When reality blows the cover stories apart, U.S. officials wring their hands in dismay, shake their fingers at the Mexicans, then invent another bold new initiative to show that all is still cooperation and progress. But these official stories do more than mislead. This reassuring fairy tale blinds us to the ways in which high profits and porous borders doom the war on drug traffickers from the outset. By driving up and sustaining prices, the drug war ensures the trade's high profits. Yet, the war on supply will never drive the price high enough to lower addiction in the United States.
Drugs also are so easy to smuggle that there are always new ways to elude border controls.
McCaffrey reported that U.S. border inspectors searched more than 1 million railway cars and commercial trucks entering from Mexico last year. They found cocaine on six occasions. On another level, a dogged pursuit of the drug war tends to undermine many important interests we share with Mexico. U.S. pressure on Mexico to get its military involved in the drug war is at crosscurrents with the democratization of Mexico, a goal central to U.S. policy. The Mexican military is increasingly charged with abusing human rights, a problem that may worsen.