Images of the violence in Mexico -- What do they mean? What do comments about them mean?

The Atlantic's In Focus blog has a vivid photo essay of the drug organization related violence in Mexico. Since December 2006, on the order of 50,000 have been killed, according to the Mexican government and news media tabulators, in the the varieties of conflict around the illegal drug trade and its suppression.

What is the killing about?

Criminal organizations are killing police, prosecutors, judges, military, government officials, and candidates for office, as well as ordinary citizens to maintain their impunity for their criminal activities, to enhance their reputations for violence and to enforce their threats. Within the organizations, people are killed if they are suspected government informants, suspected allies of competitors, suspected thieves, or suspected rivals for succession. Between the organizations, people are killed because they are suspected of being members of rival organizations for power and control over markets and traffic routes. The government forces and trafficking organizations engage in shoot outs and kill suspected criminals. Potential witnesses, including journalists are being killed. Corrupt law enforcement officers kill on orders, for pay, and to protect against exposure. Law obeying law enforcement officers kill in self-defense. How many non-drug related intentional homicides are "packaged" to look like drug war related killings to throw off suspicion?

There are extensive comments posted at the blog. Yes, drug prohibition policy drives up the value of these drugs. Yes, consumers of drugs worldwide have a share of the culpability. No one is excused.

Two things strike me about the comments (and this is in common with comments following news and commentary everywhere on the Internet): The analyses are usually simplistic on all sides. And among those who write anonymous comments there is profound indifference to the lives and dignity of drug users. Calls to execute large classes of people are made passionately.

Perhaps this style of communication pervades the world of on-line comment, regardless of the subject.

Does this superficiality and cruelty reflect a political and cultural reality that has a significant impact, or reflects commonplace prejudices that play out in the actual resolution of policy in Congress, state legislatures, county and municipal boards, and the confidential meetings of bureaucrats and police leaders in departments and agencies around the nation?

I fear so. Thinking about superficiality, consider this report from the Sunlight Foundation on the complexity of communications by Members of the U.S. Congress.

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Women: The invisible victims of the drug war in Mexico

Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy, a liberal reform organization, writes about the terrible impact of the current drug war on women in Mexico.

Her report on a recent conference of women stresses that the greatest number of those killed -- now more than 50,000, and those who have disappeared in the course of the Mexican government's assault on the power of the drug trafficking organizations are civilians who were not involved in the drug trade.

She says murder of women has increased dramatically. When the military comes to a town, rape and sexual assault increase dramatically. Women who seek investigations into the murder, disappearance or rapes of family members are subjected to harassment, threats, violence and sexual assault, according to the report.

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Mexico -- Is the state "failing?"

George Friedman at Stratfor published a mind-boggling analysis of the situation in Mexico in April.

He argued that the violence in Mexico is largely in the little populated North, and does not threaten the state. The violence is for control of the profitable drug trafficking routes, but does not threaten the Mexican heartland.

The drug trade is so profitable it enriches Mexican banks and institutions because most of the profits remain in Mexico. Thus Mexico has little incentive to stop the drug trade -- it is not in Mexico's national interest.

Friedman acknowledged that the U.S. can:

1. accept the status quo.

2. figure out how to reduce drug demand.

3. legalize drugs.

4. "move into Mexico in a bid to impose its will against a government, banking system and police and military force that benefit from the drug trade."

He concluded, "The United States does not know how to reduce demand for drugs. [See Peter Reuter's recent paper "How Can Domestic U.S. Drug Policy Help Mexico?" on this point.] The United States is not prepared to legalize drugs. This means the choice lies between the status quo and a complex and uncertain (to say the least) intervention. We suspect the United States will attempt some limited variety of the latter, while in effect following the current strategy and living with the problem."

"If . . one accepts the idea that all of Mexican society benefits from the inflow of billions of American dollars (even though it also pays a price), then the Mexican state has not failed -- it is following a rational strategy to turn a national problem into a national benefit."



So when might American policy makers begin to consider that control of these profits remain in criminal hands and will be used for criminal purposes?

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Thoughts from a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border -- fixing the violence?

Eric L. Olson, a very distinguished American analyst at the Mexico Institute at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, has just issued a ten-page report on his recent trip to the borderlands.

This balanced and thoughtful report gives a very straightforward description of the crisis of violence and lack of respect for the government that prevails in Mexico -- without the hyperbole that characterized the trip report of Gen. Barry McCaffrey after his visit in December to Mexico, "fighting for survival against narco-terrorism."

The report should be read by everyone interested in what is happening in Mexico as it struggles against violence and the drug trafficking organizations.

Most Americans are probably completely unaware that Mexico is in the process of completely transforming its justice system from the Napoleonic (or inquisitorial) approach which relies upon documents to the Anglo-American-style approach with trials involving witness testimony. The challenge of re-training prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys across Mexico is profound. In Chihuahua, it lags behind Baja California.

The problems are not simply that the cartels are powerful, drugs are profitable, or the government's response is wrong. The problems are more universal: deep-seated, endemic mistrust of the government, widespread poverty and lack of economic opportunity. Some of the problems are similar to problems that face anti-crime initiatives in the United States: politicization of anti-crime initiatives, intense bureaucratic rivalries among agencies for credit and resources, and lack of cooperation across jurisdictions and the levels of local, state and federal administration, and quick fixes that attempt to employ military assets (i.e. drug interdiction), techniques (i.e., S.W.A.T. tactics and raids) or ideologies (i.e., zero tolerance).

There is nothing wrong with Olson's recommendations -- they clearly identify the general areas in which Mexico and the U.S. need to move forward. Calling first for a reduction in demand for drugs in the U.S. by increasing treatment and prevention is perfectly appropriate, if utterly predictable.

Tragically, America has reached the sorry state in which any reasonable suggestion to reduce demand by improving our ability to prevent illegal drug use and increase the availability of treatment is a cliche.

However, most states are now cutting back on drug treatment and prevention programs as they address what has been estimated to be a collective $300 billion gap between current expenditures and projected revenues that must be closed.

I believe that treatment works. Of course, not everyone who is using illegal drugs needs treatment. In simple numerical terms, most of those who use illegal drugs do not need treatment, but there is a minority who use drugs heavily or compulsively who could use treatment. Those who have committed crimes -- robbery, burglary, shoplifting, domestic violence, etc. -- who use expensive and addictive drugs can and should be compelled to abstain from drug use by using programs such as Hawai'i's Operation HOPE. There, most hard core drug users stop without treatment. They modify their behavior to avoid the inconvenience of guaranteed arrest if one of their frequent drug tests comes up positive for illegal drugs. But in most of America, probation for offenders is ineffective supervision, treatment beds insufficient, and access to treatment screwed up. In your community is there a central intake for treatment that is conveniently reached at convenient hours? If you show up for treatment, will you get a bed -- or a place at the back of the line?

Of course one can drill down into the wide variety of treatment offerings and find a mixed bag. There are plenty of poorly run programs and outright scams. But treatment works for those who are in well-run programs or who are sufficiently motivated.

Will we see more treatment? The Obama Administration is asking for $137 million more for treatment in FY 2011 compared to FY 2010. Chickenfeed! The Administration is asking for $180 million more for its enforcement programs (excluding increased federal spending on prisons, prosecutors, etc.). Not since President Richard Nixon has there been a serious high-level national commitment to providing effective drug treatment in a scale that approaches the need.

The other half of the cliche to reduce demand is for more drug abuse prevention. Most of the expenditures for dedicated drug abuse prevention "programs" are a proven waste. D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), founded by Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates (who famously said that "casual drug users should be taken out and shot"), was found to be worthless after numerous evaluations. D.A.R.E. revised its curriculum, but a Google search finds no new evaluations published in the past twenty years. Even D.A.R.E.'s website can only report some preliminary -- first year of a five year evaluation -- from 2003! Another bogus prevention program is the ONDCP White House Media Anti-Drug campaign. Once again, the program was found to be ineffective in scientific evaluations. But the Obama Administration is asking for almost a 50 percent increase -- from $45 million to $66.5 million. They want to throw away another $21.5 million on a program that has been proven to be ineffective.

My daughter is in her middle school health education program this quarter which includes drug abuse prevention. Last night at dinner, she told my wife and me about the program's self-esteem enhancing exercise that she and her classmates engaged in Wednesday. Go around the circle and tell the next student what you like about them. She said that everyone was embarrassed and resorted to saying vapid things like, "I like your hair. I like your blouse. I like your personality." She didn't have to tell us explicitly that she thought this was silly and pointless, her sarcasm was unmistakable.

Scholars, policy experts, commentators and politicians have been exhorting one another about the urgency and importance of reducing demand for drugs for more than thirty years. In the 1980s, successive heads of DEA would testify that more money should be spent on demand reduction. DEA even started its own demand reduction programs. America may someday get serious about demand reduction, but not in time to do anything about Mexico's violence and corruption. One could ask which will come first, a regime to regulate and control drugs (usually crudely called "legalization") or adequate and effective prevention programs and treatment capacity.

Regulation and control of the now illegal drugs will not be easy to execute, even after the political consensus adopts it. But there is little likelihood that any less radical strategy will appreciably reduce violence, other than engaging in corrupt accommodation of the drug trafficking organizations along the lines of the pre-Fox, PRI governments.

Among the obvious consequences of drug regulation and control in the U.S. is that schools and parents will have to have much more meaningful conversations with their children about drugs legally distributed. Teachers potentially can be truthful and accurate, freed of serving as propagandists in the "war on drugs" crusade. Parents will be able to speak truthfully about their experiences with drugs without the stigma of law-breaking. Drug prevention may rely less upon stigma ("Users are losers!") and more upon science and reinforcing positive behaviors.

The demand for illegal drugs that Eric L. Olson and other observers of the crisis in Mexico lament is not going to be reduced by exhortation or policy papers. The most well-meaning "drug czars," DEA Administrators, HHS and Department of Education Secretaries, Surgeon Generals, Congressional leaders and other have a thirty year record of insignificant actions. Drug use declines have been real at various times but, as factors affecting the global criminal trade, negligible.

To reduce the demand for illegal drugs in the scale that will substantially impact corruption and violence in Mexico demands that their illegal character be eliminated. When that happens, notwithstanding the repeated warnings of the International Narcotics Control Board, the global drug control regime will have more "coherence" and "effectiveness."

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