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the director of defense and foreign policy studies at cato. it is my pleasure to welcome you, in this form, an uncommonly formal august afternoon in washington, to our forum on proposals for using u.s. military at the border to counter fentanyl. you will hear a lot of reasons this afternoon why proposals for using the u.s. military in and around mexico to counter fentanyl is a bad idea. it is important to state at the outset that there is an underlying crisis happening in the u.s.. overdose deaths and precise data are hard to come by. as we can tell, somewhere on the order of 60 and 80,000 americans per year, last year in 2022, are dying of fentanyl related overdoses. provisional data from the cdc

suggested there were more than 70,000 fentanyl overdose deaths in the country last year. so, there is a real underlying crisis happening in the u.s., that helps to explain why politicians have begun to latch onto the problem. june, nbc news poll, they illustrated the public is quite anxious about this problem. respondents were asked whether a presidential candidate who supported "deploying the u.s. military to the mexican border to stop illegal drugs from entering the country" would make someone more or less likely to vote for that candidate. speaking of the public, it made people -- it made 55% of people more likely to vote for such a candidate. only 29% of people less likely to vote for such a candidate. speaking about republicans, 86% of people were more likely to

vote for a candidate who favored deploying u.s. military to the border, to counter drugs. only 6% of republicans were more likely to oppose a candidate. you have a real underlying crisis happening in the u.s.. you have politicians groping around at solutions. just because something is marketed as a real solution to a real problem, does not mean it is a real solution, to a real problem. i think that is the right way to set up the discussion we are about to have this afternoon. i am very pleased to have what i think is a panel of diverse experts that get at this problem from different angles. uncommonly, i think they will flow from your left, to your right. brian is the senior advisor for the u.s. program at the international crisis group, and a nonresident senior fellow at the right-center of law and security at nyu law school.

he served as attorney advisor the u.s. state department's office of the legal advisor. his work on u.s. foreign policy appeared in forte affairs, policy -- foreign affair policies, just security. he's going to comment on some of the legal aspects of the proposals, particularly in congress for using the military and cartels. lupe, is a school at -- teacher at george mason diversity, her research includes organized crime and u.s./mexico relations. she is the author of criminal corporation, energy and civil war in mexico. she is working on a book project about human trafficking. she has a ba in economics, her na in political science from the

new school for social research. finally, we will hear from jeff singer, my colleague, where he is a senior fellow of health policies. he is the founder of surgical clinics in phoenix, arizona. he is a physician by trade. he has practiced general surgery for more than 40 years. in march, he testified before the house committee on crime and surveillance and the role that prohibition has paid -- played in the fentanyl crisis. he earned a ba at brooklyn college. i think it is probably best to start off by asking brian to talk about -- we have heard from republican presidential candidates, that we will be tough and use the military against the cartels, but not a lot of details and those proposals. we have at least three pieces of

legislation wending their way through capitol hill that involve, or at least adjacent to use of the military, for these cartels, can you talk a bit about what, if any powers with those grant the government for using the military, and what the implications of these legislations would have? >> thanks for having me here. it is a pleasure to be here. let me preface my remarks by noting that because the illegal guardrails from the unilateral use of force by the president are weak, it is not necessary that congress enacts any additional legislation for the president to be able to wield the military against cartels in mexico. bear in mind. you're selecting both the scale of the fentanyl crisis and also its political assailants, it is

145 pieces of legislation being introduced in this congress that refer to fentanyl. they cover topics of strengthening criminal penalties to increased border control, to harm reduction, i will focus on measures that have been introduced, that frame the war on drugs on an act -- as an actual war and propose either use of military force or militarized approaches to capturing fentanyl. the most extreme of these is the amf cartel introduced by dan crenshaw, representative of florida. this is a real deal war authorization cut and pasted from the 2001 authorization use of military force. this measure reproduces many of the pathologies of that war on terror authorization. it would give the president the authority to use appropriate force against a list of named drug trafficking organizations

in mexico. also, to add additional groups against whom the president can use force. because this authorization is so broad, the president would have the authority to launch new wars against organizations in mexico potentially even mexico state itself. there is also, right out of the house affairs committee, the project precursor act, which would direct the secretary of state -- fentanyl as a chemical weapon -- to add fentanyl as a chemical weapon. lindsey graham has introduced a measure that would designate drug trafficking organizations as foreign terrorist organizations. there's also measures introduced that would direct the homeland of security to designate fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. earlier this year biden received

a letter from 18 states attorney generals making similar requests that fentanyl be labeled as a weapon of mass destruction. the prospect for any of these measures becoming law, being enacted is pretty dim. it's not -- it will have to pass in congress. the administration shows no interest in signing this into law. the danger in the framing and measures that cast the war on drugs and cast the use of military force as appropriate policy tools is likely on the campaign trails. doing drone strikes, blockades, shooting suspected drug traffickers. they have normalized the ideas that using military force is an appropriate policy response to the crisis. they make it more likely that a future president will actually use that authority. the president does not need additional authority given the week guardrails he has. they will normalize the notion

that this is the future of the white house to rely upon. >> i will do my best to keep this from becoming the representative crenshaw show. there's a lot that he has done with this policy. he has done -- again an authorization for the use of military force. it has very clear parallels to the 2001 authorization of the use of military force. i am going to read you a quote. he has done this back and forth, what i would call hiding the ball on what the legislation would do. he said aghast, he said no one is talking about an invasion or war with mexico, rather the bill provides, as he puts it "the minimum authority needed to operate with the mexican

military". this is what i want to ask you about, your analysis of, "as we have done with other allies battling internal insurgencies". there seems to be this underlying conceit between the way we frame this problem. is it whether you want to frame it as mexico is engaged in a counterinsurgency war, or low-grade civil war? what is vexing us is that they don't want our help, or help in the right way, or they don't want enough health -- help? what are we to make of this? first of all do you buy that analysis underpinning what is going on here. if so, what are we to make of this? >> it is disingenuous. you don't need a statute drafted in this fashion to provide the authority he is referring to. that depends what he has in mind. he is vague.

in terms, if he wants to share intelligence with the mexican state to combat trafficking, the president would not need additional authorities to engage in intelligence sharing. which i am sure is taking place right now. this is an attempt to walk back the clear implications, to distance themselves from the clear text of the statute. it reminds me of some of the measures and language from members of congress, that voted for the iraq war authorization. after it was used, they tried to distance themselves from their votes, for the authorization, saying, we did not intend it to be used go to war, despite the fact that it offered authority. anytime you see members of congress vote for war operations, take it seriously. >> we got more specificity about representative crenshaw's bill. he had a post, i don't know where he was speaking, on

instagram recently, where he talked about having gone to high school in the columbia. he visited columbia recently and talked about how much it is a different place than it was when he was in high school. according to the representative, "columbia is the model". the reason columbia changed over 20 years "is because of what american partnership meant for them, our american military working hand-in-hand with them, or police, our law enforcement, very close relationships". we heard a lot about insurgencies. i was aghast at this. the american track record over the past 20 years is not what people should want to replicate, particularly on our border. in one sense, it was a relief that we did not want to replay the iraq and afghanistan experience in northern mexico. at the same time, vexing that

the columbia experienced is what we are supposed to be replicating in mexico. you have done work in trafficking. your convert -- well-versed in columbia in the 1990's. is columbia good and along for what we -- analog of what we're trying to achieve with the cartels? >> it is a very bad analogy. first of all, the name of the bill, the war on cartels. cartel as a concept is its own concept to use. i understand that this concept is used in the media. everybody uses that to refer to criminal groups in mexico. in columbia, too, the idea of the cartels, the colombian conflict. first of all, we're not talking about organizations. we are not talking about organizations in columbia that come together, that sit together

to form -- and decide the amounts of drugs they are going to produce and transport in order to operate the monopoly. the concept is wrong. what about columbia? i don't understand if representative crenshaw remembers, it is surprising he lived there, he does not remember how much destruction this partnership, that was a learning process, caused for colombian citizens. not only that, what are we fighting? if a war against drugs, is a war on fentanyl, is a war that is going to leave this country free of drugs, or will it diminish the level of drug consumption? what happened in columbia as a failed war. the objective was to reduce the levels of consumption of cocaine. if that is what we want -- if

that is the final aim of this collaboration. the narcotics corporation between the united states and the different countries of latin america, have failed. more drugs are coming to the u.s. than at any other time in history. the opioid epidemic, now the fentanyl crisis, after $1 trillion being spent on the war on drugs. columbia is an example of the destruction that militarization of the fight, or the militarization of antinarcotics policies. what is happening in mexico with the initiative? one mexico started to militarize under the umbrella of the initiative, the agreement of the

even though the current president of mexico does not talk about a war on drugs. >> i want to bring this up because we have a slide here. we started talking about columbia because we were talking about cocaine and we talked about mexico because we were talking about fentanyl. this is a graph that was released and these are the prices and different levels of quantity of adp program of cocaine. -- a pure gram of cocaine.

as you can see here, if we are interested in columbia because of cocaine or mexico because of fentanyl, what you would want is to reduce the amount of them coming into the united states, which as my economics fetzer is reminding me, should have the effect of driving the price up. but the price of cocaine went down dramatically. and during the hot and heavy years in columbia, the prices were relatively flat. if the reason we are interested in the cartels is because of paraphernalia -- fentanyl, there is a lot of reason to be optimistic about mimicking the

columbia experience in mexico. i wanted to ask a little bit about the politics of this issue inside mexico because it is to my mind a little bit of a hot issue. people get fairly agitated about it. the mexican president and not like the idea of an authorization for the use of military force in the congress. this was the least surprising thing to happen in my recent memory. there is a lot of consternation that this would be a hot topic inside mexico. can you talk a little bit about both at the elite level and the mass level how this issue would be likely to plan mexican politics. in my superficial understanding

of mexican politics i cannot think of a politically relevant force that would say we see this as a swell idea. maybe you can tell us different see -- differently. >> mexico today is very divided. beyond that, the opposition might be somewhat happy with that idea, but let's try to discuss this better. absolutely for any mexican citizen, just the idea of military involvement in mexico is pretty traumatic because of the traumatic experience [indiscernible] but not only that, there is a sense of course of sovereignty, but what has happened, the

experience, but also the brutality that this can create because of the brutality that has been created within mexico because of the involvement of the military. there is a segment of the population by supports mexican military signed the ground but there is a lot of criticism. how many people have disappeared or died because of confrontations between the cartels and the mexican military? the concern also is about intervention. it is about the united states intervening in our country and causing massive deaths. what is a mexican cartel? not all of these cartels are dedicated to the drug trade. the united states does not necessarily have to go after all

criminal groups. some of them specialize in criminal call activities. what are you going to do? what are you going to go after? are you going to go after any criminal group, are you going to bomb complete communities of people where these activities are? it will be mass destruction because of the involvement of an army that does not understand the dynamics of what is happening in this country. some part of the opposition were criticizing the lack of results with regards to these criminal groups. but not all of these groups are connected to drug trafficking of fentanyl. some of these groups have tram

-- transformed themselves because of the war on drugs or the military strategy are. they adapt. they specialize in different criminal activities so it is not a war on cartels. it is a war on the mexican people. >> so there is an ambivalence that wherever you look it can also get worse. jeff, i wanted to get back to fentanyl because the discussion in congress has drifted from a bunch of people overdosing. as i said at the opening, some youthful -- 70,000 or so people die in of overdoses. we should all be open to

solutions to that problem. why are 70,000 people a year die from fentanyl? is there something unique about fentanyl? is it all drug prohibition and things that we know about how drug prohibition works? >> it is important not to look at this in a vacuum. fentanyl is a legal pharmaceutical drug that has been around for over 50 years. if anyone had any sort of surgery, there is a good chance they were given intravenous fentanyl. if they are chronic pain patients, they were likely given fentanyl and a skin patch. it is a legal drug, but it can be synthesized by amateur chemists in a lab.

we are talking about fentanyl as if it is traveling across the border and searching for prey to attack. but it is just the response to the market and people wanting to purchase drugs on the black market. it is the latest example of the iron, which is the harder the enforcement, the harder the drug. during alcohol prohibition, they were not smuggling in beer and wine. there were smuggling in whiskey. when people tailgate at a football game, that is a real time example of the iron law for prohibition.

they are not allowed to bring alcohol in the stadium. there smuggling the hard stuff. it comes to the current war on drugs, in the early part of the century the drug of choice for nonmedical users was prescription pain pills. as efforts to perfect to clamp down on the amount available in the black market, drug users moved to heroin which became readily available. around 2012, those were marketing heroin figured out if you add a little bit of fentanyl , it increases potency so you can smuggle it in smaller sizes. gradually that became more of a component. in the early days heroin users were disappointed. they performed -- preferred the feeling of heroin to fentanyl.

