The perverse nature of our ‘War’ on Drugs was never more evident than in this Wall Street Journal article. A few choice quotes: [Read more →]

After reading this article, it seems as if legalization is the only solution to Mexico’s drug problem. Countries without strong independent judiciaries and relatively non-corrupt public institutions don’t have the luxury of outlawing drugs.

…everything is scarier, more urgent.  Like this swine flu epidemic.  I’m really nervous about this, especially living in Arizona.  Roque – keep healthy down in Mexico, man…. (you are in Mexico, right?)

While I’m largely of the same mind as Freddie on the subject of drug legalization, which may indeed be the best way to defeat the cartels and avoid the sort of civil war (a la Anbar Awakening) that Chris warns of, I do have some concerns about the implementation. Freddie’s concern over the militarization of the police, and the use of the military as a police-force, is not even hypothetical anymore, as the National Guard has indeed been called to the borders, and Democrats and Republicans alike have called for increased use of the military to help stop up leaky borders, fight increasingly powerful drug cartels, and so forth.

However, I do wonder two things: First, is a call for the legalization of drugs en masse really politically pragmatic?  Obviously pragmatism is not the only consideration, but is this option even remotely likely to succeed?  And second, is there not a more conservative, cautious approach that could be taken?

I am not completely sold on the idea that legalization of all drugs is even necessary to cut the cartels off at the knees, or to free up sufficient resources to actually make a decent effort at halting much of the drug trade.  Marijuana, for instance, accounts for the vast majority of all drug-related arrests, and the legalization of marijuana only would free up a great deal of money, prison space, as well as add a steady stream of tax revenue on marijuana sales to supplement the effort against harder, more dangerous substances.

A third consideration is whether or not we, as a nation, could condone the legal sale of a drug such as crystal methamphetamine.  If the free market did, indeed, step in to provide meth for purposes of recreational use, could we as a society reconcile the sale of such a destructive substance with our ethical and moral framework?

The argument could be made that similar questions could revolve around the sale of alcohol, also arguably a very dangerous substance–indeed, quite a lot more dangerous than marijuana, and responsible for far more deaths.  Still, alcohol can be used in moderation, and when a clerk at a grocery store sells a six-pack to a shopper, they don’t necessarily worry that that person is going to go out and get wasted and overdose.  Could the same clerk exchange meth or heroin for money and do so with a clean conscience?  This is due in part to our long history as an alcohol-consuming society, and partly due to the fact that alcohol can indeed be used responsibly.  The same simply cannot be said for drugs like heroin or crack or crystal meth.

This is a major stumbling block in the War to End the War on Drugs, and inevitably circles into the region of pragmatism vs. principle.  Even if we knew, conclusively, that legalizing these substances would end the militarization of our police, destroy the cartels, and free a good number of non-violent offenders, could we reconcile that with consequences of societal acceptance of the sale of these substances?

I do believe it’s time to stop treating drug users, no matter the substance, as criminals.  But I have yet to be convinced that legalizing the hardest of our illegal drugs will serve to make this nation any safer, healthier, or prevent people from destroying their lives with poisons that simply have no place in any society.

C. Augustin Dierkes post on the Mexican drug war to me highlighted one of the many downsides to the drug war, one which happens to be among the more distressing changes in American life from the past century: the increasing use of the American military in civilian contexts and settings.

The point of using the war analogy in the war on drugs is to demonstrate that, when it comes to the fight against the trafficking of illegal drugs, “the gloves are off” and all equipment and tactics are on the table. And, while I echo many others in finding a great deal of empty rhetoric in the war on drugs terminology, it is true that the last several decades of American efforts at eliminating drug use has seen the introduction of weaponry and tactics previously unheard of in crime prevention. What’s more, the American military and intelligence apparati have been used regularly to limit the inflow of drugs into the United States, since the great Reaganite expansion of the drug war. The fact that our standard metrics for determining the efficacy of our drug prohibition has shown no consistent or meaningful reduction in the use of illegal drugs would be enough to question this use of military personnel in the drug war. But there are legitimate reasons to oppose this militarization independent of effect.

