Legal, legal, legal, legal, legal, legal:
The bullet-riddled, bound bodies of seven men were dumped Sunday at a downtown bus stop in the Pacific resort town of Zihuatanejo, police said, as drug violence claimed at least 20 people this weekend along a stretch of coastal tourist destinations. […]
Guerrero state police said agents found the bodies early Sunday in the beach town, which is popular with both Mexican and U.S. tourists. Less than two weeks ago, 35 tortured bodies were dumped onto a main avenue in the Gulf coast seaport of Veracruz.
Cocaine if it were legal would still be nasty—but never this nasty. Cocaine doesn’t massacre tens of thousands of people—of innocent people. Or set them of fire or decapitate them or hog tie them and torture them with pliers and leave their remains in the town plaza. It doesn’t terrorize continents.
With cocaine alone—if it were legal and internationally monitored with, say, the oversight we give rum or gasoline—there would still be victims, mostly addicts who harm themselves, but there would be fewer victims. Certainly fewer innocent victims. That’s the lesser of two evils compared to the widespread, enormity of prohibition.
Regulate the coca cultivation in South America, set environmental standards for rendering it into cocaine, control the supply chain through Central America and Mexico, tax it like any agricultural commodity at every step of the way, and sell it at pharmaceutical grade to the massive Hoover that is America’s collective nostrils. Slap big warning labels on it and keep treatment specialists on hand. That’s cheaper, less bloody, and a million times more humane to the random fucks getting killed or the poor people swept up into cartels.
And to those who say people just need to stop using cocaine: don’t be daft.
You forgot Levamisole
People really ought to stop using cocaine. I’m sure that if I took even one sniff, it would bore me terrifically, too.
I hope Red and Andy are okay.
People ought to stop using cocaine.
But since lawyers are the primary consumers, I doubt anything will happen.
@2 I get no kick from champagne, either, but you gotta drink something at weddings.
No no no. People shouldn’t stop using cocaine: if people stopped using cocaine, what could possibly replace it as an instant, foolproof and 100% accurate means of sussing out who’s a self-involved douchebag?
Damn.
@6 for the This One Girl At The Peak Party at SFU win.
I’m all for legalization of pot and cocaine. Prohibitions are idiotic. It’s simple economics. You can’t win a price war with a black-marketeer.
However there is a distinct troubling inconsistency here. We have no problem placing a lion share of moral responsibility on the consumers of other harmful products and work to discourage the use of these products by socially stigmatizing said consumers. From SUV’s to guns. Even meat.
But when it comes to drugs? Why… it’s always The Man’s fault! Down with the man!
Clearly prohibition has to end. It’s too expensive and counterproductive to maintain. But we should also be calling out users as the fucking shit stains they are for their share of participating in a system that causes the death of tens of thousands of innocent people.
Once it’s legal and the cartels no longer need to utilize overt violence then have at it.
But anybody using (non home-grown) pot, coke, or junk is a huge part of the problem.
Legalizing marijuana? Sure, no-brainer. But cocaine (and therefore crack)? What else, meth, heroin?
No way.
Also, not to rain on anyone’s parade, but… let’s assume that cocaine is legalized. The pharma companies swoop down, buy up everyone’s coca crop for processing, and sell it at your local walgreens. Great, problem solved, right?
Except what, precisely, do you think that the hundreds of heavily-armed and (for the moment) extremely well funded gangsters on both sides of the borders are going to do? Submit their resumes to AstraZenica? (Or to Walgreens?) Take up a quiet life of subsistence coca farming, selling their crops at whatever pittance the pharmas will be paying? Retire to their estates in the countryside? I’m thinking “no” and “fuck no.” They’ll find another black market to muscle into.
Legalize it, sure: it’s the right thing to do. But don’t pretend that it’s going to solve any problems other than “cocaine is pretty expensive and sometimes adulterated with scary shit.”
