by Thomas Keister

Isn't it amazing when everybody knows the dice are loaded, yet no one bats an eye when the United States keeping on throwing chips at the guys running the game?

Hiding under the atypical umbrella of anonymity, American officials are using the explosion of violence leaking over the Mexican border into our country as some form of proof the drug war is working, despite the fact the violence is escalating as a result of the ramped-up drug war efforts. Yes, indeed. This is a level of thinking that compares with being told that breaking both of your legs can improve your marathon time. This must be more of that "looking forward" shit I keep hearing about as our country continues to spiral down the porcelain.

Meanwhile, as our government continues to twiddle their thumbs in response to the third war they are managing to lose simultaneously, the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico convened the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, offering new tactics and suggestions on dealing with the current approach, which they called a failure.

Among those tactics, the Commission reckons, should be a "broad" debate, which includes decriminalization of cannabis for personal use and developing a "public health" approach, which would focus more on treatment and education, while using law enforcement to battle the organized crime front of the Drug War.

While I can't say I can't disagree with these three men, or their commission's stances, the cynic in me can't help but think that, if these three men had just "played ball" with the United States, they would probably still be El Presidente (or whatever the hell their official titles were), instead of playing it up on the lecture circuit. Where was this enlightened opinion of the drug war when they were in office? Oh yeah, they didn't want to cut off the flow of U.S. money coming into their countries to, uh...er..."help." Once you figure out a way to take U.S. "throwaway" money off the front line of the war on drugs, then you might even be able to convince Latin America to decriminalize marijuana, the "paradigm shift" the Commission so rightly calls for.

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