28,000 Dead - Mexico Yells "Uncle"

First it was Mexican president Felipe Calderone, now it's his predecessor Vincente Fox raising the idea of legalizing the production, distribution and sale of drugs in their country.   Mexico remains mired in a vicious drug war between gangs and the government that has claimed 28,000 lives in recent years.  Despite the government's efforts the gangs have grown increasingly powerful and increasingly bold aided, in no small part, by widespread police corruption.

Neither Calderone nor Fox will come right out and advocate for legalization.  Both present it as an issue that should be debated.   Mexico is keeping a wary eye on California where voters will decide in November whether to legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and allow the state to tax sales.

Regardless of one's position on legalizing or decriminalizing drugs of any kind, it's becoming increasingly obvious that the "War on Drugs" initiated by Richard Nixon in 1970 hasn't worked.  Unfortunately the prohibitionists don't have a Plan B and the high-level narcotics industry has learned to thrive under the existing system.   While interdiction and eradication efforts can claim some successes, so long as there is a market for the drugs and massive profits to be derived, there will always be ample supply reaching the end consumer.

Nixon and every president since then has been highly successful at stuffing their prisons full of drug users but that too hasn't made a dent in the trafficking even as it has created an enormous drain on already debt-ridden states.

Leaders of the drug-importing states really have but two choices.   Stick with the current, failed approach, which is really just treading water, or decriminalizing the production and possession of some, but not all, street drugs.   Marijuana is the obvious candidate for decriminalization, something that Paul Martin was willing to recognize.   Ideologues like Harper, naturally, prefer to step up Plan A and simply build more prisons  ...except in Afghanistan where we stand by and allow our supposed ally to produce just as much illicit opium as it likes for processing into heroin and delivery to our own streets.   Wait a minute, doesn't that make Harper complicit in heroin trafficking?   No wonder he won't decriminalize drugs.

Photo - LA Times - 3 federal police officers gunned down by drug gangs

The New War on Terror - Narco-Terror

By now we're all too aware of the war underway in Mexico between drug cartels and the country's army and federal police force. It's bad enough that, in December, the Pentagon listed Mexico along with Pakistan as the two nations most in danger of sudden and total collapse.

To put it in some perspective, Canada has a force of 2,700 at war with the Taliban in Kandahar province. Mexico has a force of 60,000 at war with the drug cartels inside its own country.

The Guardian has just released an expose of the Latin American drug trade and how it has beset both the United States and Europe.

A new trafficking route between South America and west Africa has grown so quickly that the 10th latitude corridor connecting the continents has been dubbed Interstate 10.
Almost all those interviewed agreed that insatiable demand for cocaine in Europe and north America had thwarted US-led efforts to choke supply and inflicted enormous damage on Latin America.

"We consider the war on drugs a failure because the objectives have never been achieved," said César Gaviria, Colombia's former president and co-chair of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.
"Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalisation have not yielded the expected results. We are today farther than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs."

The commission is urging a "paradigm shift" from repression to a public health approach, including decriminalisation of marijuana. Dismal statistics about coca cultivation, cocaine exports and murder rates have amplified calls to replace a policy which dates back to Nixon with one which focuses on curbing demand.

On Wednesday, ministers from around the world meet in Vienna to hammer out a new, UN drug policy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/09/cocaine-production-united-nations-summit