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19 Could End Mexico's Drug War

vta

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Veteran
:bandit:


CALIFORNIA'S PROP 19, ON LEGALIZING MARIJUANA, COULD END MEXICO'S DRUG WAR


MEXICO CITY -- On Nov. 2, Californians will vote on Proposition 19, deciding whether to legalize the production, sale and consumption of marijuana. 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.

The costs of that war have long since reached intolerable levels: more than 28,000 of our fellow citizens dead since late 2006; expenditures well above $10 billion; terrible damage to Mexico's image abroad; human rights violations by government security forces; and ever more crime. In a recent poll by the Mexico City daily Reforma, 67 percent of Mexicans said these costs are unacceptable, while 59 percent said the drug cartels are winning the war.

We have believed for some time that Mexico should legalize marijuana and perhaps other drugs. But until now, most discussion of this possibility has foundered because our country's drug problem and the U.S. drug problem are so inextricably linked: What our country produces, Americans consume. As a result, the debate over legalization has inevitably gotten hung up over whether Mexico should wait until the United States is willing and able to do the same.

Proposition 19 changes this calculation. For Mexico, California is almost the whole enchilada: Our overall trade with the largest state of the union is huge, an immense number of Californians are of Mexican origin, and an enormous proportion of American visitors to Mexico come from California. Passage of Prop 19 would therefore flip the terms of the debate about drug policy: 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?

The prospect of California legalizing marijuana coincides with an increasingly animated debate about legalization in Mexico. This summer, our magazine, Nexos, asked the six leading presidential candidates whether, if California legalizes marijuana, Mexico should follow suit. Four of them said it should, albeit with qualifications. And last month, at a public forum presided over by President Felipe Calderon, one of us asked whether the time had come for such discussion to be taken seriously. Calderon's reply was startlingly open-minded and encouraging: "It's a fundamental debate," he said. ". . . You have to analyze carefully the pros and cons and the key arguments on both sides." The remarks attracted so much attention that, later in the day, Calderon backtracked, insisting that he was vehemently opposed to any form of legalization. Still, his comments helped stimulate the national conversation.

A growing number of distinguished Mexicans from all walks of life have recently come out in favor of some form of drug legalization. Former presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox, novelists Carlos Fuentes and Angeles Mastretta, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Mario Molina, and movie star Gael Garcia Bernal have all expressed support for this idea, and polls show that ordinary Mexicans are increasingly willing to contemplate the notion.

Indeed, as we have crisscrossed Mexico over the past six months on a book tour, visiting more than two dozen state capitals, holding town hall meetings with students, businesspeople, school teachers, local politicians and journalists, we have witnessed a striking shift in views on the matter. This is no longer your mother's Mexico -- conservative, Catholic, introverted. Whenever we asked whether drugs should be legalized, the response was almost always overwhelmingly in favor of decriminalizing at least marijuana.

The debate here is not framed in terms of personal drug use but rather whether legalization would do anything to abate Mexico's nightmarish violence and crime. There are reasons to think that it would: The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has said that up to 60 percent of Mexican drug cartels' profits come from marijuana. While some say the real figure is lower, pot is without question a crucial part of their business. Legalization would make a significant chunk of that business vanish. As their immense profits shrank, the drug kingpins would be deprived of the almost unlimited money they now use to fund recruitment, arms purchases and bribes.

In addition, legalizing marijuana would free up both human and financial resources for Mexico to push back against the scourges that are often, if not always correctly, attributed to drug traffickers and that constitute Mexicans' real bane: kidnapping, extortion, vehicle theft, home assaults, highway robbery and gunfights between gangs that leave far too many innocent bystanders dead and wounded. Before Mexico's current war on drugs started, in late 2006, the country's crime rate was low and dropping. Freed from the demands of the war on drugs, Mexico could return its energies to again reducing violent crime.

Today, almost anyone caught carrying any drug in Mexico is subject to arrest, prosecution and jail. Would changing that increase consumption in Mexico? Perhaps for a while. Then again, given the extremely low levels of drug use in our country, the threat of drug abuse seems a less-than-pressing problem: According to a national survey in 2008, only 6 percent of Mexicans have ever tried a drug, compared with 47 percent of Americans, as shown by a different survey that year.

