Last November, Massachusetts voters approved a referendum that decriminalized marijuana. In December 2007, voters in Denver approved a law that made adult marijuana possession the city's "lowest law-enforcement priority." In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced it is time to closely study the decriminalization of marijuana, which is already the state's largest cash crop.

American policy makers seem to be cautiously following the shift in public opinion on drug policy. A recent Zogby poll showed that 52 percent of those polled thought marijuana should be legal, taxed and regulated. The shift is probably the result of experience: Many Americans have either used drugs or have relatives or friends who have tried marijuana or other drugs and do not see their friends and loved ones as criminals.

More people are asking why some drug users have to be jailed while other users (such as Olympic champion Michael Phelps) maintain successful, even flourishing careers.

Drug policy reform is moving even faster abroad. In 2001, Portugal decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Not only has the predicted spike in drug use and a public health crisis failed to materialize, Portugal's drug usage rates compare more favorably than many other European states that have kept up a strict "lock 'em up" approach.

In Latin America, policymakers impressed by the experience of Portugal and other countries have begun to move in that direction. Earlier this year, a commission headed by three former Latin American presidents — Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico — called on the governments of the region to break the taboo of discussing alternative drug policies such as decriminalization.

Just recently, Argentina hosted the first Latin American Conference on Drug Policies, a high-profile event sponsored by, among others, the United Nations, the Pan-American Health Organization and the Anti-Drug Latin American Initiative on Drugs and Democracy. The participants, including high-ranking government officials and experts from the region, labeled the war on drugs a failure and suggested a more pragmatic approach to drug policy based on decriminalizing possession for personal consumption.

During the event, Anibal Fernandez, chief of staff for Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, announced that her administration will be submitting a decriminalization bill to Congress in the upcoming months. An Ecuadorean official said similar legislation will soon be debated in that country's National Assembly. Brazil is considering similar changes.

Mexico recently decriminalized possession of any drug so long as the amounts were small enough to indicate personal use. The Supreme Court of Argentina recently ruled that it is unconstitutional to punish marijuana users if no other person is harmed by such use.

There is no ideological common denominator among those questioning the war on drugs. Both liberal and conservative policymakers are dissatisfied with the gang violence that pervades the black market and the futility of trying to stop adults who wish to use drugs from doing so.

We seem to have finally reached a tipping point where the costs of the drug war clearly exceed any perceived benefit. Drug addiction is a problem. But just as alcohol prohibition was a mistaken approach to the problem of alcoholism, so too is the drug war a mistaken approach to drug abuse.

Even before Medina Mora’s surprise ouster, there was a growing buzz that Calderón might be rethinking the drug war, and that in marked contrast to Washington’s long-standing attitude, the Obama administration would support a less aggressive approach. In mid-August, Calderón signed a measure that the Mexican Congress had passed in April decriminalizing the personal possession of small quantities of all illegal drugs. Under the new law, anyone caught with the equivalent of as many as five marijuana joints or four lines of cocaine can no longer be arrested or fined—much less imprisoned. Police will simply give them the address of a rehabilitation clinic and urge them to overcome their habit.

That was precisely the sort of apostasy regarding drug policy that used to generate outrage and threats of retaliation from officials in Washington. This time, the reaction was dramatically different. When asked about the reform measure during a visit to Mexico in July, U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske merely responded that the United States would “wait and see” how it worked out.

Despite such developments, there is little evidence that Calderón’s government is about to abandon the military campaign against the cartels. Indeed, it is more likely that these changes are designed to clear the decks for the escalation of that war.

Medina Mora’s departure is more than a little ominous. Throughout his tenure, he had feuded with Genaro Garcia Luna, the secretary of public security. The departure of Medina Mora and his replacement by a less prominent figure, obscure federal prosecutor Arturo Chavez, strengthens Garcia Luna’s relative position in the administration. Since his approach to the drug war is even more hard-line than Medina Mora’s, his rise in status does not suggest the onset of an appeasement or accommodation strategy regarding drug traffickers.

