Pubdate: Sat, 04 Aug 2012
Source: Odessa American (TX)
Copyright: 2012 Odessa American
Contact:  http://www.oaoa.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/708
Author: Malcolm Beith
Note: Malcolm Beith is a former Newsweek International general 
editor, and a freelance journalist who has written for Foreign 
Policy, Slate.com and Jane's Intelligence Weekly, among other 
publications. He is the author of two books on the Mexican drug war, 
"The Last Narco" (Grove Press, 2010) and "Hasta El Ultimo Dia" 
(Ediciones B, Mexico, 2012).

HOW THE DRUG WAR CAN BE WON

Can we please, finally, end the debate over legalization of drugs?

Don't get me wrong. I'm dead against the drug war in its current 
form. By some calculations, it's cost the U.S. taxpayer $1 trillion 
since 1971 to fight a war that has resulted in more than 40 million 
arrests and only slight dips in the consumption of marijuana, 
cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. If someone produces the drugs, 
Americans and Europeans will use them. If someone uses them, someone 
- - more than 50,000 people in Mexico since December 2006, in this case 
- - will die in the process.

I'm also against drug use, even though I don't consider it a force of 
evil like President Richard Nixon did. But in spite of all the talk 
of change, the alternatives - legalization and government regulation 
- - remain as much a pipedream as they ever did. California (which 
voted against legalization in 2010) has taken a pro-marijuana 
initiative off the ballot this year, lacking support. We all know the 
conventional wisdom: if California doesn't legalize it, no one will. 
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has requested a budget of 
$2,051 million for 2013; with more than 8,000 positions, more than 80 
offices and almost 4,000 agents around the globe, the DEA isn't going 
to close up shop anytime soon.

Recently, with marijuana legalization rhetoric increasing, the DEA 
shifted its focus to pills as its No. 1 priority, thus ensuring a new 
threat (albeit a real one; an estimated seven million Americans aged 
12 and older abuse prescription pills, according to the DEA). 
Marijuana and other drugs will still be covered under the new mandate.

So what can be done? The drug war - in spite of a new president in 
Mexico this coming December; in spite of the arrest of four Mexican 
generals on drug-related charges; in spite of the imprisonment of 
Mexico's drug czar in 2009 - will continue. More bodies will pile up; 
top Mexican officials have admitted publicly that the death toll 
won't likely ease up until about 2018. Let's not be naive and 
underestimate the power of bureaucracy or traditional beliefs about drug use.

There's a scene in the movie "Traffic," in which Benicio del Toro, 
after turning informant, asks the DEA agents whether they like 
baseball. "You like baseball? We need lights for the parks, so kids 
can play at night. So they can play baseball. So they don't become 
burros (carriers) for the malones (thugs). Everyone likes baseball. 
Everyone likes parks."

In early 2009, in the northern Mexican city of Reynosa, the baseball 
team enjoyed a winning streak. As the home run count increased, the 
homicide rate dropped.

Everyone likes baseball. Everyone likes parks.

The current program to rebuild Ciudad Juarez includes the creation of 
several parks and other efforts - like improving schools - to 
reconstruct a shattered community. This strategy worked in Medellin, 
Colombia; it can work in Mexico, too. Mexico needs parks. It needs 
libraries. It needs better schools, better teachers, better cops. Too 
many neighborhoods, like Rancho Anapra in Ciudad Juarez - home to the 
rough-and-tumble Barrio Aztecas gang - need street lighting and 
water. Mexico needs psychologists provided by the state, to help 
children who see dozens of dead bodies piled up alongside the road on 
their way to school.

Mexico needs corrections ofSinaloa needs parks. It needs lights. It 
needs baseball. It needs schools, psychologists and more. It needs 
something, anything, to convince its youth that drug trafficking is 
not the answer. There's an expression that's become popular in 
Sinaloa: "better to live five years like a rey (king) than a lifetime 
like a buey (an ox)." The young need a reason to be reminded that 
actually, it's not.

Mexico, incidentally, isn't the only country that needs parks, 
schools, psychologists and better role models - anybody but Chapo.

Roughly every 19 seconds each year, someone is arrested for 
drug-related offenses in the United States, according to the FBI. 
Fifty-four people died in counter-drug law enforcement operations 
last year; three were police officers.

It was New Year's Eve. Little Mia Alvarado Rodriguez was tucked up in 
her bed, asleep, as her parents celebrated.

Her father heard a cry. He ran to the bedroom Mia shared with her 
three siblings. Mia was standing up, or at least, trying to. Blood 
was streaming down her front. She had been hit by a stray bullet from an AK-47.

She would die six days later.

She was only three years old.

Close your eyes for a minute and picture little Mia in your head. An 
adorable little Mexican girl from Ciudad Juarez.

Now open your eyes. Imagine she was white, and lived next door to you.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom