According to a new expert analysis, Mexico's brutal drug war is costing the country a whole hell of a lot of money:

Tobias estimates the economic cost of Mexico’s violence is 2 percent to 3 percent of GDP, and the total cost is $120 billion, or about 12 percent of Mexico’s $1.085 trillion GDP in 2008. The estimate by Bulltick, a Miami-based brokerage with offices in four Latin American countries, includes prevention measures, prison costs, lost foreign direct investment and expenses to victims and businesses. [Bloomberg]

What I just can't understand, no matter how hard I try, is why on earth anyone ever expected a different outcome than this. It is literally the goal of Mexico's chief drug war strategists to reduce violence and save their nation's reputation. That is what they thought would happen if they cracked down on the drug trade. Instead, every single problem they sought to address has gotten worse.

And as bad as things have gotten, you can bet that the leaders of the Mexican drug war will look at this data and say that it shows the need for more aggressive strategies to finally defeat the cartels.

The FBI has released its preliminary 2008 drug arrest numbers, collected as part of the Uniform Crime Reports program. The report verifies that the nation's police forces -- federal, state, county and local -- continued to pour vast amounts of limited police resources into the ineffective anti-drug effort. Arrested for drug abuse violations (as they call them) numbered 1,702,537 in 2008, out of a total of 14,005,615 non-traffic arrests -- 12.2%, more than one out of eight. This is a slight drop from 2007, when there were about 1.8 million, according to UCR, about 13%. 82% of drug arrests were for possession, and more than half of those were for marijuana. That slight percentage drop in the number of drug arrests means nearly 100,000 people who were spared the drug war shaft, so this is a good thing. The fact that it would drop at all provides some encouragement -- hopefully warranted, though only time will tell about that. Whichever way you look at it, it is a vast number of arrests affecting a vast number of people, and a whole lot of police time that could have been spent more usefully doing almost anything else. The reports points out that drug arrests were more numerous than any other category of offense that UCR tracks. Perhaps because of that, the front page of the arrest section has a useful table categorizing what the arrest types were, for which drugs, and where they took place. I've copied the table below; but you can see the original, and then explore UCR for '08 and many years past, at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/arrests/. Expect a more detailed analysis from Phil, if not in this week's Chronicle then in the next one.

Drug abuse violations		United States total	Northeast	Midwest	South	West
Total1		100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
Sale/ Manufacturing:	Total	17.7	22.1	19.3	16.4	16.1
	Heroin or cocaine and their derivatives	7.7	13.4	5.6	7.5	5.8
	Marijuana	5.5	5.9	8.2	4.3	5.4
	Synthetic or manufactured drugs	1.5	1.2	1.2	2.6	0.6
	Other dangerous nonnarcotic drugs	3.0	1.5	4.4	1.9	4.3
Possession:	Total	82.3	77.9	80.7	83.6	83.9
	Heroin or cocaine and their derivatives	20.1	20.7	12.5	21.0	22.3
	Marijuana	44.3	46.5	51.9	50.2	33.2
	Synthetic or manufactured drugs	3.3	2.7	3.8	4.2	2.5
	Other dangerous nonnarcotic drugs	14.6	8.0	12.5	8.2	25.9

 

The New York Times "Room for Debate" blog has a series of comments on Mexico's new decriminalization law. Will it reduce violence, or police corruption? Will increase drug use? Is it really a decriminalization law? Former foreign minister of Mexico Jorge Castaneda is among the participants. Check it out . Also of interest today, Mary O'Grady in the Wall Street Journal on "Mexico's Hopeless Drug War." O'Grady points out that "[p]rohibition and demand make otherwise worthless weeds valuable," arguing that neither the decrim law nor Calderon's ongoing drug war will reduce the violence. Via Tony Newman...