Pubdate: Thu, 16 Apr 2009
Source: News Journal, The (Wilmington, DE)
Copyright: 2009 The News Journal
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/1c6Xgdq3
Website: http://www.delawareonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/822
Author: Mike Gray

WE TRIED A WAR LIKE THIS ONCE BEFORE

In 1932, Alphonse Capone, an influential businessman then living in 
Chicago, used to drive through the city in a caravan of armor-plated 
limos built to his specifications by General Motors. 
Submachine-gun-toting associates led the motorcade and brought up the 
rear. It is a measure of how thoroughly the mob mentality had 
permeated everyday life that this was considered normal.

Capone and his boys were agents of misguided policy. Ninety years 
ago, the United States tried to cure the national thirst for alcohol, 
and it led to an explosion of violence unlike anything we'd ever 
seen. Today, it's hard to ignore the echoes of Prohibition in the 
drug-related mayhem along our southern border. Over the past 15 
months, there have been 7,200 drug-war deaths in Mexico alone, as the 
government there battles an army of killers that would scare the 
pants off Al Capone.

Now U.S. officials are warning that the vandals may be headed in this 
direction. Too late: They're already here. And they're in a good 
position to take over organized crime in this country as well.

After decades of trying to stem the influx of illegal narcotics into 
the United States, it's clear that the drug war, like Prohibition, 
has led us into a gruesome blind alley. Drugs are cheaper than ever 
before and you can buy them anywhere. As Mexico's cash-starved 
government struggles to keep up the good fight, the drug barons rake 
in more than enough to buy political protection and military power 
while still maintaining profit margins beyond imagining. And what's 
driving this desperate struggle may be the ubiquitous weed: 
Southwestern lawmen say that marijuana accounts for two-thirds of the 
cartels' income.

At last, the spectacular violence in Mexico has captured everybody's 
attention, and in an eerie replay of the end of alcohol prohibition, 
we may at last be witnessing the final act in the war on drugs.

One hint of a shifting wind came in February, when a state legislator 
from San Francisco introduced a bill to tax, regulate and legalize 
adult use of cannabis. This sort of grandstanding is always met with 
derision, and this was no exception. But then something strange 
happened: California's chief tax collector said that the measure 
would bring in $1.3 billion a year and save another $1 billion on 
enforcement and incarceration. In a state facing an $18 billion 
deficit, suddenly nobody was laughing. Four days later Arizona 
Attorney General Terry Goddard, who's no legalizer, said that he, 
too, thinks we should take another look at marijuana prohibition. 
"The most effective way to establish a virtual barrier against the 
criminal activities is to take the profit out of it," he told a U.S. 
Senate subcommittee.

The next day, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced a 
minor policy shift with enormous implications: The federal government 
would no longer go after groups that supply medical marijuana in the 
13 states where it is legal. The Drug Enforcement Administration had 
been raiding dispensaries routinely, and dozens of patients and 
growers are behind bars today despite their legal status in 
California's eyes. Now that threat has vanished for those who comply 
with state law. For California, this amounts to de facto legalization.

At his recent cyberspace town hall meeting, President Obama fielded a 
question about whether legalizing marijuana would improve the 
economy. "No," he replied as the audience giggled. But that answer 
sheds no light on his actual thinking. Obama has already called the 
drug war an "utter failure." And since he himself is an admitted 
ex-toker, it's hard to believe that he'd cancel some kid's college 
education over a crime he got away with.

Of course, resistance to marijuana legalization remains rock solid in 
Washington among those who can't face the failure of prohibition. But 
that has more to do with politics than science. The Department of 
Health and Human Services says that there are 32 million drug abusers 
in the country, but that includes 25 million marijuana smokers. If 
you strike them from the list, how do you justify spending $60 
billion a year in this economy trying to stop 2 percent of the 
population from being self-destructive? It would be dramatically 
cheaper to follow the Swiss example: Provide treatment for all who 
want it, and supply the rest with pure drugs under medical 
supervision. When we erected an artificial barrier between alcohol 
producers and consumers in 1920, we created a bonanza more lucrative 
than the Gold Rush. The staggering profits from illegal booze gave 
mobsters the financial power to take over legitimate businesses and 
expand into casinos, loan sharking, labor racketeering and extortion. 
Thus we created the major crime syndicates -- and the U.S. murder 
rate jumped tenfold.

