With Drug War on Its Knees, It's High Time to Admit Prohibition Has Not Worked Carlos Sabino - PanAm Post
go to original July 21, 2015

Crime Novelist of 'The Cartel' Calls for End to Futile War on Drugs (PBS NewsHour)

Ten years ago, Mexico launched a “war on drugs” with the goal of eliminating illegal trafficking heading north toward the United States. The term “war” is fitting, since the strategy has resulted in some 200,000 casualties, tens of thousands of prisoners, and the killing, detention, or extradition of several cartel leaders to the United States.

Nevertheless, the war is being lost, not won.

These criminal groups always find a way to survive any blow to their organizations. They may be forced to regroup, spread out, and fight among themselves, but in the end are able to retain their lucrative business. Like a hydra with 100 heads, new bosses replace those who are forced out of the scene. Their immense financial wealth allow them to buy officials at every level, and threaten and punish those who oppose them.

Paramilitary groups have sprung up to fight the cartels since the government is unable to do so, creating a conflict that the state is unable to fully control. The result of this drug war has been a deplorable increase in corruption, a demoralized nation, and a climate of violence and insecurity which further hinders progress for the Mexican people.

The real issue for this country is that it has committed to a war that cannot be won. As long as there is a thriving consumer market, and there is demand for what they supply, cartels will maintain their insurmountable power. Their resources are immense and their ability to penetrate markets is frightening.

Despite multiple “anti-drug” campaigns, millions of US residents continue to pay good money for illegal drugs, and their government doesn’t really do much to prevent trafficking on its own turf. If there is a well-structured, ruthless organization on one side of the border, then logic dictates there should be one on the other side as well.

It isn’t possible that drugs reach consumers in North America without first passing through a very well-structured distribution base throughout the region. Where are the US drug lords? Where are these captured capos, the confrontations, the high-level networks that meet and negotiate with the likes of “El Chapo” Guzmán?

I honestly don’t know what’s going on in the United States in terms of the war on drugs. My impression is that little is done there, aside from detaining thousands of petty dealers and consumers who are caught off-guard. It seems they’d rather export this evil war to Mexico, Central America, and other countries in our region. The results after decades of prohibition have truly been quite few.

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