MEXICAN DRUG WAR: CASE FOR LEGALIZATION?

President Obama hosted a state dinner for Mexican President Felipe
Calderon. High on their agenda is a Bush-era program to fund Mexico's
"war on drugs."

More than $1.4 billion of our taxes have already been dumped into this
losing war. Despite a nearly tenfold increase in U.S. funding for
Mexico's military and police, drug-related violence in Mexico
continues to soar, claiming over 20,000 lives since 2006. Now Congress
is deciding whether to give the faltering counternarcotics program
another year and $310 million of life.

But has a single life been spared from Mexico's drug-related violence
because we bought eight Black Hawk helicopters for the Mexican
military? Has a single person in the U.S. been weaned off cocaine
addiction by night vision goggles to Mexico's police? Failing
strategies should be replaced, not perpetuated.

We need to acknowledge the root of the problem: U.S. demand. So long
as addicts in our communities continue to provide an ample market for
cocaine, cartels in Tijuana will kill to control that market. Any good
capitalist knows that where there is a demand, someone will appear
with a supply. Poverty in Mexico makes drug money a powerful incentive
to join the cartels.

We who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Prohibition did not do
away with alcohol use, but gave us an organized crime syndicate.
Keeping drugs illegal is doing the same for the cartels. There will
always be those who choose to do themselves harm by using substances
such as tobacco, alcohol and drugs. We already have "sin" taxes on the
first two.

Could we not do the same with other drugs, eliminating the raison
d'etre of the cartels, and filling the lean coffers of government? Are
we so hypocritical that we can legalize two potentially deadly
categories of substances yet not a third?

Susan Junkroski

Winfield