America to the rescue. . . I mean blackmail.

I salute the Mexican government for being brave enough to publicly reconsider a ridiculous policy. I only wish the US Congress had the prerequisite cojones.

Mexico’s Congress opened a three-day debate Monday on the merits of legalizing marijuana for personal use, a policy backed by three former Latin American presidents who warned that a crackdown on drug cartels is not working. Although President Felipe Calderon has opposed the idea, the unprecedented forum shows legalizing marijuana is gaining support in Mexico amid brutal drug violence.

Such a measure would be sure to strain relations with the United States at a time when the two countries are stepping up cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking. The congressional debate — open to academics, experts and government officials — ends a day before President Barack Obama arrives in Mexico for talks on the drug war.

Sadly, even if Mexico does come out in favor of legalization, the US will likely blackmail it with a cutoff of various funds to prevent such a move, the same way they violate the sovereignty of their own states. Nevertheless, Mexico would be in a good position to defy the US as even with the legalization of marijuana, it would be a tough sell domestically for the US to cut off aid to Mexico at a time when drug violence is all over the news.

Joaquin Guzman, “El Chapo,” head of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, has been recognized by Forbes as one of this years new billionaires.

El Chapo (Shorty) narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by a rival cartel in 1993. A few weeks later he was nabbed by officials in Guatemala and extradited to Mexico where he began a twenty year sentence for bribery and criminal association. In January of 2001, shortly before he was to be extradited to the US, he (bit of irony here) bribed prison guards and escaped via the prison laundry.

Crime has certainly paid for Shorty but I doubt he’s rubbing elbows with his fellow billionaires on some swank golf course. He’s got a $5 million DEA bounty on his head and has made Interpol’s short list. Forbes, last year, put him second behind Osama bin Laden on their top ten most wanted fugitives list. He’s reported to have undergone plastic surgery (sadly, not the deadly sort previous Mexican drug lords have suffered) to alter his appearance, changes cell phones on a daily basis and travels in a subterranean fashion via tunnels whenever possible.

As my learned colleague previously noted, “it is time to declare victory in the War on Terrorism and move on.” There is simply no value in war without end. And in this slightly dated, but no less relevant article from the Atlantic Monthly, writer Ken Dermota notes how the war on drugs has become less effective over time.

Clearly, policing has a big impact on cocaine prices: On the streets of Bogotá, a gramo of cocaine can be had for under $2. Recreational users in America, on the other hand, typically pay upward of $50 a gram. Yet over time, cocaine prices per pure gram in the United States have steadily fallen, from $600 in the early 1980s to less than $200 by the mid-1990s. In 2000, under Plan Colombia, the U.S. took the fight directly to the coca fields, spending nearly as much each year on aerial coca eradication and fighting cocaine-dealing rebels in Colombia as Ireland spends on its entire military. Plan Colombia has cost $4.7 billion since its inception, but cocaine on U.S. streets has only gotten cheaper, while American demand has remained steady.

No one is here to make a direct comparison between the war on drugs and war on terror, but if a war on a nebulous enemy is declared and never formally finished, the policies become aimless, results hard to calculate, yet the money is still ready to be pumped by politicians.

Inspired by Warfare 2050, image from Stratfor: