Rice Visits Mexico for a Meeting About Its Drug War – NYTimes.com
MEXICO CITY — The Bush administration signaled its alarm about Mexico’s vicious drug war by sending the American secretary of state on Wednesday to a two-day meeting on improving cross-border cooperation in the battle against the country’s powerful drug cartels.The Bush administration increasingly sees the violent clashes in Mexico as a threat to American security, and the lawlessness was high on the agenda when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived on Wednesday in Puerto Vallarta for meetings with her local counterpart, Patricia Espinosa. The Mexicans had sought the high-level visit to press for greater coordination with the United States in their fight against the heavily armed cartels, but the world economic crisis was also discussed.
Ms. Rice’s arrival was the latest in a series of visits this month alone by top-level administration officials. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey met with his counterpart in Mexico City several weeks back. Last week, John P. Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, made the rounds of the Mexican capital.
The violence has directly affected American government facilities. The American Consulate in Monterrey was attacked this month by a gunman who fired several shots at the building and another man who lofted a grenade, which did not detonate. Several days later, after a visit to the building by the American ambassador to Mexico, Antonio O. Garza, gunshots rang out nearby and the consulate was closed for the day.
During his visit to Mexico last week, Mr. Walters heaped praise on Mr. Calderón for his “courageous leadership” in taking on the cartels. But he also expressed concern about the spillover effects of the drug war on the United States.
Mr. Walters, a vehement opponent of drug legalization, backed a proposal by Mr. Calderón not to prosecute people caught carrying relatively small amounts of illegal narcotics, including cocaine and heroin. Under Mr. Calderón’s plan, addicts would be treated differently from traffickers and would avoid jail if they agreed to undergo treatment, not unlike similar programs in some parts of the United States. “I don’t think that’s legalization,” Mr. Walters said.
Drug Czar Walters, what Mexico is proposing here is decriminalization, not legalization. Something that Canada proposed in 2002 with regard to marijuana (not also cocaine and heroin, like Mexico). At that time, you warned that relaxed marijuana laws would lead to an increase in drug abuse in Canada, stating, “When you weaken the societal sanctions against drug use, you get more drug use. Why? Because drugs are a dangerous addictive substance.” You also expressed concern that liberalized marijuana laws in Canada would lead to more drugs crossing into the United States.
So how is it that not busting Canadian pot users will lead to more drug abuse and more drugs in the US, but you don’t seem to have that same fear about Mexico, and, in fact, are supporting decriminalization of even harder drugs like heroin and cocaine? Is it because, unlike the Mexican border, there aren’t regular gun battles, assassination of police officials, and deaths of over 4,000 along the Canadian border?
If you can support not prosecuting people carrying a personal amount of cocaine and heroin in Mexico, how can you oppose Barney Frank’s HR5843 bill that would do the same for personal amounts of marijuana in the United States?