during the pandemic, things really ramped up. borders were closed. you have to first get the opium plant, you have to process morphine which is extracted from the opium poppy into heroin. it was also a supply chain shortage. so the drug cartels figured quickly that they could just switch out fentanyl for heroin. the ingredients for fentanyl were abundant. now that the supply chain issues have resolved, it makes good business sense to stick with what is working. already we are seeing the addition of the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine to fentanyl to make it more potent. it is called tranq by users.

as another synthetic opioid making its appearance, a category called nitazene, bat started showing up around 2019 and not every lab is testing for it. the tennessee department of health reported a fourfold increase in nitazene related deaths in their state. we cannot just look at this as fentanyl coming over the border to attack americans. americans are purchasing drugs on the black market and fentanyl is the latest product developed to satisfy the market. >> we were talking before this about things that are somewhat less risky and somewhat more

hopeful in terms of having an effect in diminish the number of people who are dying from overdoses. you mentioned naloxone is available over-the-counter. none of these things are things you want to have a parade about that now someone overdoses they can be brought back to life. what are some other things in terms of harm reduction? we have this stuff floating around. in many cases, it is not clear how many people are dying because they do not know what they are getting. they think they are snorting cocaine, but they are's noting fentanyl and dropping dead because of that. there is a certain amount of uncertainty causing these overdoses.

what are some public health things that policy could conceivably do that might have a better effect than gunships over mexico? >> that is some low hanging fruit. harm reduction is taking to reduce the harmful effects of whatever you are engaging in. it would still make sense. on the federal level congress can take steps to take federal legal obstacles out of the way of organizations that are trying to help the community. one easy one is drug paraphernalia laws. many states are taking steps to change that. up until recently if you were to distribute test strips to people

you know use drugs on the black market so they can test what they purchased, you can get arrested because test strips are considered for bended drug paraphernalia. one thing that can be done is not just to legalize fentanyl test strips, but legalize equipment to test illicit drugs. because now there are xylazine test strips out there. so just test strips. another thing that can be done, since the mid-1980's, now there are 147 government sanctioned overdose prevention centers in 16 countries, including two in the united states that are sanctioned by the city of new york. these has been shown

unequivocally to prevent overdose deaths, to prevent the spread of bloodborne diseases and as a bonus, they have a tendency to bring people into treatment. it makes a lot of people with addiction actually seek help. in the united states we have the crack house statute which makes it federally illegal to knowingly allow someone on your premises who was using a controlled substance. we just learned so far they have reserves -- reversed 1000 overdoses. they are technically against the law and we are waiting to see

the justice department already said some mornings this week. congress can repeal that law or at least modify it to allow overdose prevention centers that have been sanctioned by governments to operate. also, in terms of treating people, methadone has been a proven method of treatment since the 1960's. people can access methadone three primary care provider and fill it at the pharmacy. clinicians are given a lot of flexibility. in this country, people have to line up at a federally and state approved clinic and some states like virginia has a more tour mail -- moratorium, so no more

clinics. an estimated seven or 8 million people in this country with opioid use disorder but not many are able to access methadone. if we can access -- increase access to methadone we can decrease the number of people going to the black market. >> on test strips, what is the argument those should be prohibited by the federal government? >> in the original personnel yeah laws, -- paraphernalia laws, it was anything used to treat illicit drugs. a lot of lawmakers are realizing we should make footnote test strips available. -- fentanyl test strips available. just make all testing equipment available.

>> i am going to keep asking questions, but you can ask questions on the cato website, on all the social media outlets. i am going to keep directing the discussion and asking questions of our panel. there was an indictment in april in new york of the sinaloa cartel which was very interesting reading for a variety of reasons. there was a fascinating fact that claimed that $800 worth of fentanyl precursor chemicals produces street value in the united states of $640,000.

if you say they are shooting those numbers by a factor of 10, $800 a precursor chemicals yielding $60,000 is a strong structure to bomb out of existence. there were all sorts of salacious details in there. i thought that was an interesting nugget that reveals the nature of the problem. when we were discussing doing this event, i think all of us were a little reticent to -- of doing an event that all because these are wild and crazy ideas.