Moreover, Chavez comes from the same faction of the governing National Action Party (PAN) as Garcia Luna, and the two men have been longtime political allies. George W. Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William and Mary and the author of Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?, concludes that Chavez’s appointment not only is a victory for Garcia Luna in a bureaucratic power struggle, it “backs the muscular approach as they try to ramp up their capabilities to fight the cartels.”

The official justification for Calderón’s signing of the drug-law reform also indicates that the hard-line policy toward the cartels is still in place, and might even intensify. Commenting on the reform measure, Bernardo Espino del Castillo, an official with the attorney general’s office who helped write the new law, stated: “This frees us from a flood of small crimes that have saturated our federal government and allows the authorities to go after big criminals.”

Nor is there any indication that Washington would welcome a de-escalation of Mexico’s offensive against the cartels. While the Obama administration seems more receptive than its predecessors to mild “harm reduction” drug-policy reforms in Mexico, any truce or accommodation with the drug lords would be another matter entirely. Such a move would signal that Mexico City had decided to abandon—or at least greatly scale back—the goal of trying to stem the flow of illegal drugs into the United States in exchange for a commitment from the traffickers to cool the violence.

That step, in the view of zealous U.S. drug warriors—and even relatively moderate Obama administration policy makers—would be a devil’s bargain. Although the U.S. response to Mexico’s new drug decriminalization law was relatively low-key, officials went out of their way to reaffirm an uncompromising stance toward the cartels. “We know that Mexican law-enforcement authorities are continuing their efforts to target drug traffickers,” U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson Laura Sweeney emphasized,

Our friends and partners in Mexico are waging an historic battle with the cartels, one that plays out on the streets of their communities each day. Here in the United States we will continue to enforce federal narcotics laws as we investigate, charge, and arrest cartel leaders and their subordinates in our joint effort to dismantle and disrupt these cartels.

The bottom line is that the drug-war violence in Mexico is likely to get worse, not better, in the coming months. Calderón is a stubborn man, and he seems intent on ignoring pleas for a de-escalation even from some of his political supporters. “The people of Mexico are losing hope, and it is urgent that Congress, the political parties and the president reconsider this strategy,” said Senator Ramon Galindo, a Calderón ally and fellow PAN member. Galindo may have a special vantage point to be alarmed, since he is a former mayor of Ciudad Juarez, the city on the Mexico-U.S. border that has been the epicenter of the drug violence. 

Washington should be concerned about the possible escalation of Calderón’s ill-advised strategy as well. The chaos on our southern border is already at alarming levels. Yet, as bad as the situation has been over the past three years, it may just be a mild prelude to what we will encounter going forward.

The two leaders need to jettison such competing fallacies. Drastic policy changes are needed to neutralize the mounting threat to the stability of our next-door neighbor and the security of our own country.

The only effective strategy is to defund the drug cartels, and the only way to do that is to eliminate the multi-billion-dollar profit caused by the drug trade's black-market status.

It is not surprising that supply-side antidrug initiatives have failed in Colombia and other countries and are now failing in Mexico. The global trade in illegal drugs is a vast enterprise estimated at $320 to $400 billion a year, with Mexico's share thought to be anywhere from $35 billion to $60 billion. The United States is the largest single retail market, but U.S. demand is not the only relevant factor. Indeed, the main areas of growth are in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and some portions of the Middle East and Latin America. The bottom line is that global demand for illegal drugs is robust and likely to remain so.

There is more than enough consumption to attract and sustain traffickers. Since the trade's illegality creates a huge black-market premium (depending on the drug, 90 percent or more of the retail price), the potential profits are enormous. Supply-side antidrug campaigns are not only a futile effort to defy the basic laws of economics, but they also cause serious problems of corruption and violence for a drug-source country like Mexico. The brutal reality is that prohibition simply drives commerce in a product underground and allows the most violence-prone elements to dominate the trade.

Governments around the world seem to be awakening to the problems caused by a prohibition strategy. The Netherlands and Portugal have adopted decriminalization policies for possession and use of small quantities of drugs. In the Western Hemisphere, the leaders of Argentina and Honduras advocate reforms, and sentiment for liberalization seems to be growing in Mexico. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the country's largest opposition party, has called for drug decriminalization, and even President Calderón has proposed to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of street drugs.

