AMERICANS FLEECED LONG ENOUGH IN A FUTILE AND FAILED WAR ON DRUGS

In the past two weeks before this column went to press, at least 40
people were either killed or their bodies were found in Mexico. The
dead include 12 federal agents, one mayor, one police officer and two
anti-crime activists, one of whom was a U.S. citizen. In that same
time span at least 112 police officers were detained for alleged corruption.

Just to our south, some 11,000 people have been killed in
drug-related violence over the past two and a half years. Decapitated
bodies, mutilated victims, dead police officers and a country gripped
with fear are all the result of our country's obscene drug policy.

We're to blame, they say. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
President Barack Obama and Mexico's attorney general all put at least
part of the blame for the skyrocketing violence in Mexico, if not a
majority of it, on the shoulders of you and me.

In Mexico this year, Clinton said "our insatiable demand for illegal
drugs fuels the drug trade." Her statement, however, is based on the
premise that drug use and possession needs to be against the law.

If the U.S. government were to re-legalize or even decriminalize
drugs, the incentive for drug cartels to behead Mexican police
officers would vanish. Mexican politicians wouldn't have to relocate
their families to Texas to keep them safe. I might be inclined to
visit Juarez the next time I see my in-laws in El Paso.

American politicians are using the latest round of violence to
ratchet up the rhetoric and bolster their case for maintaining and
even intensifying the failed war on drugs.

An unnamed U.S. official was quoted in The Wall Street Journal in
February: "If the drug effort were failing there would be no
violence." Huh? It's precisely because we have decided to make
certain drugs illegal that this violence exists.

If you cringe at the idea of legalized drugs in the U.S., ask
yourself this: What is it about the war on drugs over the past four
decades that makes you think this is still a good policy?

Is it the estimated $50 billion spent annually by local, state and
federal governments to wage this absurd war? I know that may seem
like a paltry sum compared to the spending proclivities of Obama and
President Bush, but where I come from, that's a lot of money. Or is
it the 11,000 dead in Mexico? Maybe you're impressed by the volume of
drug-related incarcerations. According to Common Sense for Drug
Policy, more than half of all federal inmates and 20 percent of all
state prisoners are in for drug charges.

And to what avail? Whatever your opposition is to ending drug
prohibition, it surely can't be the policy's effectiveness.

So if you're not supportive of legalization, what's your solution? If
you're a politician, that's easy: more money and resources. We're not
spending enough. After the Obama administration announced plans in
March to spend an additional $700 million on border drug enforcement,
Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked for an extra 1,000 "boots on the ground"
at the border. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said those resources were "a
drop in the bucket in terms of what is needed."

Give us more and everything will be fine.

The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, formed by the
ex-presidents of Brazil, Columbia and Mexico, recently said
"acknowledging the failure of current policies and their consequences
is the inescapable prerequisite for opening up the discussion about a
new paradigm leading to safer, more efficient and humane drug policies."

It's time for our politicians to admit to a failed policy -- one that
was doomed from the beginning.

The taxpayers of this country have been fleeced in the name of
prohibition for decades with no discernible benefit.