MEXICO, JUST SAY NO TO AMERICA'S WAR ON DRUGS

Something remarkable happened in Mexico last week. Tens of thousands
of Mexicans gathered in the main squares of cities across the country
to demand an end to the "war on drugs".

In the Zocalo, in the heart of Mexico City, they chanted "no more
blood" and many called for the resignation of President Felipe
Calderon, who began the war by using the army against the drug cartels
in late 2006.

Some 35,000 people in Mexico have been killed in drug-related violence
since then. Even as the crowds chanted, news came in of another 59
bodies discovered in mass graves in Tamaulipas state.

In the words of poet-journalist Javier Sicilia, who inspired the
demonstrations after his own son was killed last week, the war is
"tearing apart the fabric of the nation".

But what does he know? In fact, the United States and Mexico are on
the brink of winning the war on drugs.

We know that because Michele Leonhart, head of the United States Drug
Enforcement Administration, said so on the same day, at an
international conference in Cancun.

"It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a
sign of success in the fight against drugs," she said.

She presumably means that all the Mexican drug-traffickers will be
dead soon and that nobody else will be tempted by the easy money to
take the place of those who are killed.

Americans will then stop using drugs because they simply aren't
available, or at worst they will be so scarce and expensive that only
the very rich can afford them. And we'll all live happily ever after
(except the very rich, of course).

True, drugs in the United States have become cheaper, stronger and
more easily available over the past 40 years, despite annual claims by
the DEA that victory is at hand. To go on doing the same thing every
year for 40 years, while expecting that next time will have a
different outcome, is sometimes seen as evidence of insanity, but we
shouldn't be judgmental.

We could, however, try to be rational. Former Mexican president
Vicente Fox has been doing well on the rationality front recently.

Last August he wrote in his blog: "We should consider legalising the
production, sale and distribution of drugs. Legalisation does not mean
that drugs are good. But we have to see it as a strategy to weaken and
break the economic system that allows cartels to make huge profits,
which in turn increases their power and capacity to corrupt."

This would mean that Mexican drug-users could get any drugs they want,
of course. Just like now.

The only differences would be that the drugs, being state-regulated
and taxed, might cost slightly more and there would be fewer deaths
from impurities and overdoses. But it wouldn't actually break the
power of the cartels as long as drugs remain illegal in the huge
American market.

Former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria addressed this issue head-on
in a recent interview with Time magazine: "US drug policy has failed.
So please, change it. Don't force us to sacrifice thousands of lives
for a strategy that doesn't work simply because American politicians
lack the courage to change course."

Well said - but why did these men not act when they had the power?
Because they were afraid of the American reaction.

The United States has repeatedly made it clear that it will inflict
grievous economic pain on any Latin American country that defects from
its war against drugs. That is becoming an empty threat, however, for
US economic power is nothing like it used to be, even in Latin America.

That's partly because of the recent near-collapse of the US economy,
but it's also the result of the rapid growth of the Latin American
countries. Mexico, for example, is a rising industrial power with tens
of millions of educated middle-class people and an economy that's
growing at 7 per cent a year.

It can now say no to Washington without being crushed. It is the
American refusal to allow its consumers legal access to the drugs they
want that creates the demand and American weapons that arm the Mexican
gangs that compete for that market.

Since no American politician will commit political suicide by
advocating gun control or the legalisation of drugs, Mexico can only
escape its agony by refusing any further co-operation with the US Drug
Enforcement Administration.

Ending the war on drugs in Mexico would not instantly stop the
killing, most of which is between cartels competing for control of the
routes by which drugs transit Mexico on their way to the United States.

But just ending the army's involvement would greatly lower the level
of violence and legalising drugs in Mexico would diminish the epidemic
of corruption too. You don't need to bribe officials if the drug trade
is legal.

The current wave of demonstrations against the drug war is only a
start. The policy won't change as long as Calderon is president as too
many people have been killed for him to repudiate it now.

But by the end of next year he will be gone and his successor, from
whichever party, will be free to change the policy. One of these days,
Mexico will just say "no".