But such reforms, while desirable, do not get to the causal root of the violence that accompanies the drug trade. Unless the production and sale of drugs is also legalized, the black-market premium will still exist and law-abiding businesses will still avoid the trade. In other words, drug commerce will remain in the hands of criminal elements that do not shrink from bribery, intimidation and murder.

Because of its proximity to the huge U.S. market, Mexico will continue to be a cockpit for drug-related violence. Continued adherence to prohibition means that the United States is creating the risk that the drug cartels may become powerful enough to destabilize its neighbor. Their impact on Mexico's government and society has already reached worrisome levels. Worst of all, the carnage does not respect Mexico's northern border.

When the United States and other countries ponder whether to continue drug prohibition, they need to consider all of the potential societal costs, both domestically and internationally. Drug abuse is certainly a major public-health problem, and its societal costs are considerable. But banning the drug trade creates economic distortions and an opportunity for the most unsavory elements to gain dominant positions. Prohibition leads inevitably to an orgy of corruption and violence. Those are even worse societal costs, and that reality is now becoming all too evident in Mexico.

Abandoning the prohibition model is the only effective way to stem the violence in Mexico and its spillover into the United States. If U.S. leaders are reluctant to embrace the radical course of legalizing all drugs, they should at least begin with legalizing marijuana. That step by itself would strike a significant blow against the cartels, since at least 55 percent of their revenues come from marijuana sales. Even most drug warriors concede that marijuana is the least harmful of the illegal drugs. And if production and sale of that substance (as well as possession and use) were legalized, there would be more than enough domestic sources. Who would bother to deal with the Mexican cartels when a local producer could supply the product, or in many cases, consumers could grow it in their own back yards?

In his town-hall session a few weeks ago, President Obama was asked if he thought marijuana should be legalized. He responded with a flippant, half-joking "no." That response was most unfortunate. One would think that Obama, given his own youthful drug use, would be more receptive to moving away from the mind-numbing conventional wisdom about keeping marijuana illegal. There are ample domestic-policy reasons for changing that strategy, but with the awful violence the drug cartels are causing in Mexico, we now have a national-security imperative as well to alter course.

Ending drug prohibition would defund the criminal trafficking organizations while enabling honest enterprises to enter the business and be content with normal profit margins. Legalization would weaken the cartels more than any other step we could possibly take. The current strategy risks Mexico becoming a chaotic narco-state, with all the alarming implications that development would have for America's own security.

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On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense.

While other states in the European Union have developed various forms of de facto decriminalization — whereby substances perceived to be less serious (such as cannabis) rarely lead to criminal prosecution — Portugal remains the only EU member state with a law explicitly declaring drugs to be "decriminalized." Because more than seven years have now elapsed since enactment of Portugal's decriminalization system, there are ample data enabling its effects to be assessed.

Notably, decriminalization has become increasingly popular in Portugal since 2001. Except for some far-right politicians, very few domestic political factions are agitating for a repeal of the 2001 law. And while there is a widespread perception that bureaucratic changes need to be made to Portugal's decriminalization framework to make it more efficient and effective, there is no real debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized. More significantly, none of the nightmare scenarios touted by preenactment decriminalization opponents — from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for "drug tourists" — has occurred.

The political consensus in favor of decriminalization is unsurprising in light of the relevant empirical data. Those data indicate that decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal, which, in numerous categories, are now among the lowest in the EU, particularly when compared with states with stringent criminalization regimes. Although postdecriminalization usage rates have remained roughly the same or even decreased slightly when compared with other EU states, drug-related pathologies — such as sexually transmitted diseases and deaths due to drug usage — have decreased dramatically. Drug policy experts attribute those positive trends to the enhanced ability of the Portuguese government to offer treatment programs to its citizens — enhancements made possible, for numerous reasons, by decriminalization.

This report will begin with an examination of the Portuguese decriminalization framework as set forth in law and in terms of how it functions in practice. Also examined is the political climate in Portugal both pre- and postdecriminalization with regard to drug policy, and the impetus that led that nation to adopt decriminalization.

