Shootout in Mexico suggests remaking “war on drugs”

A wild weekend in Tijuana. I’m sure Lou Dobbs will have more on this tonight:

Gun battles between suspected drug gang members have left about 15 people dead in the Mexican city of Tijuana, near the border with the US.

Police said rival factions of the local Arellano Felix drug cartel opened fire on each other on Saturday along one of Tijuana’s main roads, using rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning.

Rommel Moreno, attorney general of Baja California state, said: “Today shows we are facing a terrible war never seen before on the [US-Mexico] border.”

Like immigration, there’s a huge vacuum in between the US and Mexico: drugs on one side, demand on the other. The US has demand and lots of money and that creates supply in an impoverished Mexico. Much of this drug trade is inherent because of that equation. Nevertheless, I think that it holds the key to solving some of its extremities.

We have to recognize that the mere act of making something illegal doesn’t necessarily stymie demand. Instead, laws that prohibit something simply shift transactions away from a legal, tax collecting marketplace to the black market; away from a marketplace that’s subject to competitors, laws, and market forces to an underground economy that has few competitors and contempt for the law — making it extremely profitable.

That realization is especially true where a prosperous country borders a poor one. Where the relatively rich want drugs but aren’t willing to take on the burden of growing or manufacturing the drugs themselves. The poor, however, considering their lack of income, will take on that risk — for a price.

The question then isn’t how do you cut demand or supply. As 50 years of the “War on Drugs” has shown, that’s a futile effort because of the enormous potential for profit.

This leads me to the linchpin of drugs and immigration: how do you make the risk vs. reward dynamic less appealing? After all, people don’t envision jail time or death when deciding to smuggle drugs. Instead, they see themselves unemployed or making ends meat.

The only way to alter this dynamic, in my opinion, is to inject real jobs into the Mexican economy. The Mexicans who are working for the drug cartels would, in a perfect world, much rather be doing something else. The problem is that there are few other jobs that pay as well or enough. They don’t want to risk their lives or jail time, but that’s not their immediate problem. Their immediate problem is no job, no income.

This goes back to, much to Lou Dobb’s chagrin, NAFTA and perhaps a NAFTA plus. Creating and sustaining jobs in Mexico is the only way to cut into drug trafficking and immigration. I’m sure most Mexicans would prefer to live at home with their families, but the lack of jobs in their home towns and country sends them north. Likewise, I’m sure most Mexicans, like Americans, would prefer lawful employment with a sustainable wage.

Shifting American manufacturing jobs from the US to Mexico, instead of to China, is the best way to do this. It’s not perfect, there will still be those who want to reap huge rewards, but it will help to cut down on the culture of lawlessness and in turn the conveyor belt of drugs and immigrants into America.