Still, real questions remain. Should our country legalize all drugs, or just marijuana? Can we legalize by ourselves, or does such a move make sense only if conducted hand in hand with the United States? Theoretically, the arguments in favor of marijuana legalization apply to virtually all drugs. We believe that the benefits would also apply to powder cocaine ( not produced in Mexico, but shipped through our country en route from Latin America to the United States ), heroin ( produced in Mexico from poppies grown in the mountains of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango ) and methamphetamines ( made locally with pseudoephedrine imported from China ).

This is the real world, though, so we must think in terms of incremental change. It strikes us as easier and wiser to proceed step by step toward broad legalization, starting with marijuana, moving on to heroin ( a minor trade in Mexico, and a manageable one stateside ) and dealing only later, when Washington and others are ready, with cocaine and synthetic drugs.

For now we'll take California's ballot measure. If our neighbors to the north pass Proposition 19, our government will have two new options: to proceed unilaterally with legalization -- with California but without Washington -- or to hold off, while exploiting California's move to more actively lobby the U.S. government for wider changes in drug policy. Either way, the initiative's passage will enhance Calderon's moral authority in pressing President Obama.

Our president will be able to say to yours: "We have paid an enormous price for a war that a majority of the citizens of your most populous and trend-setting state reject. Why don't we work together, producer and consumer nations alike, to draw a road map leading us away from the equivalent of Prohibition, before we all regret our short-sightedness?"



URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n726/a11.html
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Authors: Hector Aguilar Camin and Jorge G. Castaneda
Note: Hector Aguilar Camin is a historian, a novelist and the publisher and editor of the Mexican magazine Nexos. Jorge G. Castaneda was Mexico's foreign minister from 2000 to 2003 and teaches at New York University
.
 
Excellent post!

It's good to finally hear something from south of the border on this subject. Maybe logic, reason, and attention to the effects of the costly and unjust war on drugs will finally win out over the culture of fear that has been engendered in Americans Anslinger (sp) made it law and Nixon and Reagan made it Christian.

"I shot ronald reagan i shot jfk i slept w/ marilyn she sang ME happy birthday" - "Oh My God" Michael Franti, Spearhead

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgBq_feHYQ4
 

kmk420kali

Freedom Fighter
Veteran
I support Prop 19...but I do not think that it will drive the price of Cannabis down much, nor do I think it will do much to the Black Market--
Mexico's problem is Corruption on a mass scale--
Until They do something with their System to make Federali's (sp), Local Police, Mayors, Politicians on every Level, accountable for their actions...with complete transparency for Investigations...they will continue to live in utter corruption--
My heart goes out to the Mexican People....but I do not think that Legalization alone will solve their problems--
Even if it does do something to take away 1 source of income to the Cartels...they will just move to another way to supplement that loss, like more kidnappings, etc...
 

BiG H3rB Tr3E

"No problem can be solved from the same level of c
Veteran
i agree with KMK. this wont stope because of 19.....
 
Last edited by a moderator:

opt1c

Well-known member
Veteran
werd cuz when i think of mexican cartels i think of brick weed.... not coke or meth
 

kmk420kali

Freedom Fighter
Veteran
werd cuz when i think of mexican cartels i think of brick weed.... not coke or meth

Hard drugs are their bread and butter...weed is just the jelly--
Smuggling has the same risk, whether it is 100 lbs of weed, or 100 lbs of coke-- But the coke makes them 100 times the money--:tiphat:
 

kmk420kali

Freedom Fighter
Veteran
^^^but the weed goes a 100x faster

I think you might be surprised--
Remember, the end user of weed will buy a gram or eighth...and be good for the night--
The end user of coke....can easily come back 10 times in a day--:tiphat:
 

Greyskull

Twice as clear as heaven and twice as loud as reas
ICMag Donor
Veteran
hahaha
speed meth coke & herion are still the big ticket items
and theres always states that dont recognize cannabis recreationally or medically that will become new key markets for the south of the border weed

the only thing thats gonna stop the mexican drug war is everybody killing each each other off...
 

