Ruminations of an Expatriate

Mark L. Schneider, “senior vice president and special adviser on Latin America at the International Crisis Group, an international conflict prevention organization”, chronicles the failure of Plan Colombia, the USA military aid plan intended, ostensibly, to eradicate the Colombian production and trafficking of cocaine.

The New York Times today includes a report of corruption in the Customs and Border Protection division of the Fatherland Security Department.   Yesterday’s edition carried a report of corruption within Mexican police agencies wrought by the war on drugs destined for the immense, and growing, USA market.

The reports, it seems, provide further evidence that the prohibition of drugs and denial of visas to poorer Mexicans and other Latin Americans whose labor is in demand in the USA enables a lucrative smuggling industry, the proceeds of which a growing number of law enforcement personnel, in both Mexico and the USA, find hard to resist.

The Washington Post reports that “Mexico’s Police Chief Is Killed In Brazen Attack by Gunmen”, as in the “national police chief.” The report indicates that Mexican based “drug cartels [are] blamed for 6,000 killings in the past 2 1/2 years…”

Given that USA consumers provide the chief market for the products moved by the Mexican based drug cartels, most of the six thousand killings in Mexico may be directly attributed to the misguided USA prohibition of now illegal drugs. Prohibition, as was learned during the prohibition of alcohol in the USA from 1920 to 1933, accomplishes nothing except to raise the price of a product to the point of enabling black market entrepreneurs, who are often not reluctant to eliminate their competitors with extreme prejudice.

The rates of prohibited drug use have not been materially changed through prohibition. Prohibition has made criminals of millions of otherwise law abiding folks, increased police corruption, increased the USA prison population by millions, and spawned an industry engaged in the promotion of the construction and filling of prisons. And it has created a situation where police agencies are essentially working on commission, seizing property and selling the property to further militarizing policing in the USA and the consequent increase in “Botched Paramilitary Police Raids” which have resulted in the killing and destruction of the property of innocent citizens.

The drug cartels in Mexico, Colombia, the Bahamas, and elsewhere would be put out of business in short order, and those countries returned to civil rule, if USA drug policy was changed to return the price of now illegal drugs to their true market prices.

It is perfectly permissible in the USA for one to be whacked out daily on  legal psychotropic drugs, such as Prozac, Valium, and etc., so long as one pays the doctors and pharmaceutical companies; but one goes to prison for growing marijuana in the back yard.   The policy makes no sense, unless, of course, you one of the folks enriched by it.

“In today’s globalized world, the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people. When narco-trafficking and corruption threaten democracy in Latin America, it’s America’s problem too. . .”

So exclaimed Barack Obama in a recent “foreign policy” address, necessitated in his presidential campaign, I think, by the persistent media criticism that Obama lacks foreign policy experience.

Aside from the fact that such media criticism is nothing more than obedient stenographic reproduction of Obama’s opponents’ talking points, and that only one of our last five presidents had any foreign policy experience entering office, Obama is wrong.

Obama is correct that “narco-trafficking and corruption threaten democracy in Latin America” and it is the USA prohibition of illegal drugs that enables the black market within which the narco-traffickers operate.  It is the USA drug policy and appetite for drugs that lies at the root of the narco-trafficking”. 

Legalize drugs and the narco-traffickers would be out of business almost instantly, as would the corruption inevitably associated with drug wars.  I presume that Obama, like most other politicians, understand this fact but lack the political courage to say so.

I have more than once noted that the only rational that comes to my mind as to why it is legal to be whacked out on legal psychotropic drugs and illegal to be whacked out on illegal drugs is the protection of drug manufacturer profits.

Consequently, I think the recent news that illegal drug use is down amongst teens while legal drug use is up represents a victory in the drug war.