Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency -- Review of El Narco

What’s going on in Mexico is not a “war on drugs.”

No doubt that the drug-related violence and crime are products of drug- prohibition and counternarcotics policies instituted by the United States and later give international legitimacy by the United Nations. Yet the essence of the turmoil and terror in Mexico is the product of a drug war.

If the only contribution of El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency (Bloomsbury Press, November 2011) were to succeed in getting us to understand this difference, the book would be regarded as one of the best on the origins and evolution of the drug trade in Mexico.

As British journalist Ioan Grillo explains in his new book, the

“war on drugs” dates back many decades in Mexico and has been largely coincident with U.S., ever since President Nixon announced the new war four decades ago  -- marked by both the failed U.S. interdiction plan called Operation Intercept in 1969 and by the U.S. –supported drug eradication campaigns in the early 1970s (using highly toxic defoliants like paraquat, also deployed in the still raging Vietnam War).

What Grillo calls the Mexican Drug War is distinguished from the rhetorical “war on drugs” both because it has become more like an actual war and because the objective of drug control has been subsumed into a combat for territorial, social, economic, and to some degree political control by warring factions – including the various and evolving cartels, the Mexican military, and the Mexico police.

But it is less clear cut and more worrisome than simply a battle for the supremacy among legal and illegal warlords. That’s because we learn from Grillo – in his superbly organized and narrated exposition of the Mexican Drug War – that the Mexican state and its instruments of law enforcement and security are no longer simply corrupt and compromised, as has been a fundamental truth in Mexican governance historically, but that they are often no longer representatives of a corrupted state but father functionaries of criminal factions.

Grillo makes as a strong case that the Mexican Drug War, as we now know it, began not with President Calderón’s declaration of war on Dec. 11, 2006 shortly after moving into Los Pinos but rather two years previously when Los Zetas, a grouping of former-special force soldiers, “militarized the conflict” in their campaign to institute control over sections of northeast Mexico, mostly notably in Nuevo Laredo.

“Suddenly,” as Grillo describes the transition, “the public saw captured criminals in combat fatigues with heavy weaponry.” The Zetas,” writes Grillo, “were not thinking like gangsters, but like a paramilitary group controlling territory.”

One of the many standout contributions of El Narco is Grillo’s success in helping us understand that the evolution of the drug war in Mexico is not simply a matter of more deaths and more horrific ways of killings. Not just a matter of scope and scale, the Mexican Drug War has become a new phenomenon that defies easy definition.

Grillo mounts a strong case that the Mexican Drug War is a “criminal insurgency,” arguing convincingly that the security of the Mexican state is at risk from insurgent cartels, which are not just defending themselves from the official security forces but contesting state power to govern.

Insurgency is typically met with counterinsurgency and often outside military intervention – which an increasing band of U.S. hawks are saying is all but inevitable – but Grillo contends that the solution should “not come from the barrel of a gun.”

The author presents a cogent plea for a pragmatic and long-overdue reform of drug prohibition laws that have fostered a shadow and increasingly violent economy of drug trafficking and consumption. “People kill over street corners because they are fighting over the wealth of the black-market trade, not because they smoked spliffs.”

El Narco is the best overview book on the Mexican Drug War.  While the book’s subtitle “Inside the Criminal Insurgency” exaggerates the extent that Grillo managed to penetrate the drug industry in Mexico, the book is less valuable for its bit of investigative reporting but more for the author’s admirable ability to assemble a great deal of material – past and present – about the drug trade into an engaging and highly illuminating briefing about what’s going on in Mexico and what both countries may face if more sensible policies are not adopted by the international community, particularly the U.S. government.

Grillo’s writing is consistently accessible and pleasing – and refreshingly direct. He writes, for example, that, “The Obama administration stumbled on with a befuddled agenda on Mexico,” noting that its mixed messages – hailing Calderón’s courage and achievements while also speaking frankly, as Hillary Clinton did, about the emerging insurgent character of the evolving Mexican Drug War – illustrate that it has been “increasingly confused on Mexico and shaky in its support for the current strategy.”

The chapters on narco “Culture” and narco “Faith add little new to our understanding of Mexican drug trafficking, and simply recount the usual tales of the narcocorridas and Santa Muerte.

Grillo’s “Diversification” chapter is mostly descriptive and the analysis that the drug cartels have become diversified criminal organizations falls short. Could the major cartels or associated bands survive without the immense profits of drug trafficking? Unlikely, unless they assumed control over entire legal industries. But Grillo makes a strong point when supporting his argument about the evolved character of the cartels when he describes the new business of extortion and protection payments, which is eroding the traditional financial base of Mexican politics and law enforcement.

