Salazar's Unfriendly Crystal Ball

Yesterday's column from Ana María Salazar was a look back from 2019, several years after having legalized the consumption of drugs in Mexico. She imagines a nation much like today's, only worse: drug consumption equal to that of the United States, a kidnapping rate higher than any other nation's, and rampant identity theft. In her scenario, Mexico had many reasons to rue legalization. 

The problem with scenario is the same as that of legalization-as-utopia: it's fantasy. We don't have much idea of what would happen. Salazar presents as evidence Alaska, where decriminalization led to a sharp rise in marijuana usage in the 1970s and '80s, but this is a pretty weak supporting argument. First of all, drug use across the US was rising at that time, and Alaska was below the national average in high schoolers smoking pot before and well into the decriminalization. In any event, the differences between Alaska and Mexico are far more than the similarities, so extrapolating from the former's experience what would happen in Mexico is futile. Second of all, the primary goal of decriminalization isn't to lower rates of drug consumption, but to lower the mafia activity associated with it. Given that there are no Chapo Guzmáns running Alaska, the comparison isn't particularly useful. Arguments about what would happen to consumption are secondary to most legalization advocates' position. 

Salazar imagines mafiaosos jumping from drug trafficking into other crimes, such as credit card fraud and car theft. That seems like a pretty logical outcome to me, but a) if Mexico were able to develop a more capable law enforcement bodies, it would likely be temporary, and b) since said activities are less profitable than smuggling cocaine, it would represent far less of a threat to Mexican governments. That doesn't mean that a nation with 500,000 car thieves and petty crooks is better off than a nation with 500,000 drug smugglers/dealers/producers/money launderers (though I'd be interested to see what people think about that), but I don't think you can assume that a rise in other crimes following the legalization of drugs is evidence of its failure. 

I do find a lot to agree with in her penultimate paragraph: 

Mexico's historic error was trying to confront organized crime and the nation's insecurity without having developed a viable system of criminal justice. What the country continues needing are capable police, public ministers who are effective in their work, and judges that can confront organized crime. It's clear to us now that legalizing drugs is not the solution to the problems: it was only an easy way out to avoid doing the work required.

I get a little nervous when it seems like legalization proponents talk about it as though it alone would make Mexico's deficiencies vanish. Indeed, if you agree that legalization would lead to temporary increase in other crimes, in the near term those deficiencies would become all the more pressing. Regardless of what you think about legalizing or decriminalizing drugs, fixing Mexico's security agencies --from the federal to the local-- is an urgent task.