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How to stop the drug wars
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Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 4:05 pm Post subject:

Free World wrote:

Fox wrote:

TexasPete wrote:

Two--what happens to the drug dealers who suddenly don't have "jobs"? If the stuff they peddle is made legal, regulated and taxed like tobacco or alcohol then what do these people who never made a "legitimate" dollar before do?

Some will move on to selling other illegal substances (e.g. prescription medication), some will move on to other criminal ventures, some will find other sources of menial labor (yes, selling drugs on the street is menial labor) to partake in. It's not as if street drug vendors are otherwise upstanding individuals who just happen to sell drugs; the bulk of the ones that rely on the pathetic wages of street pushing to get by are generally going to be committing other criminal acts all ready. So, worst case scenario, you have just as many criminals as before. Best case, you have fewer as some of them end up finding legitimate employment. You can only win.

You can only win? Are you kidding me?

If you were criminal making $1000 / day selling drugs and lost your job would you
a) rob a bank
b) break into houses
c) find a minimum wage "menial labour" job.
d) steal cars

First of all, the vast, overwhelming majority of drug pushers make no where near $1000 a day selling drugs. Drug dealing is not some sort of glamorous rock star profession; most people involved in it make purely menial wages. Only the ones quite high up in the heirarchy make money like you're describing, and those individuals are both a very tiny minority and the ones most likely to be involved in other illegal goods anyway (prescription medication, stolen goods, etc), meaning they won't suddenly be destitute and desparate like you seem to think.

Any street-level drug dealer comfortable with doing things like a, b, or d almost assuredly all ready is, and likely doing even worse things from time to time. Hell, I've talked to some about it; my brother, unfortunately, has been a part of such circles for a pretty long time now. Violence is common, breaking and entering is immensely common, mugging-based theft is common. Car theft and bank robberies are sporatic, but that's the nature of those crimes; anyone who robs banks frequently is going to get caught sooner rather than later.

Some will maintain their criminal lifestyle. Some others won't. The former are generally all ready committing other crimes anyway.

The idea that we should keep drugs legal to keep current criminals from becoming worse criminals is more than questionable. Anyone likely to transition into a worse sort of criminal because they were so dependent on drug sales to get by and suddenly have no other choice is either all ready or soon will be that worse sort of criminal anyway. The menial wages street pushers get aren't enough on their own to afford any sort of comfortable lifestyle that is suddenly going to be lost, causing them to spiral into "other crime" like you describe.

If we legalize drugs, we can only win. We don't produce MORE criminals, only fewer or, at worst, the same number. I'm not at all worried about those "out of work" drug dealers suddenly breaking into my house. If that was their inclination, they probably all ready are willing to.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 4:16 pm Post subject:

Free World wrote:

Fox wrote:

We could really solve our nation's shoplifting problem by executing shoplifters too. Most crimes -- in my opinion, actually, all crimes -- are not worth taking someone's life for. I'd like to think that understanding is one of the positive, humane features of our nation.

Which nation? If you come from a country with capital punishment then you don't really have that understanding.

First of all, my home state is Wisconsin, which does not have the death penalty. That's one of the reasons I maintain residence there, I'm very happy with that.

That said, yes, some American states do have capital punishment. Which is why I said the understanding held by our nation is that "Most crimes are not worth taking someone's life for," and merely qualified that in my opinion the same was true for all crimes.

There are only a tiny handful of crimes that you can be killed for anywhere in the United States, and in many places in the States, you can't be killed at all. There was even a federal law enacted against the death penalty in 1972, but the Supreme Court unfortunately overturned it a few years later.

Free World

Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Drake Hotel

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:40 pm Post subject:

Kuros wrote:

Free World wrote:

Fox wrote:

Which nation? If you come from a country with capital punishment then you don't really have that understanding.

Its decided state by state, you Commonwealth ignoramus.

No shit. He is the one who said nation.

Free World

Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Drake Hotel

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:56 pm Post subject:

Fox wrote:

Free World wrote:

Fox wrote:

TexasPete wrote:

I still think you are living in a dream world.

