Blowback at the Border

PETER O. ZIERLEIN*

The mounting drug-gang violence along the Mexican border spilling into Tucson, Atlanta and other American cities--the kidnappings, beheadings, torture and street massacres--is as unsurprising as it is ironic. It's also a loud call for a fundamental review of this nation's so-called "war on drugs."

It's unsurprising because Mexican President Felipe Calderón's attempt to assert his authority and please his American neighbors by cracking down on the drug cartels is jeopardizing established supply routes and the cozy arrangements with Mexican drug cops and public officials that in effect stabilized the trade. Now the gangs, which are also seizing a growing segment of the migrant-smuggling business, are at war not just with Mexico's federal cops, the army and the shrinking number of honest prosecutors and judges who try to confront them but with one another for a share of that destabilized market.

It's ironic because Americans, as everybody knows, buy and consume most of the marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines that make up the lion's share of the cartels' business. Also, some 90 percent of the guns used by drug gangs, including a growing number of military-type assault weapons, come from American gun dealers, most in the border states. And it's American politicians who've been most active in putting the heat on Calderón to stop the drugs. But perhaps most ironic of all, it's the federal prohibition of marijuana, first enacted in large measure because of its association with Mexicans, that created the multibillion-dollar market in which the drug gangs thrive.

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