Fortunately, the Roaring '20s were interrupted by the Crash of '29, 
and when the money ran out, the battle against booze was a luxury we 
could no longer afford. Prohibition was repealed in 1933, and over 
the next decade the U.S. murder rate was cut in half.

Today it's back up where it was at the peak of Prohibition -- 10 per 
100,000 -- a jump clearly connected to the war on drugs. And anyone 
who's watching what's going on south of the border can see that we're 
headed for an era of mayhem that would make Meyer Lansky and Frank 
Costello weak in the knees.

Profits from the Mexican drug trade are estimated at about $35 
billion a year. And since the cartels spend half to two-thirds of 
their income on bribery, that would be around $20 billion going into 
the pockets of police officers, army generals, judges, prosecutors 
and politicians. Last fall, Mexico's attorney general announced that 
his former top drug enforcer, chief prosecutor Noe Ramirez Mandujano, 
was getting $450,000 a month under the table from the Sinaloa cartel. 
The cartel can of course afford to be generous -- Sinaloa chief 
Joaquin Guzman recently made the Forbes List of Billionaires.

The depth of Guzman's penetration into the United States was revealed 
a few weeks ago, when the DEA proudly announced hundreds of arrests 
all over the country in a major operation against the "dangerously 
powerful" Sinaloa cartel. One jarring detail was the admission that 
Mexican cartels are now operating in 230 cities inside the United States.

This disaster has been slowly unfolding since the early 1980s, when 
Vice President George H.W. Bush shut down the Caribbean cocaine 
pipeline between Colombia and Miami. The Colombians switched to the 
land route and began hiring Mexicans to deliver the goods across the 
U.S. border. But when the Mexicans got a glimpse of the truckloads of 
cash headed south, they decided that they didn't need the Colombians 
at all. Today the Mexican cartels are full-service commercial 
organizations with their own suppliers, refineries and a distribution 
network that covers all of North America. As we awaken to the threat 
spilling over our Southern border, the reactions are predictable. In 
addition to walling off the border, Congress wants to send 
helicopters, military hardware and unmanned reconnaissance drones 
into the fray -- and it wants the Pentagon to train Mexican troops in 
counterinsurgency tactics.

Our anti-drug warriors have apparently learned nothing from the past 
two decades. A few years ago we trained several units of the Mexican 
army in counterinsurgency warfare. They studied their lessons, then 
promptly deserted to form the Zetas, a thoroughly professional narco 
hit squad for the Gulf cartel, which offered considerably better pay. 
Over the past eight years, the Mexican army has had more than 100,000 
deserters.

The president of Mexico rightly points out that U.S. policy is at the 
root of this nightmare. Not only did we invent the war on drugs, but 
we are the primary consumers.

The obvious solution is cutting the demand for drugs in the United 
States. Clearly, it would be the death of the cartels if we could 
simply dry up the market. Unfortunately, every effort to do this has 
met with resounding failure. But now that the Roaring '00s have hit 
the Crash of '09, the money has vanished once again, and we can no 
longer ignore the collateral damage of Prohibition II.

Two weeks ago, a conservative former superior court judge in Orange 
County told the Los Angeles Times that legalization was the only 
answer, and of 4,400 readers who responded immediately, the Times 
reported that "a staggering 94 percent" agreed with him.

This is another pivotal moment in U.S. history, strangely resonant 
with 1933. The war on drugs has been a riveting drama: It has given 
us great television, filled our prisons and employed hundreds of 
thousands as guards, police, prosecutors and probation officers. But 
the party's over.

Here is a glimpse of what lies ahead if we fail to end our second 
attempt to control the personal habits of private citizens. Listen to 
Enrique Gomez Hurtado, a former high court judge from Colombia who 
still has shrapnel in his leg from a bomb sent to kill him by the 
infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar. In 1993, his country was a 
free-fire zone not unlike Mexico today, and Gomez issued this 
chilling -- and prescient -- warning to an international drug policy 
conference in Baltimore:

"The income of the drug barons is greater than the American defense 
budget. With this financial power they can suborn the institutions of 
the State, and if the State resists ... they can purchase the 
firepower to outgun it. We are threatened with a return to the Dark Ages."

Ending prohibition won't solve our drug problem. But it will save us 
from something far worse. And it will put drug addiction back in the 
hands of the medical profession, where it was being dealt with 
successfully -- until we called in the cops. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake