Why America is to Blame for Mexico’s Drug War

I attended a debate recently in New York on the role of the U.S. in Mexico’s drug war -- and I was happy to see most of the audience on my side. The U.S. is finally waking up to the destruction our drug war has caused outside of our borders, and we’re moving in the direction of a series of policy shifts that will transform our domestic drug problems and change the way we interact with the countries that supply our insatiable demand for drugs.

The proposition of the debate -- part of the Intelligence Squared series that runs on Bloomberg TV and NPR -- was: “America is to Blame for Mexico’s Drug War.” Listen to the full debate here. Allow me to explain why I voted yes.

1. The demand is here -- the U.S. makes up 5% of the world’s population but we're the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs. Mexican cartels are killing one another for the right to supply our lucrative, booming drug market.

2.    Forty years of strict drug prohibition in the U.S. has driven the market underground and criminalized the supply. As Harvard Economics Professor Jeffrey Miron said at the debate: “The reason there are drug wars is because the drug trade is prohibited. It's an indisputable fact that when you drive a market underground, it becomes violent.” Clearly, Miron was arguing for the proposition.

3.  Through the United Nations and our own diplomacy, we have bullied the world into prohibiting drugs. Mexico has taken a strong stance on drugs because several consecutive U.S. presidents have urged the country to do so.

The panel debating for the motion -- Miron, Andres Martinez and Fareed Zakaria -- resoundingly won the debate, and much of their argument focused on decriminalization and legalization. There wouldn’t be so many hundreds of murders in Mexico, they argued, if drugs were regulated and legal in the U.S. There wouldn’t be a market to fight for.

On the other side of the stage were: NRA lobbyist Chris Cox (who was miscast on the panel and spouted irrelevant and canned anti gun control rhetoric), former Congressman and drug warrior Asa Hutchinson (who refuses to accept even a hint of failure in the drug war and said with a straight face that his opponents were wrong to suggest some kind of failure of American drug policy) and former Mexican diplomat Jorge Castañeda. Now, here’s a guy with some substance. He gets his own paragraph.

Castañeda -- the author, most recently, of "Ex-Mex" -- explained that he was on the side arguing against the resolution because he thought Mexico’s drug war was a personal decision by President Jose Calderon, and a very bad one at that. Yes, the US provides the market, but Mexico doesn’t have to wage a military-style war on the cartels. It could pursue a policy of containment. Castañed seemend torn between the two sides, but his suggested containment policy isn't a longterm solution. Only legalization in the U.S. could stem the violence in the supply and delivery of drugs.

I urge you to listen for yourself. It's an entertaining 50 minutes of radio and an enlighting lens through which we can examine the failure of the drug war at home and abroad.