Drug war creates violence in Mexico

On Saturday in Tijuana 15 people were killed in an apparent shootout between members of the Arellano Felix derug-trafficking gang. Last year 400 people were killed in Baja, 2,500 in the entire country in drug-law-related violence. This is a predictable effect of a War on Drugs that insists on prohibition as the only option. Enforcement attempts (the Mexican federales have stepped up action since Calderon took office in December 2006, as happens with every incoming Mexican president. Bush wants the U.S. taxpayers to underwrite this exercise in harmful violence by subsidizing Mexico's drug enforcement efforts. In years to come people will wonder about the stubbornness of the drug warriors the same way we moderns wonder how anybody could ever have thought that "bleeding" a patient would do a lot of good and cure diseases.