but it is quite clear that given the public appetite for and frustration with what is going on with fat no -- fentanyl, the first station -- the first station with the war on drugs, this will be kicking around for a while. you talked a little bit about the extent to which these bills on the hill are in a blind alley for now. president trump obviously has some unique ideas about dealing with these problems, namely to lob some cruise missiles over the border, which he announced to pentagon officials the mexicans would never be able to know who did it, which is a unique take.

the pentagon slow walked it and he forgot about that idea and move on. but you can conceive clearly of a somewhat more focused commander-in-chief with somewhat more practical applications of this idea. get your crystal ball out here. five years down the road, is planned mexico a conceivable scenario? what do you worry about in practical terms? >> it is all too conceivable. when those revelations came out in the memoir about former

president trump wanting to bomb with missile strikes mexican drug labs and denying the u.s. had anything to do with it, it was regarded with some degree of amusement and as being absurd. what we have seen happen sense is this notion as been regarded abnormal is now normal. ha it has gained a lot of traction. while he may have been true in the trump administration that the pentagon slow walks ideas it does not like, i think the more this ideas out there, the more likely it is to make its way to

bureaucracy. i have seen the parallels in the last 10 years of other uses of force by the president. for example, when president obama declared the use of weapons redline in syria. ultimately, president obama did not use military force against syria in response to chemical use. the process was underway where this was regarded as a potentially acceptable policy response. when president trump came into office and wanted to respond with use of force, there was not that sort of pushback from the

pentagon. we saw something similar with the a reading general where the trump administration had designated a foreign terrorist organization. by framing them as terrorists, the bureaucracy starts thinking about what are the tools to use against terrorists? the last 20 years we have been using drone strikes on terrorists. why don't we use that same tool? those are the sort of risks i see. the framing sets you up such that the wheels are grease to make an instantaneous decision. >> guadalupe, i wanted to ask

you more about mexico. amplifies with the mexican government. -- i empathize with the mexican government. they are sort of stuck. they cannot go the full crenshaw. but there are some things that could be done differently that would be helpful. if you were given advice, what would be some things that you think would be constructive in this respect that would not be

potentially catastrophic? >> this is a great question because we criticize policies. we do not acknowledge the ones that are on the table but that have not gone further. during the years of more collaboration between the united states government and the mexican government, by the end of 2006 when former president of mexico declared war on drugs come also with the close collaboration of the u.s. government and things did not work well. you have now a sentinel -- fentanyl crisis. the next administration, the relationship was so strong.

the strongmen of the war on drugs 2006, 2012, the secretary of public safety was connected with one of the cartels. in the next administration, the head of the ministry was arrested in 2020 in the united states. well, corruption and impunity has always been utilized by the u.s. government to say they cannot deal with their own stuff. from president donald trump -- former president trump says mexicans cannot deal with their own issues so he would bring his own men to fight. it is interesting also to a knowledge the maritime experience was not as good as we

would want to have and the current president criticize the previous two administrations for this close collaboration. he was talking about reframing that collaboration, having less u.s. presence, diminishing the role of the dea. because of a number of issues that have happened because of mistakes or may be other problems. recently, the mexican government and the u.s. government worked an an initiative. if you read what the framework is about, a focus on combating this problem through the root causes. addressing the root causes of violence in mexico and drug

consumption in the united states. focusing on solving these issues in a different way. combining a number of strategies. of course, collaborating to address the criminal networks, but also dealing with the problem of drug consumption in the united states, focusing resources on -- i mean to treat this issue as a public health crisis. the problem with the framework is there are no budgets to further these excellent proposals. in the united states, to deal with the issue of arms, the arbitrator in the united states

has different types of logics that the mexican government would have. the mexican government does not address the issue of their customs. arms enter freely. the mexican authorities always always putting the united states as the united states put the blame on the cartels to explain the drug trafficking issue. if you read very closely these documents that incorporates these high-level meetings between the two governments, i think we can go somewhere. but the budgets and the specific actions have not reached the level to where we have to be at, address and property -- addressing poverty, inequality.