How many coke snortin’ Capitol Hill hipsters care that their drug use helps cause this murder, torture and abuse in Mexico? I’m all for legalizing all drugs but don’t think it will ever happen unless Ron Paul gets elected President. In the meantime, we could use a PETA like PR campaign to show the users of drugs like cocaine what their drug use causes in countries like Mexico.
#10: Yeah, just imagine if someone could go to their doctor and get a legal prescription for a drug like heroin or meth. Society would collapse!
@7 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-firs…
What I put in my body should be nobody’s business. And if we send the army to Mexico, the drug trade will move to Costa Rica. And if we invade Costa Rica, the drug trade will move elsewhere. No matter how we hate the facts, they remain the facts. We will never have enough police or prisons.
@9 and 12 – Yes, yes, yes. Our system is flawed and drug policy needs a massive overhaul, including legalization and regulation. However, those problems do not absolve individual users.
@9: Hear, hear!
@11: Ditto
@13: You think a doctor’s going to write a prescription for meth or cocaine or heroin? What possible medical reason would a doctor have for justifying that? They don’t (or, aren’t supposed to) just hand you drugs because you want them.
@17: actually, doctors in the UK are allowed to prescribe heroin for heroin addicts. Society there has no collapsed last I checked.
#17: Legal heroin-like opioids (like hydrocodone, morphine, oxycontin, etc) are by far the #1 legal prescription drug in the country already. Legal amphetamines (like adderall) aren’t doing so shabby either.
@11 This is a good point.
The idiotic drug war created the mafia state in Mexico but the cartels have already diversified into kidnapping and other rackets and will find other sources of revenue if their primary one is curtailed or taken away. Still legalization would likely take the wind out of their sails.
This is the on-going evidence of why prohibition doesn’t work. The same thing happened around alcohol in the 1920s — illegal trade, gang wars, murders over territory and income. Drugs should be legalized and taxed both nationally and at the local level, with local taxes at least partially devoted to treatment for addicts who want to get out of their habit.
Ken: you’re not wrong, but to put it mildly rural Mexico and Columbia are not Illinois. There are not a lot of straight jobs available there at all, and especially not for someone who’s primary job skill is “shooting motherfuckers in the face.”
@9 – we need to shame cocaine users even if cocaine were legalized? Do we shame alcohol users? I mean, beer drinkers indirectly caused all that suffering during the Prohibition era ….
@10 – so the massive drug wars should remain for those other substances? Zero tolerance laws for meth users and dealers? Random drug screens for everyone to fight the scourge of heroin? How far do we go with it?
It’s amazing how many anti-Reagan liberals seem to think that Just Say No was a legitimate drug control strategy.
@24 – Yeah, and everyone realized that decreasing alcohol use wasn’t worth the exorbitant price in human blood and treasure…
Legalize it, regulate it… and make it a “one strike and you are out” offense to commit any crime while high on the stuff, including driving under the influence. If people are going to be stupid enough to use it, we should try to minimize the risks to everyone including the addict.
Cocaine is nasty stuff and a serious danger to society. Unfortunately, criminalization has shown to be worse.
I would like to see your sources. Not your dealer, but your fact sources.
@28 – ok. So further questions: What does ‘moderate’ mean? And how to do you keep those law and order folks from ratcheting it all back up to the absurd levels we have now?
If it’s illegal and addictive or fun, then there will be people breaking the law. And most of the time they will get away with it. There’s that whole ‘prohibition causes people to disrespect the law’ again.
@25
“we need to shame cocaine users even if cocaine were legalized?”
No. I pretty much said the opposite.
Are you arguing that users share no moral responsibility for how the harmful manner the products they consume are produced and distributed?
By the way, the most deadly drug is alcohol. It’s legal and regulated because we found out it was even worse when it was illegal.
@25 we shame alcohol users all the time when they overdo it and act like assholes. Why should cocaine be any different?
Yes, problem solved. Better big pharma than organized crime.
That’s how the Canadian beer industry was born during the American prohibition. So, again, problem solved.