The guys who make the most money trafficking would be the ones most likely to be involved in other illegal goods anyway (prescription medication, stolen goods, etc)??? If they were making good money with drugs why would they bother stealing? Logic would say the lower level guys who can't make enough slingling drugs would be more likely to break other laws.

I agree that the street level pushers are not making a lot of money. However, the shitrats that are making fortunes in the drug trade are much more plentiful than "a very tiny minority".

Legal drugs = easier access = more people experimenting = more addicts. This does not equal "you can only win".

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 6:22 pm Post subject:

Free World wrote:

I still think you are living in a dream world.

You're welcome to your opinion.

Free World wrote:

The guys who make the most money trafficking would be the ones most likely to be involved in other illegal goods anyway (prescription medication, stolen goods, etc)??? If they were making good money with drugs why would they bother stealing? Logic would say the lower level guys who can't make enough slingling drugs would be more likely to break other laws.

Who said they were stealing? I said they were more likely to be involved in other illegal goods, such as prescription medication and stolen goods. Generally, that involves selling such goods, not necessarily directly procuring them for themselves via personal theft; they have menial criminals to do that, just like they have menial criminals to sell their drugs for them. Often, they're the same menial criminals doing both.

My kid brother's 3 main suppliers all also sell, in addition to drugs:
-Prescription medicine.
-Stolen electronics.
-Stolen furniture.
-Illegal weapons.
-Stolen auto-parts.

and possibly other things as well. By your logic, why would they ever do this? They make money off of drugs, why would they do anything else? None the less, in reality, it happens. If their illegal drug revenue suddenly vanished, they wouldn't suddenly have no income of which to speak, because they're all ready involved in other things as well. Once you're connected enough to make any sort of decent money with drugs, it's very easy to also make decent money with other illegal goods.

Free World wrote:

I agree that the street level pushers are not making a lot of money. However, the shitrats that are making fortunes in the drug trade are much more plentiful than "a very tiny minority".

What percentage of people involved in some way with drug sales do you feel make over $1000 a day, such that it's not a tiny minority?

Free World wrote:

Legal drugs = easier access = more people experimenting = more addicts. This does not equal "you can only win".

Legal alcohol = easier access = more people drinking = more alcoholics.

Legal cigarettes = easier access = more people smoking = more smoking addicts with cancer.

Legal fatty food = easier access = more people eating unhealthily = more obese people.

This argument for the illegality of drugs is just as bad as it would be if you tried to apply it to alcohol, cigarettes, unhealthy food, or anything else of that nature. Laws designed to protect people from themselves are ridiculous and demeaning, and the removal of such a law is a victory for dignity if nothing else.

Beyond the fact that on principal I find your argument questionable, I don't think it's necessarily accurate. Yes, legal drugs would mean easier access, but legal drugs also automatically removes an entire level of stigma associated with being an addict, as if nothing else an addict is no longer a criminal. This makes the creation and application of treatment programs easier and associates less stigma with them, and because legal drugs will raise revenue via taxation, such programs would be much easier to fund as well.

Free World

Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Drake Hotel

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 4:13 pm Post subject:

Fox wrote:

I couldn't agree more.

How many problems does alcohol cause?
How many problems does cigarette smoking cause?
How many problems does obesity cause?

TECO

Joined: 20 Jan 2003

Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 11:38 am Post subject:

Vancouver has a really bad gang war going on right now. Not sure how many gangs there are but they are killing each other weekly in shoot outs downtown and in parking lots, etc. 2 men were shot to death in Abbotsford (outside of Vancouver) today. In Vancouver, it's a weekly occurrence with gun battles and murders. The police and Government have lost control of the situation and some innocent citizens have been hit and killed with bullets.

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 8:11 pm Post subject:

Another prominent voice rejects the horrors of the drug war:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e0234460-277d-11de-9b77-00144feabdc0.html

Quote:

How much misery can a policy cause before it is acknowledged as a failure and reversed? The US �war on drugs� suggests there is no upper limit. The country�s implacable blend of prohibition and punitive criminal justice is wrong-headed in every way: immoral in principle, since it prosecutes victimless crimes, and in practice a disaster of remarkable proportions. Yet for a US politician to suggest wholesale reform of this brainless regime is still seen as an act of reckless self-harm.

Even a casual observer can see that much of the damage done in the US by illegal drugs is a result of the fact that they are illegal, not the fact that they are drugs. Vastly more lives are blighted by the brutality of prohibition, and by the enormous criminal networks it has created, than by the substances themselves. This is true of cocaine and heroin as well as of soft drugs such as marijuana. But the assault on consumption of marijuana sets the standard for the policy�s stupidity.

Nearly half of all Americans say they have tried marijuana. That makes them criminals in the eyes of the law. Luckily, not all of them have been found out � but when one is grateful that most law-breakers go undetected, there is something wrong with the law.

Harvard�s Jeffrey Miron published a study denouncing drug prohibition in 2004*. He noted that more than 300,000 people were then in US prisons for violations of the law on drugs � more than the number incarcerated for all crimes in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined. Today the number is higher � according to some estimates, nearly 500,000. The far larger number of people who have been convicted, at any point, of a drugs offence face permanently impaired employment prospects and all manner of other setbacks: in the US, once a criminal always a criminal.

Strict enforcement, Mr Miron explained, has reduced drug use only modestly � supposing for the moment that this is even a legitimate objective. The collateral damage is of a different order altogether. Violence related to drug crimes has surged in Mexico and in US cities close to the border, giving rise to renewed interest in the topic. Thousands are thought to have been killed by criminal gangs competing for the trade.

Many users also die because of tainted drugs, or because they share needles � consequences again of prohibition. There is an obvious national security dimension as well: in countries such as Colombia and Afghanistan, the huge surplus derived from prohibition supports terrorists.

The consequences of prohibition corrupt governments everywhere, and the US is no exception. Since a drug transaction has no victims in the ordinary sense, witnesses to assist a prosecution are in short supply. US drug-law enforcement tends to infringe civil liberties, relying on warrantless searches, entrapment, extorted testimony in the form of plea bargains, and so forth. Predictably, in the US the hammer of the law on drugs falls with far greater force on black people: whites do most of the using, blacks do most of the time.

Few policies manage to fail so comprehensively, and what makes it all the odder is that the US has seen it all before. Everybody understands that alcohol prohibition in the 1920s suffered from many of the same pathologies � albeit on a smaller scale � and was eventually abandoned.

The present treatment of alcohol, which is to regulate and tax the product, is the right approach for today�s illegal drugs. One could expect some increase in the use of the drugs in question, but also an enormous net reduction in the harms that they and the attempt to prohibit them cause. Adding the direct costs of prohibition (police and prisons) to the taxes forgone by the present system, the US could also expect a fiscal benefit of about $100bn (�75.7bn, �68.2bn) a year.

Is an outbreak of common sense on this subject likely? Unfortunately, no. Only the most daring politicians seem willing to think about it seriously. One such is James Webb, a refreshingly unpredictable Democratic senator for Virginia, who has called for a commission to examine the criminal justice system and the law on drugs. Politicians such as Mr Webb are very much the exception.

Elsewhere, signs of movement are minimal. Barack Obama has admitted that as a young man he used not only marijuana � and, unlike Bill Clinton, he inhaled; the whole point was to inhale, he joked � but also cocaine. This might suggest the president has an open mind on the subject. And in a departure from the previous administration, his attorney-general has said he will not bring federal prosecutions against the medical use of marijuana in states that allow it. But then at a recent event Mr Obama ran away from a question about the broader decriminalisation of marijuana under cover of a wisecrack.

For now, outright legalisation of marijuana, let alone harder drugs, is difficult to imagine. Even gradual decriminalisation � a policy that maintains prohibition but removes it from the scope of the criminal law � seems unlikely, though perhaps not unthinkable. A new study by Glenn Greenwald, a writer and civil rights lawyer, looks at Portugal�s policy of decriminalisation**. He judges it a success: �While drug addiction, usage, and associated pathologies continue to skyrocket in many European Union states, those problems � in virtually every relevant category � have been either contained or measurably improved within Portugal since 2001.�

Somebody in the White House should take a look. This national calamity is no laughing matter.

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:12 am Post subject:

John Stossel:

Quote:

Prohibition Spawns Drug Violence

Visiting Mexico last week, President Obama said he will fight drug violence: "I will not pretend that this is Mexico's responsibility alone. The demand for these drugs inside the United States is keeping these cartels in business" (http://tinyurl.com/d4kjto).

I don't expect politicians to be sticklers for logic, but this is ridiculous. Americans also have a hefty demand for Mexican beer, but there are no "Mexican beer cartels." When Obama visits France, he doesn't consult with politicians about "wine violence." What's happening on the Mexican border is prohibition-caused violence.

A legal product is produced and traded openly, and is therefore subject to competition and civilizing custom. If two beer distributors have a disagreement or if a liquor retailer fails to pay his wholesaler, the wronged parties can go to court. There's no need to take matters violently into their own hands. As a result, in legal industries the ability to commit mayhem is not a valued skill.

On the other hand, dealers in a prohibited product operate in the black market. Upstanding businesspeople stay away, relinquishing the trade to those without moral scruples. Black-market operators can't resolve disputes in court, so being good at using force provides a competitive advantage.

Politicians gave us prohibition and created the conditions in which violence pays. This doesn't excuse those who commit it, but the fact remains that a legal drug market would be as peaceful as the beer, wine and whiskey markets. When alcohol prohibition, which spawned large-scale organized crime, ended in 1933, there was a brief upsurge in drinking, but America became a more peaceful and less corrupt place.

We should learn from that, but we haven't. American politicians are largely responsible for the atrocities now taking place.

That's not what they want to hear, of course, so they blame others. Their "solution" to increasing violence is to crack down even more on production and distribution of some drugs. This has never worked before, and it won't work now.
Black-market profits are abnormally high because of the risk premiums and limited competition, so plenty of people will want to enter the business. Wipe out one cartel, and another is waiting to take its place. The high profit margins leave plenty of cash to bribe judges, cops and border guards. Even in America.

When American politicians scapegoat drug consumers, they bring the court system to a standstill and clog prisons with nonviolent offenders who are stigmatized for life. Minorities bear the brunt of any crackdown.

When will we learn that prohibition doesn't banish a popular product? It merely turns the trade over to thugs. The result is worse for society than if drugs were legal. After decades of the "war on drugs," anyone can still buy most any drug he wishes. Authorities can't even keep drugs out of prisons.

Another aspect of this issue has been overlooked, especially by conservative supporters of the drug war: President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have promised the Mexican government they will stop the southern flow of American guns said to be used by the drug cartels. A war on drugs inevitably becomes a war on guns. Yet conservative Second Amendment advocates refuse to see the connection.

Obama's drug warriors are happy to link the issues. The president says, "More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border, and that's why we're ramping up the number of law enforcement personnel on our border" (http://tinyurl.com/dk7hh3).

That 90 percent figure has been repeated many times, but FactCheck.org says it's bogus:

"The figure represents only the percentage of crime guns that have been submitted by Mexican officials and traced by U.S. officials. ... U.S. and Mexican officials both say that Mexico recovers more guns than it submits for tracing ... " (http://tinyurl.com/c6zbcz).

And FactCheck says Mexico only submits those it already has reason to believe came from the United States.

Once again the politicians show contempt for the truth as well as for freedom.

http://www.creators.com/opinion/john-stossel/prohibition-spawns-drug-violence.html

Bill Moyers interviews David Simon, creator of The Wire:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/watch.html

It is an excellent interview.

loggerhead007

Joined: 22 Mar 2009

Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:07 pm Post subject:

I don't know why my opinion was yanked but as I said, make all drugs legal. Give junkies heroin by the bucketfull. The problem will solve itself. Thin the herd man, thin the herd. How many old junkies do YOU know?

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 8:41 am Post subject:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/16/AR2009081601758.html

Quote:

It's Time to Legalize Drugs

When it makes sense to deal drugs in public, a neighborhood becomes home to drug violence. For a low-level drug dealer, working the street means more money and fewer economic risks. If police come, and they will, some young kid will be left holding the bag while the dealer walks around the block. But if the dealer sells inside, one raid, by either police or robbers, can put him out of business for good. Only those virtually immune from arrests (much less imprisonment) -- college students, the wealthy and those who never buy or sell from strangers -- can deal indoors.

