I have been wondering for a while now how odd it is that the current events of the day, while pointing to the larger problems of our nation seem to obscure the roots of those problems.

For instance, the relationship between illegal immigration and the drug war.

The federal and state governments involved in fighting the drug war will say that the connection between the two is simply the fact that drug dealers pay illegal immigrants to carry a load across the border when they go. This undoubtedly does happen, but other experts think that most of the transportation of drugs across the border is done by professionals who do that for a living.

The actual connections are much deeper, and much more subtle; as with all social problems, history has to be considered, for it is what has made Mexico and Central and South America so dysfunctional.

For many years after Cocaine, marijuana and other drugs were made illgal in the 1930's the new drug laws had a very subtle effect. There was not widespread usage of cocaine, which is the drug we are concerned with here. The farmers which produced the drug, until the 1930's had been dealing with a free, legal market and it took some time for that market to become corrupted.

In the sixties and seventies there was an explosion of drug use across the country; in the early seventies, President Nixon declared the first War on Drugs, and that policy was reaffirmed and strengthened by President Reagan.

These policies had unintended side effects - they drove the price of the drug up in the market; the more expensive the drug got, the more power and money it gave to the gangs who now controlled the farming population.

This building momentum led to weakening governments in the drug producing nations; the US pushed all countries to adopt the same drug policies, and the drug cartels' influence over the governments and army and police forces became stronger than the governments themselves, despite our best efforts to help these countries.

There is a dirct line between our drug policies and the failed governments and economic policies of those countries to the south of us. We are not wholely responsible, but our policies have ensured the destructive influence that would go with any huge illegal industry in a country which is not very strong to begin with.

It has taken decades for this problem to develope; now we see people fleeing across the border every day, striving so hard, fighting with death itself to get away what they are leaving behind as much as what they are coming towards.

Until our policies on the drug war change, there will be little change in the levels of corruption that are found in Mexico and Central and South America. Until that happens, there will be little or no real ecomic developement, and the imigration trend will only become worse. In this situation, as in our energy policy and the study of the influence of money on the system, we are guided away from the root causes of our problems. The drug war is not the whole story on illegal immigration, but it is a factor that is to large to be ignored.

It is also one that has gone on long enough without being discussed in a senseible way.

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