DRUG WAR NEEDS NEW BLUEPRINT

Congressional reports in recent weeks paint a disturbing picture. The
federal government has spent nearly $10 billion since 2005 in the war
on drugs -- and has literally nothing to show for it.

Narcotics continue to flow into the United States, and violence
associated with the drug-dealing underworld has spiked
dramatically.

That is especially so in Mexico's border states, where mass murders
and war-like shootouts occur almost daily, with a staggering death
toll. These aren't East-L.A. drive-bys. These are full-on assaults by
drug cartel gunmen.

One might be tempted to say, let them fight it out in Mexico. But that
is frighteningly short-sighted. Anyone who lives near the border with
Mexico knows how quickly that level of violence can spill into U.S.
cities and towns.

This seems to be one of those problems the U.S. government cannot, or
will not, buy its way out of.

The U.S. Defense Department, for example, has spent $6.1 billion in
the past six years on interdiction of drug shipments into this
country, without noticeable effect. Government officials trumpet drug
busts when they happen, but what you see in those photo ops is a tiny
fraction of the narcotics flown, shipped and driven into this country
every day.

Private contractors have been paid more than $3 billion in the last
five years to train drug-fighting law enforcement groups, eradicate
growing fields and pay informants inside the cartels -- again, with
little discernible effect.

Now, federal agencies are ramping up operations to intercept
cartel-related Internet and cell phone traffic, perhaps in the belief
- -- probably the hope -- that high-tech surveillance can do what
paramilitary operations on the ground have been unable to do.

Unfortunately, those soldiers in the drug wars aren't getting any help
from licensed gun dealers in this country.

There are an estimated 7,000-plus firearms dealers in the border
states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. A significant
percentage of those dealers are believed to be the source of the
armory being used by drug cartels in Mexico.

One federal program being targeted by critics is the Operation Fast
and Furious, in which federal agents allowed straw-man purchases of
automatic weapons, with the purpose of tracking the arms to cartels.
Instead, thousands of those guns simply vanished into Mexico -- and
almost certainly have contributed to the death toll there.

Now, the Obama administration is requiring those 7,000 gun dealers to
notify authorities whenever they sell two or more semiautomatic
weapons, most of which can easily be converted to full automatic.

Congressional Republicans howled in protest about the new
sales-reporting tactic, and for good reasons -- it likely won't make
any difference to money-hungry gun dealers, the flow of guns to drug
cartels won't be fazed, and U.S. taxpayers will be financing yet
another war-on-drugs strategy the success of which will be minuscule.

We fully understand and appreciate the arguments against legalizing
narcotics, but failed drug-war policies have gone on for far too long,
have cost U.S. citizens hundreds of billions over the past several
decades -- with barely negligible results.

The number of those citizens using illegal drugs has remained more or
less constant over the course of the war on drugs.

Imagine if the hundreds of billions of dollars spent chasing the drug
cartels' shadows, with little success, had been spent instead on
educating Americans on the risks involved in drug use, or treating
addicts. Would the outcome have been different?It's time to discuss a
new strategy.