The report then assesses Portuguese drug policy in the context of the EU's approach to drugs. The varying legal frameworks, as well as the overall trend toward liberalization, are examined to enable a meaningful comparative assessment between Portuguese data and data from other EU states.

The report also sets forth the data concerning drug-related trends in Portugal both pre- and postdecriminalization. The effects of decriminalization in Portugal are examined both in absolute terms and in comparisons with other states that continue to criminalize drugs, particularly within the EU.

The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success. Within this success lie self-evident lessons that should guide drug policy debates around the world.

Have you heard of Santiago Meza Lopez? They call him "The Soupmaker." In January he confessed to Mexican authorities that he had dissolved over 300 dead human bodies in acid. There's a lot of money to be made in America's black market for drugs and Mexican suppliers are willing to kill a lot of people to control those markets and capture the gains. Conservative estimates put the death toll of the war between rival Mexican gangs at over 5,000 in the last year alone. When you kill so many people it's hard to know what to do with all of the rotting bodies. One way to handle the problem is to call in the Soupmaker. Six hundred American dollars per corpse.

Did you know that the United States of America, the Land of the Free, puts a larger portion of its population behind bars than any country on earth? Thanks in large part to the War on Drugs, Americans lock more of their own in cages than do the thuggish Russians or those "Islamofascist" Saudis. As it happens, American drug prohibition and sentencing policies hit poor black men the hardest, devastating already disadvantaged black families and communities—a tragic, mocking contrast to the achievement of Obama's election. Militarized police departments across the nation month after month kick down the wrong doors, terrify innocent families, shoot lawful citizens, and often kill the family dog.

So why is Obama laughing? To be fair, in 2004, Obama called the War on Drugs "a complete failure." And he's much saner about pot than most politicians. He has in the past called for decriminalization of marijuana and his Justice Department has promised the DEA will ease up on medical marijuana dispensaries that comply with state law (though the Feds just cracked down on a cannabis coop in San Francisco). Sure, Obama's got a lot on his hands these days. But his dismissive snicker reflects a sadly common nonchalance toward America's disastrous experiment in prohibition. This is a "war" that has not only failed utterly to shut down the market for drugs, but has, on the way, perpetuated the shameful American legacy of racial stratification, eroded the rights and safety of American citizens, and fomented a civil war on our southern border in which knock-on markets for assassins and corpse liquidation specialists flourish. To call this "complete failure" is to put on a happy face.

Barack Obama inhaled. "The point was to inhale," he once smartly observed. But Obama also knows how to get elected president. Sadly, at this point in history, it remains a political liability to have become intoxicated on certain safe but illegal and stigmatized substances, like marijuana. Obama has said his past drug use was a regrettable youthful indiscretion, and he might even believe it. But why regret it? He managed to become president, didn't he? It's easy to laugh off the folks who jammed the White House switchboard when we imagine them as pranking "stoners," and this picture of "the online audience" concedes the harmlessness of marijuana users while refusing to take them seriously. But why not imagine them as regular folks motivated by a love of liberty, justice, peace, and, sure, maybe a taste for grass? Why not imagine them as successful professionals, unlike Barack Obama only in political ambition?

Marijuana is neither evil nor dangerous. Scientists have proven its medical uses. It has spared millions from anguish. But the casual pleasure marijuana has delivered is orders of magnitude greater than the pain it has assuaged, and pleasure matters too. That's probably why Barack Obama smoked up the second and third times: because he liked it. That's why tens of millions of Americans regularly take a puff, despite the misconceived laws meant to save us from our own wickedness.

The Atlantic Monthly's Andrew Sullivan has been documenting on his blog the stories of typical, productive Americans—kids' football coaches, secretaries of the PTA—who smoke marijuana because they like to smoke marijuana, but who understandably fear emerging fully from the "cannabis closet." This is a profoundly necessary idea. If we're to begin to roll back our stupid and deadly drug war, the stigma of responsible drug use has got to end, and marijuana is the best place to start. The super-savvy Barack Obama managed to turn a buck by coming out of the cannabis (and cocaine) closet in a bestselling memoir. That's progress. But his admission came with the politicians' caveat of regret. We'll make real progress when solid, upstanding folk come out of the cannabis closet, heads held high.

