Drug war makeover

Mexico’s battle with narcotics is getting an overhaul from President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Obrador announced to end his government’s militarized drug war when he assumes office on 1 December 2018.

Unlike in the Philippines, Mexico’s drug-related crimes count homicide and murder among rival drug gangs to eliminate competition in the very lucrative, clandestine export of cocaine, heroin and meth to neighboring United States. Former president Felipe Calderon involved troops in stopping rival gangs from killing each other in 2006, a policy continued by incumbent President Enrique Peña Nieto since 2012. Unfortunately, violence has not abated.

A 2018 report from the Congressional Research Service, which provides members of the US Congress with policy and legal analysis, showed 150,000 murders in Mexico were related to organized crime and committed by troops and police. The 2017 murder count of 29,168 from Mexico’s interior ministry is considered a national record. In the first half of this year, the public affairs consultant Lantia Consultores citing data from Mexico’s Department of Public Security, counted 15,973 murders.

Obrador hopes to reduce, if not stop, the killings and trafficking by de-escalating the drug war and promoting reconciliation and healing. He believes that violence cannot be solved “with an iron fist and more prison cells.”

“I do not believe in ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.’ We cannot fight evil with more evil,” Obrador was quoted as saying during a town hall meeting early this month.

The incoming president has four strategies. First, soldiers will be sent back to barracks and the crime-fighting chore of a “better-trained, better-paid, more professional police” force will be restored.

Second, laws regulating marijuana and poppy will be enacted and non-violent drug offenders pardoned.

Third, victims of the drug war will be offered reparations and support.

Lastly, government will increase social service, education and employment in violence-wracked, poor regions.

While Mexico’s militarized drug war seems a failure, the outcome of a demilitarized drug war and other Obrador approaches could still not prove as the right alternatives.

There are a lot of ways countries and governments are trying to solve the drugs crisis. But targeting the source of illegal drugs may always prove ineffective because it is not the root of the problem.

As long as there are consumers of cocaine, heroin and meth, drug cartels, traffickers and pushers will thrive. Today’s $29 billion US market for narcotics alone drive Mexico’s drug cartels. But if there is no American demand, there is no need for Mexican supply. The same is true for other countries facing drug crises of their own.

In the end, it will be the consumption of narcotics that will spell the success or failure of any campaign against cocaine, heroin and meth production and trafficking.