Mr. President, end this (drug) war!

Death toll in Mexico this last year: a stunning 12,000, according to WAPO.

Yes, some will write it off as only "professionals" dying, but the same is largely true in all conflicts.

We supply the money and the guns, and then demand that the Mexicans fight it out to the last man standing.

It's a wonder that all Mexicans don't hate us all the time.

Decriminalize drug use and you deny the cartels the big money that fuels their warfare.  You also stop US states from spending so much on jail time for small-time users and peddlers. You also medicalize our response, which is how the rest of the intelligent world deals with debilitating drug abuse.

End the drug war, Mr. President, and truly earn the Nobel, because that would take some political courage.

We can only hope that a second-term Obama, hemmed in domestically by a GOP House and Senate, will escape to some suitably radical foreign policy (back-dooring some sensible domestic policy changes). This would fit that scenario, but I have little hope of Obama making such a call.

End the Prohibition Era approach on drugs

I like Mary Anastasia O'Grady in the WSJ, because she is the rare prominent columnist who works the Western Hemisphere with such diligence.  She's also unstinting in a lot of good ways, so when she writes approvingly of a recent blue-ribbon commission (George Shultz, Paul Volcker, Javier Solana, etc) issuing yet another call to end the war on drugs, I listen.

She talks about how John D. Rockefeller came out in 1932 and admitted that the whole conservative experiment had been a complete disaster, largely because it destroyed respect for the law.  Rockefeller had been a huge supporter of Prohibition going in, committing resources.

What have we gotten with the drug war?  Unbelievable incarceration rates, drugs still plentiful and easily accessed by those who want them (according to my HSer and college kid), and the militarization of our relationship with Latin America - opening the door to China.

We simply cannot secure a border when our own money constantly destabilizes it:  we are fighting money with money, burning up resources in the process and punishing our neighbors unduly.

The madness needs to stop.  Decriminalization isn't legalization.  It just means you don't judicialize/criminalize all your tools.

Great piece.