The book, The Border Challenge, authored by T. Michael Andrews, a former adviser at the Dept. of Homeland Security’s counternarcotics office, is scheduled to be released in bookstores in early February.

Andrews has suggestions for how federal drug enforcement agencies can reshape their strategies along America’s northern and southern borders, and he explains how government bureaucracy and shifting goals have made winning the drug war impossible thus far.

“One of the problems with having so many offices in the federal government directed at a common cause is direction and leadership,” Andrews wrote. “The scope of bureaucracy can be overwhelming. If one department wants to take a different policy direction from another, this could lead to an immediate bureaucratic tie-up and in some cases pushback among the many agencies.”

According to Andrews, bureaucracy comes from partisan politics, lack of consistent focus, and jurisdictional conflicts within competing law enforcement agencies that are not working together.

“One of the problems we always had–even today, I’m sad to say, are that there are still problems between the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement),” he said during an exclusive interview conducted from his home in northern Virginia.

“Those are really the two agencies that have drug enforcement power. ICE is charged with stopping any and all contraband coming into the United States under Title 18, and the DEA is charged with both domestic and international drug enforcement under Title 21.”

“The problem arises when once someone crosses over into the United States. Is it ICE or DEA? You’ve got two agencies that need to coordinate operations between one another. There’s already an inherent conflict with two different offices with two different missions that intersect. ICE will tell you that their job is securing the border. DEA will tell you their job is stopping drugs and if it’s at the border then they’ll be there, too.”

Andrews explained that one major problem is that ICE currently lacks independent authority to investigate smuggled drugs that end up in the U.S., but that the DEA has that authority. In order for ICE to pursue an investigation based on a Title 21 crime of drug trafficking, the agency must request approval to continue their investigation.

“The FBI is the only law enforcement agency that has total authority on each and every crime,” he explained. “ICE should have the same authority as the FBI in order to handle the Title 21 drug trafficking infractions much more effectively.”

Andrews said the federal government has also failed to develop effective long-range objectives and that foreign cartels are using the American legal system against itself.

“There’s no cohesive and long-range goal to fighting drugs,” he said. Every two years the goals change. If the goal shifts constantly the government can’t achieve it because it keeps moving. The goal shifts because of partisan politics and also the reality of the day we live in. Drug trafficking has been bumped off the radar screen for counter terrorism. There are limited resources to go around, so the same resources we were once using to fight drugs are now being used to fight terrorists.

“The Mexican cartels have some of our own people,” he explained. “Some of them know our laws better than we do. They have U.S. educated lawyers working down there. I learned that while working in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. There are cartels that have U.S. law firms on retainer. They know all about the attorney-client privilege and they use it for money laundering.”

In his book, Andrews examines each president’s leadership in the drug war from George H. W. Bush through Barack Obama.

“Clinton came off really soft and that really hurt him,” Andrews explained. “But then he found a hard charging drug czar named Barry Mccaffrey, and under his leadership that was the first time you had established goals. McCaffrey said we’re going for outcome measures, performance measures, and an end game, and then he established a lot more drug agencies, which got more overall drug control funding.”

Andrews said that under President George W. Bush, the budget to fight the drug war increased from $10 billion in 2002 to $13 billion in 2008, but because of the Sept. 11 attacks the mission changed and the drug war suffered as a result.

“The focus changed,” Andrews explained. “I don’t blame him because we were just attacked. We weren’t able to worry about the street thug selling dope because we had to go to war against terrorists. So, even though the national drug budget increased, it didn’t lead to more success.”

Andrews explained that under President Bush, dedicated drug enforcement money was now utilizing the drug trafficking budget to fight terrorism in the Middle East.

“There was a legitimate nexus between drug trafficking and terrorist activities,” he explained. “George W. Bush was the first president to focus on the nexus between the two, that terrorists were selling drugs to buy weapons of mass destruction… but it depleted resources from fighting drugs on the border.”

As a result, Andrews said that drug activities at America’s borders increased.

“We used to have helicopters that were dedicated to combat drug runners in the Caribbean,” he explained. “Those assets were redeployed in the Middle East to assist in our counter-terrorism efforts there. As a result, we lacked those dedicated resources for the Caribbean corridor. There were less resources there to combat the drug runners.”

Andrews said Obama has downgraded the former drug czar cabinet position to a diminished role within the White House (Office of National Drug Control Policy).

