The Drug Wars

When you're at war, it's natural to feel the urge to reassess strategy now and then, especially if you've been engaged in the battle for a while with not much to show for it.

And so it is with the U.S. war on drugs and, more recently, Mexico's highly publicized and increasingly brutal war on drugs. There has been a lot of talk lately on both sides of the border about whether it's time for both Americans and Mexicans to reassess their drug fighting strategy and perhaps do more to undercut the appeal of the drug trade or the profits made by drug traffickers.

Those were just some of the questions addressed during a recent conference in El Paso that brought together academics, policymakers and community activists from Mexico and the United States to come up with fresh ways of thinking about the drug wars.

The inspiration for the conference came when El Paso Mayor John Cook vetoed a City Council resolution condemning the violence in the neighboring Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez but also urging "an honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition of narcotics."

Ideas discussed included creating social programs to provide other options for impoverished Mexicans likely to join the drug trade, developing more effective drug prevention programs, expanding needle-exchange programs and legalizing marijuana.

Each of these causes has its own constituency, and so it's not surprising to see them resurface in a conversation about the drug war. But, none of them, it must be said, has anything to do with the most righteous cause of all: putting drug dealers out of business.

That is what Mexican President Felipe Calderon has been doing for more than three years since taking office.

His government has arrested more than 50,000 drug suspects. Prosecutions are the rise, and people are going to prison. There has also been a high death toll, as more than 10,000 Mexicans have lost their lives in the effort to free Mexico from drug dealers. Say what you will, Calderon is racking up his share of victories. He's managed to cut into the drug traffickers' bottom line, as evidenced by the fact that many of them are now scrambling for other — no less illicit — ways of making ends meet. Most importantly, Calderon also convinced a new generation of Mexicans that they don't concede their country's destiny and that they can make a dent in the drug trade by avoiding the product altogether.

Of all the speakers at the conference, the one who appeared to have made the most sense was Anthony Placido, head of intelligence for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Placido said that, while law enforcement alone would never be enough to solve the problem of drug trafficking, "it must be part of the answer."

He's right. By all means, let's continue to look for ways to improve our strategy of curbing drug use and battling the drug trade. That's smart. But let's also keep doing what works — on both sides of the border.

But we also have to make sure that our troops are undertaking a mission that can be accomplished. And it's the job of the president to decide that, with all the information he can gather and however long it takes to gather it.

REPRINTED FROM THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM