POWER TO THE DRUG LORDS

Jamaican gangster and drug kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke, subject
of a violent month-long manhunt in the slums of West Kingston,
surrendered to authorities on Wednesday without a shot being fired. He
happened to be dressed as a woman at the time, police gleefully
announced, providing photo evidence -- a darkly comic anticlimax to a
senseless battle that killed 73 people and wounded 35 more. It's no
exaggeration to say that drug consumers in the world's leading nations
have blood on their hands. Their presidents and prime ministers have
more.

The U.S. indictment against Coke--who may or may not be immediately
extradited -- makes fascinatingly grim reading. I was especially
struck by this passage:

"In addition to providing Coke with a portion of the proceeds from
their drug trafficking activities ... members of [his] Organization in
the United States supply Coke with firearms in exchange for the
assistance that Coke provides, and in recognition of his status and
power within the Organization.

"Organization members purchase firearms in the United States and ship
those firearms to Jamaica. Once those firearms arrive in Jamaica, Coke
decides how and to whom they will be distributed. Coke's access to
firearms, as well as cash, serves to support and increase his
authority and power in Kingston, Jamaica and elsewhere."

So, that's a pretty rotten deal for Jamaica. The sale of illegal drugs
in the United States enriches a few criminals in Jamaica, arms them to
the teeth with illegal American guns and effectively cedes to them
control of entire chunks of the nation's capital, thus delegitimizing
the government even as individual politicians fight, with varying
degrees of conviction, the temptation to partake of lucrative
corruption. Law-abiding Jamaicans, meanwhile, are caught in the crossfire.

What to do? Over the past month, newspaper editorial boards,
politicians and talking heads have lined up to espouse the same
solution: Provide more support for Jamaica's forces in the global war
on drugs. Which is absurd. The island is, famously, a significant
source of marijuana. But the cocoa leaf doesn't even grow there;
Jamaica is just a transshipment point for cargo from Bolivia, Colombia
and Peru.

So let's say the Jamaican police and military somehow did manage to
eradicate the drug trade. Would the extraterritorial cartels and
gangsters simply throw up their hands in defeat, perhaps enrolling in
trade schools or opening restaurants? Of course not. Any country --
Cuba, Haiti, Guatemala, anywhere -- could be next in line to service
what Hillary Clinton once called America's "insatiable demand" for
drugs, at the modest cost of the destruction of its society and
thousands of dead citizens. It cannot be repeated enough that 23,000
Mexicans have died in President Felipe Calderon's drug war-- in
three-and-a-half years.

In many ways, illegal drugs are like blood diamonds. If no one wanted
to buy them, an awful lot of suffering would be alleviated around the
world. But people do want to buy them, and they always will. It's
completely unethical for political leaders in developed countries to
continue to ignore the very real power they have to improve the
situation -- by liberalizing drug laws and thereby weakening criminal
elements both at home and abroad.

I'd be willing to support outright legalization of all drugs simply
because the current approach has been such an unmitigated, disastrous
failure. But there's a lot of room between outright legalization and
the status quo. As a first step, we could decriminalize marijuana, as
Jean Chretien pretended to want to do and as several American states
have actually done.

Instead, the Canadian government proposes to enact a mandatory
six-month minimum sentence for possession of as few as six marijuana
plants. Think about that. If Canadians are going to smoke pot anyway
- -- and they are -- it is indisputably better that they grow it
themselves on their own windowsills or in small-scale hydroponic
operations, or purchase it from friends who do so, as opposed to
buying it from a criminal dealer. Yet the tough-on-crime gang in
Ottawa seems utterly determined to entrench marijuana production as
strictly a criminal enterprise. Ask the leader of the official
opposition about it and he'll tell you he doesn't want you "parking
your life on the end of a marijuana cigarette."

It's indefensible. If they don't want to indulge Canadian pot-smokers,
perhaps they could indulge the Jamaicans who spent the last month
dodging gunfire on their way to work and school.