So here we go. My name is Will Wilkinson. I smoke marijuana, and I like it.

Bush claimed to respect federalism, but his Justice Department repeatedly brought the heavy hand of the law down on desperately sick people who, with the approval of their state governments, used marijuana to ease their pain.

Calling off the raids was the right thing to do, and—for a liberal president vulnerable to the charge of being "soft on drugs"—a politically courageous move ("the Audacity of Dope"?).

Thousands of Americans use marijuana to treat glaucoma, cancer, and other diseases. The federal government has no business coming between them and their doctors. Cancer survivor Richard Brookhiser made that clear when he testified before Congress in 2006.

Brookhiser, a staid senior editor at National Review, hardly resembles the stereotypical pot smoker. But in 1992, he contracted a particularly virulent form of cancer and found that only marijuana would allow him to hold down enough food to survive the treatment.

"God forbid that anyone in this room should ever need chemotherapy," Brookhiser testified, but if you do, "Let me assure you that whatever you think now, or however you vote, if that moment comes to you, you will turn to marijuana. Extend that liberty to your fellow citizens."

In recent years, 13 states have done just that. After California passed the Compassionate Use Act in 1996, the Clinton administration commissioned a comprehensive study on medical marijuana.

That report came out 10 years ago this month, and it indicated that the drug had shown promise as a treatment "for symptoms such as pain relief, control of nausea, and vomiting." The scandal-scarred Clinton worried that his opponents might portray his administration as a klatch of licentious Baby Boomers, so he wasn't entirely happy with the report's result. His administration sued medical marijuana dispensaries, and tried to revoke the licenses of doctors who prescribed the drug.

President Bush was more aggressive still. In the case of Gonzales v. Raich, the Bush Justice Department insisted that, regardless of what California's voters had decided, it had every right to deny use of the drug to a woman with an inoperable brain tumor.

In the process, the Bush team undermined the core constitutional principle that federal power is limited. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his Raich dissent, "If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything—and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers."

Holder made clear last Wednesday that the Obama administration won't pursue cases like Raich. That's good news, but the new policy doesn't go nearly far enough. There's no good reason to wage war against people who use marijuana as medicine, but neither is there any reason to prosecute recreational users. It's a disgrace that, in the 21st century, in a free country, we continue to send people to prison for using or selling the drug.

Survey data tell us that some 40 percent of Americans have tried pot. Any policy that suggests that 100 million Americans are criminals needs rethinking. Among them are a host of political elites who support the drug war, at least tacitly: Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama himself.

Obama's no legalizer. But his early moves—including the appointment of a moderate as drug czar—suggest that he's much less hawkish than his predecessors. There are even some signs of new thinking on Capitol Hill.

Last year Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) cosponsored a bill to decriminalize possession of marijuana. Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) recently took to the pages of the Washington Post to lament the fact that the United States locks up more people per capita than any other country in the world—many of them nonviolent drug offenders.

We're still far away from calling an end to our foolish and destructive War on Drugs, but the debate finally seems to be headed in the right direction. The prospects for drug policy reform look better than they have for decades.

He had better hope that they don't "melt down" more, or it may not be safe to venture anywhere in Mexico. Just a few weeks before the attorney's general's optimistic assessment, the Marine commander at Camp Pendleton barred his troops from spending their leave time in Tijuana because the city had become too dangerous. The U.S. State Department has issued new travel alerts warning American businesspeople and tourists about the growing risks of travel in Mexico. Several American colleges and universities have likewise urged their students to avoid going to Mexico for spring break.

Washington Times correspondent Sara Carter reports that a high-level source in the Pentagon concludes that the two leading drug-trafficking organizations, the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels, now field more than one hundred thousand armed foot soldiers. That figure does not take into account the enforcers at the disposal of the smaller cartels. Adding their personnel to the mix would likely bring the total to one hundred forty to one hundred fifty thousand. In short, the forces the drug gangs can deploy are now nearly as numerous as Mexico's one hundred eighty-eight thousand man army.