Drug users generally aren't violent. Most simply want to be left alone to enjoy their high. It's the corner slinger who terrifies neighbors and invites rivals to attack. Public drug dealing creates an environment where disputes about money or respect are settled with guns.

In high-crime areas, police spend much of their time answering drug-related calls for service, clearing dealers off corners, responding to shootings and homicides, and making lots of drug-related arrests.

Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies -- and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men -- have we and other police officers begun to question the system.

Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where, when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn't work perfectly, but it works well enough. Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration. Regulating drugs would work similarly: not a cure-all, but a vast improvement on the status quo.

Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.

Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.

We simply urge the federal government to retreat. Let cities and states (and, while we're at it, other countries) decide their own drug policies. Many would continue prohibition, but some would try something new. California and its medical marijuana dispensaries provide a good working example, warts and all, that legalized drug distribution does not cause the sky to fall.

Having fought the war on drugs, we know that ending the drug war is the right thing to do -- for all of us, especially taxpayers. While the financial benefits of drug legalization are not our main concern, they are substantial. In a July referendum, Oakland, Calif., voted to tax drug sales by a 4-to-1 margin. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that ending the drug war would save $44 billion annually, with taxes bringing in an additional $33 billion.

Without the drug war, America's most decimated neighborhoods would have a chance to recover. Working people could sit on stoops, misguided youths wouldn't look up to criminals as role models, our overflowing prisons could hold real criminals, and -- most important to us -- more police officers wouldn't have to die.

Peter Moskos is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of "Cop in the Hood." Neill Franklin is a 32-year law enforcement veteran. Both served as Baltimore City police officers and are members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

I think the trend of thought on this issue is changing but I'm sure that I'll still be reading about how we can end the war on drugs in 40 years.

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 9:47 am Post subject:

http://www.theagitator.com/2009/08/19/man-gets-three-months-for-possession-of-breath-mints/

ontheway

Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 10:02 am Post subject:

It is quite likely that drug prohibition has greatly increased the usage of drugs and that legalization would result in less use. The history of alcohol prohibition should be instructive, although no guarantee of the same result with today's drugs. During Prohibition, alcohol consumption doubled from what it had been prior to Prohibition. Production of illegal alcohol jumped to 5 times the level prior to imposition of alcohol prohibition. After repeal, there was a temporary increase in consumption as people celebrated re-legalization. However, since that time, there has been a steady year to year reduction in the per capita level of alcohol consumption in the US. The war on drugs also kills many times more innocent people annualy than the drugs themselves. We can expect murder and robberies to drop by more than half if we re-legalize all drugs. Remember that all drugs were legal at one time. Coca cola was an alcohol free cocaine drink that is still legally made with imported leaves from the coca plant. Cocaine, heroin and other now illegal drugs were widely available with far fewer social problems that we have today. So, who loses if we re-legalize drugs: The drug kingpins will lose the source of their billions. Of course, they can become politicians ala the Kennedy alcohol cartel family. Organized crime will have less money and power. The government will be the biggest loser and have to give up a great deal of power and money and the ability to harass, arrest, frame and imprison the innocent.

bacasper

Joined: 26 Mar 2007

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 9:59 pm Post subject:

ontheway wrote:

It is quite likely that drug prohibition has greatly increased the usage of drugs and that legalization would result in less use.

This is similar to the argument NYU Law Professor Amy Adler makes regarding kiddy porn in her Columbia Law Review article, "The Perverse Law of Child Pornography."

Quote:

So, who loses if we re-legalize drugs:

The drug kingpins will lose the source of their billions. Of course, they can become politicians ala the Kennedy alcohol cartel family.
Organized crime will have less money and power.
The government will be the biggest loser and have to give up a great deal of power and money and the ability to harass, arrest, frame and imprison the innocent.

So then there is no downside.

This highlights that the drug war is maintained by a collusion between drug kingpins, the mafia, and law enforcement.

