DRUGS BEGET THUGS IN THE AMERICAS

"It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism
are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work
and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as
vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must
interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is
it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the
government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this
end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box
of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and
morphinism."

- -- Ludwig von Mises in "Liberalism," 1927

The Mexican state of Campeche, tucked into the curve that forms the
Gulf of Mexico in the south, is about as far from either the posh
suburbs or the mean urban streets of North America as you can get.
Arguably, there are parts of the region that have changed very little
since Graham Greene wrote his 1940 novel about a whiskey priest on the
run from an anti-clerical zealot in neighboring Tabasco.

Yet as last week's massive drug bust there showed, it is very much
part of the international market place. The capture of 5.2 tons of
cocaine at the airport in Ciudad del Carmen, flown in from Venezuela,
is a reminder that as long as there are consumers who want to ingest
illegal substances there will be suppliers. For every shipment that
gets stopped you can bet nine others get through. We know this because
decades into the war on drugs, prohibited narcotics are still widely
available in the U.S.

The more disturbing lesson provided by the Campeche bust is the
revelation of the underworld monster that prohibition has created and
that is now emerging from the Pandora's box that Mises warned of. A
mighty and unflinching organized-crime network is overwhelming Latin
American law enforcement.

In the debate about Mexican immigration to the U.S. there has been a
lot of legitimate criticism about Mexico's failure to create an
economically viable environment for its own people. When exporting
human capital is a top priority something in the policy mix is
dreadfully wrong and there is no doubt that the Mexican political
class has a lot to answer for.

But the drug war also figures in the equation. Nobel economist Douglas
North taught us the importance of institutions in development
economics. Yet prohibition and the war on drugs are fueling a criminal
underworld that handily crushes nascent democratic institutions in
countries that we keep expecting to develop. Is it reasonable to blame
Mexico for what enormously well-funded organized-crime operations are
doing to its political, judicial and law enforcement bodies when we
know that Al Capone's power during alcohol prohibition accomplished
much the same in the U.S.? These are realities of the market, of
supply and demand and prices under prohibition that no amount of
wishing or moralizing can change.

A serious discussion about U.S. security interests has to begin by
acknowledging the great cost of prohibition and the war on drugs to
U.S. foreign policy objectives. A U.S. policy that unintentionally
empowers brutal organized-crime rings is counterproductive to U.S.
hopes for a stable and prosperous Latin America.

The problem is particularly acute for America's southern neighbor.
Drug violence is spiraling throughout Mexico and innocents are paying
the ultimate price. One target city is Nuevo Laredo where eight months
ago Mexican federal authorities arrived to quell unprecedented cartel
violence. Today the murder rate is up; the Mexican general who was in
charge of restoring order has gone missing; the news media has
suffered atrocious assaults, including a grenade attack; and there is
concern that the government's anti-drug units have been
infiltrated.

Last month four federal intelligence officers were gunned down in the
middle of the day near a school. That's about the same time some 600
federal police were sent to the city as reinforcements.

The rest of Mexico is under siege as well. In February the police
chief of an upscale district of Monterrey was gunned down. An April 21
report in the Los Angeles Times captured the attitude of the drug
lords: "'So that you learn to respect,' read a message scrawled on a
red sheet attached to a Guerrero state government building in
Acapulco, where passers-by in the early morning hours discovered the
heads of former Police Commander Mario Nunez Magana, 35, of the
Municipal Preventive Police, and another man, who was not
identified."

More than 140 people have been killed in drug violence this year in
the states of Guerrero and Michocan. The L.A. Times also reported that
the beheadings occurred hours after the state governor "announced a
$12 million project to give more firepower to police, who say they
often are outgunned by the cartels." Outgunned they were on March 26
in the border city of Matamoros. As reported by Knight-Ridder, three
agents with Mexico's Federal Investigations Agency were chased through
the city's downtown "where they were attacked by suspects armed with
AK-47s and other high-powered weapons."

Two more scary developments are notable. The first is the link between
organized crime and political enemies of the U.S. In Colombia the
rebel army known as the FARC is now a full-fledged narcotics
trafficking operation. Officials believe that Venezuela, headed by the
menacing Hugo Chavez, has become a major transit point for drugs. A
2006 State Department narcotics report noted that "rampant corruption
at the highest levels of law enforcement and a weak judicial system"
have made matters worse in Venezuela. Some in Mexico worry that drug
money could play a corrosive role in July's presidential election.

A second, depressing development is the increase in drug consumption
in poor countries as those doing the trafficking are paid in kind and
push drugs locally to collect their money. A worthless weed has been
made all the more dangerous by prohibition which gives it value and
provides the incentives to get poor children hooked. Where's the
morality in a policy with such pernicious, if unintended,
consequences?

The question is not whether dangerous drugs are innocuous. Let's agree
they are not. The question is which policy is best to manage the
problem. We can't make that calculation until we face honestly all of
the costs of prohibition and the suffering of our neighbors.