| | |  Editorials | April 2009 
Mexico’s Drug War
 The Financial Times
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 |  | Surely it is time for a debate on whether a tightly regulated and internationally agreed decriminalisation of narcotics, along with greater effort to curb demand, is the way to destroy the financial basis of the industry. |  | | |
When the Pentagon suggested in a strategy document last year that the US should be alert to the possibility of a “rapid and sudden collapse” of Mexico as a state, it caused diplomatic heartburn.
While admitting state failure in Mexico was less likely than, say, the collapse of Pakistan, the US Joint Forces Command said Mexico’s government, politicians and judicial infrastructure were under sustained assault from drugs cartels that could trigger a descent into chaos, demanding “an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone”.
The government of President Felipe Calderón, which has launched a fierce assault on the narcotics industry, was understandably indignant. But there is no question that US demand for drugs, and the tactics adopted to deal with it, are destabilising Mexico – and have been for 25 years.
Indeed, the present problem originates in a US “victory” in the war on drugs. In 1984, then Vice-President George H.W. Bush’s South Florida Task Force succeeded in bottling up the favoured point of entry for cocaine into the US. The Colombian cartels switched to the longer Pacific seaboard, inevitably godfathering a new cocaine power in north-west Mexico. Mexican cartels were soon buying politicians and policemen, generals and judges.
Mr Calderón’s offensive, designed to end this mafia impunity and seize back control, is a bloody and uphill battle; around 10,000 people have been killed over the past two years. As Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, acknowledged on a visit to Mexico last month, it is not just America’s “insatiable demand for illegal drugs” that is doing the damage, but licensed US gun dealers. They help keep Mexico’s narco-gangs better armed than its army and security services, while the US Congress is cutting back funding that would help redress the balance.
Mexico needs and has the right to expect fuller US co-operation. Both countries need to take down the ultra-violent drugs mafias. The problem is that the economics of illicit drugs ensure new criminal gangs emerge to take their place.
US drugs policy is asymmetrical in its effects on supply and demand. It has led ineluctably to the growth and spread of narcotics production. It subverts the laws of the market by putting a floor price under the product. Interdiction and eradication – especially when successful – provide narcotics with great price resilience. Disruption of supply lifts profits and recapitalises the chains of production and distribution – increasing and diversifying supply in the next phase of the cycle.
Surely it is time for a debate on whether a tightly regulated and internationally agreed decriminalisation of narcotics, along with greater effort to curb demand, is the way to destroy the financial basis of the industry – and take it out of the hands of organised crime. |
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