U.S. War on Drugs Is Killing Mexico

The Three Amigos Summit which just ended -- U.S., Canada and Mexico -- is the private gathering of North America's dysfunctional family. The level of good will and cooperation has been incredible, but border problems are growing, not abating.

Protectionism is on the business agenda but there are also border security issues such as illegal immigration, criminality, drug dealing and potential terrorism.

These concerns have resulted in two high-profile, and financially damaging, actions this year: the U.S. requirement that Canadians need passports to enter their country and Americans need passports to return home and also Canada's new requirement that Mexicans need visas to enter Canada.

The Real Story

These measures are irritants but are necessary due to two overriding difficulties facing the amigos.

For starters, Mexico has lagged behind its two northern neighbors economically and politically. This has led to a number of unintended negatives: the outflow of tens of millions of Mexicans, illegally, into American society and, most recently, the beginning of a flow of illegals, possibly criminals, into Canada through the manipulation of Canada's "refugee" loopholes to gain entry.
(Canada's refugee malfunction also contributed to the American passport requirement to prevent backdoor entry by criminals, terrorists and drug dealers from Canada into the U.S.)
Most Mexicans who leave are fleeing Mexico's growing poverty rate. Poor conditions have also led to lawlessness and a de facto takeover of parts of the country, its economy and society by vicious drug cartels.

Those conditions have played into the next major problem for the continent, which is America's growing appetite for narcotics and Prohibition, which makes them more valuable. Every year, Americans jail hundreds of thousands, spend billions and refuse to even debate legalization, regulation and taxation of drugs. Their War on Drugs has been a total failure and propagates the myth that addicts are criminals, not sick persons.

This confluence of events means that instability and corruption is metastasizing in Mexico, driving more Mexicans out of the country or into crime. Last year, 4,000 important civic officials from police chiefs to mayors and judges were assassinated by the country's powerful drug cartels. The total drug-related murder tally was 10,000 that year.

Last fall, the assumed-successor to the current President died when his jet mysteriously crashed in the heart of Mexico City on November 4, the day that President Barack Obama was elected. There was little news coverage considering the questions raised. It was deemed an accident but there are skeptics and should be.

Descent of Mexico

The situation is so serious that Mexico's army is engaged, Canada has just announced an initiative to send "military" advisers to Mexico and the Americans have been there for many months trying to help, too.

So summit coverage will be about business issues such as protectionism, the damage to tourism of the passport and visa requirements, and the banking crisis, but the subtext is darker.

The former President of Colombia laid out Mexico's crisis to me in an interview this spring in Brazil: "Drug usage is unstoppable [in the U.S.] and the cartels have coyotes [people smugglers] planting on the streets hundreds of thousands of illegals selling drugs. The U.S. consumption has stayed level despite huge costs and the jailing of millions of people."

He said the Americans must recant, and abandon, their drug Prohibition policies and adopt European or Canadian-style health care to deal with the problem. Because they have not, Mexico runs the risk of being devastated as was Colombia.

"Mexico is now fighting this battle and must do that, but cannot win," he said.

Neither can the other two amigos.

Comments

[noweknow]

The corrupt Mexican ruling elites and corrupt rich Mexican oligarchs are killing Mexico, not the U.S.

[outnow]

The US is a BIG MARKET FOR DRUGS. Our jails and prisons are full of drug offenders but the problem is getting way worse, not better. More opium is coming from Afghanistan than ever before. High schools are seeing more students use heroin than ever before. 4,000 government officials have been murdered in Mexico by the drug cartels.

If the war on drugs creates a black market, corruption, incarceration, and murder and causes Mexico to become a failed state, the war on drugs has failed as a policy initiative.

The urge to change one's state of mind is universal throughout history. Even animals change their state of mind such as pigs and elephants eating fermemted fruit. But so long as pushing drugs is profitable, I see little hope for progress being made. Meanwhile, the drug companies push drugs on TV in the US. Anyone see a contradiction. The problem with the US is that the biggest drug pushers are the drug companies, except for the tobacco companies.

[yankeetwo]

Right. Except that you forgot the alcohol pushers, of whom President Obama is lately the major government representative. As we've pointed out so many times: tobacco (which the President is addicted to) kills 400,000 Americans every year, and millions worldwide. Alcohol (which Obama imbibes) kills another 65,000 Americans outright, and is strongly implicated in tens of thousands of deadly automobile accidents every year. Marijuana, on the other hand, has never caused a single death, does not cause any serious disease, and has never been shown to have caused even a single automobile accident. Which one should be legal is a no-brainer, is it not?

Actually, none of them should be illegal. Is America not the "Land of the Free?" Not as long as the government dictates our personal behavior, revokes our freedom, and treats us like its own personal property. We will be free only when these hateful, tyrannical laws are ELIMINATED.

[RobinSeattle]

Little will fix Mexico until there is a democratic revolution there. Their current system is stacked for the benefit of guys like Carlos Slim and not the average Mexican. Moreover, the Mexican government approves of the outflow of labor to the U.S. because they get billions back in remittances that prop up the Mexican economy without having to school the emigrants and provide social services to them. So all the way around, illegal immigration is a huge winner for Mexico.

I agree that prohibition is stupid and should never have been imposed. By the same token, nobody is forcing Mexicans to become gangsters or leave jobs in the government or the police to become Zetas. So while blaming the U.S. is a convenient excuse for Mexicans and its sympathizers for that country's farcical failures to be a first world nation, I would say that the solution starts with Mexico itself (along with strong border enforcement by the U.S.). .

[lightningbolt]

There needs to be a democratic revolution in the U.S. as well for the exact same reason: the system is rigged to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

[JayDubs]

The war on drugs is based on the mistaken idea that making something illegal will necessarily cause people to stop doing it. We've tried it before. It was called Prohibition. It failed, as do all projects that follow this course. Yet, we continue these policies on drugs, guns, and abortion.

Banning drugs doesn't stop drug use.
Banning guns doesn't stop gun crime.
Banning abortion doesn't stop women from getting abortions.

It's time to stop trying to shape culture through law.

[lightningbolt]

Prohibition was never about stopping drug use, but about certain corporations making more money.