FATAL ALLIANCE

A recent article in The Washington Times by Sara A. Carter
show the frightening importance of the alliance between
Arabic terrorists and Mexican drug cartels. It documents how well
known this dangerous situation has been for several years, for which
no effective action had been taken by the Department of Homeland
Security or local officials.

As an old drug-policy hand, I thought I had heard everything about it.
But parts of the story were news to me and terribly disturbing. One
example was the report that "approximately 20 Arab persons a week were
utilizing the Travis County Court in Austin to change their names and
driver's licenses from Arabic to Hispanic surnames." I do not claim
that this horrendous problem is easy to deal with; it is not.

However, I do claim that some obvious first steps come to mind. In the
short and medium term, there must be greater legal controls on name
changes and also more border agents and border fences. To the expected
objections by the Mexican government and by our own group of the usual
fuzzy-minded critics, my reply would be, cleaned up a bit: "Terribly
sorry you feel that way."

In the longer run, our government must start taking even more
courageous actions that account for the dynamics underlying this
lethal alliance. That alliance is based on the fact that American drug
laws and strategies have managed the majestic alchemy of converting
relatively worthless plants into substances often worth more, ounce
for ounce, than gold and diamonds. If we assume that the Arabs are
jihadists planning to harm this country, then it follows that they
have no interest in the drugs but rather in the great treasure to be
made and the access to our cities and nuclear plants to be gained by
associating with the Mexican gangs.

But is there a way to make the plants cheap again? There is of course
an obvious but politically unpopular answer: It is to treat the plants
and the derivative powders as legal articles of commerce. If, say,
marijuana and cocaine were worth roughly as much as alcohol and
tobacco, there would be no Mexican gangs involved with these legal
substances and thus no such gangs to form an alliance with the
jihadists who want to destroy America and its people, except for those
who accept Islam.

To those who say that we will all be destroyed by drugs if we make
drugs legal articles of commerce, I have several responses. For
starters, I won't be destroyed by them because the very thought of
using them bores me. Moreover, based upon research, I estimate that
perhaps 95 percent of the American people feel the same way. We are
not a nation of suicidal fools. Millions of American recently
drastically reduced their consumption of readily available red meat,
alcohol and tobacco for reasons of personal health.

In my latest book, "Fatal Distraction," I went over all the evidence
that proved the war on drugs was indeed a fatal distraction. By that I
meant that the drug war has never worked and now diverts limited
resources from combating more deadly menaces -- bombs, not bongs.
Today, in the Drug Enforcement Administration alone, a total of 10,891
federal officials are employed to save us all from drugs -- usually
marijuana -- at an annual cost of $2.5 billion.

It is high time in this perilous era that we say to these dedicated
officials in the DEA and in hundreds of other police agencies that we
as free citizens accept the personal responsibility to save ourselves
and our families from drugs (and red meat, alcohol and tobacco). You
focus attention on dealing with the new threats emanating from the
jihadists who want to destroy us.

Of course, Congress and the president must soon demonstrate the
political courage to repeal the drug laws, dismantle the expensive
drug-control bureaucracy and create a new legal system to control the
formerly illegal drugs. That's no small task, but stopping another
September 11 demands guts and imagination.