Pubdate: Tue, 31 Mar 2009
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2009 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Terry Field
Note: Terry Field Has Reported On Mexican Politics, And Is The Chair 
Of Mount Royal's Journalism Degree Program.

THE REAL COST OF WAR ON DRUGS

By now the majority of Calgarians will have heard of the daily 
fighting between drug cartels and authorities in Northern Mexican 
cities that dot the border with the United States. The devastating 
context of this protracted 'war' has been slow to reach us here, 
largely because the news media has been slow to see the story as 
something other than a Mexican story.

And by Mexican story, I mean a story from Mexico we dismiss or 
diminish because it is, well . . . Mexico, a place we love to visit 
but whose misery we assume is not our concern, until and unless you 
begin to consider the larger story the Mexican border hints at.

In truth, the drug trade causes havoc in every western nation, not 
just Mexico, and our sense of Mexico as a lawless, corrupt place 
where these kinds of things happen routinely, is to miss the point entirely.

It is time that news organizations started connecting the dots on the 
drug trade, and assembling the little bits of information on this 
issue into a more coherent and cohesive package, drawing lessons from 
this mess, and holding legislators in Canada the U. S. and Canada 
accountable for allowing this to continue. Because it is clear that 
legislators would rather continue with the fight than face up to its 
costs --in both dollar terms, and in the damage to lives.

To set the often-missing context, drug cartels have been operating in 
Mexico in one form or other and in a sophisticated way since the 
1980s. In the early days, the focus was on the movement of the 
product from other countries through Mexico to reach the U. S. The 
flow of drug money into Mexico enriched and emboldened the locals, 
and the immensely wealthy and powerful cartels that operate on the U. 
S. border today are one result of this. The other results are less 
obvious but no less concerning. Death dogs cities like Juarez and 
others in Mexico. The toll stands at an estimated 7,200 attributed to 
drug trade along the border alone in just two years, but the problem 
exists throughout the country. On a recent visit to the city of 
Colima in west central Mexico, my colleagues at the local university 
were talking of the escalation of drug-related violence in their part 
of the country, including several message-sending beheadings. 
Further, it is folly to limit the discussion of the death toll to 
"soldiers" in the trade.

You need to factor in all the people who die from overdoses, or who 
live their lives in miserable addiction. Mexicans whose lives have 
been disrupted or threatened are now Canada's newest and largest 
source of refugee claimants, and you also need to factor in gang 
shootings in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver, and so on.

Calculating the actual cost of the so-called "war" on drugs is 
impossible. Calculators don't have enough numbers for that. The 
phrase "war on drugs" is attributed to former and disgraced U.S. 
president Richard Nixon but it was Ronald Reagan who made it a 
popular crusade, authorizing the expenditure of vast sums to beef up 
policing agencies both in the U. S. and abroad.

That was 1982. Now, 27 years later, we are no closer to eradicating 
drug use than we were then. In fact, by most measures the problem is 
worse. The only thing this policy has succeeded in doing is wasting 
untold billions in enforcement and encouraging the enemy to defend itself.

Every war needs an enemy, and in this case the enemy has grown from a 
series of modestly scaled country-specific gangs into large-scale, 
wealthy, well-armed and well-connected international organizations.

Just last week, U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said U. S. 
policy on drugs has been a failure and Mexico is paying too steep a 
price for the war on drugs, especially considering that the U. S. is 
the main market.

She then went on to say that the answer is to escalate and get more 
money promised during the Bush years into Mexican hands to support 
their battle with the cartels.

Meanwhile, the U. S. border service has just announced it will spend 
another $184 million right now policing the border.

That money is on top the cost of building the border wall between the 
U. S. and Mexico, and the billions and billions the U. S. has spent 
fighting these cartels from a distance by providing cash and other 
resources to Colombia and Mexico. Meanwhile Mexico (whose population 
still lives largely in poverty) is also spending hundreds of millions 
monthly it does not have, waging a "war" in its own cities, against a 
drug gang 'army' estimated to be almost as large as, and likely 
better equipped than, the real Mexican army.

I wouldn't presume to have the ultimate answer to this issue, but I 
would suggest that news organizations need come up with more 
sophisticated questions to ask of decision-makers. Starting with a 
simple one: what alternatives to waging this war might exist? When 
former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo suggested in late February 
that perhaps it might be smarter to legalize the use of marijuana the 
idea was immediately dismissed by the current Mexican government, and 
some U. S. lawmakers.

Zedillo was floating that idea as an example of alternative action 
following release of a report he co-authored on the bigger problem.

"If we insist only on a strategy of the criminal pursuit of those who 
traffic in drugs," Zedillo has said, "the problem will never be resolved."

Maybe he has a point.

Arguably, if drug production and use was made legal, we could save 
billions of dollars, countless lives, make money taxing it, and using 
what we earn to educate the public and treat addicts.

It might not reduce the demand, and it might result in other issues, 
but it would alter the context dramatically and take the drug trade 
away from cartels and gangs.

At the very least, the idea is worth examining in a serious way. 
Politicians are too close to law enforcement, too concerned to admit 
failure, and too ideologically driven to allow for that any time 
soon. News organizations must now stage the debate without the 
legislators by giving more credence to Zedillo and others with fresh 
ideas about this desperately naive and misguided war that is taking a 
tremendous toll on our Mexican friends and partners.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom