Thank you, Hillary Clinton!
I don't exactly know where the Secretary of State expects to go with her analysis of the drug violence exploding in Mexico, but I appreciate her framing the issue. The violence in Mexico, Clinton said last week, is the result of high demand for illegal drugs in the U.S. and the flow of black market weapons to Mexico.
Clinton will likely be criticized for her analysis. The hawks will see as a form of appeasement Clinton's comments about U.S. responsibility for the rising power of drug cartels, which bring drugs from Colombia through Mexico into the United States. Gun rights advocates, meanwhile, will see her concern about the flow of guns into Mexico as paving the way for tighter restrictions on guns in the U.S.
So,thank you, Pat Buchanan!
Now working for MSNBC, the irascible conservative didn't waste his time carping at Secretary Clinton. Leave that to the silly partisans. Buchanan used his few minutes of airtime on Hardball With Chris Matthews to size up the options: "There's Milton Friedman's way and there's Mao's way."
In a quick back-and-forth with Matthews, Buchanan fundamentally agreed with Clinton's view of the problem in Mexico. Though he stopped short of blaming the violence on U.S. policy—"[to say that] would be appeasement," he said—Buchanan acknowledged that America's so-called war on drugs, which began under President Richard Nixon (Buchanan's old boss), had been a failure.
Matthews began by saying that Clinton's analysis was fine, but left the big question unanswered: "What are we going to do about it? Nobody has a plan for getting rid of the drug market in the United States. This is a relatively free country. You can have tough laws. You can put dealers in jail for 20 years. That doesn't work…"
Buchanan: There's Milton Friedman's way and there's Mao's way…
Matthews: Tell us both…
Buchanan: [Renowned economist] Milton Friedman said Mr. Nixon don't do this. Legalize these drugs. These guys commit suicide; it's their own business. Don't start another… No prohibition…
Matthews: So you'd have Reynolds Tobacco selling the drug…
Buchanan: You'd have a managed market in the United States.
Matthews: … Pfizer or somebody selling it, right?
Buchanan: Exactly. Just like you'd have R.J. Reynolds. But here you have Mao's solution, of course. He killed all the drug dealers and he killed a lot of the users and he stopped it that way. We're not going to do that… You have millions of [drug users]. They're our friends. They're our colleagues. They're our family. They're former candidates for President of the United States, have smoked dope or used dope. So we're not going to do that solution and we're not going to kill them all. So we've got what we got.
While the reasons for high demand for illegal drugs in the United States, as well as the effects of prohibition, are surely more complicated than Buchanan's assessment suggests, it is refreshing to see a couple TV pundits take up the issue without immediately demonizing drug users and dismissing out of hand the efficacy of ending the failed war on drugs.