>> i have been talking about fentanyl and 70,000 people a year. the drug war in mexico itself has not exactly been a walk in the park. we do not have exact numbers of drug war deaths in mexico. north of 100,000 over the past couple of decades attributable to drug war violence. >> more or less. >> we do not want to be too u.s. centric here. it has been a nightmare in the country. as you pointed out, there is a supply problem and there is a demand problem. when you have demand, there is

going to be supply from somewhere. i keep looking for a really hostile question that i can give to jeff. >> i am just the doctor. and just trying to wrap my head around how we would do this because when we were trying to eradicate the cocaine trade from colombia, we were bringing cocoa fields. but fentanyl is made in labs. you can make it in your basement. are we anticipating urban warfare? can somebody explain to me how we would do this? >> there is a reason nobody is explained in it to you. if you read this indictment, you are talking about in some cases the precursor chemicals are

coming in 33 jars. this is an china. it is a problem of scale. you are better able to speak to the chemical conditions. we eradicated a lot of marijuana and cocaine during that heydays of the drug war. the idea you are able to chase this stuff down at a scale at the same time you are going to put in just strikes me as being -- i hate being a check gdp drug warrior, but it is just true. i think that needs to be said that you are not going to win this thing.

>> the proposals are vague and light on specifics. you hear calls on the campaign trail for missile strikes, a naval blockade of mexico, shooting migrants at the border suspected of carrying fentanyl. i just saw that one today. they are both vague, but also over the top. the u.s. two years ago pulled out of afghanistan. we bombed drug labs there without much success. that was with tens of thousands of troops on the ground. i do think it bears mentioning here, but some of this stuff has gotten into inhumanity. we have heard things along the

lines of, there was a presidential candidate talking about shooting suspected cartel members in the united states who had come across the border. the question raised was how would you know there with the cartel? they do not wear uniforms. the presidential candidate responded by saying it is the same way we did it in iraq, we cannot tell one person from the other. i thought, this is the united states, it is not erratic. -- iraq. two brian's point, -- i am willing to grant all of the precursor arguments if we want to.

that will get us to this, but i really think some of the rhetoric in some of these cases has gotten scary and inhumane. i think that is worth calling out. i was looking for something really hostile to direct at jeff or somebody else here. people seem really reasonable on the internet once -- for once. let's see what i have here. gabrielle says mexico is a major trade partner the united states. only growing more important as the u.s. seeks to decouple from

china. how would this unilateral action from mexico impact trade? i would just also add as i was thinking through this before, the core unifying principle these days and american foreign policies supposed to be china. the one thing that would really set people's hair on fire as the mexican government playing nice with the chinese. but if we started blowing stuff up in mexico, the mexicans could certainly be forgiven for having a state visit from president xi jinping. what do you think about this trade and investment question? it gets to this question of the broader bilateral relationship

may be. >> it is not just trade. declaim a war on the cartels -- declaring a war on the cartels is similar to declaring a war on the country mexico. these organizations are not necessarily related to national security priority. these organizations operate in a very different way. we are talking about networks of people that transport drugs, corrupt officials, lookouts, members of the community. it is a network. it is not a cartel per se. how are you going to identify a cartel? you are going to cause a lot of destruction. how many refugees are going to try to get into the united states? what will be the relationship of

the united states with russia and china? russia has already mentioned something about this. they have tried to say they also can protect mexico. this is going to happen with china too. this is going to fire. -- backfire. >> since harm reduction tools are effective, should they be utterly funded? >> no. that is an easy one. they do not have to be federally funded. the emphasis should be to remove obstacles to groups that want to engage in harm reduction. legislators in rhode island passed a law which allowed

prevention centers to be set up. again in defiance of the federal law. there are plenty of organizations that have no problem raising funds. the problem they have is there is law enforcement and law in their way. >> at think there is a lot in here about the intermingling -- and this is talking about prohibition, but this person anonymously is talking about mental health crisis, like there's something weird going on in the united states right now that is bound up with fentanyl

and prohibition. are there policies being presented to mitigate the mental health crisis? >> i am glad that person asked that question because that is an important point. we are not hearing enough about this. in 2018, researchers using cdc data, showed the overdose crisis is growing exponentially since the late 1970's. the only thing that has changed over the decades is which particular drugs are predominantly in vogue at any given time. they are not seen evidence that the growth trend is slowing down. we can expect it to go up. ted cicero and colleagues at washington university, a well-known addiction researcher,

found that heroin addicts admitted to rehab, 33% said they initiated nonmedical drug use with heroin. heroin was the gateway drug. in my generation, you thought you were living on the edge smoking pot. heroin was not even on the list. 10 years earlier, the same survey found 9% initiated with heroin. for reasons that are beyond my area of expertise, we are seeing a growing number of people who are willing to engage in drug use, either they are self-medicating because they have mental anguish, or they are just recreationally engaging, and they're willing to take

risks that earlier generations were not. you have that intersect with the dangers of prohibition and the black market and it is a perfect storm. >> this question reads, what role does our military create in crating conditions in mexico [indiscernible] where would narcotic supply lines shift to? in the 90's, somehow cocaine kept coming into the united states. coco was being grown in places like peru and bolivia. it is not hard to figure out. right around the same time, a lot of the processing moved to mexico.

