Brazil's Fernando Henrique Cardoso on Why Legalization of Marijuana Will Reduce the Cartels' Threat to Latin Democracies.

Washington - The classical argument in favor of marijuana legalization rests on personal liberty. Why, proponents ask, should the federal government tell free citizens what they may consume? It is also one reason why many conservatives fear it. They worry that legalization will mean more pot heads, an increase in the consumption of hard drugs, and a decrease in the quality of life for the sober and for society at large.

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Frustrated ATF Agents Testify That Their Bureau's 'Operation Fast And Furious' Let Weapons Get Into The Hands Of Mexican Drug Cartels.

One of the frightening things about the U.S. government's war on drugs is that it is being waged by federal bureaucracies. The legend of Elliot Ness notwithstanding, this implies that it is not only fraught with ineptitude but that before it is all over, there are going to be a lot of avoidable deaths.

Witness "Operation Fast and Furious," a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms plan that allegedly facilitated the flow of high-powered weapons into Mexico in the hope that it might lead to the take-down of a major cartel. It did not. But it may have fueled a spike in the murder rate and led to the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

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An Increasing Number Of World Leaders Are Concluding That Laws Against Drug Consumption Do More Harm Than Good.

Tomorrow marks the 79th anniversary of the beginning of the end of the U.S. prohibition on alcohol. On that day in 1932 John D. Rockefeller Jr., a vociferous advocate of temperance, called for the repeal of the 18th amendment in a letter published in the New York Times.

Rockefeller had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for the constitutional prohibition on alcohol. But his letter did more than admit the error of his investment. Because of his moral authority on the matter, it effectively ended the conservative taboo against admitting that the whole experiment had failed.

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U.S. Ambassador To Mexico Carlos Pascual Loses His Job For Telling The Truth.

It took Mexican President Felipe Calderon more than three months, but on March 19 he finally got his man. That's when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that she had accepted the resignation of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual.

Mr. Pascual had earned the ire of Mr. Calderon for his critical accounts of Mexico's prosecution of the war on drugs, sent to Washington in 2009 and 2010. Those dispatches were supposed to be confidential. When they were made public by Wikileaks in December, they infuriated the Mexican president, who reportedly requested that Mr. Pascual be removed.

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Rounding Up The Killers Of U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement Officer Jaime Zapata Will Not Curtail Americans' Voracious Appetite For Mind-Altering Substances.

Mexico City

The murder of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jaime Zapata in the state of San Luis Potosi on Feb. 15 shocked and outraged the American law-enforcement community. For Mexican law enforcement it was just another day at the office.

Early indications are that Zapata was killed by members of the Mexican drug cartel known as the Zetas. If so, his death adds to a shocking statistic. The latest data available from the Mexican government show that 87 members of the Mexican military and 867 law-enforcement officers were killed by drug gangs between December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon took office, and March 2009. Undoubtedly the number is higher now.

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The Mayor of Juarez - the Border Town at the Center of the Drug Wars - Says He's Not Getting Enough Help From His Capital, or Washington Either.

Cuidad Juarez, Mexico - 'I can't imagine how the U.S. can be so worried about Iraq and Pakistan while we don't sense that it is worried about the border here. We are together whether we like it or not."

So says Hector "Teto" Murguia, the mayor of this city that is plagued by drug-war disorder. In the 35 months since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched his war against his country's drug cartels, more than 7,100 people have been killed in this border city. Over 2,700 have died since January-in other words, the rate of the killing has increased.

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Competition in the Narcotics Trade Is Preferable to Monopolistic Syndicates.

Mexico City - President Felipe Calderon still has two years left in office. But he is already on track to go down in history as having presided over the bloodiest Mexican sexenio since the revolution of 1910. By December, when Mr. Calderon completes his fourth year as president, the national death toll from his war on the drug cartels could reach 30,000.

Statistically speaking, Mexico is a relatively safe place with 12 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009. The trouble is that the violence is concentrated, and according to one economist I talked with here, that's because the drug-trafficking business is structured much like Colombia's was in the 1980s and '90s.

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The Resolutions Offered by El Paso's City Council to End Prohibition Are Quashed by Fear of Retaliation by Washington.

El Paso, Texas - In the national debate about the efficacy and morality of the U.S. war on drugs, it is not uncommon for prohibitionists to accuse their opponents of harboring libertine motives. But as opposition to current policy increases in places like this culturally conservative and predominantly Catholic border city, that charge isn't sticking.

The growing tendency here to question U.S. drug policy has nothing whatsoever to do with ideology or an affinity for drugs. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that while the "war on drugs" has done nothing to curb the U.S. appetite for mind-altering substances, its unintended consequence has been to empower organized crime networks. These gangs, which aggressively target children as customers and low-level employees on both sides of the border, are undermining the economy and the quality of life in the binational El Paso-Juarez metropolitan region.

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Dramatic Evidence Presented By Colombia At Last Thursday's Oas Meeting In Washington Puts Hugo ChaVez On The Hot Seat.

When Colombia launched a strike in March 2008 against a terrorist camp just over its border with Ecuador, the loudest protestation came not from Quito but from Caracas.

Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez mourned the death of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commander Raul Reyes, whom he called "a good revolutionary." He also shrieked about the violation of Ecuadoran sovereignty and called for 10 Venezuelan tank battalions to be sent to his country's Colombian border. "Don't think about doing that over here," he warned Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, "because it would be very serious, it would be cause for war."

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The Vicious Violence the Border States Are Experiencing Is Not Committed by Migrant Laborers.

The organized-crime epidemic in Latin America, spawned by a U.S. drug policy more than four decades in the making, seems to be leeching into American cities. Powerful underworld networks supplying gringo drug users are becoming increasingly bold about expanding their businesses. In 2008, U.S. officials said that Mexican drug cartels were serving their customers in 195 American cities.

The violence is only a fraction of what Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia live with everyday. Yet it is notable. Kidnapping rates in Phoenix, for example, are through the roof and some spectacular murders targeting law enforcement have also grabbed headlines.

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Strong Demand and the High Profits That Are the Result of Prohibition Make Illegal Trafficking Unstoppable.

They say that the first step in dealing with a problem is acknowledging that you have one. It is therefore good news that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a delegation to Mexico tomorrow to talk with officials there about efforts to fight the mob violence that is being generated in Mexico by the war on drugs. U.S. recognition of this shared problem is healthy.

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Elections Scheduled for December 6 Will Mark the Official End of the Bolivian Democracy.

A dictatorship that fosters the production and distribution of cocaine is not apt to enjoy a positive international image. But when that same government cloaks itself in the language of social justice, with a special emphasis on the enfranchisement of indigenous people, it wins world-wide acclaim.

This is Bolivia, which in two weeks will hold elections for president and both houses of congress. The government of President Evo Morales will spin the event as a great moment in South American democracy. In fact, it will mark the official end of what's left of Bolivian liberty after four years of Morales rule.

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The Former Secretary of State Has Long Doubted the Wisdom of Interdiction.

When George P. Shultz took office as Ronald Reagan's secretary of state in 1982, his first trip out of the country was to Canada. His second was to Mexico.

"Foreign policy starts with your neighborhood," he told me in an interview here in the Canadian capital last week. "I have always believed that and Ronald Reagan believed that very firmly. In many ways he had [the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement] in his mind. He paid a lot of attention to both Mexico and Canada, as I did."

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Mexico's Decriminalization Is an Admission That Things Aren't Getting Better.

Mexico announced recently that it will decriminalize the possession of "small amounts of drugs"--marijuana, cocaine, LSD, methamphetamines, heroin and opium--"for personal use." Individuals who are caught by law enforcement with quantities below established thresholds will no longer face criminal prosecution. A person apprehended three times with amounts below the minimum, though, will face mandatory treatment.

For the government of President Felipe Calderon, which has spent the last three years locked in mortal combat with narcotrafficking cartels, this seems counterproductive. Is the government effectively surrendering to the realities of the market for mind-altering substances? Or could it be that the new policy is only a tactical shift by drug warriors still wedded to the quixotic belief that they can take out suppliers?

