Some regional leaders say it could bring peace and much-needed tax revenue, but both they and supporters of the drug war are missing the real problem.
Last week, the president of Guatemala joined former and current presidents of Colombia and Mexico in expressing interest in considering the regional legalization of the drug trade. The U.S. State Department immediately expressed its disfavor, but the question is out in the open now. The issue of whether to legalize drugs -- and thus reject the U.S. model of "war" against drugs -- threatens to consume the next Summit of the Americas, an April meeting of Western Hemisphere Heads of State in Colombia.
It is easy to see why. The drug war has been a disaster for the Latin American countries fighting it, especially Mexico, and Central Americans' suspicion that legalization could be less painful and costly is reasonable. Whether or not legalization would in fact be a good thing for Central America, the situation is desperate enough that they must at least consider their options.
Since Mexico declared its own war against drugs and drug cartels in 2006, over 50,000 civilians, police, journalists, judges, and soldiers have died. Several cartel kingpins have been arrested or killed, but organized crime is as potent as ever, and there's no indication of a significant drop in the volume of narcotics flowing into the United States. And the Mexican state is suffering mightily for its effort. Despite years of training and hundreds of millions of dollars in police and military modernization and professionalization, there are still episodes like Tuesday's jail break in Nuevo Laredo, where prison officials appear to have helped Zetas cartel gunmen kill 44 inmates -- all members of a rival cartel -- and help 30 Zetas escape. It's depressing.
In Guatemala, the drug war looks even worse. The Guatemalan national budget for public security is $420 million and its military budget is $160 million. The value of the narcotics smuggled through Guatemala each year is in the range of $40 to 50 billion -- about equal to the national GDP -- and that does not include the money made from smuggling weapons, people, and other contraband. In just three years, it appears that the Sinaloa and the Zetas Mexican cartels have come to control as much as 40 percent of the country's territory. They grow poppy, process cocaine and methamphetamines, and run training camps for their new recruits, who include members of Guatemala's elite special forces unit.
Guatemala and other Central American states are understandable worried their drug wars will come to resemble Mexico's, but with far fewer national resources to support the fight, much weaker police and military forces, and far less help from the United States. In 2011, the U.S. gave $180 million to Mexico for military and police assistance, but only $16 million to Guatemala and around $6 million each to Honduras and El Salvador.
So, naturally, the option of legalizing the drug trade, and thus avoiding a further drug war, sounds appealing. Though the Guatemalan government hasn't presented any specific idea or plan, the conventional interpretation would be to legalize personal drug consumption as well as small batch sales and to tax them; to focus on drug use prevention and treatment, instead of criminalizing addicts; and then to focus security efforts against organized crime and violence, instead of constantly watching for, chasing, and interdicting drug shipments.
