War on Drugs: Is It Working?

I went backpacking this past weekend and managed not to think about work or El Paso or much of anything. My mind quiet, I came home, relaxed and ready for just about anything.

First thing I did was check out the newspaper to see what I missed. A man from Horizon City was kipnapped in front of this home while schoolchildren watched on. Later that week, he was found brutally murdered in Juarez, his hands carved off and laid over his chest. Eighteen people were slain in a Juárez drug rehab center. Maybe the center was a cover for the cartels. Maybe not. But 18 people were dead.

It is strange to live so close to such daily and relentless and consuming violence, just minutes really. And yet I feel safe. There is not one neighborhood in this city that I would feel anxious in walking around after dark. We are the third safest U.S. city of our size sharing a common border, a common culture, a common history with a city that is by most accounts the most dangerous city in the world today.

It wasn't always that way. I miss Juarez. I miss crossing over for dinner, for New Year's Eve at Martino's, a drink at the Kentucky Club, a walk down to the Cathedral, shopping with friends from out of town... My mom and dad used to take the kids over for a special dinner and the Feria. We haven't been in a long while, a year maybe. It was always familiar, like home. Not anymore. Better not to chance it.

So it is easy to seal ourselves off from the violence in Juarez, not cross over. Bemoan the daily headlines and trust the law enforcement agencies that it will not spill over. But as citizens of El Paso, as citizens of the United States, we should not let our sense of security distance us from the violence in our sister city, from the violence begat from an insatiable hunger for illegal drugs in the United States and the laws that have created irresistible profit margins for greedy thugs with guns. The violence in Juarez is our problem. This region, El Paso and Juarez, have sat perched at the edge of a great renaissance. The insecurity in Juarez has unraveled economic gains in our region. Momentum is lost. Worry sets in.

We can't really afford to just stand by.

It is with this in mind that several UTEP professors and community folks came together to host "A Global Public Policy Forum on the U.S. War on Drugs." The War on Drugs was declared by Richard Nixon 40 years ago. Given the level of violence in Juarez, it is fair to ask whether the war is working and at what costs. The forum brings together thinkers and actors on this issue from all walks of life--government, journalists, academics, law enforcement--to examine the history of the war, its successes and its failures and to ask what options and alternatives we have as a global community to significantly reduce the threat of drug violence and drug use to our communities. The forum is meant as a time to reflect on current policy but its true aim is to develop an action plan for how we pull our region out of this crisis.

I invite you to attend, to participate, to put in your two cents, but most importantly to act.

A GLOBAL PUBLIC POLICY FORUM ON THE U.S. WAR ON DRUGS
When: September 20-22, 2009
Where: UTEP, Juarez and the Plaza Theatre
For more information: http://www.warondrugsconference.utep.edu/
RSVP to warondrugsconference@utep.edu