MEXICO'S HOPELESS DRUG WAR

Mexico's Decriminalization Is an Admission That Things Aren't Getting Better.

Mexico announced recently that it will decriminalize the possession
of "small amounts of drugs"--marijuana, cocaine, LSD,
methamphetamines, heroin and opium--"for personal use." Individuals
who are caught by law enforcement with quantities below established
thresholds will no longer face criminal prosecution. A person
apprehended three times with amounts below the minimum, though, will
face mandatory treatment.

For the government of President Felipe Calderon, which has spent the
last three years locked in mortal combat with narcotrafficking
cartels, this seems counterproductive. Is the government effectively
surrendering to the realities of the market for mind-altering
substances? Or could it be that the new policy is only a tactical
shift by drug warriors still wedded to the quixotic belief that they
can take out suppliers?

The answer is that it is a bit of both. But neither matters. Mexico's
big problem--for that matter the most pressing security issue
throughout the hemisphere--is organized crime's growth and expanded
power, fed by drug profits. Mr. Calderon's new policy is unlikely to
solve anything in that department.

The reason is simple: Prohibition and demand make otherwise worthless
weeds valuable. Where they really get valuable is in crossing the
U.S. border. If U.S. demand is robust, then producers, traffickers
and retailers get rich by satisfying it.

Mexican consumers will now have less fear of penalties and,
increasingly in the case of marijuana, that's true in the U.S. as
well. But trafficking will remain illegal, and to get their products
past law enforcement the criminals will still have an enormous
incentive to bribe or to kill. Decriminalization will not take the
money out of the business and therefore will not reduce corruption,
cartel intimidation aimed at democratic-government authority, or the
terror heaped on local populations by drug lords.

Nevertheless, Mexico's attempt to question the status quo in drug
policy deserves praise. Unlike American drug warriors, Mexico at
least acknowledges that it is insane to repeat the same thing over
and over again and expect a different outcome.

Because so many Americans like to snort cocaine, that business has
flourished over four decades. Most of the traffic once went through
the Caribbean, but a crackdown on the sea routes caused suppliers to
shift to paths over land through Central America and Mexico. In just
two decades Mexican drug capos took over the industry, adding other
drugs to their product lines. By paying their employees in kind
rather than in cash, they also grew the business at home; lower-level
"mules" have to push locally to turn their salary into money. Now
Latins have become consumers. In other words, demand and prohibition
up north have poisoned the entire region.

As their revenues exploded, the drug lords took over large swaths of
Mexican territory. Government officials who couldn't be bought with
silver were eliminated with lead. When Mr. Calderon took office in
December 2006, he pledged to restore order. By all accounts his "war"
is being waged on the belief that a free society cannot be held
hostage by organized crime, not on the belief that supply can be
defeated. Mexico seeks to raise the cost of trafficking so that the
flows go elsewhere. The Americas in the News

Almost 1,150 law enforcement agents and military have been murdered
in the last three years in this war. Having staked his presidency on
restoring Mexico's rule of law, Mr. Calderon has had an incentive to
claim that his blitz is working. And there is no doubt that it has
had an effect. Wherever the army has moved in, extreme lawlessness
has subsided. Thousands of criminals have been killed, either by law
enforcement or by rival gangs who now fight over shrinking turf. Drug
shipments have been confiscated, traditional supply lines for
imported chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamines have been
disrupted, and corrupt officials have been outed.

Yet the war rages on. Dead capos are replaced, new supply lines for
making meth--most recently discovered coming from Argentina--crop up,
and corruption persists. The racketeers kidnap, rob and trade in
weapons. They are also innovators. Semi-submersibles are now used to
move drugs by sea.

By decriminalizing consumption, Mexico is admitting that things are
not getting better. It says its hope is to concentrate limited
resources in going after producers, traffickers and retail
distributors. According to the Mexican Embassy in Washington, another
goal is to end the corruption that comes from the "free
interpretation of what constitutes 'retail drug-dealing.'" The aim is
to reduce police graft while going after big fish, not little ones.

The war on supply is a failure, something any first-year economics
student could have predicted. But this plan is unlikely to reverse
the situation. It is demand north of the border that is the primary
driver of organized-crime terror. And that shows no signs of abating.