The founding politicians of our country had a disdain for standing armies that would have them relegated to the status of lunatic peaceniks today. But distrust of standing armies, and the uses of military personnel and equipment on domestic soil, has justifications that have nothing to do with pacifism. The American revolutionaries had seen first hand the chilling effects of military garrisons among domestic populations. We of course have military bases dotted around the United States, but in my experience the military takes pains not to have too obvious a footprint in local communities. More importantly, they don’t have military personnel deployed in official capacity within the population, unlike, say, the British redcoats stationed in American population centers before the revolution. But I’ve noticed in recent years a trend upward in the use of the National Guard, a military organization, on domestic soil– not just in assisting in the war on drugs but in providing security for events deemed high profile targets, such as today’s Inauguration, during which time we’ve seen packs of National Guardsmen wandering around. During Katrina, of course, we talked endlessly about why it took so long for the National Guard to be deployed to help. While I do support the use of the National Guard in that level of emergency, I think we need to take great care when deciding to deploy them.

My fear is that many Americans seem not to understand that the use of military personnel for crime prevention and domestic security, whether fighting against Colombian cartels (directly or by proxy) or providing security at a political event, is a major change from the traditional distrust of the military that has long been a part of the American character. This could, over time, lead to a gradual normalization of the projection of American military power within our borders, a change that I don’t think helps anyone, no matter which party is in power.

At worst, this sort of domestic use of military power can have consequences similar to the one Dierkes describes– a situation that really does deserve the appelation war. You might say that the cartels in Mexico have forced the hand of the Mexican government in provoking a military response. But as Dierkes mentions, the military does a pretty poor job of performing the central mission of any police force, which is balancing enforcement of the law with respect for individual rights and limits on police power. And there can’t help but be a kind of cycle of escalation when more and more military grade hardware is brought onto the scene. Civil rights will inevitably be eroded in this kind of action; the question is whether that tradeoff will actually bring with it the sought increases in security and law enforcement. I don’t know how best to solve the problems in this growing war between the Mexican government and cartels, but I am largely persuaded that drug legalization is the only long-term method to undercut the economic power of the cartels and handicap their ability to wage war.

My namesake, the great detective C. Auguste Dupin, who was himself an extraordinary gentlemen (I a member of the ordinary type) deployed a process termed “ratiocination”. It involved among other things Dupin’s remarkable ability to enter into the mind of the criminal he was investigating.  To imagine the world from the perspective of the criminal.

On that note….a look into the rampant criminality and increasing chaos-violence in Mexico.  This BBC story tells us of mass arrest of 21 police in Tijuana, accused of being in cahoots with criminal drug cartels.

The rise of the narco-insurgency in Mexico has yet to gain a great deal of press in the US but according to outgoing CIA Dir. Michael Hayden, it way be a bigger problem for Pres. Obama than the Iraqi insurgency.

Since local police throughout the country are on the payroll of the cartels, the government has had to initiate the use of federal police, aka militarized police.  As in Brazil, they are attempting to deploy a modified form of counterinsurgency (COIN) along the lines laid out by Gen. Petraeus & others in the New Army COIN manual.  The problem is that the militarized war model of policing can cause just as many problems, and be just as brutal (these police-military groups are often accused of political rights violations), as the drug lords themselves.

[Little remembered US prez election sidenote:  John McCain argued that US police forces in US ghettos should themselves employ (deploy?) COIN model.  It didn't get much play in the midst of so much else, but that kinda freaked me out.  When police become militarized, then tend not to worry about little things like warrants.]

In the latest twist to this macabre mexican tale, vigilante groups may now be  appearing targeting the drug criminals.  Criminal gangs have been fighting each other as well as government forces for years now.  But these new potentially irregular non-state sponsored and businessmen-financed/backed militias/vigilante groups may it sound indeed more and more like Iraq.

These various gangs can often be seriously weakened but only with the creation of an indigenous militia force (a la The Anbar Awakening).   However for the government to pay off such groups and admit to their legitimacy (and give up on their own military proxy police as the primary fighters) is a loss of authority and prestige to the state.  It potentially de-centralizes power and breaks the state’s monopoly on the means of (legitimate) violence in the country.  The state appears to lose face either way–whether the vigilantes or the narcos win out.

Almost 6,000 people were killed last year in the Mexican Drug War, which is more than the entire amount of US soldiers killed in the (2nd) Iraq War to date.  It’s basically equivalent to all US military deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan.