Is the Drug War Now Over?
by
<http://fff.org/author/jacob-hornberger-2/>Jacob G. Hornberger July 18, 2013
Drug-war proponents are going through one of
their periodic paroxysms of ecstasy over the
capture this week near Nuevo, Laredo, Mexico, of
a man alleged to be one of Latin America’s
biggest and most brutal drug lords, 40-year-old
Miguel Angel Trevino Morales. Mainstream
journalists are even wondering what effect the
arrest might have on the decades-old drug war.
Permit me to put their minds at ease. The arrest
means nothing insofar as the drug war itself is
concerned. It certainly does not mean that the
drug war is now over. On the contrary, if
anything it will inspire drug-war proponents to
carry on the drug war more fiercely than ever, in
the attempt to arrest even more powerful and dangerous drug lords.
It’s all a fool’s errand, of course. The more
they crack down, the higher the black-market
price soars. The more the price soars, the bigger
the incentive for people to enter the drug trade.
The higher the illegal profits, the more violent
the black-market business becomes.
I’ve seen this much-ballyhooed drug-war nonsense
ever since I was a teenager in the 1960s in
Laredo, Texas, which is right across the river
from Nuevo Laredo, where they caught Trevino. My
father was the federal magistrate in Laredo. When
a person was arrested by the feds, he’d be
brought before my father for an initial hearing and the setting of his bond.
There were all sorts of drug-law violators who
were being arrested in Laredo back in the 1960s.
They included big drug kingpins, couriers, drug
users, and even lots of innocent long-haired
hippies who were having drugs planted in their
cars by federal agents at the international
bridge upon their return from Mexico. It was an
endless stream of people, many of whom would be
sent to serve long prison sentences in federal and state prisons.
Some of the minor players in the drug trade in
Laredo were high-school friends of mine. The
brother of a girl I dated got caught bringing an
ounce or so of marijuana back from Mexico. He had
dropped his package of dope over the bridge on
the U.S. shore of the Rio Grande before he
arrived at U.S. Customs and had returned for it
later that night. They caught him and convicted
him in federal court of marijuana possession. Big
deal. The bust certainly didn’t end the drug war,
just as it didn’t when they sent another
high-school friend of mine to federal prison for
years for minor possession of marijuana.
When I returned to Laredo in 1975 to practice
law, the flow of drugs from Mexico had grown
monumentally. Criminal-defense lawyers were
making a killing. Drug defendants would pay
retainer fees of $10,000 in cash. One of my very
first cases involved a guy who had been busted at
the bridge for carrying cocaine within the panels
of his car. With the same type of fanfare that
we’re seeing with the Trevino bust, the feds
announced that it was one of the biggest cocaine seizures in U.S. history.
The guy got convicted and sentenced to serve 15
years in federal prison. It made no difference
insofar as the drug war was concerned. The war continued.
During my practice of law, I came to personally
know some of the DEA agents. They were guys in
their 30s and 40s and committed and passionate
about their work. They were also very good at it.
I can only assume that they’re now retired on fat
pensions, after teaching their successors in the
use of popular drug-war bromides especially after making a big drug bust.
Young people have no idea that people who have
grown up with the drug war have heard all the
Trevino-type buzz before. Two big drug busts
involved such famous drug cartels as the Medellin
Cartel (headed by Pablo Escobar, who was the
Trevino of his day) and the Cali Cartel.
It has never made any difference insofar as the
drug war is concerned. The busts are made and
people go to prison. There are quickly replaced
by new suppliers, and the war just keeps on going.
The whole process is gotten to the point where
the DEA and the drug lords need each other.
Everyone knows that if the drug war were ended
with drug legalization, the drug lords would go
out of business immediately, just as the booze
lords did after Prohibition was ended. Drug lords
can compete only in an illegal market, not a legal one.
So drug legalization is not what the drug lords
want. But it’s also not what the DEA wants. If
the drug lords were put out of business with drug
legalization, the DEA would be put out of
business too. That would obviously mean layoffs
for DEA agents and DEA officials, people who
depend on their generous drug-war salaries and
pensions to pay their mortgages, raise their
families, and fund their retirement.
There is also the matter of corruption to
consider. The drug war generates unbelievably
great opportunities for public officials,
including cops, prosecutors, and judges to make
generous amounts of money on the side through
bribery. In fact, when Trevino was captured, he
was carrying $2 million in cash with him, no
doubt for the purpose of making payoffs when
necessary. If drugs were legalized, those
opportunities to make money from drug-war bribery
would disappear instantaneously. That’s a
powerful disincentive to ending the drug war on the part of public officials.
So, anyone who thinks that the Trevino arrest
means the end of the 40-year-old drug war is
obviously suffering from an extreme case of
naiveté. There is too much money involved, both
on the drug-dealer side and on the
law-enforcement side. They need each other, which
is why both sides want the drug war to keep going and going and going.
http://fff.org/2013/07/18/that-arrest-in-mexico-doesnt-mean-the-drug-war-is-over/
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