THE MESSAGE IN MEXICAN MASSACRES

More violence in Mexico -- just miles from where New Mexico bumps up
against our neighbor nation, and this time taking the life of students
who were U.S. citizens ...

U.S. consular officials yesterday confirmed that Eder Diaz and Manuel
Acosta, both from the University of Texas at El Paso, and both of whom
lived in Ciudad JuA!rez across the Rio Grande, were citizens of this
country. Acosta was nearing graduation from UTEP.

Gunmen opened fire on their car Tuesday. They were the fifth and sixth
U.S victims of violence in JuA!rez in the course of a week.

Police say at least two of the earlier victims had criminal records,
but have made no connection between the bloodshed Tuesday and the
attacks on U.S. citizens that took place last weekend.

Citizenship should have little to do with the ongoing tragedy that is
Mexico today; in JuA!rez alone, 2,000 people have lost their lives so
far this year in what, for the most part, is drug-related violence.

Even if the death toll amounted to viciosos being killed by rival
gangsters, the numbers and the violence should be alarming leaders of
both nations sharing nearly 2,000 miles of border. But too often,
innocent people are caught in the deadly crossfire, while yet other
inocentes -- young children of gang families -- are becoming targets
of retribution between drug-smuggling cartels vying for control of key
cities the way norteamericano mobsters made war in our country during
Prohibition.

Out on the western end of the international boundary, Tijuana was only
recently being praised by President Felipe CalderA3n for its
pacification efforts. Then a couple of weeks ago, gunmen swooped in on
a drug-rehabilitation center and killed 13 men. Far to the southeast,
15 others in drug rehabilitation were gunned down while working at a
car wash.

For all CalderA3n's touting of his law-enforcement and social-outreach
solutions, he presides over a country sickened by growing greed for
drug profits. Those profits come from feeding appetites this side of
the border for still-illegal drugs. That brings us back to Prohibition
- -- which ended against liquor in our country by constitutional
re-amendment in 1933 after nearly 15 years.

The day the two UTEP students were shot, California voters had a
chance to end prohibition, at least where marijuana is concerned. The
Golden State already has "medical marijuana," legal and peddled by
storefront dispensaries in what has become a farcical scene in parts
of many cities there. On Tuesday's ballot was Proposition 19 to
legalize the weed.

The proposition was roundly rejected -- by a surge of old-folk votes
prompted by alarmist ads warning of a society about to run amok.

So the medical-marijuana charade will still be played, but otherwise,
dope remains illegal -- thus far more expensive than it should be. To
support predilections or habits, homes in California and the rest of
the country remain under siege from thieves -- and people walk the
streets at risk of mugging and worse.

Granted, legalization of drugs demands no-nonsense education as to
their risks, as well as readily available treatment. The California
campaign should have emphasized those needs, and programs to meet them
through some of the revenue that taxed marijuana might have brought
in.

But keeping drugs illegal isn't working. Mexico is slowly coming to
realize that. Will it take the spread of that country's violence into
the U.S. to wake us up?