And the gangs are well-armed, which leads to the second manifestation of delusional thinking on the part of Mexican authorities. President Felipe Calderón and other leaders insist that "lax gun laws" in the United States are largely responsible for the violence the drug cartels are inflicting. Medina-Mora typified that view, saying: "I think American [gun] laws are absurd" because "they make it very easy for citizens to acquire guns."

Gun-control advocates in the United States have encouraged the Mexican government's search for scapegoats. A New York Times editorial encapsulated the logic of strengthening the restrictions on firearms as a way to more effectively wage the war on drugs south of the border. "Mexico has no hope of defeating the traffickers unless this country is also willing to do more to fight the drug war at home—starting with a clear commitment to stop the weapons smugglers."

Even some U.S. political leaders have accepted the Mexican government's explanation for the surging violence. Last summer, the Bush and Calderon administrations announced a new program, the Armas Cruzadas (Crossed Arms), to stem the flow of guns from the United States to Mexico. Senator Charles Grassley defended the initiative, saying: "As drugs come into our country, money and illegal firearms go out. We owe it to our neighbors to help cut down on outbound smuggling."

The notion that the violence in Mexico would subside if the United States had more restrictive laws on firearms is devoid of logic and evidence. Mexican drug gangs would have little trouble obtaining all the guns they desire from black market sources in Mexico and elsewhere. After all, the traffickers make their fortunes operating in a black market involving another product and they have vast financial resources to purchase whatever they need to conduct their business. Even assuming that the Mexican government's estimate that 97 percent of the weapons used by the cartels come from stores and gun shows in the United States—and Mexican officials are not exactly objective sources for such statistics—the traffickers rely on those outlets simply because they are easier and more convenient, not because there are no other options.

One could close every sporting goods store in the southwestern states, and the measure would not disarm the drug gangs. Indeed, many of the most lethal weapons the cartels employ, such as machine guns and grenade launchers, are already illegal. If Washington and the various state governments adopted the firearms "reforms" that Mexico City is demanding, the principal result would be to inconvenience law-abiding American gun owners and merchants.

Attempts to lay the blame for Mexico's chaos at the door of U.S. gun laws are either naive or a cynical exercise in excuse making. Tightening firearms laws in the United States (even if that were politically feasible) is not a solution to the violence in Mexico.

Mexican leaders need to face some troubling realities. The cartels are not melting down. They are growing stronger and pose an increasing threat to the stability of the Mexican state. Growing levels of violence are not indicators of desperation, but of power and arrogance. Seizures of large drug shipments (another "positive" sign Mexican authorities have recently touted) merely show that large quantities of drugs are in the supply pipeline, not that the cartels are on the ropes. And using U.S. gun laws as a scapegoat for Mexico's problems is not a constructive policy.

The Calderón government can, of course, continue to indulge in such fantasies. But if it does, the threat posed by the cartels will become even worse. Despite some hysteria in the United States, Mexico is not yet on the brink of becoming a "failed state." If Mexican leaders persist in attitudes that amount to little more than wishful thinking, however, such a terrible outcome is not out of the question.

US and Nato leaders need to understand that they can wage the war against radical Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan or wage a war on narcotics — but they can't do both with any prospect of success. The opium trade is a huge part — better than one-third — of the country's economy. Attempts to suppress it will provoke fierce opposition. Worse yet, opium grows best in the southern provinces populated by Pashtuns, a people traditionally hostile to a strong central government and any foreign troop presence. These same provinces produced the Taliban and more easily revert to supporting fundamentalist militias than their Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara neighbours to the north.

Alternatives to opium offer little hope. More than 90% of the world's opium comes from Afghanistan. Taking on opium in Afghanistan means taking on the world's demand for opium. Opium purchases for medicinal uses and substitute crop programmes with wheat, saffron and pomegranates will not stanch the demand for illicit drug production. In fact, reducing the illegal harvest with these efforts only makes the black-market prices rise and encourages farmers to grow more. If the Cold War taught us anything, it is that you cannot fight economics.

