Pubdate: Sat, 26 Jul 2014
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2014 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, Creators Syndicate
Page: A11

DRUG WAR A MAIN REASON KIDS FLEEING CENTRAL AMERICA

As thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America seek 
refuge in the United States, some commentators are blaming American drug users.

"If there weren't a lot of Americans seeking marijuana and heroin and 
cocaine," says former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, "there would not 
be a drug war."

Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady seems to agree.

"This crisis was born of American self-indulgence," she writes.

If so, it was not the self-indulgence of people who consume 
arbitrarily proscribed intoxicants. It was the selfindulgence of 
prohibitionists who insist on exporting their disastrous policy to 
other countries.

Although O'Grady mentions "rethinking prohibition" as one possible 
response to the flood of refugees, she clouds the issue by saying 
"the demand for drugs ... fuels criminality." In truth, the 
government's response to that demand fuels criminality by creating a 
black market in which thugs violently vie for artificially high profits.

That policy is one of the main factors driving the recent surge in 
unaccompanied minors making their way to Texas from Honduras, El 
Salvador and Guatemala. The number of such children apprehended by 
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) more than doubled in fiscal 
year 2012, from 4,059 to 10,443, and then doubled again in fiscal 
year 2013, to 21,537. The Obama administration expects the number to 
be about 90,000 this fiscal year.

In a 2013 survey by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, 66 
percent of children from El Salvador, 44 percent of children from 
Honduras and 20 percent of children from Guatemala mentioned 
"violence by organized armed criminal actors" as a reason for leaving home.

CBP notes that Salvadoran and Honduran children "come from extremely 
violent regions where they probably perceive the risk of traveling 
alone to the US preferable to remaining at home."

In a recent Military Times essay, Gen. John Kelly, who runs the U.S. 
Southern Command, estimates that "perhaps 80 percent" of the violence 
behind "the mass migration of children we are all of a sudden 
struggling with" is tied to the illegal drug trade.

That sort of violence has intensified in Central America partly 
because of crackdowns on drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia, which 
Honduran President Juan Hernandez identifies as "the root cause" of 
his country's astonishing homicide rate: 90 per 100,000 people, by 
far the highest in the world.

"Drug cartels and associated street gang activity in Honduras, El 
Salvador and Guatemala ... have left near-broken societies in their 
wake," Kelly writes. "Profits earned via the illicit drug trade have 
corrupted and destroyed public institutions in these countries and 
facilitated a culture of impunity ... that delegitimizes the state 
and erodes its sovereignty."

The ills that Kelly cites - violence, illicit profits, corruption, 
loss of respect for the rule of law - are entirely predictable 
consequences of prohibition. Yet his solution to the problems caused 
by prohibition is more enforcement of prohibition - specifically, 
more money for interdiction, which he claims has been "wildly 
successful in a relative sense." Really? "With few exceptions and 
despite increasing investments in enforcement-based supply reduction 
efforts aimed at disrupting global drug supply," a 2013 study 
published by BMJ Open concluded that "illegal drug prices have 
generally decreased while drug purity has generally increased since 
1990. These findings suggest that expanding efforts at controlling 
the global illegal drug market through law enforcement are failing."

Intensified enforcement is not just futile, but also positively 
harmful, fostering violence by destabilizing the black market.

In fact, drug warriors argue that violence of the sort that killed 
some 60,000 people after Mexico's crackdown began in 2006 means 
prohibition is working.

"If the drug effort were failing," an unnamed "senior U.S. official" 
told The Wall Street Journal in 2009, "there would be no violence."

That official may have been Michele Leonhart, head of the Drug 
Enforcement Administration, who two years later argued that "the 
unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs."

Tell that to the terrified children streaming toward Texas.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom