Pubdate: Tue, 16 May 2006
Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
Copyright: 2006 The Salt Lake Tribune
Contact:  http://www.sltrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/383
Author: Brian Doherty, Special To the Los Angeles Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/walters.htm (Walters, John)

U.S. HARDBALL TACTICS FRUSTRATED MEXICAN ATTEMPT AT DRUG REFORM

The rise and fall of Mexican drug-law reform over recent weeks has 
been, for drug legalizers, a dizzying high followed by a painfully 
abrupt crash. U.S. drug authorities laid down their usual bummer: No 
user is going to get off easy on "their" watch. And thanks to the 
United States' overwhelming power and influence, their watch extends 
everywhere.

Mexico isn't the first nation to suffer side effects from America's 
estimated $30 billion-a-year drug war. A 2003 attempt by former 
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien to liberalize drug possession 
laws met with threats from U.S. drug czar John Walters that the 
tougher resulting border security could hold up U.S.-Canadian trade, 
and the idea soon went up in smoke. Colombia has been for years the 
site of what is essentially a damaging and expensive proxy war in the 
service of the United States' delusion that it can wipe out cocaine production.

Still, both cops and heads must have been hallucinating if they 
thought Mexico's mild reform proposals would have ushered in some 
kind of lotus-eaters' utopia, a permanent Altered State down Mexico way.

The legislation, which passed Mexico's House and Senate with 
President Vicente Fox's initial support, would have legalized the 
possession of minute quantities of substances such as pot, cocaine 
and heroin (5 grams of pot, 0.5 grams of cocaine -- only a few lines 
- -- and 25 milligrams of heroin), in an attempt to focus 
drug-enforcement resources on larger-scale dealers. But sales, and 
possession beyond the tiniest weekend's worth, would have remained 
illegal. State and local cops would have been dragged into a Mexican 
drug war that had heretofore been federal, increasing the total 
resources spent on drug enforcement -- and introducing more cops to 
the lure of drug-money corruption.

Even before this policy, you could beat a possession rap by 
convincing a Mexican judge that you're an addict. The quantities 
allowed under that definition have been undefined; the new law would 
have defined them, in an effort to eliminate judicial corruption.

As the bill came perilously close to receiving Fox's signature, White 
House drug officials raised the fear that Mexican border towns would 
become out-of-control party towns for thrill-seeking U.S. youth. 
(What else is new?) Border city cops spouted nonsense about how the 
new policy would lead to unmanageably rowdy public chaos, as if 
potheads and junkies are an energetic bunch, or as if any substance 
creates more troublesome public inebriation than already available 
alcohol. Because sales still would have been illegal under the new 
law, warnings by U.S. officials -- from the mayor of San Diego to the 
spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy -- that the 
proposal would have led to a drugged-out free-for-all just don't fly.

Trade in other commodities, even damaging ones such as cancer-causing 
cigarettes or obesity-triggering sugary soft drinks, doesn't generate 
the rampant violence and corruption of the illegal drug business. The 
ugly side of drug trafficking isn't inherent in the drugs. It arises 
because illegal businesses by definition demand artificially high 
profits, lack peaceful institutions for settling disputes (if you 
can't take your opponent to court when you feel ripped off, you might 
feel more compelled to shoot) and attract risk-seeking, 
violence-prone types to begin with.

When drugs are outlawed, only outlaws deal drugs. If it weren't 
illegal, the sale of narcotics would be no more prone to violence and 
corruption than the sale of cola or cigarettes.

Reform far more radical than what Mexico contemplated would 
drastically reduce, not exacerbate, the serious problems associated 
with drug-law enforcement.

The United States is fortunate enough not to have rebel armies funded 
by profits from the illegal coca market within its borders. And we 
can afford not to care about the thousands of murders a year and 
dangerously rampant police corruption in Mexico caused by the drug 
laws we refuse to let it change.

Americans angry about Mexican immigration complain that the country 
is exporting its troubles to us. In fact, with our drug-war bullying, 
we're exporting our enforcement troubles back to Mexico, adding to 
the problems that make so many people want to come here to begin with.

The White House's disproportionate panic can't be explained by any 
actual damage the law could have caused. Maybe U.S. drug warriors 
realized that if we saw firsthand, right across the border, just how 
unnecessary are the laws against drug possession, the futility of 
making 1.7 million drug arrests each year would be exposed, and 
that's never a happy thought for any bureaucrat. In the Netherlands' 
Amsterdam, where pot, hash and mushrooms can be sold freely in 
certain shops, surveyed use of most drugs is lower than in the United 
States, illustrating that legalization does not equal everyone 
getting high. The social order still stands.

Experienced drug users have an ethic: You don't force other people on 
your trip against their will. Pity that U.S. drug policymakers can't 
be that sensible.

Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and the author of "This 
is Burning Man."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman