MEXICO'S A VICTIM OF AMERICA'S ADDICTION TO DRUGS

America's drug habit is killing its neighbor to the south, writes
columnist Neal Peirce. If the United States were to decriminalize
drugs, prices would plummet. This means that the massive profits the
Mexican druglords reap would literally evaporate.

Profoundly immoral - and fiscal folly, to boot.

That's how the United States' continuing "war on drugs" and its
horrendous impact on our neighbor Mexico deserve to be seen.

Why?

First, it's our appetite for official forbidden drugs - marijuana,
heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine - that's driving the chaos on our
southern border and deep into Mexico. President Felipe Calderon
expected - but has clearly failed - to crack the vicious drug rings
through police and military power. But he's dead right on one score:

"The origin of our violence problem begins with the fact that Mexico
is located next to the country that has the highest levels of drug
consumption in the world. It is as if our neighbor were the biggest
drug addict in the world."

The conclusion is simple: If the United States were to decriminalize
drugs, end the criminal prohibition on growing or selling them, prices
would plummet. This means that the massive profits the Mexican
druglords reap - their "take" on an estimated $15 billion a year
cross-border trade - would evaporate.

And that, in turn, would put an end to most of the barbaric
drug-driven crimes - shootings, kidnappings, beheadings - that are
currently being committed by the Mexican gangs as they struggle with
each other for bigger slices of the market.

More than 23,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence
since December 2006, according to a still-confidential but leaked
Mexican government report. At the scale of deaths reported since
January, the total could top 13,000 just this year. Late in June the
remains of 64 people, some decapitated, were discovered in a 50-story
former mining pit near the tourist town of Taxco. From the wounds, it
appeared many were alive when they were thrown down the shaft.

So how are we supposedly moral, righteous Americans reacting? Mostly
with indifference, as if it's "someone else's" problem. Even the
supposedly progressive Obama administration, while saying it wants a
shift from interdiction to prevention and treatment of drug abuse,
won't make the connection between our drug-prohibition laws and the
mass killings in Mexico. Rather, it's funneling more cash to the
Mexican police and armed forces, money to support a bloody, unwinnable
war.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, interviewed by The
Associated Press on a trip to Mexico City, was asked why the U.S.
pursues its clearly failed, decades-long war on drugs. Her reply:

"This is something that is worth fighting for because drug addiction
is about fighting for somebody's life, a young child's life, a
teenager's life, their ability to be a successful and productive adult."

But does U.S. drug prohibition accomplish this when our teenagers
report it's easier to get a marijuana joint (because it's unlicensed)
than a six-pack of beer (its sale to minors government-enforced)?

Let's assume drugs were decriminalized in the United States. And let's
acknowledge some added addiction occurred (even though the predicted
rise in use is not reported in countries such as Portugal, the
Netherlands and Switzerland where decriminalization has been
introduced).

Even if more Americans would have to battle with addictions, we need
to ask: Are American lives so precious, so superior, that Mexicans can
or should be obliged to suffer tens of thousands of deaths because
we're too timid to lift our legal prohibition on drugs? Is this kind
of behavior, belief in our moral immunity, what our chest-thumping
Fourth of July celebrations are all about?

And then there's the fiscal folly point. For Mexicans, the continued
drug horrors darken any prospects for an economically successful
nation - one that's an effective trading partner with the United
States, and able to provide strong incomes for its families so that
fewer feel compelled to emigrate north across the border.

And for the U.S. economy there are big stakes, too. We could save tens
of billions of dollars - at a time when the federal and practically
all state and local budgets have moved into deep deficit territory -
by moving rapidly to terminate our war on drugs.

There's a strong parallel to the Great Depression. The repeal of the
Prohibition Act, which outlawed liquor from 1920 to 1933, not only
quashed the Al Capone-style crime rings but created tens of thousands
of new legal jobs.

A similar move today would also stop the epidemic of drug arrests that
have driven our prison populations - and costs to taxpayers - to
world-record levels.

Morals and fiscal common sense both dictate that we end our drug
prohibition. And not some decades from now, but quickly.