“It gives the role less stature – it’s tough to say you speak on behalf of the president when you’re not cabinet level. You’re really just a glorified cheerleader. It doesn’t give the position the weight it merits.”

Andrews’ examination of the drug war is insightful because it touches upon the problems our government has in fighting a perpetual war that will not go away. To successfully combat drug trafficking, however, the government must work to structure its own legal code and law enforcement agencies so that they are in sync and can finally work together instead of apart from one another, and in some cases perhaps against one another.

Think how many tax cuts we could have with the money we are spending. If you’re a Republican – think how many tax cuts (federal, state and local) could be bought with the money you’re spending to lock people up for something as dangerous as drinking. Think how many poor people could be helped with that money. We need to reform our drug laws as soon as yesterday by stopping the prohibition of marijuana and regulating its sale.

If you think the drug war makes you and your children safer, think again. The International Center for Science in Drug Policy stated: “Drug prohibition likely contributes to drug market violence and higher homicide rates.” But you don’t need to be a scientist, or the governor of a border state, to understand why: the drug war creates violent criminals.

Criminals deal drugs because drugs make them money, a lot of money. When that kind of money is in play, people kill for it. Entire armies of crime have built up on our streets and across the border in Mexico. But we can stop that tomorrow – with drug policy reform. We know that prohibition makes prices higher. Our own history with prohibition proves that. When we make something illegal, we keep the supply artificially low, and that keeps the price artificially high – and that means violence.

When marijuana is legal, farmed and taxed, we will suck the lifeblood from violent gangs and place the money in the public good. We tax and regulate alcohol and cigarettes, and we prevent kids from using these dangerous substances. Marijuana is no more dangerous than those, and yet Democrats and Republicans can only unite to allow this weed to fund entire armies of crime.

These criminals take to violence because, in absence of normal market regulations, only violence controls territory and market. Liquor stores don’t shoot each other over territory. If a newsstand up the block starts selling cigarettes, are you going to do a drive by and shoot their family?

Take for example the AP report on New York City. New York’s lowest-level marijuana-possession charge – criminal possession of marijuana in the 5th degree, a misdemeanor – has been the most common arrest charge in the city for much of the past decade, and the numbers have been steadily rising. So far this year there have been 38,359 reported arrests. Last year, there were 50,377 arrests citywide, up from 46,492 in 2009, according to statistics from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. That represents about 616 arrests per 100,000 city residents.

A report done earlier in 2011 by the Drug Policy Alliance concluded it cost an estimated $75 million in 2010 to process, jail and prosecute the low-level arrests in New York. That figure was a compilation of estimated court costs, police manpower and jail time, averaging about $1,500 per arrest – a cost shared by the state and city. The city budget alone is $65 million.

Every experiment in drug reform and decriminalization has met with a drop in crime. When New York State reformed its harsh Rockefeller drug laws, the precipitous drop in crime rates continued. When Portugal decriminalized drugs, crime dropped. Drug use dropped. New HIV infections dropped. Brute force has failed. And we should know better – our own experiment with prohibition virtually created organized crime in our country. Prohibition doesn’t work – users and addicts find a way to use drugs anyway. All prohibition does is create a black market that kills innocent people, when the DEA isn’t shooting them already.

I’m not soft on crime – as Governor I presided over a drop in the crime index from of almost 20%. If I had the tools to treat drug use as a public health hazard rather than a crime, I could have made that even lower. Thousands of retired drug enforcement agents, police and district attorneys join me in wanting to overhaul America’s drug laws. Democrats and Republicans don’t seem to understand, but as millions of people leave the two parties, independents can find new solutions. So join countless law enforcement officials, and a humble two-term governor; together we can save this country from crime – and our broken two-party system.

“Ever since the War on Drugs, everything has hit the fan,” says Romesh Bhattacharji, former Narcotics Commissioner of India. Rather than continue the unnecessary and costly drug war, Bhattacharji advises the United States to simply “Relax, take it easy, [and] tolerate.”

Last month, at the Cato Institute’s “Ending the Global War on Drugs” conference, Bhattacharji’s sentiments were echoed by ex-drug czars, cops, politicians, intellectuals, liberal and conservative journalists, and even the former President of Brazil.

