“IF U.S. LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES WERE LOSING THEIR FINEST AT SUCH A RATE, YOU CAN BET AMERICANS WOULD GIVE GREATER THOUGHT TO THE VIOLENCE GENERATED BY HIGH DEMAND AND PROHIBITION. OUR FRIENDS IN MEXICO DESERVE EQUAL CONSIDERATION.”

THE U.S. ROLE IN A MEXICO ASSASSINATION

By MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY
The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2008

Stories of campus drug use in the U.S. are so common that last week’s
arrest of 75 alleged dealers at San Diego State University was shocking
chiefly due to the number netted. The occasional big bust aside, the long
running drug war has become almost background noise. At least in this
country.

American nonchalance about drug use stands in sharp contrast to what is
happening across the border in Mexico. There lawmen are taking heavy
casualties in a showdown with drug-running crime syndicates. On Thursday
the chief of the Mexican federal police, Edgar Millán Gómez, was
assassinated by men waiting for him when he came home, becoming the latest
and most prominent victim of the syndicates.

What the activities of the San Diego students demonstrate is that here in
the land of demand, the “war” isn’t taken nearly as seriously as in the
land of supply. The Associated Press reported that when undercover agents
decided to investigate drug dealing on the San Diego campus, they were
surprised at how easy it was to “infiltrate” the crime ring. All they had
to do was to reflect interest in a given substance and suppliers appeared.

The transactions at the university went on “in front of dorms, in parking
lots or behind frat houses, sometimes in broad daylight in full view of
surveillance cameras,” the AP reported.

It’s no secret that the narcotics trade is like a roach infestation. If
you see one shipment or dealer, you can be sure that there are many others
that go undetected. That’s why such brazen behavior at the university
should be disturbing to America’s drug warriors. The signs of an
infestation are everywhere, making a joke of their 40-year claim that any
day now they will wipe out American drug use.

Yet if prohibitionists should find this lack of results troubling, imagine
how Mexico must view it. That country doesn’t even produce cocaine, but it
became a transit route to the U.S. when enforcers had some success in
curtailing supplies coming through the Caribbean in the late 1990s.

That success didn’t change the U.S. appetite for the mind-altering
substances. Instead, drugs started flowing over land routes and Mexican
cartels took charge. Now they are rumored to be in control of most of the
traffic from the Andes northward. They are also suppliers of marijuana and
synthetic drugs. Prohibition puts value in their product, because customers
at places like San Diego State are willing to pay the premium that
illegality exacts. A U.S.-Mexican joint assessment estimates that more than
$10 billion in cash from drug sales flow from the U.S. to Mexico every
year.

The upshot: Americans underwrite Mexico’s vicious organized crime
syndicates. The gringos get their drugs and the Mexican mafia gets weapons,
technology and the means to buy off or intimidate anyone who gets in their
way. Caught in the middle is a poor country striving to develop sound
institutions for law enforcement.

The trouble for Mexico is that, even if it understands that U.S. demand is
not going away, it cannot afford to cede large swaths of the country to the
drug cartels. Thus Mexican President Felipe Calderón has made confronting
organized crime a priority since taking office in December 2006. His
attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, told me in February that the goal is
to reclaim the state’s authority where it has been lost to the mafias.

But after 17 months of engagement, while San Diego students party on,
victory remains elusive and the Mexican death toll is mounting. Most of the
drug-related killings since Mr. Calderón took office seem to be a result
of battles between rival cartels. Still, the escalating violence is
troubling. The official death toll attributable to organized crime since
the Calderón crackdown began now stands at 3,995. Of that, 1,170 have died
this year.

Especially alarming are the number of assassinations among military
personnel and municipal, state and federal police officers. The total is
439 for the 17 months and 109 so far this year. Many of these victims have
been ordinary police officers whose refusal to be bought off or back off
cost them their lives.

But as the murder of police chief Millan makes clear, high rank offers no
safety. Two weeks before he was gunned down, Roberto Velasco, the head of
the organized crime division of the federal police, was shot in the head.
The assailants took his car, which leaves open the possibility that it was
a random event, but most Mexicans are not buying that theory. Eleven
federal law enforcement agents have been killed in ambushes and executions
in the last four weeks alone.

If U.S. law enforcement agencies were losing their finest at such a rate,
you can bet Americans would give greater thought to the violence generated
by high demand and prohibition. Our friends in Mexico deserve equal
consideration.