Ventura 3:58 p.m. PT June 12, 2017

In this Jan. 12, 2014 file photo, men belonging to the Self-Defense Council of Michoacan, ride on a sandbag-filled truck while trying to flush out alleged members of The Caballeros Templarios drug cartel from the town of Nueva Italia, Mexico.(Photo: Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press)

The following editorial appeared in The Orange County Register:

While American foreign policy has for years fixated on conflict in the Middle East, just across the border in Mexico and throughout Central America tens of thousands of people lost their lives last year because of drug cartels competing to deliver illicit drugs into the United States.

According to an International Institute for Strategic Studies new report, 50,000 lives were lost in Syria last year, while 39,000 were killed in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, much of which is attributable to drug-war violence.

Although the exact number of people killed because of the drug war in Mexico is unlikely to ever be known, a recent report from the Congressional Research Service cited estimates of 80,000 to more than 100,000 in that country alone.

The violence is a predictable consequence of our failed policy of drug prohibition. In the near-half century since President Nixon declared a war on drugs, hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been killed in conflicts fueled by a lucrative illicit drug trade made possible by our prohibition of drugs.

Were losing badly the war on drugs, Donald Trump said in 1990. You have to legalize drugs to win that war.While Trump may have since lost this insight, the war on drugs is still doing more harm than the drugs themselves.

Rather than squander more lives and resources fighting a war that cannot be won, the United States must recognize the futility and harm of its drug policies.

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Editorial: 'War on drugs' costing too many lives - Ventura County Star