U.S loses war, blames CNMI

Despite billions of dollars in federal spending, the US government still has yet to win the war on drugs. Indeed, it is doubtful that federal government will ever win this war. So far the Feds have only been losing.

A November 29 Washington Post article only confirms this colossal failure on the part of U.S. authorities. According to the Post, marijuana imports from Mexico have grown at an alarming rate over the past two years. In fact, the U.S. government itself reportedly estimates a 33 percent Mexican marijuana increase over last year; and between 1991 and 1998, marijuana seizures rose from 113 tons to 720 tons.

Cocaine from Columbia and Mexico is on the rise as well. The U.S. Coast Guard made the largest cocaine drug busts this year. These record cocaine seizures include 10.5 tons seized on a Mexican shark fishing boat 500 miles off Acapulco–“the largest cocaine bust ever made off the Mexican Pacific coast.”

As if cocaine and marijuana were not enough, opium and heroin Mexican imports are also on the rise. The Washington Post reports that opium yields may have increased by as much as 25 percent from 1997 to 1998, according to Mexican authorities.

Fully 70 percent of all illegal drugs reportedly come from Mexico, either directly or transshipped from other Latin American countries, such as Columbia. Yet, of all these illegal drug imports, U.S. authorities admit to capturing only about 10 to 15 percent of all smuggled narcotics.

In other words, the federal government–the DEA, the US Customs Service, the F.B.I., and so on–cannot even substantially enforce its own drug laws. A 10 to 15 percent clearance rate?

Who will federalize the Feds? The United Nations?

The Mexican government is surely of no help. U.S. Drug Enforcement Agents openly concede to the problems of the corrupt Mexican government. They cannot be entirely trusted to enforce U.S.–or their own–drug laws. Yet free trade between the United States and Mexico continues unabated, with no economic sanctions in sight. The
Clinton administration merely looks the other way.

When it comes to the CNMI, however, there is always Federal hell to pay. Regardless of the relative insignificance of our crime problems, our detractors always stubbornly insist on federalization as the only acceptable solution–even if the United States has the very same problems, only worse. We do not yet have heroin, cocaine, and the rest of it.