Like Robert C. Koehler on today's Common Dreams…
“It’s not just about us. If Californians legalize marijuana on Nov. 2, maybe Mexico will end its horrific drug war. The “war on drugs,” like the war on terror, is a simplistic and brutally stupid solution imposed on a complex, multifaceted human problem, born out of the notion that you can take evil out of context and eradicate it with the firepower of righteousness. Science and the arts have long ago moved on to new realms of awareness, but we’re still playing politics the way we did in the 19th century — or the 12th or 1st — with the primary difference being that we have the capacity to do far more harm these days. And righteousness, indeed, all too often becomes a far greater cause of harm than the original problem; in tandem, problem and solution may combine to turn chronic trouble into unfathomable disaster, especially for innocent bystanders. Mexico’s drug war, for instance, which began in late 2006, has so far resulted in the deaths of 28,000 people and consumed billions of dollars in military expenditures. Meanwhile, government human rights violations are rampant, crime in general is on the rise — and most Mexicans think the drug cartels are winning. Writing earlier this month in the Washington Post, Héctor Aguilar Camín and Jorge G. Castañeda ask: “If California legalizes marijuana, will it be viable for our country to continue hunting down drug lords in Tijuana? Will Wild West-style shootouts to stop Mexican cannabis from crossing the border make any sense when, just over that border, the local 7-Eleven sells pot?” If Californians pass Proposition 19 and make marijuana fully legal, Mexico may choose to legalize it as well, they suggest. The two countries are inextricably linked via drugs; what Mexico produces, the U.S. consumes. Thus: “If the initiative passes, it won’t just be momentous for California; it may, at long last, offer Mexico the promise of an exit from our costly war on drugs.” (Click here for more)
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5 comments:
There always have been a few people talking sense. The problem is that nobody's listening.
All for legalizing pot- but you're fooling yourself if you think it will render the drug cartels here in Mexico impotent. Marijuana is small time in comparison to the trade in cocaine and heroin and speed and humans. These cartels move drugs across the border with the sole intention of making a massive profit- not because they care about drugs. If they can't make money through drugs these organizations will simply find other means to get rich, and these means surely won't be any cleaner or more peaceful. It's like saying the mafia disappeared after the US ended prohibition. These people are a manifestation of capitalism in it's most brutal form- and addressing that is the only way you could think about changing the situation.
The goal is a rational international social and legal policy towards substances prohibited by law. We do not know what the end result will be, though we have our suspicions. All we know is that the decades old witch hunt is not working for anybody - not even the witch hunters.
The US mafia did get less violent after Prohibition ended.However in the case of the Mexican cartels their "core business" has traditionally been smack - far more profitable and far more barriers to entering that market for competitors than the marijuana market, which is as close to a market with perfect competition as possible. Also with the Sinaloa Cartel's organizational and logistics structures being patterned after WalMart, it's obvious they're not going away...
However legalizing weed would be a VERY good idea on every level even if Mexico's problems with cartel violence would not change.
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