The Drug War on the Border Doesn’t Work – Progressive.org

During the Prohibition Era, the U.S.-Mexico border was rife with liquor smuggling. One rancher who lived about twenty miles north of Nogales, Arizona, decided to get into the game with his string of self-directing mules. At night, the rancher would lead the mules south through the canyons into Mexico. The next night, hed load up the team with booze and let them go. The mules would make a beeline back, while the rancher went home another way. The mules consistently arrived before dawn, ready to be unloaded.

It took the feds two years to discover what was going on. They finally tracked the liquor-laden mules to the ranch and arrested their owner. He was fined, and the mules were sold to a miner who used them to haul ore.

I tell this story not to be quaintProhibition was a time of deadly violence on the border (and in Chicago, for that matter)but to draw a parallel to today.

Alcohol smuggling boomed under Prohibition, just as drug smuggling booms today under draconian drug laws. We can end it the same way.

We keep hearing that getting tough on the border is the solution to drug smuggling and migration. But weve been getting tough on the border for more than thirty years. And despite the billions spent, irreparable environmental damage, and massive body countmore than 7,800 have died since 1998, making the Mexican border the deadliest land border on Earth for migrantsmore drugs and migrants seem to be entering the United States than ever.

The reason people and contraband keep flowing into this country is because there is a market for them. We, of all people, should understand the laws of supply and demand.

Alcohol smuggling boomed under Prohibition, just as drug smuggling booms today under draconian drug laws. We can end it the same way. Legalization is already happening with marijuana; here in Arizona, it seems as if there are pot stores on every corner.

This is progress, although national standards and regulation of the industry are clearly needed. Predictably, marijuana legalization made the cartels switch to harder drugs like fentanyl, with deadly results. We must take away the illegal market by treating all drugs like we treat alcohol and cigarettesas a public health challenge, rather than a law enforcement problem. That means legalization and taxation and using the profits to expand education, health care, treatment and other support services for addicts.

Like drugs, the United States is dependent on immigrants. Our population would be declining without them and experts say they are keeping the economy afloat. On a macro level, immigration is good. But on a micro level, as were seeing on the border and in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities, migration causes painful dislocation and difficulties for both the migrants and the communities receiving them.

Migrants and refugees need to be carefully screened, given work permits, and settled in towns and cities across America where their labor is needed. Locals need help to prepare. Money spent on useless and harmful political stunts, like the nearly $200 million it cost the taxpayers of Arizona to place and then remove shipping containers in the desert that did nothing to deter migrants, could be used for this purpose.

Those of us who live and work on the border dont want open borders. We want an end to the fantasy that more crackdowns on the border will solve complex problems, or that the border was somehow under control when Trump was in charge. Those of us with memories longer than three years recall migrant surges were happening then too. We want an end to the border-bashing, wasteful spending, and threats to invade Mexico and kill even more people than the tens of thousands already killed by the war on drugs.

With more than $64 billion in trade and 350 million legal crossings every year, the U.S.-Mexico border is a thriving part of our economy and in many ways a model of peaceful, international cooperation. If we reframed these challenges of drugs and migration not as intractable local problems but as a national concern with positive solutions, we could reduce the needless death and suffering happening on the border and across our two great nations.

September 21, 2023

9:46 AM

Follow this link:

The Drug War on the Border Doesn't Work - Progressive.org