Pubdate: Sat, 14 Jul 2012
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2012 Star Advertiser
Contact: 
http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html
Website: http://www.staradvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154
Author: Jacob Sullum
Note: Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine and Reason.com.

LEADERS (BUT NOT OBAMA) SEE FUTILITY OF WAR ON DRUGS

Early last year, when the death toll from Mexican President Felipe 
Calderon's crackdown on the cartels stood at 35,000 or so, Michele 
Leonhart, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told 
reporters in Cancun "the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of 
success in the fight against drugs." The results of last week's 
presidential election, in which the candidate of Calderon's National 
Action Party (PAN) finished a distant third, suggest Mexican voters 
are no longer buying that counterintuitive argument, if they ever did.

Even if "the fight against drugs" were winnable, it would be an 
outrageous imposition. Why should Mexicans tolerate murder and mayhem 
on an appalling scale (more than 50,000 deaths since Calderon 
launched his assault in December 2006), not to mention the rampant 
corruption associated with prohibition, all in the name of stopping 
Americans from obtaining psychoactive substances that their 
government has arbitrarily decreed they should not consume? That sort 
of arrogant expectation is becoming increasingly untenable.

Mexico's incoming president, Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional 
Revolutionary Party (PRI), has promised continued cooperation with 
U.S. drug warriors. But during the campaign, he and the other two 
leading candidates all said controlling violence, as opposed to 
seizing drugs or arresting traffickers, would be their top law 
enforcement priority. Pena Nieto has reiterated that commitment since 
the election, saying his success should be measured by the homicide rate.

At the same time, Pena Nieto has declared the current approach to 
drugs a failure and called for a "broad debate," including the 
possibility of legalization, while emphasizing that he personally 
opposes that option. The president-elect's mixed signals of 
continuity and change were reflected in a whipsawing Bloomberg 
headline: "Pena Nieto to Expand Drug War, Debate Drug Legalization."

Pena Nieto's lip service to reform might not amount to much on its 
own, but it takes on added significance in the context of recent 
rumblings from other politicians. Calderon's predecessor, Vicente 
Fox, who as president supported decriminalizing simple possession of 
drugs (a policy approved under Calderon), three years ago declared 
that "it's time to open the debate over legalizing drugs," adding 
that "it can't be that the only way is for the state to use force."

Last year Calderon himself expressed a similar frustration. "If [the 
Americans] are determined and resigned to consume drugs," he said in 
an eyebrow-raising speech, "then they should seek market alternatives 
in order to cancel the criminals' stratospheric profits, or establish 
clear points of access [to drugs]. But this situation can't go on."

In recent years that sentiment has been expressed by a growing number 
of Latin American leaders, beginning with Honduran President Manuel 
Zelaya in 2008. The following year, a commission convened by three 
former Latin American presidents- Fernando Henrique Cardoso of 
Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, and Ernesto Zedillo of 
Mexico-concluded that "prohibitionist policies based on the 
eradication of production and on the disruption of drug flows as well 
as on the criminalization of consumption have not yielded the 
expected results."

Furthermore, Cardoso et al. observed, the war on drugs has been 
accompanied by "a rise in organized crime," "a growth in unacceptable 
levels of drug-related violence," "the criminalization of politics 
and the politicization of crime," and "the corruption of public 
servants." They called for a "paradigm shift," including marijuana 
decriminalization. Since then we have heard similar talk from 
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Guatemalan President Otto 
Perez Molina, Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, and Uruguayan 
President Jose Mujica.

Is America listening? At last April's Summit of the Americas in 
Cartagena, President Barack Obama, who as a U.S. Senate candidate in 
2004 called the war on drugs "an utter failure," said "it is entirely 
legitimate to have a conversation" about whether the drug laws "are 
doing more harm than good in certain places." But he immediately 
added that "legalization is not the answer." In other words, even if 
prohibition does more harm than good, Obama is determined to stick with it.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom