Which brings us to the real problems: the drug war and the Mexican government. Both are corrupt. Both should be defunded. Both need to be reformed.

Instead, Congress has approved another $700 million in "assistance" (because hey, who needs that money here?) to help Mexico's corrupt and hopelessly inept law enforcement agencies to crack down on drug traffickers.

Members of Congress and Mexican officials actually have complained that the equipment is taking too long to arrive.

So we're missing the point once again.

"The success of our efforts to reduce the flow of drugs is largely dependent on our ability to reduce demand for them," Gil Kerlikowske, the new drug czar, said at his formal introduction this year.

He's right. And the drug czar never has been able to control demand, nor will he ever.

In the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, roughly 8 percent of Americans admitted using illegal drugs within a month of participating in the poll. The numbers may fluctuate slightly, but they never correlate with drug war policy.

And no matter how much money we send to Mexico to fight violence, that teenager in the blood-soaked gangland of Vermont, which leads the nation in marijuana use, will find a joint whenever and wherever he or she pleases without any violence or much interference.

You may not like the idea of decriminalization, but this is about economics. And most economists would tell you there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

How many of these users have been stopped by the tens of billions of dollars pumped into drug war funding? How many will be stopped by this new front in this war?

Not one.