Pluto

Joined: 19 Dec 2006

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 6:34 am Post subject:

Mary Anastasia O'Grady: Mexico's Hopeless Drug War (WSJ)

Quote:

Mexico announced recently that it will decriminalize the possession of "small amounts of drugs"�marijuana, cocaine, LSD, methamphetamines, heroin and opium�"for personal use." Individuals who are caught by law enforcement with quantities below established thresholds will no longer face criminal prosecution. A person apprehended three times with amounts below the minimum, though, will face mandatory treatment.

For the government of President Felipe Calder�n, which has spent the last three years locked in mortal combat with narcotrafficking cartels, this seems counterproductive. Is the government effectively surrendering to the realities of the market for mind-altering substances? Or could it be that the new policy is only a tactical shift by drug warriors still wedded to the quixotic belief that they can take out suppliers?

The answer is that it is a bit of both. But neither matters. Mexico's big problem�for that matter the most pressing security issue throughout the hemisphere�is organized crime's growth and expanded power, fed by drug profits. Mr. Calder�n's new policy is unlikely to solve anything in that department.

The reason is simple: Prohibition and demand make otherwise worthless weeds valuable. Where they really get valuable is in crossing the U.S. border. If U.S. demand is robust, then producers, traffickers and retailers get rich by satisfying it.

Mexican consumers will now have less fear of penalties and, increasingly in the case of marijuana, that's true in the U.S. as well. But trafficking will remain illegal, and to get their products past law enforcement the criminals will still have an enormous incentive to bribe or to kill. Decriminalization will not take the money out of the business and therefore will not reduce corruption, cartel intimidation aimed at democratic-government authority, or the terror heaped on local populations by drug lords.

Nevertheless, Mexico's attempt to question the status quo in drug policy deserves praise. Unlike American drug warriors, Mexico at least acknowledges that it is insane to repeat the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome.

Because so many Americans like to snort cocaine, that business has flourished over four decades. Most of the traffic once went through the Caribbean, but a crackdown on the sea routes caused suppliers to shift to paths over land through Central America and Mexico. In just two decades Mexican drug capos took over the industry, adding other drugs to their product lines. By paying their employees in kind rather than in cash, they also grew the business at home; lower-level "mules" have to push locally to turn their salary into money. Now Latins have become consumers. In other words, demand and prohibition up north have poisoned the entire region.

As their revenues exploded, the drug lords took over large swaths of Mexican territory. Government officials who couldn't be bought with silver were eliminated with lead. When Mr. Calder�n took office in December 2006, he pledged to restore order. By all accounts his "war" is being waged on the belief that a free society cannot be held hostage by organized crime, not on the belief that supply can be defeated. Mexico seeks to raise the cost of trafficking so that the flows go elsewhere.

Almost 1,150 law enforcement agents and military have been murdered in the last three years in this war. Having staked his presidency on restoring Mexico's rule of law, Mr. Calder�n has had an incentive to claim that his blitz is working. And there is no doubt that it has had an effect. Wherever the army has moved in, extreme lawlessness has subsided. Thousands of criminals have been killed, either by law enforcement or by rival gangs who now fight over shrinking turf. Drug shipments have been confiscated, traditional supply lines for imported chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamines have been disrupted, and corrupt officials have been outed.

Yet the war rages on. Dead capos are replaced, new supply lines for making meth�most recently discovered coming from Argentina�crop up, and corruption persists. The racketeers kidnap, rob and trade in weapons. They are also innovators. Semi-submersibles are now used to move drugs by sea.

By decriminalizing consumption, Mexico is admitting that things are not getting better. It says its hope is to concentrate limited resources in going after producers, traffickers and retail distributors. According to the Mexican Embassy in Washington, another goal is to end the corruption that comes from the "free interpretation of what constitutes 'retail drug-dealing.'" The aim is to reduce police graft while going after big fish, not little ones.

The war on supply is a failure, something any first-year economics student could have predicted. But this plan is unlikely to reverse the situation. It is demand north of the border that is the primary driver of organized-crime terror. And that shows no signs of abating.

The Drug War has made otherwise worthless plants and weeds extremely valuable. Also, by chasing the market underground, it has made the competition for such plants and weeds extremely violent. If you want to end the graft and violence, end the drug war.

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