BORDER WARS: The Mexican counter offensive against the drug cartels may not be enough to quell the violence south of the border.
It may have taken a long time for America to realize, but at least there is some level of responsibility being taken for the years of failed anti-drug policies that have fueled the present war against Mexico's overly aggressive drug cartels.
During Secretary of State Clinton's visit to Mexico, she was candid in describing the role that the U.S. played in the problem. "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," said Mrs. Clinton. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians." The BBC reports that more than 8,000 people have been killed in the drug cartel hostilities in just the past two years alone. "It is unfair for our incapacity to have effective polices that will either better interdict drug traffic or lower demand for the illegal drugs, or intercept the weapons, to be creating a situation where people are holding Mexican government and people responsible."
Mexico is the principal source of marijuana, methamphetamines, heroin, and cocaine that comes into the United States each year. The onslaught that many of these Mexican drug cartels wage against border control agents and police officers are waged with American made weapons; so perhaps Mrs. Clinton's evident mea culpa about the "co-responsibility" that America shared in creating the problem is rightfully placed, because as long as Americans continue to buy these drugs, the cartels will risk their lives and those of others in order to sell them. The continued purchase of these drugs indirectly places blood on the hands of those that buy them.
President Obama recently announced his plans to spend more than $700 million dollars which should provide the necessary resources to help Mexico fight the drug cartels. The president also voiced his intentions to send National Guard troops to the border to provide additional support in stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. as well as illegal money and weaponry that ends up in the possession of the drug kingpins in Mexico. There is, however, no easy resolution to this problem. This problem calls for us to critically reevaluate some of the apparent solutions to the conflict.
Conventional wisdom calls upon traditional economists to conclude that the prohibition of drugs has more negatives effects than anything else. "Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground," writes Jeffery A. Miron, a senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University. " This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead." If you remember back to prohibition during the 1920s, the government heavily cracked down on the lucrative black-market sale of alcohol it was eventually pressured to reconsider this because the demand for alcohol was so high that violence was widespread. I would seriously doubt whether the repeal of the alcohol prohibition laws portends anything positive for habitual drug users looking for a change in America's longstanding anti-narcotics policies. If you're secretly hoping that the democratic landslide that was ushered in with the past election will bring a change in anti-drug policies, you are probably out of luck. Obama has pledged to govern from the center, and I assure you that he will.
According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, Americans spent $10.6 billion dollars on marijuana in 1999, a statistic which has undoubtedly gone up during these past few years. It's not enough to "just say no" if there is an insatiable desire that people have for these drugs. Legalizing marijuana will not improve the economy nor will it create jobs as President Obama said in his unprecedented online town hall meeting last week. In the event that it is legalized, a heavy excise tax should be placed on legalized drugs to provide rehabilitation support for drug addicts, but be forewarned, marijuana will be a gateway drug to harder narcotics such as heroin and cocaine. Yes, some sick people do benefit from the use of marijuana to ease pain that traditional doctor prescribed drugs cannot soothe, but at the same time, the most common use of marijuana is for the so-called purposes of getting 'high'.
Drug-related violence in Mexico is so high that it is in danger of becoming a failed state if the situation does not get under control. The Mexican President, Felipe Calderan, not only needs to deploy more troops to boost the anti-drug initiative, but he needs better intelligence resources that comprehensively inform him on how these drug cartels carry out their operations so he can get the upper-hand against them. The U.S. can send all the aid, funding and National Guard troops to abate the problem, but the Mexican government must also play their role in cleaning up its corrupt political and judicial systems. The anti-drug policies put in place by Mexico with help from the U.S., will not work if high level government officials are getting paid by the cartels to ensure their protection.
We've now past the stage of partitioning blame for the sides responsible in this problem. Now to win this war on drugs, their needs to be a collective effort to fight the cartels not only with man power but with sound leadership.