it is the proverbial -- we did this during iraq and afghanistan, you push down here, pops up there. to what extent do you by my story about colombia? if you push down in one part of mexico will look up somewhere else? >> yes, may be in the united states. we are talking about synthetic drugs that can be produced everywhere. we just need the precursor chemicals. they can be produced somewhere else, they do not need to come from china. you have labs in the united states. while we do not have information about that, the cost of producing fentanyl in the united

states would be much lower. if you cannot produce them in mexico or south america, you can produce them in the united states because the demand is so important. it is just one idea. people in this country cannot of that happening because this is a country with laws, the rule of law is strong. but it is not that strong anymore either. this country suffering some issues also. >> brian, let me ask you this one. robert asks given the many gop presidential candidates more inclined toward restraint, is a

purely to score political points? there was this discussion to repeal, one deal proposed was we will get rid of the one that had not greeted the global war on terrorism, but we will will place it with a mexico one. is this progress? what do you make of this? maybe we went to little bit bananas after 9/11 for a while. >> tens of thousands of troops deployed to iraq and afghanistan. most americans are in nerd to -- inured to the occasional

drone strike. what they are contemplating our a few missile strikes, symbolic missile strikes against drug labs in mexico and you can say we are being tough on drugs. there are some real downsides. many downsides to attacking cartels and damage in our relationship with mexico. it reflects where the conversation scion use of force, i do not think many of the conversations are serious. talking about them does normalize them and makes it more likely a future president might act on them. >> acquittal here from the chairman, the house now has a task force on countering the cartels and its chair talked a little bit about some examples of what a umf might do.

what we want according to this individual is to get mexico to ask for military support such as close air support while they are prosecuting may target, which is exactly what happened earlier this year. this is getting back to this idea of mexico is in a civil war or an insurgency or something. but they just do not understand it or will not fight hard enough. i mentioned before this idea of insurgency, counterinsurgency, stability operations. i remember during the battle days in iraq and afghanistan

thinking at least 7000 miles away. a terrible thing for us to be doing, but at least it is really far away. but the idea that you would import an insurgency and stick it on your border in your largest trading partner seems to me the height of imprudence. there is this idea of living in an alternate reality. there have been shootouts using military equipment, 50 caliber machine guns. i am not saying these guys are out there in their backyards with slingshots. these are bad guys with weapons. but it is escalating a conflict right now to a full on shooting

war. let me find another one here. from the online audience. let's go to you people here. sorry, i am juggling three different things. write down here in the front in the white shirt. sorry, everybody. >> hello, my name is veronica. i think the much larger question is what are your thoughts on the legalization of all drugs? do you see it as a way to reduce violence and overdoses? what would it take to get people to start thinking about legalization of all drugs? >> that is the only way we will

see a reduction in violence and deaths. we learn this with alcohol but it seems like we have very short memories. i wheeze tell people -- i always tell people when i go to the liquor store and i look on the shelf at the bourbon and it says 45% alcohol, and never crosses my mind that he might have fentanyl, that is because it is legal and regulated. unfortunately, rather than even entertain something like a halfway step like decriminalization, which is happening in europe increasingly , they are not arresting people for possessing any of these drugs for personal use, they are

not even make these halfway measures. you hear people talking about escalating the war on drugs. i do not have a lot of optimism about our prospects. >> let's go to another person. >> another question for dr. singer. what role does synthetic drugs and amateur chemists trying to stay ahead of the wall with bureaucrats scheduling new synthetic models for these drugs. what role if anything does that player in the crisis? >> if anything, place and the dea -- the dea does the scheduling, it means that has a

high tendency for abuse. among the drugs place on schedule one, even a lot of the drug war hawks are realizing the benefits psychedelics may have, the treatment of psd and veterans and other problems. you basically stunted clinical research in psychedelics for 50 years because they were placed on schedule one. cannabis, i do not think anybody can see there is no accepted medical use of cannabis. you are basically helping to create a market that the cartels and other people who want to get into the drug market to get into because if you make it schedule one it is no longer available

through the legal market, so heroin in this country was made schedule one, but it was banned in the united states. that was banned in the united states in 1924. within 10 years it became the number one opioid road people were using in the black market. it is on the formulary much of the developed world. in some countries like canada and germany and the netherlands and switzerland, people are oftentimes given heroin when methadone is not working for them as a form of treatment. >> guadalupe, a question came in about the cartels.