Warped1

I'm a victim of fast women and slow horses
Veteran
Geez I hope I didn't double post this..Anyway, I have to agree with you Grey, I was thinking the same things when I was reading this. Whether California legalizes cannabis or not, won't really matter. There are still Arizona,New Mexico and Texas that won't be legal, and that's a whole lot more border than California. Unless it's legal all over the U.S. there will still be a market and it will be business as usual for the cartels.
 

Snowberry

Member
California being roughly 10% of U.S. population in my mind equates to the potential loss of roughly the same percentage of the brickweed market. I can see if proposition 19 passes many other states will in due order follow suit within the next few years.

With the potential cost savings to taxpayers of incarcerated people on non violent cannabis charges no longer requiring the $50k+ per year expense for each individual. States are already salivating at the potential tax revenue streams when prohibition has ended as well. Those tax revenues will take many forms from income declared to licensing and permit fees to business and corporate tax, it will add up quickly.

Booze prohibition made a millionaire out of Al Capone, Al's downfall wasn't all the murders he ordered, it was tax evasion.

So suck it up all you greedy parasites and find a job or legit business and start paying your fair share of tax.:tiphat:
 

sac beh

Member
I agree with the folks who say 19 alone won't have a huge effect on the cartels. The situation will probably get worse for a while before getting any better. Cartels and organized gangs will find other sources of income, will resort to larger acts of violence, trafficing, kidnapping and black mail of persons, to make up for lost business. And as mentioned hard drugs have been a bigger business for them than marijuana for a while.

Though the US exported drug war instigated and fueled much of the violence, the situation in Mexico is so much larger than the drugs now. Corruption in all levels of government and law enforcement, and impunity in the justice system will need to be addressed. But anyway, I'm not from California so I'm not one to judge prop 19, but it sounds like continued progress in the right direction, so good look to you all in Cali.
 

vta

Active member
Veteran
FOR MEXICAN CARTELS, MARIJUANA IS STILL GOLD

CORRE COYOTE, Mexico -- Times are good for the dope growers of the western Sierra Madre. The army eradication squads that once hacked at the illicit marijuana fields have been diverted by the drug war that's raging elsewhere in Mexico.

The military's retreat has delighted farmers who are sowing and reaping marijuana. Cultivation in Mexico soared 35 percent last year and is now higher than at any time in nearly two decades, the State Department says.

It's also been a boon for Mexico's powerful organized-crime groups.

Marijuana is perishable, bulky and less profitable than their other exports -- heroin, cocaine and crystal meth -- but drug-trafficking experts say that every major trafficking organization in Mexico reaps significant income from marijuana, drawing on cross-border criminal networks that carry cannabis to scores of U.S. cities.

"They tend to be a cash cow for the drug-trafficking organizations," David Johnson, the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, said during a visit to Mexico last week.

An aerial tour deep into the Sierra Madres at the side of a Mexican army general and a small army eradication unit -- one of a handful that are still actively working -- shows marijuana crops flourishing in valley after valley of the rugged, pine-covered region. The mountain slopes and valleys in the part of southern Chihuahua state that's hugged by Sinaloa and Durango states are sometimes called Mexico's Golden Triangle -- after the opium-producing Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia -- because of their productivity. Illicit crops include not only marijuana but also poppy, the flowering plant that provides the white gummy latex that's later processed into opium and heroin.

It's a dangerous area. Even the poorest farmers tote weapons. A third of the region's population is thought to earn its living from the illicit drug industry.

Peasant farms need little to grow small fields of marijuana: bags of seeds, some fertilizer, lengths of hose for primitive irrigation systems and a few months for the crop to mature into 10-foot-tall plants.

According to State Department estimates, the areas of harvestable marijuana fields in Mexico grew from 10,130 acres in 2001 to 29,652 acres in 2009. During the same period, the area of eradication dropped by half.

Farmers see little stigma -- or risk -- in growing cannabis.

"It's always been said that poppy is controlled by organized crime, and marijuana is for the people. Growing it is like growing corn," said the general.

The biggest competition for Mexican cartels comes from domestic marijuana growers in the United States. A document produced by local, state and federal law enforcement officials in California's Central Valley says that California's 2009 marijuana harvest alone surpassed the annual estimated harvest of nearly 32,000 tons in Mexico. It put overall U.S. marijuana production at 76,380 tons.

"Mexicans sometimes tell me that they think we are self-sufficient in marijuana," Johnson said.
 

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