Want to save Mexico? Rethink drug policy
COMING ANARCHY BLOG
By Munro Ferguson on Mexico
Last week Chirol posted on the ability of Mexico's drug cartels to literally send local governments packing. This past week has brought more alarming news, specifically on the political and potential military strength of the cartels. On Tuesday the Washington Times reported that Mexico's federal government has been infiltrated by cartels and that the two largest Mexican cartels are merging to combat government efforts to mitigate them. Together they maintain enough "foot soldiers" to rival Mexico's own army.
>>> The U.S. Defense Department thinks Mexico's two most deadly drug cartels together have fielded more than 100,000 foot soldiers – an army that rivals Mexico's armed forces and threatens to turn the country into a narco-state.<<<
Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, paid a "keep your chin up" visit to Mexico on Saturday and promised US military partnership in Mexico's growing civil war during his address to Mexico's Naval War College.
>>> "We are capable countries," Mullen said at the war college. "This is not a threat we can't beat. We can, working together, defeat it."<<<
There is, however, growing criticism that American and international drug policies are, in large part, responsible for destabilizing not only Mexico but other Latin American countries. This past February three former Latin American leaders criticized America's War on Drugs, calling it a failed policy and lamenting the destabilizing effect it's had on their own countries. The Economist ran a recent report likening the international drug trade to a "Global Al Capone," a reference to America's failed Prohibition act.
Clearly the answer to Mexico and the rest of Latin America's narcotics woes is beyond tossing money, guns and boots on the ground at. It's a matter of rethinking what are obviously dysfunctional policies both in the US and internationally. As the Economist report suggests, politician's need to stop pushing a wholly ineffective utopian policy and settle for the "least bad" policy, legalisation.
Yes this will result in negative consequences to states that follow this course as they deal with the social fall out of increased addiction rates and drug related medical issues. That's why it's a "least bad" policy. I agree with Thomas Barnett, that this can be better dealt with as a medical issue than it is currently being dealt with as a criminal issue. |
