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America's unwinnable war on drugs - Debusmann
By Bernd DebusmannSan Ysidro - Looking south out of a window at the busiest border crossing in the world, the phrase looking for needles in a haystack comes to mind, along with the realisation that America's war on drugs cannot be won. Unless the laws of supply and demand are miraculously suspended. What you see from the window looks like a gigantic traffic jam slowly moving along 24 lanes stretching from Tijuana, on the Mexican side of the border, towards inspection booths where agents of the US Customs and Border Protection check identity papers and decide whether to wave a vehicle through or order it into "secondary inspection" for hidden drugs or people. There is no day without drug busts and arrests. There is, in all probability, not a day when no drug loads slip through three layers of inspections. The brutal wars Mexico's drug cartels are waging against each other in major cities south of the border are largely over access to gateways into the US, the world's most lucrative market for illicit drugs. How big is that market? According to expert testimony to a Congressional committee in June, revenues from illicit drug sales in the US generated about $60-billion (about R471 931 200 000) in 2000, the last year the government compiled figures for an annual report on drug spending. To get that $60 billion into context: it equals what the 22 rich industrialised countries spend on foreign aid to the world's poor. As President George W. Bush phrased it at the beginning of his first term in office: "The main reason why drugs are shipped through Mexico to the United States is because United States citizens use drugs." Posted by: Besoeker 2008-08-22 |
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