NEW YORK — When I read the news that the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy "blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point" (Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12), I thought: Someone is finally talking sense. I have long regarded the U.S. approach to drugs as self- righteous, overbearing and destructive.
This is not the first time the U.S. "war on drugs," which President Richard Nixon started back in 1971, has been pronounced a failure. Five years ago, for example, none other than President George W. Bush's "drug czar," John Walters, admitted that the "war" was failing. Of course, Walters, a hard-nosed conservative, made it clear that the U.S. had no intention of abandoning it. Today, he insists that intensified drug-related violence in Mexico — 4,000 people killed in 2008 alone — is a sign that the U.S. war is succeeding.
There have been more recent judgments. Late last year, Ernest Zedillo, former president of Mexico, wrote in a Brookings Institution report that "current U.S. counternarcotics policies are failing by most objective measures."