Reason.tv attended the event and spoke with a number of the featured speakers, including:

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Wall Street Journal

Tucker Carlson, The Daily Caller

Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou, Speaker of the House of Deputies, Uruguay

Leigh Maddox, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition; University of Maryland School of Law

Enrique Gomez Hurtado, former Senator, Colombia

Larry Campbell, Senator, Canada

Romesh Bhattacharji, former Narcotics Commissioner, India

Eric Sterling, Criminal Justice Policy Foundation

Harry G. Levine, Queens College (N.Y.)

Juan Carlos Hidalgo, Cato Institute

About 6.15 minutes.

 Produced and Edited by Anthony L. Fisher. Camera by Joshua Swain, with help from Seth McKelvey.

 Graphics by Meredith Bragg.

For more Reason coverage on the Drug War, go here.

For Cato Institute Drug War coverage and research, go here.

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“Someone has to do something for Guatemala. The government doesn’t do anything,” says a Guatemalan resident Reason.tv calls “Miguel.”

In the past few years, the drug war has resulted in more than 40,000 deaths in Mexico and the situation in Guatemala is just as bleak. Last year alone, 5,000 people died in drug-war-related incidents.

Corrupt police do little to protect Guatemalans, and Guatemala’s corrupt court system convicts only 5 percent of arrested criminals.

In Guatemala City, private security guards outnumber police officers five-to-one, and robberies at gunpoint are common. For the impoverished people who live in Guatemala’s biggest city, life has become extremely dangerous.

Not all crime in Guatemala is committed by drug gangs, but there is no aspect of life in the country that has not been made far worse by prohibition and the black markets and violence such a policy inevitably creates.

This past May, Reason.tv’s Paul Feine spoke with “Miguel” about what it’s like to live in a city controlled by drug gangs and corrupt cops.

Approximately 5 minutes.

Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

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Peter Bagge is the pre-eminent libertarian cartoonist. An intelligent, anti-authoritarian streak runs throughout his canon, especially in his hit comic book from the 1990s, HATE , a hilarious and politically incorrect series focusing on the semi-autobiographical slacker-misanthrope Buddy Bradley. Bagge frequently contributes his own brand of “cartoon journalism” to the pages of Reason magazine where he also serves as a Contributing Editor.

Bagge discusses how he came to define his libertarian political worldview at a young age, and laments his frustration at being an artist who’s political views are frequently mischaracterized as “right wing” by other artists, simply for failing to be in lock-step with the rest of the predominatly progressive-left art world.

He also discusses a recent Reason assignment which took him within the walls of a women’s prison, and how the experience led him to question his own preconceived notions about the drug war and involuntary incarceration for drug users.

His funny, outrageous and often introspective anthology of Reason cartoon journalism, “Everyone is Stupid Except Me (And Other Astute Observations)” is available from Fantagraphics.

Shot by Alexander Manning. Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Anthony L. Fisher

About 5 minutes.

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But there are degrees of evil. So if you asked me to pick the most reprehensible thing that government does,  “asset forfeiture” might be in second place (hurting poor people to benefit rich people is at the top of my list).

Asset forfeiture occurs when government seizes property that is associated with a crime. That sounds reasonable – and it is reasonable if someone is convicted of, say, bank robbery and the government confiscates the stolen cash and any loot purchased with that money.

But it is not reasonable (or moral, or just, or appropriate) when government seizes assets without a conviction. And it is downright disgusting when the government steals (and I use that word deliberately) the assets of innocent parties.

I’ve already written about this issue (including an example from my county) and highlighted how asset forfeiture gives government bureaucracies a perverse incentive to steal.

Now we have a story from the Wall Street Journal that confirms our worst fears.

New York businessman James Lieto was an innocent bystander in a fraud investigation last year. Federal agents seized $392,000 of his cash anyway. An armored-car firm hired by Mr. Lieto to carry money for his check-cashing company got ensnared in the FBI probe. Agents seized about $19 million—including Mr. Lieto’s money—from vaults belonging to the armored-car firm’s parent company. He is one among thousands of Americans in recent decades who have had a jarring introduction to the federal system of asset seizure. Some 400 federal statutes—a near-doubling, by one count, since the 1990s—empower the government to take assets from convicted criminals as well as people never charged with a crime. …The forfeiture system has opponents across the political spectrum, including representatives of groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union on the left and the Heritage Foundation on the right. They argue it represents a widening threat to innocent people. “We are paying assistant U.S. attorneys to carry out the theft of property from often the most defenseless citizens,” given that people sometimes have limited resources to fight a seizure after their assets are taken, says David Smith, a former Justice Department forfeiture official and now a forfeiture lawyer in Alexandria, Va.

What’s really amazing is that government officials want to expand this reprehensible practice. The use of “civil forfeiture” is particularly worrisome, as illustrated by this passage.

Top federal officials are also pushing for greater use of civil-forfeiture proceedings, in which assets can be taken without criminal charges being filed against the owner. In a civil forfeiture, the asset itself—not the owner of the asset—is technically the defendant. In such a case, the government must show by a preponderance of evidence that the property was connected to illegal activity. In a criminal forfeiture, the government must first win a conviction against an individual, where the burden of proof is higher.

Here’s a really disgusting example.

Raul Stio, a New Jersey businessman, is caught up in the civil-forfeiture world. Last October, the Internal Revenue Service, suspicious of Mr. Stio’s bank deposits, seized more than $157,000 from his account. Mr. Stio hasn’t been charged with a crime. In a court filing in his pending civil case, the Justice Department alleges that Mr. Stio’s deposits were structured to illegally avoid an anti-money-laundering rule that requires a cash transaction of more than $10,000 to be reported to federal authorities. Mr. Stio made 21 deposits over a four-month period, each $10,000 or less, the filing said. Steven L. Kessler, Mr. Stio’s attorney, says there was no attempt to evade the law and that the deposits merely reflected the amount of cash his client’s businesses, a security firm and bar, had produced. Mr. Stio was saving to buy a house, he says.

I have no idea whether Mr. Stio is a good guy or a crook. But I know that the government shouldn’t be allowed to grab his money without convicting him of a crime. Especially for a supposed offense against absurdly foolish and ill-conceived anti-money laundering laws.

Our Founding Fathers gave us a presumption of innocence and no bureaucrat or politician should be allowed to cancel our constitutional rights.

Asset forfeiture should apply to people like Bernie Madoff. He’s been convicted of operating a Ponzi scheme, so by all means grab every penny he accumulated. But government should follow a simple rule: Convict first, seize second.

And here’s one final section from the story, highlighting how bureaucracies “earn” a profit by abusing forfeiture laws.

Part of the debate over seizures involves a potential conflict of interest: Under a 1984 federal law, state and local law-enforcement agencies that work with Uncle Sam on seizures get to keep up to 80% of the proceeds. Last year, under this “equitable-sharing” program, the federal government paid out more than $500 million, up about 75% from a decade ago. The payments give authorities an “improper profit incentive” to seize assets, says Scott Bullock of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm in Arlington, Va. It’s a particular concern amid current state and local government budget problems, he contends. …Seeming abuses occasionally emerge. In 2008, federal Judge Joseph Bataillon ordered the return of $20,000 taken from a man during a traffic stop in Douglas County, Neb. Judge Battaillon quoted from a recording of the seizure, in which a sheriff’s deputy complained about the man’s attitude and suggested “we take his money and, um, count it as a drug seizure.” The judge’s order said the case produced “overwhelming evidence” that the funds were clean.

Note: This video contains graphic images of violence and mature language. Viewer discretion is advised.

“No Knock Raid,” written and performed by Toronto-based musician Lindy, is a searing indictment of one of the most aggressive, ubiquitous, and mistaken tactics in the War on Drugs.

Consider only the most recent raid to cause a national outrage: On May 5, 2011, 26-year-old Jose Guerena, who survived two tours in the Iraq War, was shot and killed during a raid on his house by a Pima County, Arizona SWAT team that fired dozens of bullets through his front door. Guerena, married and a father of two, had just finished a 12-hour shift at a local mine. Law enforcement sources claim he was involved in narco-trafficking but have yet to produce any evidence supporting that claim. Officers involved in the death have been cleared of wrongdoing.

Guerena’s death is not an isolated incident. As USA Today reports, an astonishing 70,000 to 80,000 militarized police raids take place on a annual basis in America, many of them on mistaken suspects and many of them ending with injury or death for police and citizens alike.

As Reason Contributing Editor Radley Balko and others have documented, the militarization of standard police practice is a direct consequence of the modern-day War on Drugs, started 40 years ago by President Richard Nixon – and perpetuated by every administration since. (For a comprehensive report on the failure of the drug war to achieve any of its stated goals, read “Ending the Drug War: A Dream Deferred,” by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.)

“No Knock Raid” written and performed by Lindy.

Produced and directed by Hawk Jensen.

Performance footage directed by Victor Tavares and Zachary Koski.

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