by Ted Galen Carpenter
When President Obama travels to Mexico today to meet with President Felipe Calderón, the alarming drug violence in our southern neighbor is likely to be the main topic of discussion. Unfortunately, neither leader seems to have a clue about how to lessen the carnage. Calderón's government apparently believes that the main answer is to have the United States tighten its gun laws, thereby (somehow) depriving the cartels of their main source of high-powered weaponry. Washington's panacea is to increase U.S. financial support for Calderón's military offensive against the traffickers — an offensive that so far has accomplished little except to intensify the violence.
The two leaders need to jettison such competing fallacies. Drastic policy changes are needed to neutralize the mounting threat to the stability of our next-door neighbor and the security of our own country.
The only effective strategy is to defund the drug cartels, and the only way to do that is to eliminate the multi-billion-dollar profit caused by the drug trade's black-market status. is not surprising that supply-side antidrug initiatives have failed in Colombia and other countries and are now failing in Mexico. The global trade in illegal drugs is a vast enterprise estimated at $320 to $400 billion a year, with Mexico's share thought to be anywhere from $35 billion to $60 billion. The United States is the largest single retail market, but U.S. demand is not the only relevant factor. Indeed, the main areas of growth are in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and some portions of the Middle East and Latin America. The bottom line is that global demand for illegal drugs is robust and likely to remain so.
There is more than enough consumption to attract and sustain traffickers. Since the trade's illegality creates a huge black-market premium (depending on the drug, 90 percent or more of the retail price), the potential profits are enormous. Supply-side antidrug campaigns are not only a futile effort to defy the basic laws of economics, but they also cause serious problems of corruption and violence for a drug-source country like Mexico. The brutal reality is that prohibition simply drives commerce in a product underground and allows the most violence-prone elements to dominate the trade.
Governments around the world seem to be awakening to the problems caused by a prohibition strategy. The Netherlands and Portugal have adopted decriminalization policies for possession and use of small quantities of drugs. In the Western Hemisphere, the leaders of Argentina and Honduras advocate reforms, and sentiment for liberalization seems to be growing in Mexico. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the country's largest opposition party, has called for drug decriminalization, and even President Calderón has proposed to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of street drugs.
But such reforms, while desirable, do not get to the causal root of the violence that accompanies the drug trade. Unless the production and sale of drugs is also legalized, the black-market premium will still exist and law-abiding businesses will still avoid the trade. In other words, drug commerce will remain in the hands of criminal elements that do not shrink from bribery, intimidation and murder.
Because of its proximity to the huge U.S. market, Mexico will continue to be a cockpit for drug-related violence. Continued adherence to prohibition means that the United States is creating the risk that the drug cartels may become powerful enough to destabilize its neighbor. Their impact on Mexico's government and society has already reached worrisome levels. Worst of all, the carnage does not respect Mexico's northern border. More.
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