some of these folks are really bad people. in many cases they have sophisticated testing equipment. sometimes they will get an addict and shoot the addict up with the drugs to see what that batch is like. in one instance, the guy died and they sent that stuff across the border anyway. what would the cartel do? what is your best guess at the response to this thing? on paper, the united states military against the militias,

but that is not the way it works. what is your best read of how the cartels would respond to a greater u.s. military role shoulder to shoulder with muska and military -- shoulder to shoulder with mexican military? >> this is a great question because in the public sphere the discussion is not based on reality and facts. it is not bad and good actors. when the mexican government in 2006 declared war on drugs there was a narrative about the bad people and the good people. the bad ones are the cartel

members. the good ones word the federal police. we understood in war we really do not know, we're talking about paramilitary groups getting into here, this is what happened in colombia. we are talking about military dressed in civilian suits to not affect the perception of the military. this is going to be very complex. we are not talking about bad and good people. the disappearances in mexico, where the perpetrators and who are the victims? some of them were cartel members, some of them were collateral dems.

-- victims. but also, the mexican military collaborated with u.s. agencies. what is going to happen in the context of war? this is going to be much more complex. it is not as if you have a monolithic bad actor that is dedicated to trafficking drugs. that is not the case. it is not as it is presented that [indiscernible] all of these names of bad men leading bad men with capacity to fight against the military of mexico or the united states. we have a third component. the mexican government is not going to allow u.s. military

force into mexico, so what is going to happen? are we going to have [indiscernible] there is a monopoly of the public safety at the federal level. the control of ports, customs, migration, the routes. they are dissipating in the projects. they are going to be dealing with an airline that has been created. they are participating everywhere. that gives you an idea what the mexican government is also thinking about. we can really create a war against two countries. i do not want to be pessimistic.

but is the mexican government going to support the u.s. military? i do not think so. >> let's see if we have any other questions. there's somebody all the way in the back. >> thank you very much for your book. is the government essentially a transnational criminal organization? >> can you repeat that? >> is mexico a transnational criminal organization or can it be perceived that way? >> if your characterizing the

mexican government all of that, i am glad you did not mention the mexican state as a criminal organization. probably when you characterize the mexican government were thinking about certain cases because we are talking about the secretary of defense or the head of public safety that was the main organization that was formed during that six year period, the administration. but if you were talking about the mexican government all connected with the cartels, some political figures are considering or that is exactly what is driving today the narrative among certain political groups in the united states. i am talking about a very important section of the republican party. it is like everything in mexico, all the government is connected

with el chapo. you are kind of like assuming that the whole government, including the president of mexico and the military is directly connected, collaborated and also participating in the drug trade, and that you are -- they are all combining themselves to bring the drugs the united states. i think this is a massive exaggeration. it is very risky, and it is going to put the whole country of mexico against the military of the united states, the government of the united states. there is going to be a war against two countries because there is a war on drugs, and if you characterized the mexican government as a transactional criminal organization, then let's declare war in mexico, and

that is dangerous. >> i did not know that was a charles tilly question. i think, unless there is another hand that i see her, which i don't, i think we have exhausted most of what i saw that was not stepping on the other questions here, and yeah, i think we have covered most of what we needed to cover today, and i do not want to stand between all of you and perfectly legal beer and wine that will be available upstairs. so again, i think this is a very important, very sobering, very grim topic that i think is going to be persistent in our policy in the months and conceivable years to come. it is very important. cato with its unique perspective is going to have a role to play, and i am very thankful that we

covered what i think is a tremendous amount of the different aspects of this issue here this afternoon, so it is 4:20 on a friday afternoon. have some beer and wine in the afternoon. for the people on c-span, thank you very much, and please join me in thanking the panel is here today. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. [indiscernible chatter]

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