Proponents of a crackdown argue that a vigorous eradication effort is needed to dry up the funds flowing to the Taliban and al-Qaida. Those groups do benefit from the drug trade, but they are hardly the only ones. A UN report estimates that more than 500,000 Afghan families are involved in drug commerce. Given the network of extended families and clans in Afghanistan, it is likely that at least 35% of the country's population has a stake in the drug trade. Furthermore, Nato forces rely on opium-poppy farmers to provide information on the movement of enemy forces. Escalating the counter-narcotics effort risks alienating these crucial intelligence sources.

Equally important, many of President Hamid Karzai's key political allies also profit from trafficking. These allies include regional warlords who backed the Taliban when that faction was in power, switching sides only when it was clear that the US-led military offensive in late 2001 was going to succeed. Targeting such traffickers is virtually guaranteed to cause them to switch sides yet again.

Targeting drug traffickers also makes it impossible to achieve any "awakening" on par with the American success in Sunni areas of Iraq. We cannot fund local militias to keep the Taliban out. These militias already pay themselves from drug profits. These same drug profits will keep them loyal to Nato's enemies as long as the alliance remains committed to destroying their livelihood.

Nato leaders need to keep their priorities straight. The principal objective is to defeat radical Islamic terrorists. The drug war is a dangerous distraction from that goal.

Recognising that security interests sometimes trump other objectives would hardly be unprecedented. For example, US officials eased their pressure on Peru's government regarding the drug-eradication issue in the early 1990s, when Lima concluded it was more important to induce farmers involved in the cocaine trade to abandon their alliance with the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.

The Obama administration should adopt a similarly pragmatic policy in Afghanistan and look the other way regarding drug trafficking. Alienating crucial Afghan factions in a vain attempt to disrupt the flow of drug revenues to the Taliban and al-Qaida is a strategy that is far too dangerous. This war is too important to sacrifice on the altar of drug-war orthodoxy.

An incident in Nuevo Laredo illustrates just how brazen the traffickers have become and how contemptuous they are of government authorities. Los Zetas, the enforcement arm of the powerful and especially ruthless Gulf Cartel, openly sought recruits to their ranks, posting help-wanted signs and hanging a large banner across a major thoroughfare with the message: "The Zetas want you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer a good salary, food and benefits for your family."

The cartels have also thoroughly penetrated Mexico's government institutions even the agencies that are supposed to be dedicated to battling traffickers. In recent weeks, prosecutors charged top officials in the Attorney General's office with being informers for the drug organizations. They allegedly received payments of $150,000 to $450,000 per month for information regarding surveillance targets and potential raids. Those sums are more than even high-level law enforcement personnel can make in several years and lower-level personnel can make in several decades. With such resources at their disposal, and with the U.S. and global demand for illegal drugs remaining robust, it is no wonder that the cartels are winning.

Indeed, given Mexico's increasingly precarious economic situation, their power is likely to grow especially in the next year or two. Mexico is suffering badly from the economic recession. For the first time ever, financial remittances sent home from Mexicans working in the United States declined in 2008. As the already meager job prospects in Mexico shrink further, the drug cartels will be one employer willing and able to pay for new hires.

Washington, alarmed at the growing power of the cartels, is backing President Felipe Calderon's government with the Merida Initiative, a multibillion dollar measure to aid anti-trafficking initiatives. But that measure shows few positive results. Indeed, the death toll in Mexico is growing, not declining. More than 5,300 people perished in the fighting in 2008, and 2009 is off to an ugly start. In just one two-day period (Jan. 26-27) 18 people were found shot dead in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, and another four in a neighboring state on the property of the state-run oil company, Pemex. Those casualties were simply the latest in a series of bloody incidents during the new year that has already put 2009 on pace for another record number of killings.

The carnage is now so bad that the U.S. State Department has issued travel alerts for Americans traveling in Mexico. One such alert warned that the battles in portions of northern Mexico are "the equivalent of military small-unit combat and have included the use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades."

U.S. tourism to cities on Mexico's border with the United States, where the bloodshed has been the worst, has dropped sharply. Even the Marines at Camp Pendleton are now prohibited from spending leave time in neighboring Tijuana because it has become too dangerous.

Even more troubling, Mexico's violence is spilling across the border into communities in the southwestern United States.