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Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Help Hugo Chavez?

Hugo Chavez took a break last week from lobbying Washington on behalf of deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to travel to Quito, Ecuador, for a meeting of South American heads of state.

There he launched a virulent assault on the U.S. military, reiterated his commitment to spreading revolution in the region, and threatened the continent with war. Mr. Zelaya was by his side.

The Venezuelan's tirade against the U.S. and its ally Colombia raised the question yet again of what the U.S. could possibly be thinking in pushing Honduras to reinstate Mr. Zelaya. He was removed from office by the Honduran Congress in June because he violated the country's constitution and willfully incited mob violence.

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Obama's Promise Not To Crack Down On Medical-Marijuana Use Raises The Stakes For Traffickers.

Mexico City Just when you thought the effects of U.S. drug policy couldn't get more pernicious, guess what? That's where we're headed.

Mexico's young democracy is already paying a high price for the lethal combination of prohibition and strong gringo demand for mind-altering substances. Drug violence has escalated as Mexican suppliers intent on satisfying appetites across the border have tangled with each other and law enforcement. Now the U.S. is getting ready to raise the incentives for gangsters. At a press conference last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder indicated that President Obama would keep a campaign promise by ending federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries. This means that the weed will remain illegal to transport and sell -- and thus highly profitable for criminals -- but there will be fewer repercussions for those who use it in states with liberal marijuana laws. The administration says it wants to end federal infringement on the rights of states.

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Law Enforcement South Of The Border Is Badly Outgunned.

A murder in the Mexican state of Chihuahua last week horrified even hardened crime stoppers. Police Commander Martin Castro's head was severed and left in an ice cooler in front of the police station in the town of Praxedis with a calling card from the Sinoloa drug cartel.

According to Mexico's attorney general, 6,616 people died in drug-trafficking violence in Mexico last year. A high percentage of those killed were themselves criminals, but many law enforcement agents battling organized crime were also murdered. The carnage continues. For the first 22 days of this year the body count is 354.

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Of all the casualties claimed by the U.S. "war on drugs" in Latin America, perhaps none so fully captures its senselessness and injustice as the 2001 CIA-directed killing of Christian missionary Veronica Bowers and her daughter Charity in Peru.

No one is suggesting that the CIA intentionally killed Mrs. Bowers and her baby. It was an accident.

But according to Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R., Mich.), it was an accident waiting to happen because of the way in which the CIA operated the drug interdiction plan in Peru known as the Airbridge Denial Program. Mr. Hoekstra says the goods to prove his charge are in a classified report from the CIA Inspector General that he received in October. Under the program, initiated by President Clinton, the CIA was charged with identifying small civilian aircraft suspected of carrying cocaine over Peru on a path to Colombia, and directing the Peruvian military to force them down.

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With the world fixated on Vladimir Putin's expansionist exploits in Georgia, a different sort of assault against a democracy south of the U.S. border is getting scant attention. But it is equally alarming. Mexico is engaged in a life-or-death struggle against organized crime. Last week six more law enforcement officials were killed in the line of duty battling the country's drug cartels.

This brings the death toll in President Felipe Calderon's blitz against organized crime to 4,909 since Dec. 1, 2006. A number of the dead have been gangsters but they also include journalists, politicians, judges, police and military, and civilians. For perspective on how violent Mexico has become, consider that the total number of Americans killed in Iraq since March 2003 is 4,142.

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Stories of campus drug use in the U.S. are so common that last week's arrest of 75 alleged dealers at San Diego State University was shocking chiefly due to the number netted.

The occasional big bust aside, the long running drug war has become almost background noise.

At least in this country. American nonchalance about drug use stands in sharp contrast to what is happening across the border in Mexico. There lawmen are taking heavy casualties in a showdown with drug-running crime syndicates. On Thursday the chief of the Mexican federal police, Edgar Millan Gomez, was assassinated by men waiting for him when he came home, becoming the latest and most prominent victim of the syndicates.

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