Editorial: Another war that's a losing effort

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. If that's true, U.S. policy on drugs is insane.

For decades, federal, state and local governments have fought the war on drugs, dumping billions of dollars into a bottomless pit, ruining thousands of lives, and ending many others. What kind of working relationship Lima police and the Allen County Sheriff's Office should have in combating drugs was a central point of the sheriff's race last fall. Massive prisons have been built to house victims of the drug war, many of them guilty of doing nothing our last three presidents haven't done. Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has proposed alternative sentencing for some nonviolent criminals, and common sense says that would include many people convicted of drug offenses. But regardless of the punishment, taxpayers have footed the bill for all this, assured by the government that their money was being spent to keep them safe.

The federal government's newest tactic is a two-fer: helping our Mexican allies in the drug war by looking at tightening firearms restrictions in the U.S. Increased violence in Mexico related to the illegal drug trade is spilling over the border. This has prompted U.S. officials to complain to authorities south of the border. Mexican officials respond by blaming what it calls lax gun laws in the U.S. for supplying the weapons that drug cartels use.

These claims don't lack for supporters. According to a Cato Institute policy paper, academics and politicians swallow Mexican claims about gun smuggling. Pamela Starr of the University of Southern California makes a preposterous claim that is quoted in the Cato report. She wrote, "an estimated 97 percent of the arms used by the Mexican cartels - including military-grade grenade launchers and assault weapons - are purchased at sporting goods stores and gun shows on the U.S. side of the border and then smuggled south, according to the Mexican government."

We're not sure which "sporting goods stores" they shop at, but we don't recall seeing grenade launchers at local gun shops. And "military-grade ... assault weapons" must refer to fully automatic or select-fire rifles (capable of firing a three-round burst with one trigger squeeze) that have been severely restricted since 1934. One doesn't walk into a store, plunk money and walk out with a machine gun.

The problem isn't supposed easy access to firearms in the U.S. As Ted Galen Carpenter, author of the Cato report, notes, drug cartels are in the business of smuggling illegal products. They have contacts for whom getting military-grade weaponry is their bread and butter. And cartels have the financial resources to purchase them by the crate, rather than singly in U.S. "sporting goods stores."

Starr is correct, however, when she writes, "The United States is enabling the bloodshed in Mexico." She goes on to say the U.S. has a "moral responsibility to stop arming the murderers and kidnappers." The United States has a moral responsibility for the violence, but it has nothing to do with firearms. It's our ill-conceived drug war that fuels the violence.

In the early 20th century, Prohibition did little to stop alcohol sales in the U.S. It simply drove the trade underground, where there is no law to protect people. Small-time thugs rose to great riches as a result of smuggling and selling illegal liquor to adults who wanted it. Selling illegal goods carries many risks, and the price reflects those risks. That risk premium is all profit. That's what fuels drug violence.

President Barack Obama has made "change" the buzzword of his administration. A major policy shift in the war on drugs would be "change" that would help people on both sides of the border. They lack any record of it, but Republicans have rediscovered their voice on fiscal control. Our local delegation to Congress could demonstrate its seriousness with legislation to make change that Obama and other Democrats couldn't seriously refuse.