CARLTON FLETCHER: In its war on drugs, U.S. should surrender

God damn the pusher.

— Steppenwolf

As renowned author Don Winslow noted in his amazing new book of fiction “The Border,” which reads like a series of “ripped-from-the-headlines” news articles, the more-than-50-years-long-and-counting War on Drugs in America has been a costly and dismal failure.

If this were indeed a war, the United States would do well to surrender.

“The Border,” which follows Winslow’s equally exceptional 2015 release “The Cartel” and, before that, 2005’s “The Power of the Dog,” is a fictitious but all too real accounting of Mexican drug trafficking and the ease with which cartel bosses incorporate their poison into every facet of American society, in the book reaching as high up as the president of the United States.

Through lead character Art Keller, who serves time fighting the drug wars in Mexico and Central America before taking a position as head of the DEA in America, Winslow makes a strong — and painful — case that efforts by the current administration to wall off the American/Mexican border to keep undesirable drug dealers out of the country demonizes the wrong people.

Like any other business, the drug market is subject to supply and demand. If there is no demand, there is no need for the supply. With first marijuana, then cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin and now opiates, there has long been an overwhelming demand in this country. And through whatever means necessary, the Mexican cartels have filled that demand.

Politicians and their followers who have advocated for a border wall have cited the rampant drug trade as one of the reasons to build such a structure. But, as Winslow points out in “The Border,” closely inspecting all traffic going from the U.S. to Mexico and vice versa, the world’s busiest such crossing, would back up traffic — and commerce — for miles and days in both directions. Unfortunately, that would include legal commerce and traffic as well as the illicit loads crossing the border.

In comments before a special committee called to investigate charges that the drug trade had reached the highest levels of the U.S. government, “The Border’s” Keller advocates for legalization of all drugs as a means of halting the illegal influx from Mexico and of curtailing the now common practice of privatized incarceration that puts men and women who have minor drug charges in facilities with the thieves, rapists and murderers who should be incarcerated.

I don’t know if full legalization and government monitoring of all drugs is a viable idea, but demonizing another country for our sins is certainly not a plausible answer. Many of the drug lords in Mexico and other countries in Central and South America and in Europe and Asia as well are uneducated individuals whose ruthlessness brought them to power. Just read up on the atrocities perpetrated on Mexican citizens, U.S. DEA agents and even tourists in Mexico if you want something to keep you awake at night.

These people would be inconsequential if, indeed, America took responsibility for its own drug problems and focused on treating people who have succumbed to the temptations of drugs and become addicted. Slowly, law enforcement personnel have advocated for rehabilitation over imprisonment for drug offenses, and while some might argue the costliness of such programs, the price is much lower than the trillions of dollars this country has pretty much wasted — often hypocritically, seeing as how big businesses and political leaders are among the regular users and importers of illicit drugs — in a war that we are no closer to winning today than we were in the beginning.

I’m fortunate; I don’t use drugs. Nor have I ever felt the need or the temptation to try them. But I have friends whose addictions have ruined their careers, their families and, eventually, their lives. I would much rather see our country focus on attacking the drug problem at its root — the people who pay for them and import them — than I would seeing tax money wasted on a foolish wall that would do little or nothing to slow down the constant flow of this poison into our midst.

Staff Photo