA, Colombia ---- Mexicans once bridled at suggestions of learning
anything from Colombia, but as the violence and power of drug cartels
have grown in their country, they now are beating a path here.

President Felipe Calderon, civil society groups, policy experts, police
and others have been traveling to this Andean nation to learn how it
beat back the cartels, sharply reduced murders and kidnappings and
reasserted a sense of civic participation. Some, such as journalists,
just seek tips on how to survive.

There is much good to be learned from Colombia, but my own visit here
reveals that it is not what many Americans hope it might be.

John P. Walters, former head of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy, is right when he recently wrote that Colombia is "one of
the greatest international policy success stories of the last decade."
But he is wrong in concluding that any of this means fewer illicit drugs
and less crime in the United States.

Colombia still supplies 90 percent of America's cocaine, according to
the State Department. Colombia's production in 2007, the last year
available, was the same as in 1999 and 2000. As the title of a report
from the Government Accountability Office in October says with elegant
understatement: "Drug Reduction Goals Were Not Fully Met."

Even if the more than $6 billion we have invested here since 2000 in
fumigation and in outfitting the security forces under Plan Colombia to
fight narco-guerrillas, narco-paramilitaries and plain narcos begins to
have sustained success, American officials freely admit that Bolivia,
Peru and other countries that are increasing their production could
easily step into the breach. The eventual answer to our drug woes is not
in Latin America, but in a radical rethinking at home, including
legalizing some or all drugs.

That is not to say the Colombian money has been a waste. Colombia has
successfully ---- even heroically ---- suppressed the political power of
the various narco players and prevented the country from becoming a
narco dictatorship of the right or left, which would have been far worse
for all of us. The huge cartels that were once personified by the
notorious Pablo Escobar have been broken up, the paramilitaries have
been disarmed and the guerrillas have been pushed back into isolated
jungle areas.

But remnants of all three continue to be involved in cocaine, heroin and
methamphetamines. The difference now is that they have broken into
dozens of smaller geographic groups that specialize in pieces of the
crime chain, such as growing, lab production, inland river
transportation or export. But they remain awesomely profitable and
powerful. Their money still arms nearly 7,000 guerrillas, builds scores
of ingenious quasi-submarines to run drugs north, and corrupts officials
such as those recently caught tapping the phones of judges.

Mexico today confronts six much larger cartels. Unlike the Colombian
guerrillas, they aren't out to take over the government, but their
tentacles go far deeper into the police forces and the judiciary, their
arms match the military's firepower, and they have totally cowed some
communities, including almost every city on the U.S. border.

Mexicans are learning two fundamental lessons from Colombians.

One is that they can't hope to end drug trafficking. There is simply too
much money flowing from American consumers. President Calderon, who is
remarkably similar to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in speaking style
and focused determination, says the best he can do is rebalance the
power between the state and the traffickers by targeting their leaders
and breaking up the cartels into smaller groups. His pressure has set
off a turf war among the cartels, resulting in 6,600 deaths last year.

The second lesson, as Isabel Miranda de Wallace, whose son was killed by
kidnappers, told a conference in Medellin of victims of political and
criminal terror: "The change in Colombia has been impressive because the
society believes in its authorities and police" ---- a sentiment she
says doesn't exist in Mexico.

Calderon agreed, telling the same conference that he was trying to clean
up corruption in the police so that Mexicans could trust them and help
"break a vicious cycle of fear" that the cartels have created. Millions
of Colombians turn out to march against violence and guerrilla
kidnappings, including of policemen and soldiers, a popular movement
that appears to have demoralized the guerrillas and led to many defections.

The lesson for the U.S.? Neither country will or can stop the drug flow.
Legalization may be the only effective alternative to control it.