Source: Economist (3/29/97): Contact: NEIGHBORS The political culture of Mexico is I immature; any perceived slight by the 'giant of the north' could lead to an up surge in nationalism." This unsigned memo, which found its way into briefing packets sent earlier this month by the White House to members of Congress, was typically crude and patronising. But it was perceptive. America's annual round of "certification"a stamp of approval given to those countries judged by the United States to be cooperating in the fight against drugshas this year been more fraught than ever. Relations with Mexico have significantly soured in consequence. For weeks, Congress threatened to overturn Bill Clinton's decision to certify Mexico. Then, under pressure from an embarrassed White House and outraged Mexicans, the Senate last week agreed to let certification stand and settled instead for telling both the administration and Mexico to brush up their drugfighting efforts. It is a political fudge which has soothed tempers for the moment; the White House, in particular, wants to keep Mexico happy in advance of Mr Clinton's firstever trip there, now planned for May 6th7th. But it leaves the impression that the United States' war on drugs in general, and its treatment of Mexico in particular, are riddled with contradictions. Nobody would claim that Mexico is an ideal drugfighting partner. The head of its antidrugs agency, General Jesus Gutierrez, was recently arrested on charges of being on the payroll of its most notorious drug lord. On March 17th another army general was arrested for offering $im a month to a fellowofficer to secure safe passage for co caine into the United States. In an effort to overhaul the antidrugs campaign, the president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, has already replaced his attorneygeneral. On March 21st, Mariano Herran, the replacement for General Gutierrez, promised a toptobottom sweep of the antinarcotics force. But Mexico's ambassador to Washington, Jesus Silva Herzog, concedes that any improvement will take years. However, the corruption is not all on the Mexican side: federal authorities have found mounting evidence that local sheriffs and judges in Texas counties along the border have been accepting money from Mexican drug lords to turn a blind eye to their activities. Besides, the United States has other, increasingly important, concerns in Mexico, which make it hazardous to stir resentment there. Spurred by the North American FreeTrade Agreement (NAFrA), trade between the two countries has risen fast (totalling around $120 billion in 1995, third only to trade with Canada and Japan). The number of Mexicans living in the United States, legally and illegally, is also growing fast. Until the recent row over drugs, American and Mexican diplomats reported that relations on a host of issues, including trade and the environment, were getting easier. Yet those larger considerations are less apparent to congressmen who, unlike the administration, do not deal with Mexico on a daytoday basis. The debate over drug certification became a rallying cry for all those with general worries about Mexico, notjust those concerned specifically about drugs. It united politicians (such as Dianne Feinstein) worried about the tide of immigration with those (such as Richard Gep hardt) still worried about the impact of NAFFA on American jobs. Mark Falcoff, a LatinAmerican special1st at the American Enterprise Institute, detects an increasingly vociferous antiMexico coalition in Congress, embracing both leftwing Democrats and nationalist Republicans. This coalition will have plenty of opportunities to get angry again later this year. Injuly, for example, the president is due to deliver to Congress a progress report on NAFr~ The administration is also planning to ask Congress for "fasttrack" negotiating authority to make it easier to strike new trade deals with other Latin American countries, starting with Chile. Meanwhile, the question many in Washington are asking is whether the process of certification serves any useful purpose. It is meant to punish countries deemed uncooperative in the drugs war by withdrawing aid and other forms ofassistance. In practice, only countries whose po litical sensitivities the United States can afford to ignore, such as Iran and Colombia, are decertified; the administration has to pretend that countries with which it wants to stay friendly also happen to be good at fighting drugs. Even James Jones, America's ambassador in Mexico city, argues that decertification is counterproductive and should perhaps be scrapped. Yet Congress is unlikely to agree: not least because certification conveniently shifts the debate about drugs away from the tricky issues of how to reduce demand at home, and focuses it in stead on which foreigners to blame for supplying the stuff On the face of it, demand for drugs in the United States is under control: surveys suggests that around 13m Americans take illegal drugs, compared to a high (as it were) in 1979 0f 25m users. Yet these figures mask two worrying trends. First, though casual taking of many drugs has dropped, frequent consumers and addicts seem to be taking drugs in greater quantities. Second, there has been a sudden revival in drugtaking among teenagers, from 5% 0f1217yearolds in 1992 to 11% in 1995. Around two thirds of the $15 billion federal drugs budget still goes on trying to curb supply by, for example, imprisoning drug dealers, policing borders and fighting drug gangs abroad. There is little evidence that this achieves much. Drugrelated crime is as high as ever, and the price of both cocaine and heroin sold on American streets has dropped dramatically since the early 1980s. Whenever the United States succeeds in blocking one import route, another opens. Efforts in the mid19805 to stop cocaine coming in through south Florida encouraged the Colombian cocaine cartels to develop new routes through Mexico. Efforts to stop opium production in Mexico in the 1970s by spraying poppy crops with herbicides worked for a while until production simply moved to more remote areas. The Mexican border is still the biggest drugimport route into the United States. Every year 23Om people and 84m cars cross it, making the border a 2,000 milelong sieve. According to intelligence sources, the Mexican drug cartels (which have become big traffickers in their own right) now have transport and distribution organizations that use both smuggling routes and legitimate commerce to ferry cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines. Their organization is compartmentalised. Even if a courier is caught, he cannot rat on his associates because he does not know them. Three years ago the Americans set up the SouthWest Border Initiative (SWBI), which brought together all the drugfighting agencies with their Mexican counter parts. Using wiretaps, the 5WBI identified a number of barons living in Mexico. Yet efforts to nab them through joint operations inevitably liiil, complain the American drug agents, when corrupt Mexican commanders tip off the suspects. According to Thomas Constantine, the head of America's Drug Enforcement Administration, "There is not one single lawenforcement institution in Mexico with which the DEA has an entirely trusting relationship." A report in February by the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank highlights the failure of America's efforts to control international drug supplies, and argues that more emphasis should be placed on reducing demand. Shifting popular attitudes to wards drugs is not easy: telling teenagers to say no will encourage some to say yes. But surveys suggest that much of the recent rise in teenage drug use is driven by a softening of attitudes rather than a surge in supply. The report also argues that treating addicts is a much more costeffective way of reducing drug use than international efforts to block supplies. Mathea Falco, an assistant secretary of state for narcotics issues in the Carter administration and an author of the study, recently pointed Out that the United States has a long tradition of blaming other countries for its drugs problems. Back at the turn of the century, opium was associated with the Chinese, and marijuana with Mexicans. The recent row over Mexico's certification has certainly brought the tradition bang up to date.