The War On Drugs Is a Sick Joke. By Jeff Smith HOW BIG A lie does a big lie have to get before the big kahunas in the big offices quit mouthing the words that everyone knows simply ain't so? How long can a culture survive the erosion of integrity, honesty and morality that is born in the gradual--but seemingly inevitable--acceptance of such institutionalized dishonesty? These questions have the ring of the rhetorical about them, but they are pertinent, timely, and in need of immediate and specific answers, or those huge, faraway and vague consequences we associate with broad philosophical issues are going to land on us like Thor's Own Shithammer, a week from next Tuesday. Moving from the cosmic to the mundane, I allude to the so-called War on Drugs, status as of late February 1997, and its effects on U.S. policy, both foreign and domestic. You should be aware that last week, Mexico's drug czar was arrested and jailed for accepting bribes from drug dealers. Now I realize that we in Los Estados Unidos believe in the principle of innocence until guilt is proven, but it doesn't work that way in Mexico. South of the border you've got to prove your innocence to a legal system that presumes you guilty. This makes my job a lot easier: What the guy did--the guy being Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo--was take a shitload of money from the major drug lords and rent himself a kind of Playboy mansion in Guadalajara, and put a bunch of his top brass and soldiers on the take so he could enjoy his new lifestyle, unmolested. What you are less likely to remember is that back in December, when Gutierrez was appointed by the new Mexican president, Ernesto Zedillo, U.S. Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey (also a general--and what's up with this "czar" title?) raved about what a hell of a swell guy Gutierrez was. "Impeccable integrity," McCaffrey said. "...an extremely forceful and focused commander. Well, when the federales went to arrest him, Gutierrez was so out of focus he couldn't find his ass with both hands, and they had to hospitalize him to find out what he was on. As in drugs, as in time-zone, zip-code, as in planet. What a surprise. Not. But even before Gen. McCaffrey's intemperate ode to Gen. Gutierrez, our own President Bill Clinton was gushing effusively over Mexican President Zedillo, by way of contrasting him to former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who is on the lam in Ireland, whose brother is imprisoned in Mexico, both of whom are up to their ears in drug dealing, assassination and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars--not pesos--and stashing them in foreign banks. Now Zedillo, whom Mr. Bill says is a great and honest man, running a country our country officially says is now striving manfully to stop the northward flow of drugs, is either pulling the same shit as Salinas, or at the very least, doing none of the janitorial work he promised. And that's the way it goes: A new guy with an American Ivy League education gets elected president of Mexico; the president of the U.S. certifies him as a Boy Scout and a drug-fighting motherfucker--oh, and by the way, sorry about that last Mexican president who turned out the be such a crook, but gee what a surprise and we had no way of knowing.... Well, bullshit. At the highest levels of government--our own and everyone else's--there are spies and snitches and secretaries who have the notes and the negatives and will provide them, for a fee--and everybody who gets a new appointment gets a background check. There is no excuse for not knowing who's chingering whom and for how much. All this diplomatic flattery, followed by stunned indignation, followed by sanctimonious reaffirmation that the War on Drugs is winnable and by God we're doubling our budget to do it, is one monstrous and toxic lie. Is anyone in domestic or foreign government stupid enough or naive enough to believe this? No. Is a significant percentage of the populace that dumb? Not really. Not if you turn off the TV a minute, get their attention, and ask a few basic, cut-to-the-chase questions. Then you achieve consensus that the illegal traffic in marijuana, cocaine and heroin, principally, creates its own trillion-dollar economy. This underground economy supports Latin-American governments, drives a U.S. boom in burglary and gang culture, makes felons out of people whose problems are actually medical in nature, props up bureaucracies that cost billions and accomplish nothing... ...and poisons the minds of American children. Because the non-rhetorical answer to that question about who's naive enough to believe this is: our children. They start out believing that what mom and dad say is true, that what the President and his "czar" says is true. And when it turns out to be wrong, the child is at first confused... And when the important adults are wrong again, and again, and again the child becomes suspicious... And when the child sees the adults falling down and crashing cars and screwing the babysitter, all under the influence of legal liquor, and all the while condemning the weed the New England Journal of Medicine says is medicinally beneficial, the child grows into a cynic... And a nation of cynics is already half dead.

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