Swine Flu Hype Does Some Good

While no one was looking yesterday, Mexican senators passed a bill decriminalizing possession of narcotics. Soon it could be legal to carry up to 5 grams each of weed and opium and small amounts of heroin, meth and cocaine. The legislation still has to go through the lower house, but yesterday's 87-in-favor vote indicates it should pass. Thanks for distracting us, swine flu!

The last time Mexico tried to pull this off, Washington freaked out and forced then-President Vicente Fox to veto the legalization bill he himself had proposed.

A World Where Pot Is Legal

Cannabis

In honor of 4/20, the unofficial holiday--of murky origins--of the American pothead, NPR does a concept piece imagining a world where marijuana has been legalized. On the pro side are a criminal defense lawyer and Willie Nelson, who says the only con he's experienced is that his "old friends who dealt it are out of work." Against the reform is a lisping El Paso cop with 20 years in narcotics who says that Mexican cartels have been forced to drop prices and increase the potency of the product that formerly made them most of their money--and that that's resulted in an uptick in emergency room visits. (Uh for what exactly? Acting stupid and craving junk food?) Another naysayer says children have easier access to weed now. (As a former high school student, that strikes me as totally absurd. Illegal drugs were way easier to come by than booze.) Whatever the pros and cons of the story, it's worth a listen. More important, it's just one of a flurry of legalization fantasies popping up in the mainstream press these days. Here's another from today's New York Times.

Hola, Obama?

President Barack Obama lands in Mexico City today for a day of talks and tours. Four months into his presidency, everyone is wondering how--or whether--his cool, academic approach will change the drug war landscape in Mexico. Will he listen to three former Latin American presidents at the George Soros-funded Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, who advocate for decriminalization of marijuana? Or will he continue along the wrong-headed path that every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter has followed?

So far, it doesn't look great. In his first online fireside chat, Obama responded to a thoughtful question about legalizing pot to create a multi-million dollar industry and bouy the flagging economy with a joke. "I don't know what that says about the online audience," he said. "The answer is no, I don't think that's a good strategy to grow our economy." Fine, maybe not. But how about as a way to cut into the profits of Mexico's drug cartels? Surely that would be more effective than the latest effort to unearth and freeze their assets in the United States.

Alma Guillermoprieto nicely lays out the issues of the day in this piece for Foreign Policy. You can hear the chorus now. It's time for new thinking on the drug war:

As U.S. President Barack Obama heads to Mexico, hoping to start a new chapter in the U.S. “war on drugs,” he must understand the limitations of the Balloon Theory. The “war on drugs” has been waged for 40 years. And while the United States invented and encouraged this costly battle, it’s been fought with Latin American blood, on Latin American soil. Simply altering, bolstering, or newly funding the old policies will do nothing. Nothing has worked. Indeed, Obama should realize that the Balloon Theory isn’t powerful enough to express the seriousness of the situation. The drug trade in the Americas is more like the HIV virus: Wherever it is present, it afflicts the body with a deadly disease.

Like a virus, too, it does not respond to conventional force -- no matter how forceful. Take, for example, the case of Colombia, the country perhaps most afflicted by drugs. There, for decades, the government has performed a parallel and coordinated attack on drug traffickers and entrenched guerilla organizations, designed to rout both. Instead, the two main groups forged an unlikely alliance.In 2000 then U.S. President Bill Clinton attempted to alleviate the situation with his $1.3 billion-dollar “Plan Colombia.” The Colombians gratefully received the funds, which have enabled the military to inflict severe damage on the guerillas. But this has done nothing to reduce the overall figures for controlled-substances exports. Indeed, in 1998, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that Colombia shipped around 600 tons of drugs. Ten years later, its output remains exactly the same.