Is This War Won?

When Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs, we should have known that the real war would be on truth and our wallets. More than thirty years later, the war, which in the early 1970s was focused on marijuana, seems to have had four fundamental effects:

1. The creation of a huge drug criminal empire with enormous financial resources
2. A growing problem with drugs far, far worse than reefer, in particular crack and methamphetamine
3. The birth, growth, and care of an enormous drug enforcement industry
4. More varieties of more powerful and dangerous drugs available at cheaper prices nationwide

Okay, okay, that's all common knowledge. But here's what is a really strange manifestation. "Back in the day," when a "lid" was $10 and weighed an ounce, most pot came from Mexico or, on rare occasion, some friend's backyard. Now, after over three decades of enforcement, we have this from the Arizona Daily Sun:

Law enforcement officers have busted one of the biggest marijuana-growing operations in the state -- and perhaps the nation -- in the Fossil Springs Wilderness on national forest lands southeast of Camp Verde.

No big deal, right? Domestic pot cultivation is big business in Humboldt County, California and in Kentucky as well. Here's the kicker, however.

The Department of Justice predicted in a report that marijuana farming in forests nationwide would only increase and become more commercial, led primarily by drug cartels with ties to Mexico.

Indeed, the arrest of a Mexican citizen in connection with the Arizona marijuana operation supports DOJ's prediction.

And that's what has yours truly chuckling. Drug enforcement policy has been so effective that not only do we have meth labs in every neighborhood and access road motel, but now Mexicans are coming up here to grow their pot.

Help me out here--is this true irony, or am I just too easily amused?