Indeed, Mexican drug gangs now operate in numerous cities throughout our country. Cartel enforcers have published lists of Americans, including police officers, who are targeted for assassination.

President Barack Obama must put the drug violence in Mexico at the top of his national security agenda. While it is premature to describe Mexico as a full-blown failed state, as some experts have done, the situation has reached alarming proportions.

The campaign against drug trafficking in Mexico is the latest failed front in the international war on drugs. The brutal truth is that the illegality of the drug trade creates a multibillion-dollar black-market premium that attracts the greediest, most violence-prone elements. Neither the Merida Initiative nor any other program will change that fundamental economic reality.

President Obama needs to order a comprehensive reassessment of America's drug strategy before the security environment along our southern border gets even worse.

Shouldn't Phelps be charged? Along with President Obama and his two predecessors, all of whom, it seems, used illegal drugs? If not, perhaps it is time to have a serious debate about the drug laws.

Of course, Michael Phelps immediately apologized for his poor judgment. Attention turned to his sponsors, since their contracts include the usual moral clauses, which protect their investment in celebrities who behave foolishly, if not actually immorally. Happily for Phelps's bank account, some of his big-money backers, including Speedo, Hilton, and Omega, accepted his apology. Subway and Visa haven't been talking, but don't look like they are going to jump. Kellogg's, so far in the minority, announced it would drop Phelps.

But if marijuana use is so horrid as to warrant criminalization, why are we wasting time discussing whether Phelps will be able to keep his endorsement deals? Shouldn't he be prosecuted—just like millions of other Americans, whose lives have been ruined by criminal convictions for smoking pot?

In 2007, 872,721 Americans were arrested for marijuana violations, 775,138 of them for possession. Some number of the latter undoubtedly were caught growing or selling and were charged with lesser offenses, but, in any case, hundreds of thousands of Americans ended up in jail for doing precisely what Michael Phelps did: lighting up. Roughly three-quarters of those arrested for marijuana offenses were, like Phelps, under 30. With most of their lives ahead of them, they face the greatest harm from prosecution under the drug laws.

So why shouldn't Phelps go to jail?

To ask the question is to answer it. While smoking pot may be a stupid thing to do for many reasons—risking adverse health effects, endangering endorsements, undermining Phelps's status as a celebrity role model—he hurt no one but himself. He could have been photographed while drunk and stumbling out of a party, and it would have been no different. Bad press and angry sponsors would have forced an abject apology, and everyone would have moved on. Just like with his marijuana hit.

Of course, advocates of prohibition argue that illicit drugs are different. And so they are—mostly because their use is illegal, a situation that creates the most serious problems usually associated with drug use.

The arguments are old but clear. Whatever the law might say, the people have voted with their lungs: 95 million Americans over the age of 21 have smoked pot, 20 million have smoked in the last year, and 11 million use the drug regularly. It's hard to believe that all of them, almost one-third of the U.S. population, are criminals who deserve jail time.

Moreover, the violence associated with drugs is principally from prohibition rather than use. Drunks are far more likely to commit (and be victims of) violent crimes than are users of marijuana. Prohibition-era Chicago offered a dramatic lesson in the impact of banning a widely used drug. That city's violent era is being played out on a larger scale in Colombia and Mexico, where urban and rural communities have been overwhelmed with drug-gang violence.

The health arguments remain disputed, but the basic question is whether we live in a free society in which people can choose to engage in risky behavior. Cigarette smokers, hang gliders, and rock climbers all take risks that many others view as unacceptable. That's no reason for arresting them.

And it's pretty hard to argue that marijuana use will prevent Phelps from being productive. Most all of us probably remember pothead classmates who ended up wildly successful in their chosen careers. Will some people use to excess? Yes, just as some people drink too much, gamble too much, spend too much, and act irresponsibly in a multitude of other ways. Criminal law is not the answer.

Is Michael Phelps likely to go to jail? No, and for good reason. But for the same reason, the rest of us should not be arrested for smoking pot, either. Whether marijuana use is good or bad is not the issue. Short of engaging in behavior that directly threatens others, people should be left alone. That's what a society grounded in individual liberty is—or at least should be—all about.