Because it causes horrible shit like this:
At least 2,000 people have fled their homes in Michoacan state, in western Mexico, amid several days of fighting between gangs.
The worst of the violence is centred on the town of Buenavista.
Streets are deserted in some suburbs but in central areas witnesses reported bursts of automatic weapon fire.
It is believed to be factional infighting within the La Familia cartel.
I realize that certain people don’t want anyone to smoke pot, snort coke, take opiates (Seattle saw at least two fentanyl ODs this weekend), etc., etc. And that’s fine: if you don’t like drugs, don’t use ’em.
But the drug war (which is more about 19th-century moralism and finger-wagging than science or reality) keeps fueling major-league chaos and insanity—not to mention making drugs more dangerous by abdicating any serious government regulation and leaving that to the narcos.
And if you don’t care about those 2,000 people who’ve been displaced in a matter of days, just think about the effect that their displacement will have on the next generation of Mexicans—lots of kids who have learned (from experience) that the rule of law means nothing and that the dudes with the biggest guns win.
We have to find another way to deal with this issue. Fast.
Look, I live here- in the safe haven of Mexico City- but in my time here I’ve come to believe that the instability, corruption, and murder in this country goes way beyond US drug policy. If we stopped prosecuting the drug war today it might cut the gun supply, but it won’t end the fight for money and power, nor the culture of lawlessness and government corruption.
When drug use demonstrably results in atrocities like this, whether or not our government’s drug war is right or wrong, then it is time for responsible citizens to consider whether their actions (snorting coke or smoking pot) are contributing to the atrocities. Just as responsible citizens should consider whether driving an SUV contributes to instability in the Middle East.
“If you don’t like drugs, don’t use them” is about as satisfactory a response as “If you don’t like slavery, don’t own one.”
I hear you, #1 and say:
a) US drug prohibition has been a major force in the landscape of Mexican politics for a century. Don’t underestimate its power or historical influence.’
b) But even if you’re right and Mexico has a lot of other issues to deal with, howzabout we try doing something sensible for citizens of the US and Latin America and reform our drug policy? Ending prohibition won’t solve all of the world’s problems—but it will solve some of them.
@4
yea, Portugal. Results are good.
@2, how about if responsible citizens refuse to support politicians who create and enforce policies that result in mass violence and mass incarceration? It’s easy to not do drugs. But it seems difficult to not support authoritarianism.
Where did this rumor start that Portugal has legalized drugs? They only legalized use not manufacture/selling. Also, Portugal has nothing in common with the USA and it doesn’t have to share a border with scumfuck toilet Mexico.
And hey there #1, there’s also this, from the committee to protect journalists:
You might be living in a safe haven, but lots (and lots and lots) of other people aren’t.
You’d think this would be a natural issue for the Republicans- a more peaceful mexico would probably lead to fewer desperate people sneaking over the border.
All this to create jobs for people dumb enough to vote for America-hating Republicants …
End the Drug War. Now.
Amsterdam has issues with naked tourists taking too many strong mushrooms, they curbed it. If the choice is between mild annoyances like that one and the complete devastation in mexico the choice is pretty clear. I get its not all puppy dogs and rainbows on the drug legalization front but portagul, for all its imperfections, has seen drug use rates go down. Who else can claim that? Heroine is on a clear rise and your answer is to tell people no and except that after 3000 years of using drugs they’ll give it up like slavery? Slavery was a choice for white people, drugs are not a choice for addicts. But hey, your ignorance keeps all my friends employed I can keep this drug war crap up longer than you can, and I’m the one that will never run out of drugs. Ever.
How would legalizing use end the violence exactly? All the fighting is between cartels fighting for territory. If everyone could manufacture/sell drugs with impunity do you think there would be no more violence over territory? Fair questions. I’m for it if one person could explain how it would work and not make things worse in a different way.
Do you think Bartell’s will sell you your heroin if legalized? Do you think any business is going to sell you a lethal narcotic without a doctor’s prescription?
Before someone pulls “prohibition” out and dusts it off as an example, beer does not equal Heroin/coke/meth.
Stop buying cocaine. Stop funding this war.
Consumers are responsible for handing their dollars to those responsible for this violence. Your moral obligation to do what’s right is not eliminated by the actions of government agencies which have caused this situation. You have a choice.
If cocaine is what you choose to put in your body, remember that you’re making a choice to continue the most horrific violence this continent has seen in some time.
You portray yourself as victims because you are forced to use a substance under the threat of imprisonment while your purchase funds the deaths of thousands. You are not a victim. You are the cracked out paycheck signer for death squads. Remember that next time you take a bump. Or…
Stop. Buying. Cocaine.
Declaring “it shouldn’t be this way!” has accomplished nothing. Take responsibility for your role in this and change your behavior.
@12 legalizing use would mean that both cartels could grow marijuana next door to each other without having to lay claim to territory, because they would both be legal. They wouldn’t have to infiltrate police because they wouldn’t need to (because their farming activities would be legal). That is one possible way. If we made cotton illegal, the cotton cartels would fight over territory.
and before someone pulls “beer does not equal heroin/coke/meth and dusts it off” beer kind of equals marijuana, and coca leaf is a crop, much like hops, and opium is a crop, much like barley. they all need land, and they all compete. They are actually VERY SIMILAR in how the producers react to prohibition.
@11,
Hard drugs are not legal in Amsterdam.
@ Thank You Susan.
Those are excellent questions and they are the next step in thinking about regulation instead of prohibition—what, exactly, would it look like? Would teenagers be copping heroin in the 7-11 (instead of the parking lot behind the 7-11 where they’re currently buying their heroin)? Would there be registration, background checks, and a waiting period like we have for guns? Should we legalize cultivation of the base plants for personal use but restrict commercial sales? Nobody (that I know of) has articulated the answers to these important questions.
But I do know what any fool can see: Drugs are extremely profitable because they’re illegal. Poppies and coca and marijuana are weeds—they’ll grow anywhere. But when you restrict the market with prohibition (and the drug market will ALWAYS exist), the profit motive inspires gun battles, widespread corruption, displacement, political instability… and if you want to really get into the weeds (so to speak), you could point to dictatorship and political murder from Latin American governments as well as off-the-grid thugs who are profiting from this nonsense.
Keeping people away from their drugs of choice—and let’s be clear that people die from alcohol ODs as well as smack ODs—is just not worth the level of human suffering.
@14 WHY?
@16,
They’re fighting over control of the drug trade, not farmland, you ninny.
@20
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story…
when i was i amsterdam in the late 80’s, the police turned a blind eye to the heroin as long as it was kept at a certain level of visibility. the important thing was to not scare off the tourists. it seemed to work.
90% of Mexicans live in areas that are relatively untouched by drug-war violence, and even most of those that are in rough places like Michoacan right now aren’t in the line of fire. The overwhelming problem facing most of Mexico right now is poverty, not the drug war (though the two are interrelated).
@23: extent of use is only one aspect of the problem. Alcohol causes more harm than other drugs because it is in fact more harmful. The same is true for tobacco. Both are far more harmful for users than marijuana, heroin or cocaine.
The debate is not about whether cocaine and heroin and alcohol are vitamins or poisons—they can be either, depending on how you use them. If people in the US want to be drunk or stoned or whatever, that’s fine with me. I’m a (classical) conservative that way.
But the drug war is demonstrably a) a total failure at preventing people from getting drugs, and b) a bloodbath.
So we have a policy that doesn’t achieve its goals and is also responsible for massive death and destruction as a byproduct of its failure.
Any sane person, no matter what he/she/it thinks about drug use, would point a finger at that policy and say “we should consider reforming that.”
(There are also some slightly racist/nationalist elements to the conversation, as proponents of the drug war seem to prefer saving a few Americans from ODs over saving tens of thousands of Mexican/Peruvian/Colombian/Honduran/Guatemalan citizens who neither make nor use drugs but still get killed and fucked with because of the drug war. But I’m putting that into parentheses because I don’t think it’s the most forceful part of the argument. Nobody wants to have a discussion with someone who’s screeching “you’re a racist”! But I do think that this parenthetical part is worth keeping in mind.)
Anyway: take your Portugal or Netherlands or whatever. I don’t really care. They are only barely germane to the conversation. We have a fully preventable bloodbath on the southern half of our continent.
So what are we going to do about it? Or do we not care?
@24, except it didn’t, and now a quarter century later they’re pulling back on tolerance. It’s a complicated subject, and “Amsterdam” isn’t the answer any more than “Singapore” is (mandatory death sentence for heroin possession).
The United States can’t control the actions of the countries that exist from here to Columbia. Even if cocaine was legalized here you’d still have to face the matters of importing coca from foreign nations. And then you’d have to regulate the production of it. The government isn’t supposed to be turning a blind eye to stuff like its citizens snorting cattle dewormer so they would have to oversee the production like they do with pharmacological substances, alcohol, and tobacco products. But how do we make sure that we can import coca that’s not being grown in cartel controlled territory? Oh well let’s just grow it here in giant greenhouses.
Seriously. What ARE you going to do about it?
I would guess most people who want x drug legalized don’t realize that their dream of “everything the way it is now only cheaper and I don’t have to worry about cops” is a dream that will not come true in this country, ever.
If you want the drug war on cocaine to end you’ve got to deal with the massive implications that follow. Come up for a plan for handling the consequences of legalization and sell it to people. That’s all you really can do as far as a long term solution goes. You’ve got to show people you’re ready to do more than just get high stress free. You need to show them you’ve got a plan for the future. In the short term you could never buy cocaine. But I already said that.
@26 thanks.
Next time I gave a glass of wine I’ll need to remember it’s the same as mainlining some h or smoking crack. Great analogy.
“have” sorry.
@28. Not so fast. The idea that the Netherlands are “pulling back on tolerance” is something of meme that has gained a lot of traction recently. The real situation is a lot more complicated and nuanced.
For example they aren’t pulling back at all when it comes to harm reduction practice and programmes. The Dutch have achieved something of a miracle when it comes to heroin use. There is a stark generational divide in how heroin is now used: older users (~>30) still shoot, younger users (~<30) overwhelmingly snort. Just one example with enormous public health implications.
When it comes to prostitution and coffeehouses, the debate isn’t about whether to get rid of them, but over how to limit access for tourists. The Dutch problem is that they are (were?) an island of freedom in a sea of tight regulation. If all of Europe had their policies, Friday night in Amsterdam’s Red Light District might be a quiet, tidy affair.
ack: typed “snort” above, when I meant “smoke”.
All this thread proves is as long as most Americans are insulated from WAR, be it the Drug War, the Afghan War, the Iraq War, the War on Impoverished Americans (and if you haven’t noticed, yes, there is such a war! Worrying about the debt and doing nothing to create jobs does exactly jack shit for regular, unemployed folks), they’ll never take anything seriously and just buy into the government’s rhetoric.
If we had cartels fighting here THEN you’d see people sitting straight-up and DEMANDING the violence stop. However, it’s miles away. So people just blame the problems in Mexico on ordinary Mexicans and go on their merry way. The narcos want to keep the consumers happy so they ensure cartel violence stays in the production areas.
The apathetic, amnesiac masses are what keeps war going, as does corruption by ALL governments, USA included.
The ATF routing guns to the narcos? Guns that end up being used to shoot Border Patrol agents? Hello?
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/atf-told-gun…
(And PS: I know exactly where my cannabis is grown and who grows it, right here, IN FUCKING AMERICA, don’t lump me in with the people funding the cartels)
I want to see the War On Drugs end, and until it does I’m not going to purchase or support the purchase of drugs whose proceeds will end up in the hands of the cartels.
I have a lot of family in Michoacan, and while no one has fallen victim to the violence, they do face restrictions in where they can go and what they can do because of their proximity to the violence. The U.S. government’s approach to drug policy has failed miserably; at the same time (and as a result of failed policy), I could never buy cocaine in good conscience knowing that I was contributing to the degradation of my own family’s quality of life.
But I understand why some people don’t think that way, because they have no personal connection to the violent fallout of the failed war on drugs. It’s short-sighted, but that’s just the way people are.
If only it was as easy as ending the prohibition and the war. The people of Mexico still need to eat and live. The lopsided effect* of NAFTA pushed millions off their land, ending subsistence and market farming, and ended tortilla and masa subsidies. Killed local industries and services(banking most notably). The remaining traditional monopolies and duopolies stayed in place with high prices and poor quality/service. Then there is the political system and parties. President Calderon may personally want to end drug trafficking, but his party PAN is affiliated and indebted to the Sinaloa cartel and most of the government efforts merely extend that cartel’s territory.**
The drug industry and remittances from the USA keep people alive, pesos flowing through the economy. If not drugs, the criminal armies(many are members of the national army and police) will find something else. Kidnapping and hijacking goods(oil mostly) are already rampant in the Northern states.
*Most of the American jobs that were going to Mexico after NAFTA went to China instead.
**Michoacan, one of Mexico’s loveliest and interesting states is sadly caught in the middle of politics and cartel wars. If it was just La Familia, the small cultish gang would have burned itself out. However Calderon wanted to make his home state an example and the Sinaloans(and PAN officials) wanted control of the giant port at Lazaro Cardenas (from the PRI, another political party). Other cartels have since jumped in.
I dunno why you’re asking God to end the drug war. He’s generally considered to be a Republican. Or is this a “Nixon goes to China” sort of thing?
I’m sorry, I dashed off a quick comment from my work, I think I just wanted to be the first commenter for once in my life. I meant to add that the US has a responsibility to help Mexico beyond a shift in the national drug policy. The levels of corruption on both sides are astounding, and really, only Mexicans are bearing the consequences. I think this is the money quote from cartoonist Abel Quezada, at the end of his life in 1991: “It is now no longer a question of whether the so-called Mexican political system has succeeded or failed. Morally, it failed long ago, thanks to its defect: the renewing of corruption.”
@ 36: Amen, brother. Commenters can shout about coca and poppies forever, but that isn’t going to change the facts: people will buy coca and poppy products, and we can make that either less painful or more painful for the producers and users and people who just happen to live near the producers and/or users.
I vote for less pain rather than more pain. Legalize and regulate.
In response to Gnossos’ comment, “Alcohol causes more harm than other drugs because it is in fact more harmful. The same is true for tobacco. Both are far more harmful for users than marijuana, heroin or cocaine.”, @30, TYS wrote, “Next time I gave a glass of wine I’ll need to remember it’s the same as mainlining some h or smoking crack.“
That’s a poor analogy. Heroin and crack cocaine are highly-refined substances, but wine is the result of letting some fruit juice sit around while yeast turn it into a relativly mild alcohol solution then die when the alcohol content gets to high for them to survive.
However, the next time you have a few shots of the 190-proof grain alcohol sold at state-run liquor stores (particularly if you inject it directly into your blood stream), you need to remember it’s way more dangerous than chewing on coca leaves or having a cup of poppy tea would be, and likely more dangerous than smoking opium or snorting unadulterated, powdered, cocaine, would be.
I love how all the druggies claim that heroin, coke, meth and other hard drugs are less dangerous than alcohol. It would be fucking hilarious is it wasn’t so fucking idiotic.
I’m with @15. If you want to cut the violence, stop doing drugs imported from Mexico.
Better yet, go do something productive and stop encouraging teenagers (and teenage boys in particular) to use drugs. The last thing we need are more fucking drug addicts.
Data? Or are you just making it up as you go along?
@29- The main reason cocaine is illegal in Columbia is because the USA will strongly penalize any country that actually legalizes drugs. It’s in our Federal laws. There’s also the millions and millions of dollars we spend on drug eradication/enforcement in foreign countries. So when we legalize drugs there’s NO reason for them to keep up their prohibition.
At this point we have actually made things so bad that the cartels are a serious military threat to the host countries. Pulling the drug trade out from underneath them would certainly weaken them, though it’ll take decades before they go away.
@29- And legal, regulated cocaine would probably not result in an increase in use.
@42:
Back it up baby. Find me credible references (professional, not pop wisdom and media regurgitation of anti-drug propaganda) that support your view. Even crack use during pregnancy turns out to be less harmful for the fetus than alcohol or tobacco (reference coming later…from: Journal of the American Medical Association).
And making the assumption that those of us who support legalization are druggies shows your ignorance of the subject. There are a shit ton of lawyers, doctors, PhDs, ex-judges and cops, and conservative economists and pundits (e.g., Milton Friedman and William Safire) who have reached that conclusion.
Brendan, you MURDERING ASSHOLE, you kill Mexican children every time you toke up.
Oxycontin is legal and cheap, since when has that stopped the black market and violence associated with hill-billy heroin? Oh that’s right, just because it’s legal hasn’t changed a thing. Maybe we need to remove the prescription requirement? Maybe that will solve the problem?
Legalize hard drugs, the cartels won’t all go out and become social workers. Mexico has always been a violent, corrupt shit hole, drugs or no drugs. Blame the Spanish and Catholic Church.
Legalization and regulation of ethanol did not result in less people using it but in less troubles and fighting in distribution and marketing.It still causes many deaths from accidents,overdoses,etc .Similarly drug legalization would place the responsability in your hands or the drogo’s hands and no need to fight for territory saving the lives of thousands of people in central and south america.Lets vote yes for legalization and regulation and let each individual decide if he/she wants to be the victim and not innocent bystanders from these decadent habits.
@48- Yet all the troubles caused by Oxy (which isn’t legal for recreational use, meaning laws are still broken to obtain it) are a hill of beans compared to what the heroin trade has done.