Grillo deserves special credit for supporting the groundbreaking investigative journalism of Gary Webb in his1996 series Dark Alliance that highlighted how U.S. political goals, such as the CIA and White House support of the Nicaraguan contras, overrode the drug war goals of the DEA. Your appreciation of Grillo grows as he takes the American media to task for failing to take up the investigation the Webb began: "The Los Angeles Times and New York Times should have followed these leads rather than just looking for holes."

El Narco is also refreshing in its analysis of Calderón’s naïve and moralistic view of governance in the era of the Mexican Drug War. Upon taking office, the president “spoke repeatedly about the need to restore order and reassert the power of the state,” writes Grillo,” observing too that the “message applied as much to street blockades and riots [by political dissidents] as drug decapitations.”

In this context, El Narco also talks straight about the repression of the indigenous and student protesters and dissidents in Chiapas and Oaxaca by the military and police, as in recalling “the murder of American Indymedia journalist Brad Will.”

In El Narco Grillo asserts, “Mexico is becoming the new point of comparison for a criminal insurgency.” 

While his definition of a criminal insurgency is fuzzy, there is little doubt that the threats to Mexico’s national security and public safety need to be met with a more enlightened strategy – and that Mexicans deserve more from the Obama administration than another five years of befuddlement.

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Fuentes Pessimistic about Mexican Politics, No Hope for Drug War Solution without U.S.

Marina Mendez Ransanz

In a recent BBC Mundo interview, noted Mexican writer and intellectual Carlos Fuentes discussed the current tumultuous political situation in Mexico. He showed a clear lack of enthusiasm for the candidates to the presidency, who will run in the incoming presidential elections of 2012.

Fuentes stated that the traditional parties in Mexico –PRI, PAN and PRD -- offer no solutions for the grave crisis affecting the country, and that their proposals to address the power of organized crime lack clarity and have attracted little public enthusiasm.

“The problems are too big, and the politics are too small,” the writer said with regard to the situation in Mexico.

Carlos Fuentes belongs to the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which is a group that includes several former presidents, including Fernando Henrique Cardoso from Brazil, César Gaviria from Colombia, and Ernesto Zedillo from Mexico, international leaders, intellectuals, and businessmen.

In a report published by the Commission last June, the Group warned about the failure of the war that has been waged against the drug cartels under the frame currently used by several governments, such as Mexico and the United States.

Fuentes expressed his disagreement with President Calderón’s drug war strategy, which is characterized by its apparent frontal attack against the cartels. But he credits Calderón for bringing the drug-trafficking and organized crime threats to the forefront of the political agenda.

Fuentes is a longtime advocate of drug legalization. By 2007 he had already proposed the legalization of drugs as a measure to reduce the violence caused by their distribution and the criminal activities surrounding this market. Illegal drugs should be legalized, he concluded, but for this to be effective will require joint action by the entire international community.

On numerous previous occasions, Fuentes has also observed that all efforts directed toward fighting drug trafficking in Mexico will be useless unless the United States addresses the demand for drugs in its territory.

In 2010, through a live chat with readers of the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Fuentes said that drugs are largely bought in the United States and it is there that decriminalization should begin. He expressed hope about the marijuana decriminalization initiative (defeated in 2010) in California, and was hopeful too that other states would follow the California example.

Fuentes, a prominent Mexican intellectual and internationally acclaimed novelist,

advocates for gradual policy reforms that will result in drug decriminalization. It’s a pragmatic and peaceful solution, which, he says, recognizes the reality of a large and long-lived demand for drugs in the U.S. market.

Fuentes believes that the scourge of drug-related violence in Mexico and the threat of the cartels to Mexican national security stand little chance of being resolved without more direct U.S. involvement.

He told BBC that eventually -- for both national and international reasons – the U.S. government will be obliged to take a more active role in addressing the criminal crisis in Mexico and to act together with the Mexican government to confront the power and violence of the drug-trafficking organizations.

Fuentes had choice words to describe the PRI and PRD presidential candidates, while observing that PAN, the party that currently holds Los Pinos, stands little chance of achieving electoral success given their perceived poor performance during the last two presidential terms.

The PAN was able to gain access to power in the year 2000 after more than 70 years of undisputed ruling by the PRI, and the Mexico’s population welcomed this transition great hope and high expectations.  Now, these past 11 years of PAN governments are widely regarded as a huge missed opportunity.

About Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the PRD candidate, Fuentes mentioned with some regret that he represents an outdated Left.

Enrique Peña Nieto, the current PRI candidate, was recently the protagonist of an embarrassing incident in the Guadalajara Book Fair when he was not able to mention 3 books that had made an impact on his life. Furthermore, while answering the question Peña Nieto misattributed a famous book written by Fuentes to Enrique Krauze, another Mexican writer.

Referring to Peña Nieto, Fuentes said that the PRI candidate has every right not to have read Fuentes’s books. However, the writer added “he has no right to be the president of Mexico out of ignorance.”

“Problems demand a man capable of talking to Obama, Angela Merkel or Sarkozy on the same level, and this is not the man capable to do so,” Fuentes said of Peña Nieto.


(Marina Mendez Ransanz is a Latin American Rights & Security intern at the Center for International Policy, working with the TransBorder Project)

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The Nontraditional, Traditional Drug Threat and Drug War

The commander of the U.S. Southern Command warns that the U.S. is facing a “nontraditional threat” from the south in the form of “transnational organized crime.” Commander Douglas Fraser joined the chorus of military and administration officials warning of the new threat of transnational criminal organizations, and declared: “We’re trying to move our defense further and further from our border.”  

Yet this so-called nontraditional threat is not new at all. It’s just the same old drug war dressed up in the new language of transnational crime being promoted by the administration in its newly released Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime.

In an interview with the Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service, Air Force Gen. Douglas M. Fraser said Southcom’s job is working with the nation’s military partners and defending U.S. approaches from the south.

Southcom’s relationship with nations in its region, the general added, “provides us with stability and security on our southern flank and that’s in our interest, [and] it improves the economic vitality of the region and our ability to trade with one another.”

It is not at all clear, however, that the U.S.-led drug war that Southcom has supported over the past four decades has been in the best interests of the region.

Certainly, the drug-related violence is destabilizing Mexico and the Central American nations and inflicting a massive human toll. It’s also true that the newly denominated “transnational criminal organizations” – formerly officially called “drug trafficking organizations” – represent a threat not only to public safety but also to the national security of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

But rather than continuing the failed drug-eradication and interdiction strategies, now under the new transnational crime strategy, the interests of the drug-source and transit nations would be better served by an end to drug prohibition policies in the United States and elsewhere that drive the illegal drug market.

There’s bipartisan support for escalating the drug war in the form of a new bill titled “Targeting Transnational Drug Traffic king Act of 2011” that expands the reach of the Justice Department in pursuing individuals who directly or indirectly involved in operations that export illegal drugs into the United States.  

Its main sponsors Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Cal.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), co-chairs of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, bolster their drug warrior credentials with the bill designed to complement the administration’s new drug war strategy called the Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime. 

“We cannot sit idly by as transnational criminal organizations find new ways to circumvent our laws,” said Senator Feinstein. “This bill will allow U.S. prosecutors to stay one step ahead of drug trafficking organizations.”

“Drug cartels are continually evolving, and this legislation ensures that our criminal laws keep pace,” said Senator Grassley. “This legislation closes a loophole abused by drug traffickers that intend for drugs to end up in the United States but supply them through an intermediary.”

• Establishes penalties for drug trafficking activity when individuals have reasonable cause to believe that illegal drugs will be trafficked into the United States;

• Ensures current penalties apply to chemical producers from other countries (including producers of pseudoephedrine used for methamphetamine) that illegally ship precursor chemicals into the U.S. knowing these chemicals will be used to make illegal drugs.

• Ensures that members of any conspiracy to distribute controlled substances will be subject to U.S. jurisdiction when at least one member of the conspiracy intends or knows that illegal drugs will be unlawfully imported into the U.S.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Robert Casey (D-Pa.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

While public support for drug prohibition wanes in the United States, the Democratic and Republican Party leaders escalate their deeply flawed crackdown strategies.

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An Assessment of Defeat

Big Government Breaks Bad in Drug War

The marijuana threat as seen by NIDC

CounterPunch

by TOM BARRY

Rick Perry and the other Republican presidential candidates are right. Americans are fed up, as Perry writes in his book Fed Up!, with “old guard politicians” dedicated to protecting the “establishment” and the federal government’s “culture of waste.”

That description of big government is right on target with respect to the Obama administration’s continuing support for the wasteful drug-war bureaucracy.

The Obama administration and the Democratic Party have been stalwart supporters of drug-war agencies such as the National Drug Intelligence Center and the White House’s own Office for National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). At first glance, these agencies, which have monumentally failed at their founding mission to create a “drug-free America” might well be regarded as poster children for the Republican critique of wasteful federal spending and misguided big government.

Although the Obama administration announced during its year that it would no longer use the “war on drugs” terminology, it did not initially request any reduction in the drug war budget – keeping the requested budgets at more than $15 billion for fiscal years 2010 and 2011.

In early September the National Drug Intelligence Center released its annual “National Drug Threat Assessment,” which warns:

The illicit trafficking and abuse of drugs present a challenging, dynamic threat to the United States. Overall demand is rising, largely supplied by illicit drugs smuggled to U.S. markets by major transnational criminal organizations (TCOs).

Forty years after President Richard Nixon launched the “war on drugs,” the Obama administration now warns that illegal drugs continue to constitute a threat to our national security.

What is more, according to this new intelligence assessment, the expanding U.S. demand for illegal drugs is being readily met by a new array of TCOs based in Mexico.  These TCOs have emerged to meet the rising demand for illegal drugs in the United States — this despite the new drug war aid to Mexico and the dramatic increases in U.S. border security operations, including an major expansion of border counternarcotics operations of the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Defense.

Nowhere in this new threat assessment – or that can be found anywhere else in the federal drug war bureaucracy — is there any hint of any admission of failure or any recommendation that drug prohibition policies be reexamined.

Despite the proclamations of the leading Republican presidential candidates about balancing the budget and shrinking federal government, it is highly unlikely that a Republican administration would act any differently. Support for the drug war and drug prohibition is strongly bipartisan.

Drug War as a National Security Imperative

Rick Perry says he would exempt the quarter of the federal budget dedicated to national security from any budget slashing.

The federal government’s “war on drugs” is firmly embedded in the country’s ever-expanding security apparatus, spanning the Department of Defense, the drug war agencies of the Justice and Homeland Security departments, and the “intelligence community.”

Like the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, the National Drug Intelligence Center emerged as part of the new drug-war bureaucracy created by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 and put into place by President George H.W. Bush.

The NIDC’s main champion was Cong. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who included a measure authorizing the creation of the drug intelligence center in the 1993 Defense Appropriations Bill. Infamous for his military earmarks, Murtha, who served alternately as chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, died last year.

An Assessment of Defeat

The NIDC, which not coincidentally is located in Murtha’s old congressional district in Pennsylvania, paints a picture of defeat in latest drug intelligence assessment.

According to the NDIC threat assessment, the drug war isn’t going well. It says:

Drug consumption

• Overall drug availability is increasing. 
• 
  
• The abuse of several major illicit drugs, including heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine, appears to be increasing, especially among the young.
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• Marijuana use among adolescent students has begun to increase after a decade of gradual decline.
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• An estimated 8 .7 percent of Americans aged 12 or older—or 21 .8 million individuals—were current illicit drug users in 2009, a statistically significant increase from 8.0 percent in 2008.
• 
  
• The increase in heroin availability has resulted in an increase in heroin-related overdoses (HROs) in several locations throughout theUnited States. Increased HROs have been reported in cities and in more than 60 U.S. counties spanning at least 30 states across the nation.
• 
  

Drug production and trafficking

• Across our southwestern border, drug-related violence has left more than 50,000 Mexicans dead since 2007.
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• Increased heroin production in Mexico and increased involvement of Mexican transnational criminal organizations in the distribution of South American heroin have contributed to wider heroin availability in many U.S. markets, including some where the drug was previously unavailable.
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• Cannabis cultivation in Mexico, combined with high levels of domestic cultivation, has resulted in high marijuana availability.
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• The level of illicit poppy cultivation in Mexico was second only to that in Afghanistan in 2009, potentially producing an estimated 50 metric tons of heroin.
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• Threat projection

The threat posed by the trafficking and abuse of illicit drugs will not abate in the near term and may increase.

• Mexican-based TCOs’ proficiency in the production and distribution of marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin will ensure that the drugs remain readily available in markets throughout the United States.
• 
  
• Major Mexican-based TCOs will continue to dominate wholesale drug trafficking in the United States for the foreseeable future and will further solidify their positions through collaboration with U.S. gangs.
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Responding to U.S. counternarcotics operations, drug trafficking organizations “continue to alter patterns in drug production, trafficking, and abuse,” says NDIC. “Traffickers are modifying their interrelationships, altering drug production levels, and adjusting their trafficking routes and methods. Major Mexican-based TCOs continue to solidify their dominance over the wholesale illicit drug trade as they control the movement of most of the foreign-produced drug supply across the southwest border.”

The adaptive capacity of the drug trafficking organizations contributes to NDIC’s glum threat assessment.  Noting that most illegal drugs are smuggled overland into the country, NDIC warns that “increased border security appears to be forcing traffickers to increase their use of alternative methods such as noncommercial vessels and ultralight aircraft.”

Stepped up border security operations and the U.S.-supported drug war in Mexico apparently have had little impact on the U.S. drug market and the crossborder drug trade.

According to NDIC, “The Mexican-based organizations’ preeminence derives from a competitive advantage based on several factors, including access to and control of smuggling routes across the U.S. southwest border and the capacity to produce (or obtain), transport, and distribute nearly every major illicit drug of abuse in the United States.”

The prospects of turning around the drug war, either at home or abroad, appear low, according to the drug intelligence assessment, which predicts that the above-stated “advantages are unlikely to change significantly in the short term, ensuring the dominance of Mexican-based TCOs for at least the next several years.”

There’s also bad news on the return side of the drug market.  The Obama administration has dramatically stepped up operations to check southbound traffic at the southwestern border, monitoring for cash and gun smuggling into Mexico.

Getting drugs across the border into U.S. distribution networks must be matched, if the illegal drug market is to fucntion successfully, by pathways to ensure that drug profits return to drug trafficking organizations in Mexico. The NDIC calls bulk cash smuggling “a tactical vulnerability” for the illegal drug trade. Yet new “bulk cash interdiction efforts have not impacted overall TCO operations to a significant extent.”

Obama Keeps Drug War Budget but Changes Terminology

NIDC has a new term for the organizations that traffic illegal drugs.

Like it counterparts in the drug war bureaucracy, NIDC has adopted the new terminology of transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) to substitute for the old lexicon of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). This change responds to the Obama administration’s new Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime.

Attempting to explain the new terminology, NIDC says its new usage of TCOs is “in reference to those TCOs that engage in drug trafficking activity,” while acknowledging that “some members of the intelligence community continue to use the term ‘drug trafficking organizations.’”

NDIC doesn’t directly address the implied assertion of the TCO thesis and strategy that the TCOs have a crossborder or transnational presence. But the intelligence assessment does address the issue indirectly by pointing to the role of U.S.-based gangs in distributing the drugs from the Mexican drug trafficking organizations.

According to NDIC, “With gangs already the dominant retail drug suppliers in major and midsized cities, some gang members are solidifying their ties to Mexican TCOs to bolster their involvement in wholesale smuggling, internal distribution, and control of the retail trade.”

Rather than having a direct presence, then, Mexican drug traffickers rely on gangs and other distribution networks to market the drugs. “Criminal gangs —that is street, prison, and outlaw motorcycle gangs—remain in control of most of the retail distribution of drugs throughout much of the United States, particularly in major and midsize cities,” reports NDIC.

No Evidence of Spillover Violence

The NDIC’s new threat assessment doesn’t support the claims by many border hawks, such as Texas Governor Rick Perry, that the drug war in Mexico in spilling into the United States. But its assessment of spillover violence is vague and seems purposefully intended to keep the intelligence center out of the political tensions about spillover violence and border security.

According to the drug intelligence assessment:

• Violent infighting among rival Mexican TCOs, at least partially attributable to competition over control of lucrative crossing points along the Southwest Border, is occurring mainly on the Mexico side of the border.
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• Criminal activity such as kidnappings and home invasion robberies directed against individuals involved in drug trafficking has been reported in some U .S. border communities. But limitations on the data make it difficult to assess whether such activity is increasing.
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• The available data are insufficient to support trend analysis—particularly an analysis of whether such crime is increasing.
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• FBI data show that overall violent crime rates in the southwestern states trended downward between 2007 and mid-2010, while overall property crime rates generally remained stable.
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According to the National Drug Threat Survey (NDTS) 2010, crack cocaine, and ice methamphetamine are the drugs that most often contribute to crime. Heroin was reported as a significant contributor to property crime (18 .6% of respondents). There is little relation to widespread marijuana consumption to violent or property crime. The Marijuana Threat

Border security is largely conceived as the effort to seal the border between the ports of entry (POEs).  But what exactly is the threat? Border hawks correctly say the long stretches of isolated border are the main entry points for most of the drugs entering the United States.

But what the border hawks don’t say is the drug loads smuggled across the border outside the POEs are almost exclusively bundles of marijuana.  The administration asserts that its border security operations are “risk-based.”  But the administration doesn’t attempt to explain how it can rightly claim a risk-based enforcement strategy on the border when the “threat” along the border is largely marijuana, which has no serious side effects, is increasing regarded as medically beneficially, and is not physically addictive.

Increasingly, as the number of illegal immigrants decreases, the border security buildup is focused on the marijuana trade. As NDIC reports:

More than 99 percent of illicit drug seizures made between POEs in Arizona and New Mexico involve marijuana; more than 91 percent of the marijuana seized in these incidents is seized from smugglers on foot.

One of the fascinating developments in the drug war is the emergence of Florida-based Cuban traffickers. It is not that, as the U.S. government has long charged, the Cuban government is a player in the transnational drug trade, but rather recent Cuban immigrants have started producing and distributing “high-potency marijuana” in Florida, whose role “contributed to the state’s ranking as first in the nation for the number of indoor cannabis grow sites seized (863) and second for the number of cannabis plants eradicated at indoor grow sites in 2009 (55,378).”

Designer Drugs Skirt Drug Prohibition

Drug prohition enforcement has sparked the creation of a rapidly expanding market for synthetic drugs that are not yet classified as illegal by the federal government.

Such natural substances as marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, and peyote are prohibited as Schedule 1 substances under the provisions of the the Controlled Substances Act. Seeking drug experiences that avoid entering the criminal illegal drug market, many U.S. consumers are finding a expanded offering of synthetic cannabinoids (chemical compounds found in marijuana) and stimulants.

Across the country, even in some of the smallest towns, these synthetics are on sale at local convenience stores, tobacco (now called smoke) shops, gas stations, and sex merchandise stores, as well on the Internet.  Over the past fews, the synthetic cannabinoids and stimulants have emerged as “serious problems,” says NIDC.

The synthetic cannabinoids – marketed as an “legal alternative to marijuana” – and stimulants –marketed as an “legal alternative to cocaine” or Ecstasy – have resulted in a spike in calls to poison control centers.

The synthetics market mocks drug prohibition, galling law enforcement officials and befuddling concerned parents of young users.  Marketed as Spice and K2, among other labels, the marijuana substitutes are generically sold as plant food or incense, while the synthetic stimulants are widely sold as “bath salts.”

Marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug. Its top ranking may soon be disputed by the total number of nonmedical users of controlled prescription drugs (CPDs).

Since 2008 there has been a 12 percent increased in the use of medication that that, according to NDIC, have “abuse potential, mainly pain relievers and depressants.  This abuse of CPDs involves at least 7 million individuals aged 12 or older.

If the main concern of the drug warrior bureaucracy is the public health impact, the NDIC’s conclusions about the expansion of nonmedical CPD use also points to the need for a rethinking of the drug problem.

According to NDIC, “the number of prescription overdose deaths exceeds the number of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine deaths combined.”  There is no overdose threat for marijuana users, yet the marijuana trade and marijuana consumption are the main targets of U.S. drug prohibition, border security, and Mexico drug-war operations.

Republicans Take the Lead

The Obama administration did request less funding for some divisions of the drug war bureaucracy in the 2012 budget request, including a $19.3 billion decrease for NDIC.

But is has been House Republicans that have led the fight to cut some drug war agencies like NDIC, which has long been championed by Democrats and opposed by Republicans. The Bush administration tried unsuccessfully to end NDIC funding, which has long counted on unwavering support from Democrats.

Cong. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) insists that the NDIC budget should be zeroed out given the inability of agency to demonstrate its impact or even to show that its “intelligence” is not duplicated by other agencies.  He characterizes NDIC funding as typical pork barrel funding by Democrats.

But few Republicans, except for libertarian ideologues like Ron Paul, have been unwilling to take on the drug war as part of their challenge to big government and their campaign to balance the budget.

President Obama has not demonstrated any inclination to end the drug wars and drug prohibition. To the contrary, the president has either increased or redirected federal funding for counternarcotics operations, especially along the border.

The federal government’s commitment to the drug war – redesignated by Obama as the “combat against transnational crime” – is a telling case of how big government can break bad.

Tom Barry directs the TransBorder Project at the Center for International Policy and is the author of Border Wars  from MIT Press. See his work at http://borderlinesblog.blogspot.com/

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